Postpartum Depression vs. Hormonal Changes

Having Aunika is an immense blessing in our home. She provides a sense of happiness and completion to our little family. I do not know what I would do without her. She has such a sweet personality; I love her so much. I quit my full time job 10 months ago to become a full time mother. I strongly felt that staying home was best for our family given our circumstances. Being a stay at home mother is very rewarding and at the same time very challenging. In fact it is the most difficult thing I have ever done - more difficult than leaving home for the first time to go to college, obtaining and studying a degree, and even the first few years of marriage.  How can the life of a mother be so sweet but yet so bitter?

I especially have been struggling the last several months knowing that something wasn't quite right with me. I have been ashamed to talk about it in detail to anyone with the exception of a few people. In March, I started noticing the following symptoms: sadness, extreme loneliness, fatigue, restlessness, extreme anxiety (always felt this in the past), OCD, worrying, stress (common feeling) acne (for many years), infertility (prior to Aunika), and a lack of libido. Some of these I couldn't pin point from the very beginning but it all came clear to me upon taking a hormonal saliva test at the end of July. Prior to taking the test, I had become so unhappy and lonely that I would pray to my Father in Heaven asking to be happy and to help me find solutions. I have yet to see if the vitamins, dieting, exercising, and homeopathic remedies make a difference. I just started dieting and taking the remedies. I like to say the dieting is less a diet and more a lifestyle change with more veggies and fruits and less carbs, starches, and sugars.

The Lord has blessed me with good neighbors and friends close by, who have included me in book club, craft group, and even a work-out group. I attend many relief society activities during the nights, put together by my church. I visit my family almost monthly. I even have a girls night-out, usually once a month. My husband is always so gracious and supportive in helping me attend these. However, I still feel lonely and unhappy.  Sometimes these feelings last only a few days during the week then they go away. Other times they last a long time. It was only by chance that I found one of my neighbors who has a practice, specializing in women who have hormonal imbalances. The only reason I met her was because I was a stand-in for one of my husband's videos. My neighbor was the one who told me about the hormonal saliva test. The results of that test showed that I produce way too much testosterone ever since I was probably in my early teens. I also have extremely high levels of the stress hormone - cortisol. She advised me to change my diet, exercise 30 minutes a day, take vitamins (Fish Oil, vitamin D 2000 IU, Ashagawanda, and a few others), and apply a progesterone cream to my wrist twice a day during a certain amount of days.

A month ago, I came across a flyer that my health insurance gives as a part of their club called Healthy Beginnings. I participated in the club for the cool free stuff as a new mother - mostly a book on parenting and money. Anyway one of the flyers had information on Postpartum Depression. It concerned me because all of the symptoms I feel fall under PPD. It said that PPD could happen as a result of unbalanced hormones. Just recently I mentioned what I was going through to a friend, who gave me a homeopathic remedy to help on the days I feel blue. I'm still researching exactly what this remedy does but basically I take 2-3 drops an hour after a meal, 2-3 times a day until my symptoms subside.  Since I feel sad several times a week I am desperate to try anything, but not quite that desperate to go to a doctor yet.

Another thing that helped was to stop nursing Aunika. I hated nursing so much in the beginning. However, I knew it was something I wanted to do even before I had Aunika. I am a stubborn girl and I'm not going to let my selfishness get in the way. Nursing was something I believed to be very beneficial for many reasons. But as I sacrificed my time every 1 1/2-2 hours on the couch, I felt like a slave to my own home. I could not comprehend being Aunika's only survival tool and that Matthew could do nothing to help. As time went by, I realized that I could actually do enjoyable things while being on the couch nursing like reading or watching my favorite TV show. Over time I actually grew to love the closeness I felt while nursing Aunika. I also loved that she never got sick even when Matt and I had Pneumonia for a whole month. To quit nursing earlier than I had hoped for made me feel like a failure. Especially when it's common where I live to nurse until the baby is one years old or older.  I felt like it was the best decision to get my energy back and feel less fatigued. I feel more freedom now that Matt can help with half the feedings. At least I made it to 9 months!

Today I feel especially blue. I feel worthless and inadequate. I suffer with being accepted by my own mother. If you noticed in my previous post that I mentioned that my mother cares more for my baby than she does me, well that's where these feelings started. My mother lives 2 1/2 hours away and I consider myself lucky anymore if she gets the time to visit. Somehow I feel like she disapproves of everything I do. I also feel less important to her.  She is very busy with her new calling in the church (might I add she is a wonderful person for it), babysitting her other grandchildren twice a week, working part time, spending time with my grandmother once a week, who has Alzheimers, and on top of all that she tries to be a good wife to my father by providing the meals and cleaning. She tries hard to act like nothing is wrong but I know she has so many things going on right now. I feel like she shows me tough love during my most vulnerable state of life, so right now I act like nothing is wrong because I feel it is expected of me. I feel like nobody understands what I am going through. I have no sister to confide in either. My mother reminds me that when I was little and when we lived out in the city, she also didn't have anybody - meaning that if she could do it, so could I. This is true to some extent. I think they may feel like I am the child who doesn't need anything. Though that is flattering, I am very much in need of their love, sympathy and support.  I love my mother very much, I am grateful for all that she does and I am NOT angry at her. I just feel extremely sad that I don't know how to explain to her how I feel. She has no time to really listen or talk to me very long on the phone. When we are in person I am in a happier sate of mind and we are having too much fun to bother with the topic. If she does talk to me she doesn't fully understand what I am going through and says that there is no way I could have PPD. I guess that's a common reaction because most people think PPD only consists of suicidal or harmful thoughts. My recent research states otherwise.

Sometimes I wonder why we have these trials. In a prior blog  I mentioned how difficult it was to conceive Aunika. Not only did it take a long time to get pregnant but I also had difficulties during pregnancy. I started swelling at 5 months and getting worse as I got closer to my due date. I started seeing a Maternal Fetal Specialist for my swelling and because at the time I had a heart condition - a condition I had all my life until recently. I was diagnosed with only having two functioning valves in my heart instead of three. This made me more tired and exhausted than the average person, especially when I exercised and was pregnant. Miraculously my condition went away at the beginning of this year. My mother thinks it was a blessing sent from up above. Not knowing the condition was gone my MFM wanted me to quit working full time and to move to part time work, so that I could put my feet up. My feet looked like the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. I couldn't fit into any of my shoes even if they were a bigger size. Only Crocs and moccasins worked. I was also monitored weekly at 30 weeks to make sure my baby girl was doing ok. I also had to get her heart checked out to make sure she didn't inherit what I had.  I was so stressed and unhappy at that point. Regardless of how healthy I appeared to be I was letting everything bother me. From my mother-in-law and neighbor stating how big I looked, to everyone around me pointing out the obvious. Yes I knew I was big and I didn't need to hear about it.

I have always felt like the black sheep in that I was the oldest amongst my family and friends to have a baby. I was bitter toward those who weren't in my same boat. I didn't like being around other children who wouldn't behave, which is ironic considering I wanted my own children - LOL. It was hard for me to have a younger brother who could give my parents their first grand-babies. By the time you are my age here in Utah people are already on their second and third child. It was also a trial to get married at such an old age in Utah. It was difficult learning how to communicate and argue healthily with my husband. We were both such stubborn headed people, who wanted to be right and in control.

Regardless of the many trials I continue to endure, I am grateful for the person I am becoming. I am grateful to those neighbors, friends, and family who help me out along the way. I am learning that blogging about these experiences helps me to move on and be happy. I am learning that if everything was on my timing, instead of the Lord's timing, I wouldn't grow and learn the things necessary for me to be a better person. I'm grateful to my husband that who now after learning what I am going through is supportive and tries hard to help me be happy. When I first felt blue we started arguing like we used to when we were first married. But then I realized I was the reason we were arguing and also all the hormonal changes contributed to it. And now that we both understand what is going on, we get along so much better. I'm so blessed to have his support and love. Whether I have Postpartum Depression or a Hormonal Imbalance or both, I pray that I might get through this and I continue to thank the Lord for my many blessings.<3 p="p">