Although I am new to this site, I am not new to this disorder.
I think I was somewhat normal growing up, considering my home life. Although, once when I was 13, I had a bout of depression that led me to attempt suicide twice.
When I was 20, I became pregnant with my first child. My husband and I couldn't be more excited. I had the best pregnancy ever! I truly enjoyed being pregnant and was on cloud nine. I had my first son on Aug. 21st, 2001. He was a big baby and as healthy as could be. What more could we ask for? Life was great. Within 2 days of his birth I started getting what I thought at the time were the "baby blues". My mind was going in every direction. I could not even perform my regular routine housework. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep and worst of all I couldn't even care for this helpless little bundle of cuteness that I had brought into the world. When the doctor suggested that I try taking an anti depressant I was devastated. I had never really been on any kind of regular medication, and of course this would mean that I could not breastfeed my child. Also, I saw how distraught my husband was. He went from having a happy healthy wife, to a puddle of tears and a baby to take care of. He had never had to deal with anything like this. Finally someone had convinced me to take the meds. They told me that if I am not eating, and not sleeping, and obviously not getting any better, then how could I even care for my new child that I wanted so badly? I had to take care of me first, before I could be able to care for someone else. So I started taking Paxil. Within a few days I started to feel different. I wanted to cry, but couldn't even squeeze out a tear. I guess to everyone else, I appeared to be better but on the inside I was still a mess. Eventually the medicine took over completely and I was able to cope again. I took it for several months and felt as though I was as close to normal as I would ever be. I figured that the "baby blues" were over and started going off of the medication. Life was back to normal.
I did fine for a few years then started thinking that I wanted to have a second child. I feared that I would freak out again, but eventually convinced myself that maybe since I had been through it once, and knew what to expect, that it wouldn't happen again.
So, I got pregnant. Just as with the first pregnancy everything went great. On Aug. 5th, 2004, I had another little boy. I was pretty much ok the first day, but as it closer to time for me to go home, it started. I tried my hardest to be ok, but it got the better of me and was worse than the first time. It was awful! This time I didn't even hesitate to go on medication. Same as before, within a few weeks I was feeling myself again. I stayed on the medication a little longer this time, but eventually went off of it again. I was fine for several years.
I had decided that I didn't want to have anymore children, but something in the back of my head kept me from getting fixed. I was on birth control for a few years and then my doctor decided that the birth control I was on was high risk (YAZ- now the subject of several lawsuits). I could not decide on a safe alternative so we just used condoms. Eventually I decided to go back on Depo-Provera which I had previously taken. I had to wait until the start of my next cycle before I could begin taking the shot again. Well, my next cycle didn't come.
I was pregnant again. At my first ultrasound, we discovered it was twins. I was in shock and scared to death. After a few stressful weeks of "what if's" I calmed down. Not like I could do anything about it anyway! With this pregnancy, I didn't even try to convince myself that I would be ok after birth, I just went with it.
Little to my knowledge, my episode was going to happen before I even had the babies. I live in Southern Illinois and on April 18th of 2008 we had a 5+ magnitude earthquake early in the morning. I knew exactly what it was when it hit. I spent a large portion of my life in Southern California and had felt several earthquakes before. Everyone in the house was excited and so we just got up and began our day. I was still ok at that point, but was starting to get sleepy mid morning. I laid down on the couch and started to fall asleep. It seemed like I had just closed my eyes, when we had an aftershock. This time, I was not ok. We had aftershocks for days. None of these caused any damage, but it seemed like every time I would start to fall asleep, something would startle me and make me jump. I could not sleep and was so jumpy that just a passing car would make my heart pound. I was a total mess and could not even eat. I tried for days to get my head right again, but nothing would calm me down. I tried several home remedies, meditation and prayer. I finally swallowed my pride and called the doctor. He said he did not want to give me medication while I was pregnant, but if I could not rest or eat, I was putting the twins at risk anyway. I gave it a few more days, then gave up and went on a low dose of antidepressants. It did not work as quickly as it had previously, but was enough to get me by. I told the doctor that when I had the twins, I wanted an order, to double my meds to be waiting, in case it got worse. On August 18th, 2008, I had 2 more little boys. This time I didn't even make it through the first day before it started. The doctor doubled my meds, only this time, it was so much worse than with the first 3 times I had an episode. He had to double my meds again and add another one. Eventually all was well.
I never did go off my meds though. I had another episode before I even thought about going off of the medication. Then another and so on. Each time the episodes got worse. It got to where, I wasn't really having episodes, because it was just there all the time. I had my meds changed a few times, increased, decreased, new ones added and so on.
All of my meds were prescribed by my primary doctor. A couple of years ago I saw my first psychiatrist. He seemed to think I was bipolar. I had heard of bipolar disorder and thought I knew what it was and was certain that this doctor did not know what he was talking about. I laughed! I went home and told my husband and laughed some more. That night I went online and looked up bipolar disorder. I felt like a fool! There was way more to this disorder than I thought I knew. I have done a lot of reading on it since and it even helps a little to know that there is a name for what I have and that I am not alone. I have come to the realization that this is not going to go away.
I have ups and I have downs and some times are more extreme than others. I try to take everything in day by day and try not to make any long term commitments that would require my presence in case I am not all there at the time. I have learned a few coping skills that sometimes help and have accepted that there may be days or even weeks that nothing is going to work for me. I know there is still plenty of good days to be had and try not to fear the bad ones and just carry on. My husband and I (surprisingly he is still with me after all of this) won't have any more children, we took care of that. So from here on out we just concentrate on raising the kids we have and do the best we can in every situation.