Surviving Postpartum Depression

I distinctly remember opening my eyes upon hearing the cry of my newborn son. It was 3:30 in the morning and I should have jumped up, eager to attend to his cries, but instead I lay there, lethargic and emotionless. I had just given birth a week earlier and since everything about my pregnancy had gone so smoothly, I figured that I'd just pop out the kid and get back to my regular life. How wrong I was and I found out just how wrong once we brought my son home.

My son, Matthew, was basically the perfect baby. He was sleeping through the night at about eight weeks old, he smiled all the time and people always commented on how handsome and cute he was but did any of those compliments register in my brain? No, instead I felt sorry for myself and wondered how in the world I would be able to bring up this child feeing the way that I did.

As the sun poured through the gaps in the window shades each morning, I would get this feeing of utter anxiety in the pit of my stomach and it would last into the evening. Instead of feeling the expected contentment of being a new mother, I felt like I wanted to run away where no one could find me. My husband did not know how to help me and at the time, I basically wanted to retreat into myself and not talk to him at all. I even tried the medication Paxil because it was touted as the "cure-all" for all your woes. All it did was numb my soul, taking the very life out of me.

According to the ads, you would supposedly turn into the happiest person on the planet within days of taking this drug Instead, it took all my anxieties and multiplied then a hundredfold until I felt like I didn't even know myself anymore. I knew that I would have to find another solution because medication was definitely not the answer.