Postpartum Psychosis Part 3

Sitting down and writing all of this out has been harder than I expected.  I really want to do it, though.  Especially after finding on my blog stats that numerous searches for “postpartum stories”, “postpartum psychosis”, etc. have landed people here.  If you are just joining me, you need to read part 1 and part 2 before proceeding any further.  I’m excited about continuing the story, because it is one that can give many of you out there much hope.  I promise, it ends very well.  But, to get you to the end, we’ll have to traverse some pretty rocky territory.

So, where did I leave you hanging?  If I recall correctly, I had awoken in a psych ward room after being forced to the floor and jabbed with a shot of something that knocked me out.

The next few days are a blur to me.  Here are the things that I can remember about my stay.  At some point that night, some of my personal belongings were brought to the hospital by either my husband or my Mom.  I remember being so glad to have a pair of socks because the room was freezing.  I was given a hospital gown to wear.  Lovely.  Because I was stopped from nursing my baby, a lactation consultant was brought in to familiarize me with a breast pump.  I was told to pump every 3 hours or so to keep my milk supply up.  The milk was instantly thrown away after each pumping session, though, because of the medications I was prescribed.  It was not easy for me to pour my breast milk down the drain, knowing that my baby was being cared for by someone else.

The first drug I was prescribed was Haldol (an anti-psychotic).  Haldol is known to cause muscle spasms in the neck and another drug called Cogentin is required to stop the muscle spasms.  In my whacked out state of mind, I believed that when I had the muscle spasms, the Holy Spirit was controlling my movements.  It turned out that I just needed more Cogentin. A good friend and I ( who was a part of my life during this nightmare) actually laugh about this now.

When I was first admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as bipolar, but once the doctor met with my family and discussed things further, he came to the conclusion that I was suffering from postpartum psychosis.  There had been absolutely no prior history of any mental condition in my past.  I had never even suffered from depression or anxiety, so all of this was a complete shock to everyone.

After being hospitalized for 2 weeks, I was released.  My family had no clue how hard things would end up being once I returned home.  I was in a complete fog because of the Haldol.  I was in no way able to care for our baby.  When released from the hospital, I was instructed to check in periodically with an outpatient facility, where a doctor would oversee my medication.  The first time I met with him, I begged him to decrease my Haldol dosage, because I was literally in a zombie-like state and wanted to be able to function.  He instantly cut my dosage in half, and we soon learned that outpatient care for mental illness through the system we were referred to was a joke.

I took a quick plunge into a severely depressed state once the drugs were altered.  I can best describe what I went through over the next couple of months as a vegetative depression.  I laid on the couch day after day while my baby was cared for by my family and neighbors.  It literally took all of the strength that I could muster to get in the shower and wash my hair.  My arms were so weak and it hurt to hold them over my head.

At some point during this time, my family found a different doctor in hopes that he would be able to help us.  Everyone was scared and desperate.  The baby developed colic and cried non-stop every afternoon, while I laid on the couch, doing absolutely nothing about any of it.  My Mom tried to make sure that I at least touched my baby, so she would bring him over to me and lay him on my chest or beside me on the couch.  I had absolutely no feeling.  I couldn’t cry or be angry.  I was just a shell and nothing was helping.

There were a lot of other dynamics at play in the situation, also.  I have written about this here, but my husband was struggling heavily with drug addiction, and during this time, when our life fell to pieces, he began crumbling, also.  I would wake up in the morning to realize he had been gone the entire night.  Later, he would come home and tell me that he had been out all night smoking crack.  I was so numb that I couldn’t even be angry or cry.  My parents asked him why, and his response was, “I don’t know.”

Sometime in mid-December (remember, Gage was born Sept. 29th, so this had been going on for almost 2 months), I came out of the room I was attempting to sleep in and started crying in absolute desperation to my Dad.  I couldn’t even sleep during this time because my mind raced constantly.  So, it’s not like I could sleep the time away.  It was torture, to say the least.  The doctor kept telling us to hold on a little longer. He kept saying that the new medication would start working soon.  That we just needed to give it more time.  After weeks, and weeks of hearing this, I felt that I could take it no longer.  We called the doctor and he recommended that they take me back to the psychiatric hospital as an in-patient to have Electoconvulsive Therapy (ECT’s).  We were desperate, and at that point, were willing to try anything.

I was quickly admitted into the hospital, and the therapy began right away.  They had to space the treatment out to every other day, so my stay ended up being 2 weeks, just as it was the first time.  The therapy caused me to be extremely disoriented and confused.  I slept a lot while I was there.  Much of the time during those 2 weeks is a blur, but there is one memory that I will never be able to forget.  However, I’ll have to share that, along with much more of this story, in a few days.  That’s all for now, folks…..