PostPartum Depression: I Survived

Have you ever felt like you were in a hole, and dirt was being thrown on you? You couldn’t catch your breathe. As more dirt piled on you the strength you once had started weakening. This is what PPD (postpartum depression) feels like.

One moment you are strong and on top of the world, next your scrambling to even breathe. Taking care of yourself was none existent, and you can forget about changing your clothing.

Most days it took all I had to get out of bed, just to move to the sofa and lay there. Yes I had a baby at home, and no he wasn’t cared for either, not by me anyways. I didn’t have company and nobody came to meet the new baby.

I did however manage to make weekly trips from Clarksville, Tennessee to St Louis Missouri to treat my son’s clubfoot. I was drowning in a world I created. I made the choice to get married and have children. Why couldn’t I be happy? Why was life so terrible I could barely breathe?

It was because my idea of delivering children could be nothing less then a vaginal delivery. When things changed and I didn’t have time to process what was happening I was knocked out. When I came about there was a baby, and no memory of how he came to be was there.

It wasn’t until 1 year 10 months later the pieces came together, and I understood what happened. I opened up my mouth, and words that I never told my husband slipped out. “They tortured me, made me suffer, then seconds before I became a mother they knocked me out.” Those words summed of over a years worth of pain and agony.

The doctors and nurses took what I thought to be the greatest moment in a mother’s life away from me. That first hello cry, that one that we dream about for 9 months. It’s a cry that we long to hear. It’s the cry that says, “hi mom I’m here.”

Those words I held in my brain for over a year, and once they were said I couldn’t turn back. Suddenly I could smile, breathe, and think of everyone around me. I started feeling like a wife, mother, and daughter again. I was free of a horrid bondage. I was no longer afraid to trust, and love my family again. I was me again. I survived postpartum depression.

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