Prenatal Depression

I think almost every first time parent has that moment of panic when the second line appears on the test. That “Oh my god, what have I done?” moment. Nevertheless, I wanted my son. I wanted to be a mom, and had always wanted at least one pregnancy. I had left past boyfriends specifically because having kids of my own was important to me, and now my dream was coming true. I did the mental math and saw myself with a cute bump, wearing summer dresses. I looked forward to prenatal yoga classes, and dreaded the attention of the baby showers my relatives would throw me. I envisioned a year off from work, where I would have time to rethink my stagnant career while bonding with my child over mommy & me classes and midnight breastfeeding sessions. Unfortunately for me, I found out I was pregnant on February 1st, 2020. We all remember what happened in March of 2020. 

One of the clues that I might be pregnant was that I was immediately violently sick. I had anticipated morning sickness, even watched for the warning signs of HG, which multiple friends of mine have suffered through. I ended up being borderline HG as my body responded pretty well to diclectin, also known as the morning sickness pill. I grew up hearing that the morning sickness pill was this evil thing that harmed babies, but I already knew that wasn’t true. Diclectin is basically super strength B vitamins and it is a lifesaver, at least for me. Four years prior, I had gone through severe depression and anxiety, vomiting near constantly from it. My doctor, with a smirk on his face, prescribed diclectin and got me back to a healthy weight. 

I was told that the first trimester is the worst - the second gets much easier. While the nausea and hormone fluctuations subsided quite a bit, I was left with new, much worse symptoms: insomnia and debilitating anxiety. Any healthcare worker can tell you how important sleep is for our health, both mentally and physically. The insomnia just gave my brain time to spiral into more and more dangerous thoughts. Being locked down in an unprecedented pandemic gave these thoughts fuel. 

Will I get COVID? What will happen to my baby? Will my baby be able to meet his family? Was that salad I ate tainted? Did we wash the groceries enough? That person at the store came within six feet of me - what’s going to happen?

I had already been seeing a therapist and shared some of these fears with her. At the beginning, a lot of her clients - and everyone, really - had similar thoughts, so no alarm flags were raised. I tried to speak with my midwife, and her solution was to “go volunteer at a store bagging groceries”. (No, seriously, she literally said that to me.) I shared with some family how little sleep I was getting and some of them actually laughed at me. They said, “Well just wait until the baby comes!” Comments like this taught me I should just shut up and accept it. I couldn’t have known at the time that I would get far more sleep in the first month with my son than at any point in my pregnancy. Instead, all I heard was, “Don’t worry now, it’s going to get far worse.”

With encouragement like that, it’s not surprising that the thoughts became more persistent and far worse. I began to believe that this baby couldn’t possibly want me as his mom. I was a terrible human and I’d be a terrible mom. To be honest, if I could have safely removed the baby from my body, handed him to my husband, and disappeared, I would have. I was stuck in this dangerous place of wanting to protect my baby at all costs, but feeling like I did not matter and didn’t deserve help. On top of that, I was afraid that if I did reach out for help, they would take my baby away. I think there’s a misconception that moms who suffer from anxiety and depression don’t love their kids, when often the opposite is true. We love them so much we torture ourselves in hopes it stops them from suffering.

One night, these thoughts and insomnia hit a peak. A voice inside my head told me that if I hurt myself, I would be able to go to the hospital and at the hospital, they would give me something so that I could finally sleep. I got out of bed, absolutely sobbing and it woke my husband up. He asked what was going on. I have no idea what I said to him, but he knew I wasn’t being completely honest. He told me to put on a coat (it was 4 a.m.) and we were going for a walk. It helped. The deep breathing helped. The cold air on my face and in my lungs helped. I remember him saying that I needed help. He couldn’t always get up for a 4 a.m. walk with me. He didn’t say it, but he was in over his head. Somehow, I had the courage to write an honest email to my trusted therapist in the wee hours of the morning. I also knew if I waited until she was awake to hit send, I wouldn’t hit send. Finally, she had the truth and that set things in motion. She knew I needed help, and she knew how hard it had been for me to ask. So, I signed several papers so that she could talk on my behalf to my midwife and doctor. I wasn’t in the room when they spoke, but there was a massive shift in the way my midwives spoke to me after that. I had been asking for signatures so I could take sick leave from work and had been turned down. The belief from them had been that I should get out of the house, that work would cure things, and I should keep busy. I felt like I was being called lazy then; after my therapist called, I got the signatures I needed. 

The conversation then shifted to interventions and crisis planning, and then ultimately to pharmaceuticals. I was terrified to take any anti-depressants - I felt like I should keep my body clean for my baby. Wouldn’t they hurt him? What if there were side effects? Shouldn’t he come first? And that’s sadly what a lot of people think - baby first, mom second. Legally speaking, mom is meant to be treated first in the medical world. Yet, we somehow tend to forget when someone is pregnant that they are still a person. They have a right to live and to thrive. While I was debating accepting the medication, a friend finally said to me that what was most important was not if my baby might have some entirely hypothetical mild side effects. The most important thing, he said, was that my baby needed me to be here. That was what convinced me to finally say okay. 

We started the medication a few weeks before my due date. This was the compromise - less time with it in the baby's system, but hopefully enough of a running start that we could stave off postpartum depression. During labour, I had a flare up of anxiety, believing it would never end, that I wouldn’t be believed I was in labour, and that I would be sent home in pain. This was fueled largely by the fact that I had a protracted labour, which meant 52 hours of irregular, short, and generally pretty useless contractions. The only time my body was able to make solid gains in labour was when they allowed me to sleep. Sleep heals. After all of that, between the end of the pregnancy, the medications, and regulations opening slowly but surely, postpartum depression didn’t come. Postpartum anxiety didn’t come. Of course, my milk also didn’t come, which led to a bit more depression, but this time it was manageable. This time I had help when it got hard and I got through it.

A few months postpartum, all I had been through began to hit me. When you are in the depths of depression, you manage. You nod when people say, “It’ll be okay” or try to tell you what a good parent you’ll be, but you don’t actually take that in. I realise now that I am healthy how irrational these thoughts were - but they were so real at the time. All of these fears were so real and so terrifying to me. When people told me to get over it, move on, or “just wait until the baby comes”, it didn’t help. It didn’t teach me that my thoughts were incorrect, it taught me that I wasn’t valuable. If someone you love shares with you how much they are hurting, help them. If you can’t help them yourself, find someone who can. For God’s sake, at the very least, listen to them.

I am so thankful for the people who recognized how sick I was and took care to make sure I had the help I needed. My therapist explained to me that often life is like a curved tunnel - we can’t always see the light at the end of it, but we have to hold out hope that it’s there.

-Grace