HAWMC Day 3: Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Post a picture that symbolizes your condition and your experiences.

Photo (C) Esther Dale, 2013

HAWMC Day 2: Introducing PPMD

Introduce your condition(s) to other Health Activists. What are 5 things you want them to  know about your condition/your activism? Share links to 3-5 of your old posts (or posts from other Health Activists!) that you think will help the newly diagnosed.

I’m a Health Activist for Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders. I personally have suffered from Postpartum Depression, Postpartum OCD, Postpartum Anxiety, and Antenatal Depression (not a PPMD because it occurs during pregnancy prior to giving birth) but I also feel that it’s important to talk about Postpartum Psychosis and Postpartum PTSD. As much work as remains to be done to better educate the public about Postpartum Depression, I think there’s even more to be done to raise awareness about other lesser-known PPMD. I say this based on the fact that not only do most every-day non-medical people I talk to not know about anything other than PPD, even medical personnel misdiagnose other PPMD as being PPD and are uneducated about anything other than PPD.

I think this ties in nicely with the part of today’s prompt that says to share 5 things I’d like others to know about PPMD. Please note that these are not necessarily listed in order of importance, as I think they’re all equally important.

1. Different PPMD are not all the same thing and the terms can not and should not be used interchangeably. The biggest example I see of this is people saying someone has/had Postpartum Depression when they actually had Postpartum Psychosis. What far too many people don’t realize is that, although they both fall under the heading of PPMD, PPD and PPP are not the same thing.
2. When someone says they are having thoughts of hurting themselves or the baby, it’s important to make sure that they’re truly experiencing suicidal/homicidal ideations typical of PPD or PPP; too often, what a new mom thinks is thoughts of hurting herself/her baby is actually intrusive thoughts, which are a distinctive symptom of Postpartum OCD. It’s important to distinguish between the types of thoughts and symptoms and make sure that the correct diagnosis is made because different PPMD may respond better to different methods of treatment.
3. Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders are not a cop-out. They’re not some pretend thing that people use to get out of trouble or to make excuses for not doing housework. PPMD are legitimate illnesses that suck  to an extent that is impossible to comprehend until you’ve experienced it. And even after experiencing PPMD, you still can’t expect to understand what everyone else with PPMD experiences, because everyone’s experiences are different.
4. PPMD are not automatically something you can just pray away. It’s not as simple as singing more hymns, having more faith, saying the right prayers, repenting of sins, binding Satan and his demons, attending church faithfully, being exorcised, getting blessings that are worded the right way, or anything else faith related. Sometimes those things may help comfort an individual and help them feel relief from symptoms, but to assume that PPMD are tied to one’s faith (or lack thereof) is wrong, and hinting (or outright saying) that they must not be taking the right steps with regards to their faith can be more harmful than one might imagine.
5. There is no one way that women with PPMD can be assumed to look. You can not assume that a woman with PPMD will be disheveled, be perpetually in tears, or appear to be in distress. Many women can and do hide the fact that they are suffering, and/or the extent of their suffering, not only from the world but from the loved ones they are the closest too. I speak from personal experience about that.

Five bullets is barely even a scratch on the surface. For more information about PPMD, go do some more reading. Read more of my blog entries, follow the links in this post, and check out the resources and blogs in the tabs at the top of this page. Happy HAWMC and enjoy your reading. :)

HAWMC Day 1: Getting Started!

Hello, and a very Happy HAWMC to you! If you just said “Gesundheit”, thinking maybe I sneezed, thank you, but there was no sneezing. :D “What?!”, you say, “You didn’t sneeze? Then what on earth is that... uh... word. HAWMC? Haymitch? OMG! Are you going to blog about the Hunger Games movies and books?!? You’re the coolest blogger e-var!!!1!”. Nah, hold your horses. Much as I love Hunger Games, and as much as the Hunger Games books are fantastic about expressing mental health issues like PTSD without making it look like it drives you nuts and turns you into some raving lunatic, and as much as I get all melty inside when... never mind, don’t want to get in trouble for spoilers... no. I did not say Haymitch. I said Happy HAWMC. HAWMC is an acronym standing for Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. April is Health Activist Writer’s Month, and every year, WeGo Health does the HWMC, where they send out a list of prompts and Health Activists take up the gauntlet to try to write one blog post a day for 30 days. I tried it last year but due to travel and pregnancy, it just didn’t really go very well. This year, I’ve decided to try it again. Considering that I’m in school full time and my husband is currently away with the Army (meaning I’m also juggling the kids by myself), I’m not sure whether I’ll actually make it all the way through all 3 days, but it should be fun and I’m going to give it a go. This year, I’m just not going to put much pressure on myself and see it as a challenge rather than a commitment. Pregnancy hormones last year had me feeling (unreasonably) like I was letting someone (not really sure who) down by not completing the challenge. *rolls eyes* Yay, pregnancy hormones.

Anyways, getting on to the first prompt...

HAWMC Day 1: Getting Started! Why you write – tell us a little bit about why you write about your health online and what got you started.

My name is Esther, for those of you who don’t already know me, and I am a survivor of Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders. I’ve fought my way through Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Anxiety, Postpartum OCD, Antenatal Depression, and what I think was probably some Postpartum PTSD. The majority of this happened after my first baby was born in 2009. When she was just a few months old, I was hospitalized twice with what was then being called PPD and PPA; I now (a grand total of 4 years later) recognize that I also had a nasty case of Postpartum OCD. At the end of the year, the doctors figured out that the pregnancy had caused me to develop hypothyroidism, which can cause mental health issues including, after pregnancy, being the real culprit behind PPMD for some women. At any rate, once my thyroid levels were under control, my PPMD cleared right up.

When I was suffering in silence, even after my hospitalization when I was still hurting and confused but keeping quiet because I thought nobody would understand, I came across Postpartum Progress. Postpartum Progress helped me more than I can say. Once my thyroid issues were diagnosed, I realized that there needed to be a louder conversation about thyroid and PPMD, about pregnancy and thyroid issues, and about PPMD in general. I realized how much of a help Postpartum Progress and the other PPD blogs I was starting to find were helping me, and I started wanting to speak up more to let other women know they weren’t alone.

Eventually, I discovered #PPDChat, the brain child of Lauren Hale from My Postpartum Voice. I started to realize that there really were a lot of women out there like me and that there were women who were still suffering in silence like I had, because they didn’t realize that it was normal and that there were people to talk to who had BTDT. I started blogging more and more and now, if you get me started talking about PPMD, it can be hard to get me to shut up.

So why do I blog? I write about PPMD because I know how much it hurts. I know how dark the tunnel is. I know how oppressive the cloud is. I know how hard it can be to even get out of bed and go change a diaper and make a bottle. I know the doubts and fears that pop up when you start to think “Maybe I should ask for help”. I know how absolutely terrifying it can be to go in to the ER and say “I’ having these thoughts I know something is very wrong”, to do the admission paperwork and all the while, wonder if CPS is going to swoop in and snatch your baby away from you because you have PPMD. I know how dull and lifeless the world can seem, how hopeless it can all appear. I know what it’s like to be standing at the top of the stairs, looking down in the middle of the night, and thinking “Maybe everyone would be better off without me”. I know what it’s like to be a military spouse and worry about whether your husband will get chaptered out, lose his clearance, or get reclassed because of your inner demons, inner demons you certainly never wanted and that you only want to be rid of.

I write because I know how much it hurts to hear people say things like “What sin have you left unconfessed?” or “It’s all just in your head”, I know how painful it is to hear people talking about Andrea Yates and say “Women with Postpartum Depression shouldn't be allowed to have kids.”. I know how maddening it is to hear people say “Oh, well, you’re just thinking the wrong way” or “Why don’t you just pray more?”. I write because I’ve been there and, thank God, I survived. I made it through to the other side of the nightmare thanks to the support of my family and close friends, but some people don’t have that, and I want to be that for them. I don’t want anyone I know to ever think that PPMD is something they have to walk through by themselves.

I write because I want to fight the myths and the stigmas, because I want to bring greater awareness to the public, to better educate the people around me (both in real life every day and on the internet) about the realities of PPMD and that it’s not just a cop-out.

I write because that was me, and someday, when my daughters have children, I want them to feel comfortable seeking help if they need it.

I write because others wrote, and what they wrote helped me more than I can ever say, and it taught me that words can make a difference. I want to make a difference. I want to be part of the difference. That is why I write.

HAWMC Day 4: I write about my health because...

HAWMC Day 4 prompt: I write about my health because… Reflect on why you write about your health for 15-20 minutes without stopping
The first time I ever really talked about my PPD online other than in a private message with a very trusted friend was after I was released from my first inpatient stay at Laurel Ridge. I posted in a "Protected" forum at a military significant other and spouses discussion board with a brief "Hey, this is why I suddenly disappeared" but I still didn't really openly talk about it much. When I finally started really being open about my experiences, it was December 2012. My husband and daughter had been in the car with me when my brakes failed and I rearended a very large Dodge cargo van. You know, the kind with the metal bumper? My husband had his foot on the dashboard and when the airbag deployed, so did his foot... straight into the windshield. His ankle was broken on both sides, it was only because he had on very stiff leather cowboy boots that the bone didn't go through the skin.My seatbelt didn't immediately lock so I was thrown forwards into the airbag and then back against the seat, at which point my seatbelt finally locked into position but my head snapped forwards again. I was left with a very nasty headache, a concussion, bruises on my chest, and a hideous case of whiplash that left me unable to bend over, pick up the baby or a cat, turn my head side to side, or ride in a car without vomiting unless I took Zofran (we learned this when I lost my lunch all over my mom's car on the way to a followup for my husband's ankle at the ER at BAMC the next day, I ended up getting followed up on too).

My husband had to have surgery to set his ankle and put in plates and screws. I, of course, went along and stayed in the waiting room feeling very sore, extremely guilty, tired, and wishing I could take something that would be more effective on my neck and back than Tylenol and Motrin. There was good news though! The day before, I had gone to the clinic on post to see my own doctor since my back and neck were still hurting quite a bit. While I was there, I mentioned that at a previous appointment a couple of months prior with my PCM, they had mentioned something about my thyroid levels being low but never followed up on it and was that something I needed to be concerned about. The doctor who was seeing me, Major M (USAF), looked at my records and said "Uh... yeah, your levels are off. Since this is an old test result, I want to rerun your labs to see where they are now and we'll go from there". I went and had my blood drawn. The next day, while I was in that waiting room, waiting on news of how my husband's ankle surgery was going, I got a call from Maj. M's nurse saying "Your TSH and T-4 are extremely off, we need you to come in immediately to see the doctor and get on medication". Now, when I say "My levels were off", I mean that Within Normal Limits for T-4 is between .3 and .5 and mine was .02. This was DEFINITELY something that shoudl have been caught before and in hindsight, I should have filed an ICE complaint that it wasn't caught my my previous doctor. I promptly started on Synthroid (and switched my Primary Care Physician to be Maj. M) and three months of Synthroid had me ready to come off the antidepressants totally.

Anyways, now that the history lesson is over, as soon as I got off the phone with the nurse, I sat down and wrote what became my first PPD blog post. I posted it as a note on Facebook and MySpace, posted it on the forums I was a member of, and started this blog. For some reason, having that diagnosis of Hypothyroidism was like a dam breaking open to let me post everything I had been holding in.

At that point, I posted because I wanted others who were dealing with PPD to know they weren't alone, and that is still a very big part of why I post but it's also evolved into so much more. I write about my health because I want people who have no idea to get one. I want people to know that PPD is a real problem, not just some bad attitude or some mental block. I write about my health because I want people to know what to look for in their loved ones who are expecting or have recently had a baby. I write because I recognize that there is a very real and very damaging stigma surrounding mental health in general and that it definitely extends in a very real way to moms who are struggling with PPMD. I write because I want to combat that stigma, I want to make it personal and real by putting a face to it so that people who scoff and dismiss it suddenly can't dismiss it so easily because someone they know has dealt with it. I write because this stigma is born of ignorance and can only be overcome by education, by breaking the silence. It's a lot harder to dismiss something as a "cop out" or a "lack of faith" when it's your relative/friend/neighbor/whatever, someone you know personally and care about, who is going through it.

HAWMC Day 3: Superpower Day

I'd like to start by apologizing for being MIA. I've been traveling (with the kids) on vacation to visit family and friends while my wonderful husband is  out of the country with the Army and time to blog has been a little short, especially with Yumyum not feeling well the last little bit. I actually had her at the ER one night when she spiked a fever (very out of character for her) but it turned out to be nothing but teething and *possibly* a virus. I think I would have preferred a diagnosis of an ear infection since that's something we can treat with antibiotics instead of just "Grin and bear it". Urgh.

Anyways, getting back in the saddle, I'll be trying to play catch up on the posts I've missed. I've fallen down on my goal of actually blogging every day but I keep reminding myself that it's healthy to remember that real life takes precedence over a blog challenge.

HAWMC Day 3: Superpower Day. If you had a superpower – what would it be? How would you use it?

Oh, to have a superpower. There are so many that I look at and think "Wow, I'd really love to have that" but then I think of how much I love the fact that Heavenly Father has created us all with Free Will (aka the ability to choose our own paths and make our own decisions) and the fact that a lot of superpowers you see in movies sort of take that away from people. The one thing I've always wished I could do is to fly. I would love to be able to fly like Superman. To be able to instantly get away and just think, or to be able to gain some perspective by looking down and going "Wow, that's right, I'm just one speck of humanity and the whole world really does not revolve around me and what I want". To be able to fly to far away places and help people. To be able to play among the clouds, travel and see different cultures and scenery. Just to be able to FLY without the restrictions of an airplane or other machine. Flying. Oh, how I wish.

HAWMC Day 2: Quotation Inspiration

Quotation Inspiration. Find a quote that inspires you (either positively or negatively) and free write about it for 15 minutes.

First, I'd like to take a moment to say that I love this prompt, except for the tiny detail that I had trouble narrowing it down to just one quote. I"ll have to keep this prompt in mind for the future when I have writer's block. Also, since it's a free write, I only went back and edited the spelling. And now, let the 15 minutes begin.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. -Winston Churchill

When I first read this quote, it grabbed me. If words could literally jump off a computer screen and yank at your hair, this quote would have done just that. When I first read it, my mind went immediately to blogging about PPD. To the people who have the guts to speak up when they see something that's not right. To the people who are so brave as to be able to tell their story and make themselves vulnerable to the entire world in the hopes that their story will help others.


But then, i realized that it applies to so much more than that. It applies to being able to reach out and ask for help. When you're struggling with PPD, one of the hardest things out there, one of the scariest thoughts, is to say "Hey, I know that I'm supposed to be blissfully happy right now and overjoyed at the fact that I have a new baby who is beautiful and healthy, and supposed to be overjoyed at the fact that I can now roll over in bed without knocking the pets and my husband off the mattress, and at the fact that I can now get up out of a cushy char without needing to enlist the assistance of a crane and other construction equipment, but I'm not. I'm sad, I feel hopeless, the world is bleak to me. I need help".


For me, it was scary for a multitude of reasons, and I'm pretty sure that other people would agree that they dealt with the same fears. I was scared of being made fun of. I was scared of being looked down upon. I was scared that people would think there was something wrong with me. I was scared that it would negatively impact my husband's military career. I was scared that CPS would come and take my baby away until I was deemed safe for her to be around. I was worried that admitting I needed help meant that I really did need help. I was scared that I would be judged and found wanting as a wife, mother, Christian, human being, friend, daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter, cousin, and did I mention as a wife and mother? I was worried that this meant there was something wrong with me, that I would be told that it was all my fault. Saying I needed help, calling the Chaplain and agreeing to meet him at the ER and then actually getting in the car and doing it was one of the hardest and most absolutely terrifying things I have ever done in my entire life. The fear was almost palpable.


I'm pretty sure that I'm not speaking out of turn to say that this type of fear (if not these exact concerns) are what face other women dealing with PPD too. It's a big part of what keeps many women from speaking up and reaching out for help earlier on. And every woman who faces that fear, who stands up and says "Hey, something is not right here, I need help" shows an inordinate amount of courage that I have the utmost respect for. I have just as much respect for the women who make that choice as I do for the men and women who volunteer to join the military and go overseas, as much respect as I have for the men and women who choose to become firefighters knowing that they will be put into situations where they will have to run into a burning building to risk their life to save others, as much respect as I have for the men and women who volunteer and train to become Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers and jump into insanely cold and violent waters "That others may live", as much respect as I have for any men and women who volunteer to take up any profession that they know will ask them to literally put their lives on the line for others. This is not hyperbole. These women who speak up and reach out are every bit as brave, every bit as much my hero, as any of those I have just mentioned and all the others (tere are way too many professions to name).


But something else strikes me about this quote. IT also takes a lot of courage to be willing and able to sit down and just listen when someone needs to talk about the things they're struggling with as a result of their PPD. It's not an easy thing to sit there and listen as someone bares their soul, as they admit to having dark thoughts that we are trained from childhood to see as selfish and reprehensible. It's no simple task to listen and stay open and loving instead of saying "OMG, what is the MATTER with you, why can't you just get over this? Just choose to be happy instead of wallowing in this pity party!!!". It's not easy to just listen and respond with "I love you and I'm there for you, no matter what" instead of responding with pithy sayings, cliches, and your best guess as to what that poor soul needs to hear to drag them out of the depths of despair, instead of responding with "Well this is what you're doing wrong and here's how you should fix this".

It takes courage to stand up and speak and courage to sit down and listen. The trick is to know which is needed when.


/free write


What is the quote that most inspires you?