Jen’s Story

You will be well. We are living proof.

Two kids: Evan and Alex. Evan is seven. (Say it aloud, it’s cute.) She loves Hillary Duff and the Cheetah Girls and school. Alex is two. He is a maniac for trains and rocks and Evan.

To say “I love my kids” is a ridiculous understatement, so maybe that’s the irony of my story(ies).

Evan was born my senior year of college, ten months after my wedding. We had big plans to wait seven years to have a baby. My dad suggested I write a self-help book, “How to Accomplish in Seven Weeks What You Thought Would Take Seven Years.” Very funny, Dad. I had already broken the “rules” by marrying someone outside of my race, at a very young age—20. Having a baby only ten months later? (I still have visions of friends’ contorted faces as they tried to do the math in their heads.) I made the best of it.

Evan’s birth was pretty typical: I was so resigned to being pregnant, I was shocked when the doctor said—at a 40 week check-up—that she would induce that day. After lots of kidney issues during the pregnancy, I was ready for Evan to get her Eviction Notice. I was an Earth Mother, though. Everything was supposed to be “natural.” So, to start labor, my doctor broke my water, then tried the cervical ointment, and finally Pitocin over the course of six hours. Pitocin was the only thing that worked. Of course. And it REALLY worked. And there was nothing natural about it. But, I saw it through until, five hours later, Evan was delivered, whole and beautiful and a little blue. All Pitocin, no pain meds.

The nurse showed my husband, later that night, how to bathe Evan. I remember looking over her shoulder and envisioning her under the water, not breathing, and sitting back on the bed. I was absent from my daughter’s first bath.

I bathed her for a couple of weeks, but the visions of Evan kept returning, more brutal each time I tried to ignore them. I finally turned bathing over to my husband. I hated seeing her so grey under the water. I felt like the worst mother on the face of the planet. I couldn’t tell anyone because I was terrified “they” would take her away from me.

My husband and I divorced a year later. As the custodial parent, bath time was my chore, again. I took Evan into the shower with me, but rarely, if ever, gave her a bath. The visions had convinced me that I didn’t deserve to be her mother and she certainly didn’t deserve a mother like me. The summer after my separation, I attempted taking pills and causing car accidents just to be able to escape the visions and the hopeless situation I was in. I couldn’t parent a child I was envisioning killing.

At a low point that summer, I told my mom, “Evan would be better off without me.” My mom looked at me like I was an alien. “That’s ridiculous, Jennifer.” Yeah, ridiculous. Another good reason to kill myself.

The thing is, it all seemed so logical to me. Even as I write this, now, I can point out why this thought was wrong and that thought was misguided. But, at the time, all of my thoughts were clouded by this dimness that I couldn’t escape.

I know my mom didn’t say that to hurt me. I know she was trying to point out how central I was (and am) to Evan. But it showed me that she didn’t know how to support me—and I desperately needed support. Later that week, I packed my bags and moved back to my college town. That was a place where there were people I knew loved me. Their words were ones I could count on. I stayed there, for two years, to complete my teaching certificate. It worked. Two years after Evan’s birth, I was feeling like my life had a place. Nonetheless, I never told anyone else what I was thinking or seeing.

Then, I moved to Kansas City to take my first teaching job. A few months later, I started dating Josh. Ooohhh, Josh! He was fun, fun, fun! So, we made a baby. Oops! I had done it again. (Did I mention Evan, now 7, loves Karaoke? Guess what she sings over and over and over…)

When I was about five months pregnant, I went to my doctor, suicidal. He put me on antidepressants. They helped. I didn’t even think about it, when Alex was finally born—three weeks early. Things were great! On our way home from the hospital, we stopped at Target to get a few of the essentials we’d overlooked—diapers, lotion, you know. The next day, we went Christmas shopping. Life was good.

Then, Josh went back to work. His first day back, I stayed on the couch, holding Alex, shirtless. I switched him from breast to breast. I think he nursed the whole day. I sobbed on and off for days. I obsessed about stupid things—how are we going to pay for these extra two weeks off of work? What if Evan gets a cold? How am I going to sleep tonight?

When I started concocting ways to avoid answering the questions, I went to my midwife. I was 45 minutes late for my appointment because I got lost on the way there. “There” being a place I had been thirty or forty times in the last year. Sobbing in the waiting room, I was relieved when my midwife pulled me into her office. She gave me PRC’s number and made me promise to call. “Oh yeah, Jen,” she said. “About one in every three or four moms have been coming in with this, by the way. It’s Postpartum Depression.”

“Cheesy” is the word I used to describe the mantra (You are not alone. You are not to blame. You will be well.). Maybe that’s because it’s cheesy or maybe that’s because I was so depressed that not one single ounce of me believed it. Not at all. But the voice on the other end of the phone line promised that she had survived PPD and was doing better, now. But, said my inner voice, she has no idea about this. No one can cure this.

Only because I loved my midwife and had promised her and the new therapist PRC connected me with that I would go, I went to the first support group meeting. It was late January or early February and it was icy. I almost turned back numerous times—when I slid through the intersection, when the heater wouldn’t kick on, when the lady at the church mistook me for a loud teenager and told me to be quiet. Something beyond me was carrying me to that meeting. I sat there with my coat on, listening to the four other women and their stories. There was no way they could even begin to imagine what I was going through.

Then, one of them said, “I just feel like my kids would be better off without me.”

That was it. I melted. I couldn’t talk now, not because I didn’t want to, but because the lump in my throat was the only floodgate I had in place. If I opened my mouth, the last five years of my life would spill out in a soppy mess. I didn’t talk much that night, but I could breathe. I could finally breathe.

What took two years to overcome, with Evan, took only three or four months, with Alex. PRC helped me to know what I needed and how to get it. I learned my visions with Evan were not simply signs of me being a terrible parent. It had a name: Postpartum Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It had a name! It wasn’t just me.

I have been on antidepressants since Alex was three weeks old. Just this summer, I started exercising daily. My old dose of 200mg has gradually decreased to 50 mg. Last summer, I thought I’d be on meds for the rest of my life and I was okay with that. Now, I think I might just be able to go off of them. I’m not sure and I’m not ready to give up that safety net—for fear that a sprained ankle will instigate a relapse. But I’m feeling pretty darn good!

So, if you’re reading this because you want to know you’re not alone: You are NOT alone. It’s not your fault. You can get better. And I’m not being cheesy.