A Brand New Day

Some of you  know that after I had Evie I had terrible post partum depression and anxiety.  I took my medicine for the prescribed 5 months and took the sixth month to ween off of it.  As anyone who truly has depression will tell you, the medicine just helps you get back to life, not be euphoric or on a high all the time.  It certainly did it's job.  I was back to exercising, enjoying work, out and about, and focused on getting things done around the house.  I had even stopped having the horrible nightmares about epic tragedies.


The weening process was rough, and I did it the same time I stopped pumping.  I am still not sure why I did that at the same time. Talk about a horrible chemical / hormonal mess.  It was.  There were some days I was so dizzy I couldn't get out of bed.


Anyway, that was three months ago.  Things were fine, or so I thought.  


All of the sudden I got on the scale and I had gained about 8 pounds.  A few days later, another 2 or 3. And after three months a total of 15 pounds.


The mood swings were back. I couldn't get myself out of the house.  My body ached.  And forget exercising...it was enough to get chores done before I wanted to crawl back in bed after sleeping 8 hours a night.

I finally mustered up the courage to call my midwife to get things checked out.  My wonderful, amazing, can't say enough great things about her midwife is suddenly no longer in practice. (This is another whole story which I won't share here).  Desperate for answers, I called my primary care physicians assistant.  He's been great with helping me through some other problems over the years, and with a young wife and kids, I figured he'd be in touch with what my daily reality is.

We talked a lot two weeks ago.  Went through my whole pregnancy history, and all the ups and downs of the last 8 months.  We talked about when I stopped nursing and my go with the last around of anti-depressants.

His first guess was my thyroid, since it would explain all these things and more, but thought there might be some other things going on too.  He ran two pages of blood tests.

I went back yesterday to get the results.

Well, all my levels checked out: vitamins, iron, all my hormones, etc.  The only thing that was still elevated was my prolactin, which explains why I still haven't had a visit from Aunt Flo.  We're going to test that again soon.

So, we talked some more.  I told him about my insomnia, lack of motivation, body aches, and general blah feeling.  And how I gained another 2 pounds in two weeks.  And then I started crying sobbing in his office... about how I just can't go on like this.

His new theory is that the depression is back (or never went away).  I wouldn't have suspected it until I reread my blog post from the other day...and how I lacked motivation to blog or plan my trip to Ireland...both things that I love and should be excited about.  And then over the weekend we had a teen leader retreat.  Again, something that I love and would normally be excited about but all weekend  I kept doing laps by my bed because all I wanted to do was curl up and hide.  I went to give my talk on service, something I LOVE doing, and the passion just didn't come.

So when the PA suggested a new course of anti-depressants I knew he was on to something.  He hopes this new regimen will help me get off the couch, get back in the world, get motivated to exercise, and sleep better.  All of these things will help weight loss.  He said that I have to continue tracking my food intake, boost my exercise as much as I feel comfortable, and also not to sleep so much...just 7-8 hours, not 10.  We need to break my cycle of insomnia/oversleeping/binge eating/crying/depression/not exercising.  Everything needs to work together to break the cycle.

I got home and did tons of research on this type of anti-depressant.  I talked through everything with Eric and my mom.  And I decided to go for it.  The PA wants me to give it a run for two months and then to see him again.  If it's not working then we'll try another theory / course of action.

Today is my brand new day.  I started the medicine this morning.  It'll take 3-4 weeks before it really kicks in, but it's a start of something new (I hope!).


It's a brand new dayThe sun is shinningIt's a brand new dayFor the first timeIn such a long long timeI knowI'll be okay

A special thank you to Meghan and Cassi for their emailing and texting me the last few months to check in on me.  Your encouragement and care means the world to me.