Elena Bosch This week, my only son turned two. What a magical milestone for our little family. This day, we not only celebrate the birth of our little man, Hunter, but also how far we’ve come since that fateful day on January 18, 2016.
As the days neared toward our birth anniversary, time transported me back to the memories of birth. During the week of Hunter’s arrival, I experienced contractions every night that were regular and consistent until they got about two minutes apart or until bedtime. I would pace my living room, breathing deeply, just as I was taught in my childbirth classes. I would consider them Braxton Hicks and go to sleep. No class, no expert, no one told me that there was a chance something else was going on.
Then early that Monday morning, I woke up with light cramps. I thought to myself, “this is it!” and went downstairs to make myself breakfast. As I ate alone at the break of dawn, the contractions started to come, and they came on strong.
My dog whimpered, laying his head on my lap knowing something was up. I pled with him, “Go get dad. The baby’s coming. Go get dad.” He came downstairs to find me laboring in my bra and underwear hurled near the couch in agony. Contractions were so close he couldn’t count them.
We called my mom to tell her the baby was coming soon and to be prepared to come to the hospital – probably not now but sometime that day. We were confident that we would be laboring for 12 to 24 hours at home, per the research given to us by our childbirth educator.
My mom knew better. In a voice perfected by three decades of scolding four kids she said, “Get to the hospital now. That baby is coming now.” I assured her I was fine and that she could come to the house if she wished. She said she’d see me at the hospital.
We hung up and I braced myself for another contraction. Only with the next contraction, I didn’t feel the surge of pain enveloping my uterus. I instead felt a drop. A shift in pressure from my abdomen to my pelvis. I looked at my husband in shock and fear. He looked at me and said, “We’re going to hospital, NOW.”
There were only a few short hours from that first contraction until the moment they placed my son on my chest. The minutes in between were chaotic and confusing. The rapid 4-hour active labor, the 3rd degree tear, the hemorrhaging. My head spun as I tried to make sense of it all.
As I laid there with my son on my chest, contemplating the events that had just unfolded, I wondered if there was something I could have done before birth to avoid the devastating injury. Was there something my classes didn’t teach me? Was there a sentence in a book I skipped? How was I not prepared? Why was my body not enough to get through childbirth without it being so traumatic? Why was I not good enough?
Over the last 24 months I’ve had that racket rattling in my head, questioning my decisions as a mom, undermining my authority and undercutting my confidence. The worst thing that voice said to me was that I wasn’t a good mom. I wasn’t a good mom for wanting to go back to work after my maternity leave. I wasn’t a good mom for placing my child in daycare so soon. I wasn’t a good mom for having trouble breastfeeding. I wasn’t a good mom because I fed my kid formula. I wasn’t a good mom for letting my kid watch cartoons. I wasn’t good enough.
This was a slippery slope into some dark days.
For the first 12 months of my son’s life, breastfeeding was the number one priority and the number one struggle. I obsessed over every ounce. I attended every group. I met with not one, not two but several lactation consultants. I bought gidgets and gadgets. I accepted donor milk. I supplemented only when absolutely needed. I made it to that magical “one-year” mark.
Shortly after weaning however, I began to have a short fuse over just about everything. At first, I thought it was just the mounting stress working full-time in a competitive industry and juggling my responsibilities at home. Then “the weepies” came on and they came on strong. Everything made me cry. I was so sensitive to everything.
Next came the anxiety and it weighed on my shoulders like a ton of bricks. It was so debilitating. There were mornings that turned into afternoons when I never got out of my pajamas. On a good day, I could manage the several panic attacks I was experiencing with deep breathing. On a bad day, I had to rely on a prescription that often had me struggling to get out of bed.
Despite every article, every support group and every piece of advice about breastfeeding that I had consumed, never did I know I’d be faced with an even more dangerous set of challenges after weaning.
That’s when I knew I needed to get help. I took a leave from my job, accepted my new role as a mom and sought professional help. But the challenges didn’t stop there.
As anyone who has struggled with a perinatal mood disorder can tell you, postpartum doesn’t just end after one year. I was passed from specialist to doctor to specialist and back to another doctor before I finally made my way into the office of a nurse practitioner. I described my symptoms in full detail – ground shaking panic attacks, dangerously intrusive thoughts, cramps comparable to labor pains – and let her know I had been tracking the symptoms and they consistently occur more often the week of my menstrual cycle.
Based on my symptoms she “guessed” I might have premenstrual dysphoric disorder which was causing delayed onset postpartum anxiety. She explained that I likely produce an over-abundance of progesterone – a hormone that’s elevated during pregnancy – and that as it drops, I experience symptoms similar to having a miscarriage – every 28 days. She explained that a hormonal test would likely be inconclusive because our hormones change so often. She went on to recommend and prescribe a birth control that stabilizes progesterone.
I was torn. I have never reacted well to birth control. In fact, it usually increases my feelings of anxiety and has never alleviated the pain of menstrual cramps. But I knew I needed help.
I started taking a generic prescription of Yaz in June of 2016 – that’s roughly 17 months post-partum. I immediately felt relief and have been slowly recovering since. I started seeing a Licensed Marriage and Therapy Practitioner (LMFT) and have finally started feeling like myself again.
Today, as I reach that 2-year milestone, I can proudly say that voice doesn’t get a word in as much as she used to. Instead, as she watches her smiling, happy toddler kiss and hug his favorite Disney characters, I let out a huge sigh of relief. “Happy Birthday, mom. You made it two years, mom. You’re doing great, mom.”
