Moms, Keep Going

I’m laying in bed and my arm is stretched out to the edge, gripped around the handle of my baby's car seat. It’s 4 AM. I’ve been up for over an hour, and it’s my third wake up of the night. After complete and total desperation to get him back to sleep, I resort to his car seat. The thoughts start to swirl: “this isn’t safe”; “I’m not well”; “someone please help me”; “I just need to sleep.” As I vigorously push him back and forth, I settle into my nightly ritual of convincing myself that if I can get a few hours of sleep I can make it through to the next day. A bargain I made to myself to simply keep going.

If that sounds miserable, it’s because it was.

There wasn’t a time in my life where I ever questioned if I would have kids. I felt like becoming a mom was a calling. I am a born caretaker, and I knew that I would love to take care of my own children.

When I was pregnant, some time around the end of my second trimester, I started to notice that my mood was off for no known reason. I booked an appointment with a psychiatrist who explained to me that the hormonal fluctuations caused by the pregnancy could contribute to low mood. We agreed that if I felt down after I had the baby, I would get in touch to discuss treatment.

I remember feeling euphorically high those first few days of motherhood. I was totally in love and amazed with my little guy.

On day three I noticed that my milk hadn’t come in yet. My doctor explained this was normal for a C-section birth as my body wasn’t triggered to make milk by my baby’s journey through the birth canal.

I read that you could start trying to pump to stimulate milk production. A nurse brought me a hospital-grade pump and I tried it several times with no success. I gave up and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, my breasts were the size of cantaloupes and rock hard.

A lactation consultant came by and explained that I was engorged, a condition that happens when your milk comes in too fast, all at once. The only solution would be to pump it all out. My new milk boobs made eight ounces of milk.

She sent me home with my new baby, my pumped milk and ice packs to ease the pain. I was finally home with my beautiful new baby, and I felt horrible.

For the first two weeks I had “the blues.” I felt down and not myself. I had a very hard time sleeping while my baby slept. I tried taking Benadryl to make me drowsy, but my body was in severe fight or flight mode. If I heard my baby make a peep, I couldn’t sleep.

Not being able to sleep — especially when my baby was sleeping — was the beginning of the end for me. By the time my baby was five months old, I hadn’t slept more than four hours at a time. I didn’t recognize myself. I felt terrible, my marriage was crumbling, and I could not get any relief. Sleep deprivation turned into insomnia and catapulted me into a deep depression. I was in Hell.

I understood as much as I could about postpartum depression before I gave birth. The problem with PPD is that you don’t just wake up one day and realize you have this condition. It can slowly build overtime in your body and in your mind until it ultimately takes over and pulls a heavy black cloud over your entire existence.

Still, I didn’t understand that what I was experiencing wasn’t normal. I thought this is what new motherhood was, that caring for my baby should make me feel depleted and stripped of all of my energy. I didn’t understand how anybody could really enjoy it. I was doing my best to function with severe fatigue. It felt like I was furiously doggy paddling to get my head above water. I could not get relief.

Desperate, I cut my maternity leave short and ran back to work. Work was familiar and an escape. It didn’t drain me. It showed me a sliver of my old self again. But I knew I was going to be pushing myself, because I was not well. I wasn’t suicidal, but I started to have concerning thoughts. I felt like if I went to bed and didn’t wake up again, at least I wouldn’t be tired.

My marriage was suffering. I was intensely anxious, depressed and sleep deprived. I was incapable of day-to-day functioning without emotional explosions. I was overwhelmed by the smallest tasks. My partner was scared. He thought he was losing me. He was.

One night, I did not sleep at all. As in the entire night. I prayed for help. I begged my body and mind to rest. But morning came around, and I had to care for my baby. I was a shell of myself.

I knew in that moment that I couldn’t be a mom that day. A close friend came to my rescue. I spoke to the psychiatrist and she called in Xanax. The goal was to be able to calm down enough to sleep. When nighttime came around, my friend took me to her house to sleep. On some level I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep near my baby. I slept 12 hours that night. I woke up feeling like myself for the first time since my baby was born.

From that point on, I knew I was in trouble if I couldn’t figure out how to sleep. That day showed me a window into a dark alley that had a dead end of psychosis. I was headed there.

I began treatment with two different SSRI drugs that completely changed my life. I was prescribed one drug for the day and a different drug at night to help with sleep. Within weeks, I was feeling like myself again. I slept soundly at night and felt capable of caring for my baby each day. It was a miracle.

I’m lucky to have had the resources to get help when it mattered most. I feel like I was spared. I saw and understood how this can overtake you and erase hope. It made me feel an overwhelming sense of empathy for women who aren’t as lucky – whose lives permanently change for the worse because they could not get relief.

Nothing about what I experienced is unique or uncommon. Yet it often felt like I wasn’t going to survive it.

But there’s a huge part of me that knows I wouldn’t have traded this experience. It broke me down and took me apart limb by limb until I completely surrendered. I was being rebuilt into someone different, someone stronger, someone more resilient, someone superhuman: a mom.

My baby is now eight months old and my days look and feel much different. I no longer have to bargain with myself to keep going. I just want to.

Alyssa Link is the SVP, Sales at BDG. Prior to BDG, Alyssa held positions at Condé Nast, primarily working on Vanity Fair, GQ, and Golf Digest. Alyssa holds a journalism degree from Loyola University in Maryland. Alyssa lives in Jersey City with her husband, son, and two cats.