My Episode with Baby Blues
This photo was taken at the hospital. Little Man is probably 1 or 2 days old here.
I don't think anyone could ever get used to depression, even if they're like me and suffer from depression on and off throughout the week (which for me is due to the brain injury I got in the car wreck a few years ago). Before I had Little Man I had talked to my midwife (who oversaw most of my pregnancy care, but didn't do the delivery) about postpartum depression. I was worried about getting it because I had problems with depression already and I thought I might get really bad Baby Blues... like to the point that I wouldn't want to be around my son. This was a big worry for me before he was born. She said because I deal with depression already it was likely I would get Baby Blues, but how bad they would be is something you really can't pre-determine.
Around 5 weeks after LM was born I suddenly felt like I had been slammed with a black cloud. I knew I was severely depressed, but couldn't figure out why because the few weeks since LM was born I had been doing so much better with my regular depression than usual. I had been happy, I loved spending time with my son, and I felt like over-all life was great. A few days into this depression session though I was starting to worry. Nothing I did would shake the severe sadness, the feeling of not wanting to get out of bed to do anything, not even a shower helped ease this depression!
I think around the 5th day I ended up talking to my mom about what was going on. I told her how I couldn't figure out why I was so depressed, how I was having trouble functioning (eating, sleeping, general stuff I usually did like cleaning house), and that I just felt like a giant black cloud was taking the light out of everything around me. She suggested that it might be Baby Blues and to just keep an eye on it and see how long it lasted. At that point I had completely forgotten about Baby Blues and even at that time I didn't really think that's what it was. Looking back now I'm quite sure that was my Baby Blues. Fortunately I didn't get those feelings of not wanting to be around my child. In this case, being around him actually helped me overcome a lot of the depressive feelings.
I don't really know how long the severe depression went on, but I'm thinking it lasted about a week. I am glad that it's over and that I survived it. There were a lot of random busting into tears for no reason, a lot of laying in bed sleeping/resting (or trying to sleep!), and a lot of eating chocolate and sweets. For some reason I couldn't get enough sugary foods that week either. I ate a ton of brownies (which I made several times because A. they were easy to fix and B. they had less sugar than a lot of other things I could've made). I actually perfected the recipe and added in semi-sweet chocolate chips too which made them really fantastic (if you love chocolate then these brownies are to die for! Hubby likes them but isn't a huge fan of all the chocolate). {Brownie recipe here!} I crave chocolate when I'm severely depressed.
Since that week I've only had the usual occasional depression stuff that I've dealt with for the past two and a half years. Nothing major and certainly nothing I can't handle. That Baby Blues stuff is something completely different though. I don't think I've ever experienced a depression so awful as that. Of course I may not completely remember all the depressed feelings I've had due to my brain injury which makes my memories quite hit and miss, but I'm pretty sure that's the worst depression I've ever had. I am grateful it didn't last long and that it's over now, that part was not a very fun experience!
That's my thoughts and feelings on the Baby Blues. I debated on writing this post, but I thought maybe writing about what I've been going through since having LM would help me remember some of the important things next time around and in the meantime they might help someone else who is going through the same things.
Related Posts
More posts from Helen Stafford
