Transcriber: Valentina Accardo Reviewer: Hiroko Kawano
Well, my guess is, everyone here is either a mom,
has a mom,
(Chuckes)
or knows a mom.
Well, this story is for all of us.
In June of 2018,
my husband and I welcomed a third child,
another boy to join his two older brothers, ages seven and four.
We were all so in love with him.
I couldn't wait to spend the summer bonding
and enjoying the beautiful outdoors with my family of five.
But instead,
I spent most of my summer in a dark bedroom,
suffering from a severe and debilitating case of postpartum depression,
also known as PPD.
By mid July, on one of the worst nights, when I couldn't sleep,
my bedroom fan began to chant to me:
"Singe their clothes, singe their clothes,"
beckoning me to light my house on fire and burn my children.
I had three kids to raise and a non-profit organization to run,
and yet here I was,
hearing voices in my head, telling me to hurt my family.
I'm here today to tell my PPD story because my hope is
it will help destigmatize and normalize this very common condition in new mothers,
your friends, your wives, your sisters,
even yourselves.
You will need these tools to identify postpartum depression
because she, or you,
are going to want to hide the scary symptoms that come with it.
PPD is a perinatal mood disorder caused by physical changes in women.
Hormones drastically shift and drop after we have babies,
causing emotional repercussions that are made even more severe
when we are sleep deprived.
According to Postpartum Support International,
PPD is the most common complication of childbirth,
impacting approximately 15% of women.
Yet it's incredibly rare to hear anyone talk about it.
Postpartum psychosis is even more taboo;
it's that lovely little illness that causes those delusions and paranoia
that I suffered from,
and it only occurs in every one out of every 1,000 births.
In the most tragic and rare cases, those dark visions become actions,
and the women can hurt or kill themselves,
or their children.
I started feeling like something was off just a few days after giving birth.
First, it became incredibly anxious and paranoid, unable to think straight.
I cancelled all of my plans with family and friends
because making decisions about where to go and what to do
just felt too heavy.
I was also terrified of germs and convinced that my son was sick.
I checked his temperature every hour for a fever, but he was normal.
By week two, I was completely exhausted,
but I barely ever slept.
When I would lay down to rest, my brain would turn on full blast
becoming a revolving wheel of negative thoughts and fear.
It was right around this time when I started googling things like
"postpartum depression" and "PPD" and "baby blues."
It was easy to see that I had every symptom.
But it was much harder to admit that fact out loud.
One day, I was sitting on the couch, nursing our newborn,
when I suddenly felt warm and nauseated, like I was going to pass out.
I called my OB-GYN office
and asked specifically about postpartum depression,
but the nurse told me my symptoms sounded like dehydration.
At at an urgent care clinic later that morning,
an EKG on my heart showed some irregularities in its beat,
so the doctor sent us rushing to the ER next door.
There, the technician hooked me up to an IV, ordered an MRI,
and gave me a CT scan.
But before any of these tests took place,
a distracted cardiac specialist came into my room
and barely glanced at me or my newborn baby
before misdiagnosing me with a rare and deadly heart disease
called Brugada syndrome.
I spent that night in a dark hospital room,
holding my 11-day-old baby, trying to come to terms with the fact
that I was going to die and leave behind my three young children.
The next morning, I was relieved to learn
that all those tests on my heart and my brain,
they came back with normal results.
So, physically, I was healthy, but I still felt panicky and anxious.
I asked the nurses and doctors if maybe these were panic attacks
caused by postpartum depression - I had just given birth, after all.
But the on-call nurse practitioner who breezed in and then out of my room
with my discharge papers told me
I was simply dehydrated and needed more rest.
So over the next few days, I focused on eating, drinking water, resting,
giving myself the space and the time to recover from childbirth.
I even visited my OB-GYN office in person this time,
asking more questions about PPD.
But this time, I was told not to jump to any conclusions
or to rush into taking medication,
and instead, to first try talking it out with a therapist.
But unfortunately,
my situation got much worse before I started any treatment.
Two and a half weeks postpartum, I had a severe panick attack
that lasted over 24 hours.
I actually began hallucinating.
We were at the park,
and I actually envisioned my children being attacked violently
by the Canadian geese that were grazing in the grass nearby.
Then on our walk home, I had more visions.
This time, of my kids being run over by cars and killed.
I was so shaken with anxiety
that I was convinced I was having an actual heart attack.
I told my husband, "Something isn't right.
Perhaps I'm bleeding internally,
or maybe I actually do have Brugada syndrome."
On our way back to the ER, I nearly jumped out of our moving car
when I had another hallucination -
this time, of our infant's car seat
detaching and slamming against the side of the door.
When we got there,
the check-in clerk recognized me from the week prior,
and she smiled at me sympathetically as she took my vitals.
My heart beat normally this time.
But I wasn't leaving without a diagnosis.
The ER doctor came in -
a different one than the week prior -
and this time,
he spent just five extra minutes to actually listen to me talk
about how I've been feeling.
He showed me compassion
when he sat down on my hospital bed, squeezed my big toe gently
and told me I had postpartum depression.
He said PPD is common, that it looks different in every woman
and that I would fully recover.
He then prescribed two medications and told me to be patient
because anti-depressants can take up to three weeks to begin working.
Now, up until this moment,
I'd never suffered from serious, ongoing depression before.
And I'd never taken medication for anxiety.
I was a healthy, mostly put-together, high functioning human.
I felt like I had reached a new low.
Then over the next two months, I suffered deeply,
feeling short-tempered and agitated one moment,
and then uncontrollably sad the next.
I cried so hard for so long some days,
I thought I would dry up completely.
PPD made me hate myself inside and out.
I referred to myself daily as lovely little pet names,
like "vegetable" and "psychopath" and "crazy person."
I thought I was lazy and disgusting and a horrible mother.
I blamed myself for PPD,
thinking, "I must've done something to deserve this."
And on that hot night in July,
when my fan hissed those scary demands above me
about singeing my children's clothing,
my thoughts also carried me one step further.
I actually envisioned walking to the drawer in the kitchen
where we keep our matches.
I didn't think I would actually burn or kill my kids.
But just to be sure,
I made my husband hold my hand that night
while we both lay awake in the dark just to keep me accountable.
My youngest son is one and a half now.
We all survived this!
Yay!
(Applause)
But I am most definitely still a work in progress, guys.
I still take a daily medication to cope with my anxiety.
And like any human,
I still have plenty of days when I feel worthless.
But at my lowest point,
I thought I would never function or work or be normal again,
and yet here I am!
Moms, PPD is not your fault.
But your symptoms are real.
Get treatment now!
You'll recover from this very common condition in new mothers.
And when you do, I hope you will share your story
with every mom you know.
We all need to start talking about postpartum depression.
Thank you very much.
(Cheers) (Applause)