Severe PPD

Hi L.,

God Bless You for reaching out. It does truly sound like you are in crisis. At this point you need emergency intervention. PPD is a very real biochemical disorder. It is readily treated, but can become very dangerous if left untreated.

It is valiant that you are trying to persevere and I appreciate your concerns regarding breast feeding. There are numerous anti-depressants which can be used while breast feeding, however at this point it sounds like you may need inpatient care to get you back on track faster.

Please do not be embarassed to reach out for help. It takes great strength to admit you need help. You WILL get better from this with help, but the best thing you can do for your baby right now is to get the help you need.

OB-GYN's have limited expertise in the treatment of severe PPD. You will need to see a psychiatrist and a psychologist who are experienced in PPD. At this point I believe you will be best served by going to your local emergency room where you can get immediate help.

May God bless you and your little one as you work through this difficult time. There IS a light at the end of this tunnel,I speak from experience, but I am sorry you have to work through this dark time before you walk in the sunshine again.

Yours Truly,
J. L.

Dear L.,
I can't even begin to imagine what you are going through, but I want to offer my deep sympathy for your pain and heartache, and my wholehearted support for you as a mother and a person. I echo the replies of the others here who have said - and I know this is easier said than done - LET GO OF GUILT. Your baby is FINE, and will be fine with formula. Six months is a good long time. If you DO want to try to keep nursing by using herbs such as Fenugreek to increase your milk supply, or finding alternatives to hospitalization, GO FOR IT... but if you end up needing to quit the nursing, please please please let go of any guilt or shame. There is no place for that here. Be careful of La Leche, because as well-intentioned as they are, they can indeed sometimes put pressure on mothers to put breastfeeding above any other priority, which can lead to the guilt and shame problem.
I also want to echo those who say GET HELP... and GET SLEEP. Are there any friends you can ask to come give you a break so you can have a nice long nap? If you are hallucinating, it may well be lack of sleep. I remember reading somewhere that if people go without REM sleep for 48 hours, they become clinically insane. Would you want to see your friends suffer the way you are suffering? I can't believe they would resent helping you in your time of need!! There is no shame in needing help - our culture has become so ridiculously individualized that we forget - women used to raise children among a large extended family where grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc all used to pitch in. You should not have to be torturing yourself here. And as the others said, your baby will thrive best with a happier mom.
Please feel good about yourself for everything you have done and are doing. I hope you are able to join a support group, get a good therapist, get the right medication, find a formula you like to supplement the breastmilk, take some herbs or whatever to increase your milk production, get some help so you can sleep more, and most of all LOVE YOURSELF. You deserve it!!!!!!!!!
Hang in there, I will pray for you.
Sincere best wishes,
T.

There are many aD's that are safe while breastfeeding.
http://www.kellymom.com/health/meds/antidepressants-hale1...

Zoloft is the safest.

Could you hire a nanny or mother's helper to help you try to avoid hospitalization?

Take care,
B.

I'm so sorry that you're going through this, and I am glad that you are getting help. If you can, try to stop beating yourself up over the formula - you breastfed for six months, which is so much longer than most people do. Remember (as my pediatrician said to me), we are in 2008 there are some really good formulas out there. No one disputes that breast is best, it's not like you'll be poisoning your daughter with formula. She'll be getting something that gives her all of her nutritional requirements, something that tons of babies get only from day one, and those kids turn out just fine. Believe me, I teach high school, you can't tell who was breastfed or not. I have had really good luck with the goodstart formula. I started my son on it at 4 months (after periodically supplementing with similac) and he liked it so much better than the similac. It took his bowels about a week or two to adjust (and whew was it gross!) but he never got a stomachache that I could tell and he didn't object to the taste. He's now almost 7 months, and is growing and totally healthy.

The most important thing in all of this is that you take care of yourself and get better, Your little one won't care a lick what she was fed (she won't remember) but she will have a relationship with you her whole life. Get yourself well whatever way you can, abandon the idea that you will ever be the perfect mom (she doesn't exist) and settle on being the best mom you can possibly be for your kid.

Good luck!

Hello L.,

Taking care of yourself and the PPD is more important than breastfeeding. Babies have had to stop breastfeeding or never started because of illness in their mothers, ever since babies have been being born.
A baby can thrive and grow on formula. A baby can't thrive if it's mother is depressed and suffering, no matter how it is being fed.
Go immediately to your doctor or psychiatrist and handle this serious issue. Don't wait to find the perfect formula before you take care of your self. That is the best way to take care of your baby.
Is your husband aware of how badly you are feeling? Tell him and get his help in the day to day things , and you go right to your doctor!
get better,
J.

I am all for the benefits of breastfeeding and did it myself with my two girls, but something is really wrong with our pro-breastfeeding culture if you feel so guilty for taking care of yourself even if it means no more breastfeeding! It seems like we are really pushing it these days to the point where women feel extreme guilt and feelings of failure if they can't breastfeed for at least a year. I would be completely thrilled if I had nursed them to six months like you have (I stopped around 3.5 because I went back to work full-time)!! You should be proud of the accomplishments you have achieved as a mother, and I'm not just talking about breastfeeding. Functioning every day with depression, working, and being a mom and wife cannot be remotely easy!!

My advice is to let go of the breastfeeding guilt and do what you HAVE to for yourself. I could not agree more with a previous post who said that a baby needs a mom who is healthy, regardless of how that baby is being fed. I am actually a 5th grade teacher and I can assure you that the happiest, most well-adjusted and smart kids in my class are those who have loving, supportive homes, not necessarily those who are breastfed. You got your baby to six months, which is highly recommended in the medical world, so now it's time to focus on YOU. You are not a failure - you are like the rest of us, trying to make it through the challenges of motherhood and work and life... it is a full plate! Get well so you can handle the demands AND enjoy the wonderful world of motherhood.

My heart goes out to you, L.. It sounds like torture. It's an amazing testimony to your resilient core that in the middle of this you have found it in you to ask for help.

Have you considered taking a medical sick leave? Even a week, so you can get some sleep? It's almost impossible to think straight when you're sleep deprived AND depressed. That would buy you a little time to take care of yourself, get clear, and see what's next.

Also, please, please, for your sake, for your baby, and for your husband, reach out to anyone near you geographically for help. Friends, neighbors, whoever -- this is when you need it. People who are in a depression can have the hardest time doing it (speaking from experience), and you DO deserve to not have to do this alone.

One specific recommendation is to seek out La Leche League for help with breastfeeding and sleep training (http://www.llli.org/WebUS.html). In my experience, those moms are awesome at being both supportive emotionally and helpful in practice. While they're not generally medically trained, they may well have suggestions for meds that you can run by your doctor.

L.,
You have done so much for your daughter already. The best thing you can do for her is to be the best mom you can, to do that you have to take care of yourself, body, mind and soul! Get the help you need for the PPD and if you have to switch to formula than don't beat yourself up. A happy, healthy mom is the best thing you can give your daughter! Good luck and don't suffer this alone.

Dear L.,

I can't help much with your PPD, but I can offer a suggestion about the severe symptomology you are experiencing-- go get tested for Lyme Disease, now!! Lyme can be in one's system a long time without the host knowing it is there and then suddenly flare up out-of-the-blue. Also, it masks its presence under the cover of other diseases and issues. So, one has to treat both the obvious problem, in this case PPD, as well as the hidden problem, the bacteria involved with Lyme Disease.

What makes me think this is the manifestations of hallucinations, sleep disorders and the feeling of having a nervous breakdown. Yes, I know this can and does happen just with PPD sometimes. My own mother didn't handle the conception of her 4th child at all well, but with the rampant spread of Lyme Disease today, it just makes sense to consider it as a possibility. [Since the testing is not very accurate, even if the bloodwork shows negative, one can still have Lyme.]

Antibiotics can help, however, within a day or two of beginning the treatment. So, if this seems a valid possibility, one might simply ask the doctor if you might try some antibiotics, just in case.... And, if there is no improvement over the first few days, stop the antibiotics. It's that simple. with you describing such severe symptoms, it seems worth a try to me. Running a family is hard enough without having to deal with the likes of a nervous breakdown and hallucinations (something that Lyme Disease can easily cause or worsen as it attacks a key neurotransmitter).

God Bless,
S.

L.,

Give yourself a pat on the back for being so strong as to ask for help during this tough time! It sounds like you are an amazingly committed and loving mother and are looking to do the best things for your baby, your husband and yourself. I would strongly suggest you join a support group for women who are suffering from PPD. I have seen fliers around my OB-GYN's office about a PPD support group through Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and I would imagine there are others around the area. PPD is increasingly common and having the support of other woman may be an enormous help for you as you conquor PPD and the challenges of new motherhood. Good luck to you!

I feel for you and am glad you are going to get some help. If you can get some relief and continue to breast feed, that's great, but your baby has already had six months of breast milk and you've given her a tremendous gift already. Babies do fine on formula -- please try to let go of the guilt. I'm for breast feeding when it's feasible but you have to take care of yourself and our culture puts tremendous pressure on mothers in this respect. With my first child breast feeding was a disaster --he hated it, I got a horrendous case of mastitis with a raging fever, and I peristed for three months because I felt I had to keep on. I basically ruined my maternity leave and I regret it to this day. You need to take care of yourself!

Celexa is a category B drug for pregnancy and breast feeding....

Hi L., I am responding kind of late, but wanted to anyway. I am so happy you are on your way to recovery. I had severe PPD after the birth of my daughter, it hit me fast and I was crying non stop, no halusiations, but I couldn't eat sleep or anything. I had never experienced anything like that in my life. It was so horrible that my husband and I do not know if we are having more children.
I am writing you because I also want you to know that taking meds is the best thing you can do for yourself and your daughter. I too was afraid of taking meds, and I made the mistake of going off of them. I went on paxil, and stayed on it for one yr. I swore I was fine to come off. I did no problems for 2 yrs. Then recently I had a trigger that set of my panic attacks. It was horrible, I felt like I lost control again. I met with a great doc who diagnosed me with panic attacks, and said I had those not PPD after the birth of my daughter. She started me back on meds and to be honest I feel the best I have EVER felt. I am a better mom, wife, and just such a happy person. I wake up every day so happy with my life and feel so blessed to have found a doc that knew how to treat me. So my advice is do not stop taking your meds too soon. I will be on mine now for the rest of my life. I am a better person on it. I feel for you L., I know how bad it is, and how hard it is to talk about. You feel so weak, and crazy. You are not either, you are are actually very very strong for getting help, god bless you. You will overcome this!!