It’s Not Easy to Parent When Your Soul Is Leaving Your Body
By: Darcy Reeder
Tags: Human Prompt, Mental Health, Mind, Soul, Parenting

It’s Not Easy to Parent When Your Soul Is Leaving Your Body

My recovery from postpartum depression was long and filled with brain zaps

Photo: Ade Santora/Getty Images

My sweet baby was almost two-and-a-half years old, and still I was fighting postpartum depression (PPD).

Fighting, yes. It wasn’t a quiet depression — it couldn’t be — because I had a child to raise. She needed me to sing and dance, so her mind could grow healthy and strong. So she wouldn’t be crazy like me.

All the sanity I had, I gave to her.

For myself? I needed therapy, but who has time when you’re nursing a baby? When you’re not even sleeping?

I attended one therapy session, with my sleeping newborn on my lap, as I bawled and scribbled down advice about communicating with my husband, and how to explain to him what PPD feels like.

She taught me how to lead with appreciation instead of accusation: “I know we’re both giving 110% of ourselves all the time.”

If I could make him care, maybe he could care for me, so I could care for her.

Or if that failed, he could care for her, and I could cease to be. That felt more likely.

It was an impossible time. When my doctor suggested meds at my daughter’s six-week weigh-in, I answered, “I’ll do anything.”

I started Sertraline (Zoloft). Yeah, it helped with the postpartum anxiety. I started to sleep a little. Now my baby kept me up instead of my mind.

But at a year old, she arched her back, away from my breasts and their dwindling supply of milk. When she weaned, everything changed. I experienced another puberty — why does no one tell you that? My chemistry changed, and Sertraline quit working for me.

So I started Fluoxetine (Prozac) and felt great. This was life! Except for the constant nausea. I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t keep food down. My even, happy mind was trapped in this nauseous body.

My doctor suggested Venlafaxine (Effexor). No. No. No. I wish I could go back. Wish I could tell myself back then to quit the meds, to finally start therapy. Maybe I didn’t have time for it when she was born, but I did now.

“With Venlafaxine, you won’t have nausea,” my doctor said, “but people say the withdrawal is just like with heroin.”

I stayed, of course, and together we created wounds that may never heal.

I brushed her words away. I needed to feel better. For my daughter. Always for her. Not for me. I didn’t even know who I was. And didn’t care.

I had ceased to be.

My doctor was right about the withdrawal.

One month lost. A month of pain and tears and exhaustion, of brain zaps, of depersonalization (my soul leaving my body). The month when my husband told me I needed to take this healing somewhere else. I stayed, of course, and together we created wounds that may never heal.

This was the month my two-year-old daughter developed her first fears. In a moment where I felt well enough to stand, I cleaned her wipeable placemat, erased a doodle I’d drawn of myself: a smiley face with curly hair.

When she saw the placemat, she started screaming, “Mama erase! Mama erase!”

She wouldn’t leave her bedroom for a day and a night. I drew a new doodle, but this upset her more. She was afraid her real mother was disappearing too. And she was right. I don’t believe in souls, and yet it felt like my soul had definitely left my body.

I spent my days sleeping, crying, battling fevers, wincing from constant brain zaps, and cuddling my daughter under a blanket. Yes, every day we cuddled, and I read stacks of books to her, even though I knew my voice sounded flat.

“Mama’s sick, but I’ll be better soon,” I told her. “I’m sorry. I love you so much.”

My soul was gone, but I didn’t want her to know. I didn’t want my husband to be right, that me being there — but also not there— was worse than me just being all the way gone.

He didn’t mean dead, but that’s where my mind went. Not for the first time.

“Go stay in a motel.”

“I just want to heal in my home,” I pleaded. “And it’s not like we could afford that anyway.”

“It’s not fair to us. It’s not fair to her. She shouldn’t have to see you like this.”

“I’m giving her love every day. I’m doing much more than I feel capable of. You don’t know how hard this is.”

“We don’t need your help.”

“She’s my daughter. She needs me and I need her.”

“This isn’t about you.”