So my original plan was to blog once a week... you can clearly see that hasn't happened. I wish I could say that I've just been really busy and haven't had the time to write, but that's not entirely true. The reality is that I have really been scared about putting into words my experience with Post Partum Depression, so I've made up excuses for the past couple of months as to why I couldn't sit down and pound it out on the keyboard. Well, no more excuses... time to bite the bullet and let everyone inside of my head. And maybe, just maybe, I can help someone else out there suffering from the same HELL I did four years ago.
As anyone reading my previous blogs can see, the whole "baby" thing didn't come as easily to me as I thought it would. Most people will say that's because I had twins, and while I'm sure that is a big part of it, I think it is just as easy to become depressed with one baby as it is two (or three, or four, God help those poor moms!!). From the day that Ashton and Graysen were born, something just didn't feel right. I was excited, of course, but there was something looming over me, like a dark cloud, that prohibited me from truly loving what I was experiencing. Naturally, I thought I was just tired and that the hormones were doing crazy things to my body, making me cry for no reason or lash out at anyone who looked at me funny. So, we left it at that. Ginnie's tired and hormonal. Great.
As the months dragged by, I should have begun feeling better. We had the girls on somewhat of a schedule, and we had all sorts of grandparents coming to help us get some sleep. But the dark cloud kept getting darker, and kept getting bigger. I knew I loved my babies, but I didn't FEEL anything for them. Every time they would wake up, I would dread getting them out of their cribs, and most of the times I would cry as soon as they whimpered. I made Justin get up most nights to do feedings, claiming I didn't feel well or that I was too tired. The truth was, I didn't want to be around my babies. Sure, they were cute, and sure, they were learning new things all the time, and I should really have cared SO much about them eating solid food for the first time, or sitting up, but all I wanted them to do was sleep. That way I could be alone. And I couldn't tell this to anyone, because like I've said before, it seemed that EVERYONE around me was in love with their new babies, and couldn't talk enough about the color of poop their little one squeezed out that morning. I went along with it, and added my own comments: "Oh, Ashton pooped bright yellow this morning, but Graysen's was dark green! How crazy, since they're on the same diet!" I mean, seriously??
Things continued to go from bad to worse. I started out not wanting to be around my babies, but then, as if that weren't bad enough, I started having these terribly disturbing visions. I would be giving the girls a bath, and suddenly, a picture would flash through my mind of my babies drowning. I would be playing with the girls on the floor, and as I would blink, there was a vision of one of them being smothered by a pillow. Now, before you go calling Child Protective Services on me, please know that I never did anything to harm my children. In fact, these visions never even showed me doing these terrible, horrible, unforgiveable things to my sweet, innocent children. It was just happening all on its own. And I couldn't get the visions out of my head, no matter how hard I tried. I think that's about when I started "losing it."
In July, the girls had just turned three months, and my entire family got together to spend Independence Day in Idaho at my parent's cabin. I was so excited to finally have all of my sisters around me, plus my parents, plus my husband, plus my babies. In my mind, this was exactly what I needed to get better. I knew that if I could just get out of the middle of nowhere, Montana, and be around my best friends in the world, I would get past this and the cloud and visions would go away. I could not have been more wrong. I remember being so irritable and emotional, snapping at everyone in my family, crying for no reason, and being furious when people couldn't keep the girls on the schedule like I did. I honestly don't know how everyone put up with me. But that wasn't even the worst part.
The flight from Idaho Falls to Denver was a little rough. Big deal, right? Okay, I forgot to mention that I have this incredibly over the top, annoying, really irrational fear of flying. So when I say the flight was "a little rough", picture the rest of the passengers dealing with it by reading a magazine, and picture me hunched over in my seat, sobbing, my head in a paper sack trying to breathe normally, and holding my mom's hand so tight I'm lucky I didn't break her bones. Yep, that was me. Definitely one of my finer moments. But it gets worse. Our next flight was from Denver to Austin (I was going to Texas to spend some time with my family before heading back to Montana). I did NOT want to get on that plane. My mom, dad, and youngest sister all tried their hardest to calm me down, and explained to me that they would help me get through the flight, and reminded me that it was only two hours on a plane. I tried to calm down. We boarded the plane, and my mom was holding one baby while my sister held the other. The cabin door closed. I shot up out of my seat, told my family and babies goodbye, and headed for the front of the plane. My mom told me later that she watched me in disbelief, talking to the stewardesses, explaining that I had a family emergency and had to get off the plane. My parents and sister were saying to each other "No way... She'll come back. She wouldn't just leave her babies." Oh, but I did. I turned around and waved at my parents, sister, and children, and walked off the plane.
I guess you can say that at this point, I had hit rock bottom. My husband was so angry with me for getting off the plane that he wouldn't speak to me the rest of the day. My parents and little sister, who had all been so patient with me, were finally at their wit's end. I ended up renting a car and driving the sixteen hours to Austin instead of enduring the two hour flight. During my spontaneous roadtrip, my poor parents and sister had to take my screaming three month old twins and attempt to be their mothers for the next 24 hours. I was told later that my youngest sister started crying while giving the girls a bath that night. Normally, Ashton and Graysen are happy as clams in the bath, but they were apparently inconsolable, and my sister simply said, through tears, "This isn't how Ginnie does it. We're doing something wrong." To this day, I feel so awful that I literally dumped my problems on my family. They did not deserve that.
When I finally made it to Austin, I walked into my parent's house more scared than anytime I had broken curfew in high school. It was silent when I walked in the door, and as I made my way into my parent's bedroom, my heart was pounding. My dad was sitting in his bed, reading a book, and looked up briefly as I walked through his door. He didn't get up, didn't put the book down. He simply handed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it and said, "She's expecting your call tomorrow. You need help." Then he went right back to reading. I knew he was right.
Okay, so if this were a book, now would be a perfect time to start a new chapter. And since the next part of my story deserves a title all it's own, I'm going to wrap it up now and leave you hanging till I get time to sit again (I promise it won't be months). Please feel free to leave me comments. I would love to hear your stories too...
