Math is Hard, Barbie

I'm having a hard time putting things into words, really. Not a usual complaint, in fact most of the time I need to dial down the verbosity, but sometimes I do get stuck.

Thanksgiving passed by in a whir of Thanksgivinglessness. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It was a harder holiday than usual, not least because the day before the big turkey day we had a discussion that contained the topic of discussion of leaving. Leaving for a longer term than my 24 hour hotel yearning. Leaving for a term that included a question mark.

And really any dining room table talk that includes the idea of leaving for any length of time is a bad conversation to have.

I guess we hit a new low. Somewhere along the way we had stopped communicating and started resenting. We didn't talk to each other with respect while arguing. We both needed some work. We converged on many layers of upset from many layers of life that piled on the table like a many layered dream coat.

The leaving talk was parked behind the scary shed, a place neither of us want to venture in the dark.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

A Couple of White Helens, Sitting Around Talking

A group of people, lounging around on a worn out purple velveteen couch, suddenly stop talking.

"Hey, uh, anyone seen Helen?" asks one particularly brash character.

"Last time I saw her was 9 am, and she was popping herbal tranquilizers again," replies one of them in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Oooh, I love those," interjects one of them, an airy-fairy creature known as Helen Hippy. "They work so well. Takes all of your stresses, anxiety, and anger away."

"Yeah." adds Practical Helen. "As long as you don't mind taking drugs to clear your head, then sure. Whatever works."

"But she spends her days in her pajamas," Helen Hippy says nervously, biting her lower lip. "I'm sure that having babies is sending her downhill."

"You're such a fucking pillock," replies Helen the Volatile. "She wore her pajamas every day before the babies were born."

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Twenty-Three is a Magic Number

Twenty-three.

That's the stopgap I have, that's the number where it stops.

Just twenty-three.

Twenty-three is the number of pills I have left before I start to try to wean myself off of them.

I started the anti-depressants almost eight months ago, on the first of February. The postnatal depression was simply too much for me, I wasn't functioning. My depression manifested as anxiety, and unless I was with my babies in that safe cocoon where no one could touch us, I was a mess. Crying. Sleepless. Not eating. Unable to function in public. Unable to keep from shouting at everyone - except the babies - around me. Unable to stem this mountain of anger that came from somewhere, came from nowhere, anger so fierce it was palatable yet I couldn't reach it, not even to tell Angus to go to hell when I should have done. I couldn't slow down and just hold my babies, just be with them. I mourn that, I mourn those days. My children are more interested in exploring now, and now that I am calm enough to just sit on the couch and be with them they no longer want to be with me. Every day was a mental exercise of running in sticky taffy.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Please Fire Me From My Job

"I don't want to be a mom anymore!" I sobbed into his consoling, non-judgemental embrace four days after our daughter was born.

What I wanted was a team of experts to stampede into my room and whisk her, and all her encroaching necessities, out of my house and life so that I could sleep for a month and then resume my life pre-pregnancy style. What happened instead was the beginning of an unimaginable two year struggle to climb out of an abyss of self-loathing and unbearable hopelessness.

Of course I was familiar with the term "post-partum depression", all the pregnancy books wrote about it and it was something my mid-wife and I briefly covered during one of our visits. I knew the symptoms, what I didn't recognize was how they felt and how they could happen to me, someone who was having a text-book pregnancy. Never mind that the word I exclaimed when I found out I was pregnant only included four letters. Never mind that I couldn't bear the thought of shopping for diapers or sleepers...and definitely never mind that throughout the nine months of supposed glowing bliss, I frequently questioned my decision to have our baby. Ambivalence was putting it mildly.

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Lil is also a contributing editor for Postpartum Depression. She is beginning to write about her experience with prenatal and postpartum depression at There is a Crack in Everything. She also blogs about daily life at From Maiden to Mother.

Lil's Story

Lil is also a contributing editor for Postpartum Depression. She is beginning to write about her experience with prenatal and postpartum depression at There is a Crack in Everything. She also blogs about daily life at From Maiden to Mother.

This is like walking up to you in a bar and just blurting out stuff about me, hoping something will spark your interest and we'll connect. How about postpartum depression? It affects close to 20% of mothers (and some fathers) in North America alone. Maybe you're one of them...like I was.

I was going to become a holistic health practitioner, my long-time need to be a mother quickly diminishing with the end of every other weekend with my partner's three children. Clearly Big Momma upstairs was still checking off my "life list", because nine months after committing to a man I loved and finally being able to afford to study in the field I knew I would be brilliant in, I became pregnant. Is @#*% the appropriate response when one sees the pink strip on the pee stick?

I now know that I had prenatal depression during my first trimester and that it was a precurssor to my postpartum depression (PPD). Two months into my daughter's life I was diagnosed. In its grip I was far from the earth mother I imagined I'd be...I was despondent, ambivalent about this screaming, demanding baby and didn't care whether I lived through it or drowned, just as long as it (my daughter, nursing and late-night-ass dragging) all went to hell so that I could go back to a life that was meant for me, because this was not it.

I went through it all ~ medication, hospitalization and thoughts of suicide and adoption. Three years later, I'm still here and so is my daughter. I survived just like I was assured I would. Now I write about my experience with PPD in my blogs because I want others to know they will survive too.

When the Fog Has Finally Lifted

Some mornings I walk Gorby in the local woods. He loves it there, and he deserves it. A number of people (including Cheryl, Kenju, and CTG) have asked how he's doing with the babies, and the truth is, he's very insecure. He sits by them when they're downstairs, he follows them when we carry them, but he needs an awful lot of attention. We try to give it to him but it's not always easy when you have two infants to deal with. Maggie, on the other hand, is the true loser in this scenario. She hates the babies as much as she hates all other people, and she spends most of her time outside, inconsolably angry and unwilling to sit on my lap. I am not forgiven for bringing them into the house, no matter how much I try to make peace with her.

I will keep trying.

That's what I do.

These walks we take in the morning are something I have started looking forward to. Sometimes I take a Lemonhead along with me in a sling and the three of us walk through the woods, quiet in our activities. Sometimes I take Gorby alone.

We walk until I get tired and light-headed, then we go back.

Autumn has hit the woods hard and on any given morning you can stand beneath a tree and let the shower of falling leaves hit your head and shoulders. I wear gloves and a scarf because the nip in the air takes me by surprise. Gorby runs on the path, his breath sometimes visible in the early morning air.

I take these moments of peace as they come, not because of the hecticness that comes with babies because, believe it or not, I love every goddamn minute of it. I love the baths and the feedings and the diapers and the burpings. The babies are even sleeping through the night most nights, it's not as though I'm as endlessly tired as I was. I take the moments of peace because I need them and cling desperately to them.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Helen's Story Continues

Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

I went through five rounds of IVF, over a duration of five years. We were reaching the end of the IVF ladder when lo and behold, on what was possibly our last cycle the RE transferred two “meh” quality embryos and 8 months later I gave birth to tiny preemie jaundiced babies. And they were fabulous. Even the one with jaundice who screamed 18 hours a day. But despite having my Christmas come early, I started to falter.

I felt overwhelmed with stress. I couldn’t handle any situation outside of the babies. I was angry and difficult. I felt like I was drowning. I shouted at people. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. The weight I gained while pregnant fell off and took many other pounds with it, as I just couldn’t get the energy to eat. I almost literally couldn’t hold still – when the babies were napping and I should have been napping I would be going crazy cleaning or scrubbing or crying. Most of the time it was all three. I couldn’t concentrate and couldn’t talk and my relationship was falling apart and showering was exhausting and I swore I didn’t have post-partum depression.

But I did.

10 months after the birth of the twins I am still on medication to help get me through this. Postpartum depression (called post-natal depression on my side of the pond) has, like other aspects of mental illness such negative connotations. When people hear about PPD/PND they think that you’re dangerous. If you have it you may be the kind of person to drown your kids. Maybe you’re being selfish and not getting out of bed. Really, we must just be ungrateful, crap mothers.

PPD/PNT comes in many forms. It can be depression so dark you can’t breathe. It may be anxiety so severe you prematurely age yourself by the second. It can be both. Regardless of how it manifests itself you feel very isolated and alone, particularly so if you’ve had fertility treatment – you finally got pregnant! You should be celebrating, not depressed!

Suffering from PPD/PNT is awful. If you have it, you are not alone.