Baby Blues

I hate the term "baby blues".  It is so completely inadequate for what happens after childbirth.  I also hate the term "postpartum depression".  This seems too clinical and so far removed from what I experienced.  I was not blue or depressed or delicately unhappy or leaking pretty silent tears.

I was good old fashioned bat-shit crazy.  Is that a technical term?

It hit me like a freight train after Baby Boy was born, but I didn't recognize it as crazy right away.  I thought I had legitimate new mom worries.  Until I was afraid to leave him in his crib down the hall because if someone put an extension ladder on the side of our house, all the way up to his second story window, ten feet down the hall from me and kidnapped him...I might not hear it happening.  The next morning I remembered this and thought....yup, bat shit crazy.

I was always fine in the morning.  Sunshine combined with the happy babble of my new baby had a way of banishing the nonsense that my brain dreamt up in the middle of the night.  Then, as the day went on, it would kind of creep back up on me until nightfall - where it would all just kind of spiral into crazytown. 

Bridges was a big one for me after Baby Boy.  I had recurring nightmares about getting in an accident on a bridge and going over.  How would I get him out?  What if I had other kids with us?  How would I choose who to help?  What is the best survival advice for sinking in a car?  How would it feel to drown holding my baby?  It was awful.  Gut wrenching and devastating and I could not shake it.  The fear clung to me and whispered in my ear and made me doubt what I knew to be true.

It slowly went away, kinda morphing into normal parent worry - which is so much more manageable.  And this time, when I had Baby Girl...I knew it was coming.  I knew when it got bad, it was hormones and that if I hung on, it would get better.  And I am still working my way through it one day at a time.  Every night is not always bad now.  Some nights I sleep again somewhat normal.  And on a bad night I don't succumb to the crazy.  I distract myself with binge watching tv on hulu or playing on Facebook or blogging...and eventually I fall asleep or the sun comes up and the crazy fades.  Mostly.  Some days it may carry over a teensy bit.  And on those days I guarantee Jack doesn't leave the house thinking his wife has baby blues...he is definitely thinking bat shit crazy all the way.