- Hi, everyone.
In today's video, I'm going to be looking back
at my postpartum experience
and sharing why it was actually more difficult
than I thought it was.
(gentle music)
So, that might sound a little bit weird
but while it was happening,
you know, the first year after I gave birth,
I thought that things were going really well,
I thought that I was doing well.
And I think that's probably the image I projected
onto this channel as well,
that, you know, I was doing really well
and things were going really smoothly.
And that was true to an extent.
But I think upon reflection
and, you know, hashing it out more with Rob
and looking back at how I was actually coping
and doing and managing everything,
that was more difficult and challenging
and a little rough than I had thought it was.
I'm going to start off by talking about the factors
that contributed to these challenges
or feeling like it was hard
and then go into, you know, how that actually played out,
you know, the effects that it had on my life
and what exactly I was struggling with
or using as maladaptive coping.
So I think this is kind of true for anyone postpartum
is that there are changes in hormones
and, you know, you get a lot less sleep
because you're getting up to feed the baby
and tend to the baby all hours.
And then of course there is the change in routine
to kind of just no routine.
And it feels like you're always just
reacting to your baby's needs as opposed to having,
you know, a set schedule that you follow
like you did before you had the baby.
And so those are just kind of common challenges
that everyone goes through
that can be really difficult to navigate
and I think that lead to a lot of postpartum issues.
But on top of that, you know,
all of this happened during COVID, during a global pandemic.
And so, when I had my baby, Teddy,
we were really, really isolated.
Because it was during kind of the peak
of when restrictions were happening.
And so, we really weren't able to see really anyone.
And we weren't able to get that external support
from friends and family
to help navigate the first few months or the first year
or, you know, just at all.
We didn't have that external physical support.
It was also kind of an interesting additional challenge
that this was my first time having a baby
and taking care of a baby and whatnot.
But I also had two older kids to look after as well.
And so, that was a really big juggling act
and a really steep learning curve I guess,
to figure out how to balance
looking after all three of the kids,
including one small infant,
as well as myself and my husband
and keeping up with everything.
And that was really, really difficult.
And I think probably was harder
than I thought it would be to.
This YouTube channel is also what I do for work.
So, I don't have a typical job
in the sense of having, you know, paid maternity leave.
I kind of had to keep working as soon as the baby,
well, throughout the whole pregnancy,
as soon as the baby was born
and all throughout the first year and beyond.
And so, I never got, you know, just a break,
just to focus on the baby and focus on healing
and recovery and whatnot.
It was kind of like I just had to jump right back into work.
And so, that was another element
that required juggling as well.
And then of course,
you know, medications throughout my pregnancy
were a challenging component of pregnancy.
I shared a bit about it in other videos
but there was a lot of different,
you know, titrating of doses and whatnot
that needed to happen throughout my pregnancy.
And then that kind of continued afterward too.
I had to try to re-regulate my medications
post pregnancy as well.
And so that was an additional challenge
that I faced postpartum.
Changing medications might not sound like a big deal
but when I am changing,
you know, psychiatric medications,
it often comes with the onset of symptoms,
more symptoms than I'm typically dealing with.
So, you know, increased hallucinations,
delusional thinking, sometimes paranoia,
differences in mood.
And so, that all is a lot to juggle
and, you know, navigate at the same time
as all of this newness of having a new baby
and juggling everything that I just mentioned.
And so all of these, you know, pressures and challenges
just kind of accumulated
to me not really feeling a sense of control over my life.
And so, I think that that is the ultimate,
you know, essence of what led to me really struggling.
I think that that's a really common experience
for new parents is that
this kind of loss of control over your own life,
because now this little being that's in your life
is kind of calling the shots
and kind of controlling the direction of your life,
what you spend your time on, what consumes you.
It's them, they're kind of taking over.
And you know, that's okay.
You know, you're coming at this from a place of love
and you wanna take care of this little person
but it's still very hard to kind of come to terms with that
and to figure out how to still take care of yourself
with that being your reality.
And then of course, all of the mental health challenges
that I was facing as well
just kind of made this even harder.
And so, like I said, this was kind of the essence
of what compelled me to fall into,
kind of maladaptive coping strategies.
Because I became very fixated and kind of obsessed
on certain things that I was using to cope.
But the first one that kind of came about postpartum
was kind of a fixation on my body image.
I've shared in past videos
that I have struggled with an eating disorder in the past.
And it kind of,
you know, I think there's a lot of factors
that triggered, you know, falling back into
disordered eating habits.
One being the extreme changes in my body
that come with pregnancy.
And then, you know, kind of the societal pressure
to lose the weight again right away
and get back to your pre-pregnancy body
played a role.
And I think,
I think I was,
I guess you could say lucky that a lot of weight
came off very quickly for me post pregnancy,
I didn't have to do much.
And other people took notice of this
and they would compliment me on that.
And they would make comments on how great I was looking,
you know, weeks after giving birth.
And I took that as,
you know, compliments of me succeeding.
And I took that as, you know, a marker
of how well I was doing postpartum.
And I became fixated on that for all of these reasons.
And I really, you know, kind of started to obsess
over my food intake and exercise
and, you know, having some semblance of control
over that component of my life.
Having experience managing disordered eating in my past,
kind of led me to be able to have a bit more insight
into how this was a problem.
And, you know, Rob talked a lot about it with me too.
And I realized that it was something that
I did not want to fall deeper into, like I have in the past.
And so I brought it up with my therapist,
I worked on it and whatnot. And I guess I moved past it
And I guess I moved past it
or moved into a healthier space around that.
But I kind of moved right into a different
maladaptive coping mechanism.
I had stopped breastfeeding cause it wasn't working out.
And so, I was able to drink more.
And then,
I don't know it was summer.
It was probably more difficult
than I was acknowledging to cope.
I was having increased symptoms
of, you know, my schizoaffective disorder
and it just started feeling good
having a couple drinks, a drink or two every day.
And that was kind of what I started using
as a means of coping.
And that itself became kind of an obsessive
maladaptive coping strategy too, which I fell into.
And so the cycle repeated itself and I realized,
wait, this isn't super healthy and this is not something
that I wanna fall deeper into either.
So again, brought it up with my therapist,
we worked on it, moved forward.
I was like, okay.
I wanna be in a healthier mindset in terms of this.
So, left that behind me.
And I moved forward into
another maladaptive coping strategy.
I became,
you know, kind of fixated and obsessed again
on like, online shopping.
And, you know, I used that as a self soothing technique,
you know, that I had used first,
eating and exercise and restriction and stuff on
and then drinking and then now online shopping.
And, you know,
I wasn't totally aware through all of this
that there was something present
that I was needing to cope with
using all of these maladaptive coping strategies.
And I think I kind of remained oblivious
or maybe in denial about this for a very long time
up until probably recently
and maybe still a little bit of obliviousness going on here.
And I kind of wonder if there was some agnosia at play
throughout all of this too
where I was experiencing increased symptoms
and I was struggling with my mental health
but I wasn't really aware
and I didn't have the insight
into the fact that I was struggling with those things
with my mental illness.
I kept saying, you know,
I'm doing really, really well postpartum,
things are going really well.
I'm coping well, I am on top of everything.
And that just wasn't the whole truth.
You know, there was a lot of things
that I was struggling with too.
And so, part of this might have been agnosia
but I think another contributing factor here was that
I was experiencing kind of a prolonged period
of a little bit of mania.
And that kind of goes along with the mood component
of my schizoaffective factor disorder, bipolar.
And I think I was in a prolonged period of,
I guess, hypomania,
you know, just below mania
where you have elevated mood, elevated energy,
just kind of excitedness about everything.
And I felt like I was taking on more in my life
and I was excited about it.
I thought everything was going really well.
And in hindsight, I think that that was partly
the hypomania.
And that was kind of partly why I had this kind of
rose colored vision of how I was doing postpartum.
I think pre-pregnancy and during my pregnancy,
I was primarily really, really worried
about postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis.
And so, when I wasn't experiencing,
you know, postpartum depression
or, you know, full blown psychosis postpartum,
I thought, hey, you know, I avoided those things,
I'm doing well.
But I think the reality is is that
there are a multitude of ways that
someone can struggle postpartum.
And, you know, I think I was really struggling
with my mental health in other ways
that I maybe wasn't as aware of
or wasn't looking out for as diligently.
So that's kind of why I thought that I was doing really well
but in reality and in hindsight,
maybe I wasn't actually doing as well as I thought I was.
So, if you were living with a mental illness
like schizophrenia
and you were considering having a child,
I think that some,
you know, tips for the postpartum process are really,
you know, what helped me was to stay in close contact
with your psychiatrist and with your therapist primarily
so that maybe you can catch these, you know, warning signs
or difficulties or challenges that you're experiencing
that maybe are beyond or don't fall
within postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis,
which is the two main things
that you hear talked about all the time
and, you know, you're warned about.
I also just wanted to kind of be more honest about,
you know, challenges that I experienced postpartum.
My pregnancy journey was not easy.
And, you know, I worry sometimes that I glossed over it
a little bit too much with the channel
and, you know, just kind of presented
that it went really well
and, you know, I flourished through it all.
Because that's not fully true.
You know, it did present some very real
and very challenging difficulties,
both during pregnancy and postpartum,
probably more so postpartum.
And so I just wanted to kind of help
to paint a little bit more honest, I guess, of a picture
of what my postpartum experience has been like.
So thank you so much for watching this video.
I would love to hear about your experiences
or difficulties or challenges of postpartum
or triumphs postpartum in the comments below.
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Thank you so much for watching.
And as always, wishing you and your loved ones good health.
We'll see you in the next video. Bye.