In her memoir Love Works Like This, the journalist and psychologist Lauren Slater talks about her bout with prenatal depression, and writes that a specialist once told her that there’s a correlation between women who react badly to the birth control pill and women who become depressed during pregnancy. It makes sense: During your first trimester, the doctor tells Slater, you are getting the progesterone equivalent of 400 birth control pills a day. By the time you give birth, you are ingesting the equivalent of 1,000 pills a day. I always hated the pill -- I tried several different kinds and they always made me excessively moody -- so had I known about the correlation, my misery might have been less of a shock, or even preventable.ummm DING DING DING! that's me! that's exactly my story about reacting horribly to birth control pills and wishing i'd known the correlation between that and prenatal depression. so then i realized that tomorrow i'll be 20 weeks along and couldn't remember when the depression came along last time so i started going through my archives and was blown away by this part of my 27 week post (although i even mentioned the week before in my 26 week post repeatedly crying for little to no reason at all).
What I miss: 1) walking/sitting/standing/doing anything without my pants falling down 2) being happy
Milestones: finishing the second trimester! holy cow!Theme: the week of being depressedExtra: i have far too many hormones. i'm happy sometimes. but the overall feeling is just sad, lethargic, and apathetic. this week has really caused me to be worried about post-partum depression. i have everything i've ever wanted and i'm feeling just plain crappy. this week i've been crying at least once a day. i am ultra irritable and i'm really scattered in my thoughts so it's hard to get anything done and regular things take me forever and leave me feeling dissatisfied and i constantly have an overall feeling of general anxiety because i feel like i'm in a cloud like in one flew over the cuckoos nest (or whatever that book was) and it's just terrible. chris has been so wonderful and patient when i start crying for no reason and he's been so good about taking study breaks to check in with me and see how i'm doing and make sure i'm staying busy and involved in something. but honestly, i just wish i was more emotionally stable so i could help him out when he gets stressed or whatever instead of him adding me to his already too long list of things to manage and take care of. i could keep rambling forever about all of this but i'll just say i'm having flash backs of when i was engaged and had just started birth control and i had SERIOUS breakdowns more than once a day and i was horribly mean to chris and i have no idea why he didn't break off our engagement although i'm glad he didn't. so yeah, my body can't handle caffeine and it can't handle hormones (and i would imagine i wouldn't hold alcohol well either). wish me luck for future weeks of pregnancy. but i have to say i'm loving every second of pregnancy. just in case you were doubting. chris sure does.
what i miss: being happy? theme: the week of being depressed? yikes.
but seriously, when i was on birth control i was having hysterical breakdowns DAILY and my friend sarah from tennessee can prove it because she once ran into me at the post office seconds after i'd just been screaming and throwing boxes (yes, apparently birth control hormones make you not care that you're in a jam packed public government building during your hissy-fit. and i'm not joking that my honey almost broke of our engagement (although he will never admit this) because of all this craziness.
people talk about postpartum depression but you never hear about prenatal depression... until you're sitting in your doctor's office at 29 weeks pregnant simultaneously crying hysterically and attempting to convince your doctor that you don't need medication and therapy. or was that just me?!
anyways, all of this is just for the purpose that maybe if i just write it down and am straightforward about my fears that they'll be less scary for me to face. i think it's working... maybe. time will tell... because according to last time, i've still got a few weeks of safety. that being said, if you notice me spiraling out of control (it should be pretty obvious, i'm about as honest as can be on this blog) then just stay by my side and keep reminding me it's only temporary. and to try extra hard to be nice to my husband and always let him have as many eggs as he wants.
*emmy, you are right that you were on the phone during that post office episode. you were on the phone through a lot more than that though and i am still very appreciative of when you asked if i needed you to fly out to utah so you could help me out with life.
As I started this post I kept thinking "I can attest to this! Poor Carrie really reacts horribly to birth control!" And then I get a shout-out. :) But it does make me so sad that you get depressed during pregnancy. Don't you wish Tom Cruise's cure really worked? Vitamins and exercise and poof, you're good? I get horrible anxiety sometimes and I have to take vitamin B12 to counteract it - may be worth looking into.
ReplyDeletePS, I dreamed about your baby the other night. I dreamed I was cleaning the floors in our house and she had dumped cereal all over the floor under her high chair, which was in my kitchen. I don't know why. It's never her food in the floor - it's her shoes!
What about me? I was on the phone with you at the post office.
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