The backstory

These last few months have been some of the most difficult of my life.  Following the birth of my twins, Teagan and Tristan, life started to move at a lightening fast pace.  I delivered two healthy babies via C-section April 29^th 2011, and in the days and months since, I’ve felt pulled a hundred different ways.  A week after the twins were born, my husband and I moved our family into my father’s basement, as he had to have emergency spinal surgery and needed help with his own recovery.  We’re now living there for a year, to give us time to fix up and sell our house, as it is too small for a family of 5 (stressor #1). 

In the weeks following the twin’s delivery, I attempted to breastfeed, but neither one had strong sucking reflexes.  As a result, they weren’t gaining weight, and by 3 weeks postpartum, had not regained their birth weight.  I made the decision to switch to bottles, and planned to pump, but after 4 days of trying to fit pumping into the feeding/burping/changing/pleasegodgotosleep schedule, I gave up on the idea.  The next day, I decided that I still wanted to pump, but by that time, my limited supply had tanked and I felt I just wasn’t capable (willing?) to put in the work needed to rebuilt my supply.  That was a huge blow to my ego, as I proudly breastfed my first daughter to the age of 9 months, even when I was 500 miles away (stressor #2). 

The third blow came when I had to return to work; I had taken 8 weeks of maternity leave, but the first week was spent waiting for the babies to make their appearances, so I returned to work when the twins were only 7 weeks old; much sooner than I would have liked (stressor #3). 

My PPD hasn’t manifested itself in the way that most people think of when they imagine women with PPD – I wasn’t curled up in a corner crying my eyes out.  I didn’t have depressive thoughts or negative feelings toward my children.  In fact, the first, and biggest clue that something may be wrong was that I didn’t feel anything at all.  I felt no bond with the twins.  At first I thought it was because I couldn’t breastfeed, so it was going to take longer to warm up to them.  Then, I thought the lack of feeling close to them was due to the fact that there were two babies to take care of, instead of one, and because of that, the first couple months could be expected to feel mechanical.  Finally, I decided that I obviously went back to work too early; had I had another 3 weeks with them, as I did with Taryn, I surely would be able to distinguish their “hungry cry” from their “gassy cry” from their “I’m overtired cry.” 

The truth is that I just didn’t CARE that they cried.  When Taryn was a baby, there were times that she cried and I just cried along with her, because it truly made my heart hurt.  With the twins, it just didn’t phase me.  Don’t get me wrong – I never LET them cry, because I knew that they needed something, but I found myself thinking, “please stop crying – I’m trying to watch Survivor” as opposed to “please stop crying; you’re making me feel bad.”

With as devoid of emotions I was toward the twins, I had more than a fair share of another emotion for my husband – anger.  Looking at it now, I got irrationally angry at him for anything that I deem an infraction.  Spend too much time watering the garden?  Red, angry face of doom.  Didn’t clean up the formula that Taryn spilled while you were wrangling all three children?  Huge shouting match was to about to ensue. 

It was after one such shouting match earlier this week that I decided it was time to get help.  My first suggestion was marriage counseling, but, we both realized that we needed to fix ourselves first, before we could fix our marriage.  But, how do you fix yourself when you don’t know what’s wrong?  Lucky for me, that’s when the depression set in.  After a few days of feeling tired and hopeless, it clicked; I bet this is PPD.  I made the call to my doctor the next day and now, I start my journey.