You can know anything. It's all there. You just have to find it.

-Neil Gaiman

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Friday, March 5, 2010

Sorry I have not posted in awhile. I'm sure all eleven of you who read this blog were in mourning.

So now I'm back.

And back at work. Actually, I have been back at work for two weeks now, yet have not found the motivation to write anything interesting. (More on that later).

Then I realized that not having anything interesting to say never stopped me before.

So...

So a few months ago I had this baby, you see. A very cute little baby, I might add.

And like most new parents I was both awestruck and terrified. And overwhelmed. And exhausted. Did I mention I was overwhelmed? Also, sleep deprivation doesn't help being overwhelmed.

So I waited for it to pass.

It didn't.

It got worse.

So my main reason for not posting, other than not having too much time on my hands, was that I had some kind of postpartum depression. I had not been worried about depression but I had been concerned about it. I could imagine how this could affect a person like me. I imagined how it could happen and knew what all the symptoms were.

Despite this, I still was not prepared for it. I was not prepared for the tidal wave of emotion that had no logic, no basis in reality, yet was very real, very present, and very devastating. The anxiety alone made me want to drive my car off a bridge. The dark thoughts were disturbing and repetitive. I could not turn my brain off. Sleep was difficult and when I did sleep I had horrible nightmares.

Needless to say, I felt like I was living in my own personal hell.

Which didn't make sense because I didn't have anything to be depressed about.

The people in Haiti? Yeah, they have reasons to be depressed.
Here I was with everything that most people want. A nice home. A great husband. Close family and friends. And a new, beautiful perfect and healthy baby.

And I wanted to curl up into a ball and die.

And after two months it was still there. And I realized I couldn't fix it by myself, another difficult thing to admit.

I will write more on this later, but I am doing so much better now. Thanks to time and patience and something called Zoloft. And I'm glad, because there is nothing I love more than looking at this face.

1 comment:

Christina Rodriguez said...

She has the sweetest face!

I'm sorry about your postpartum depression, a lot of the new mothers I know have been going through the same thing. I'm glad that there has been a lot of research on it and that more people recognize it and will treat it. It's hard enough to be a new mom, one doesn't need to add depression on top of that.