living with postpartum depression: ‘i knew it would be hard, but this is just beyond’
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yvonne li had her son during the covid-19 pandemic, which only emphasized her isolation after being diagnosed with postpartum depression (ppd).
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before yvonne li got pregnant with her firstborn, a son, she was always supportive of mental health access, but it never played a main part in her life. she always had “a hold on things” beforehand, so her passion for mental health stemmed not from personal experience, but rather from a deep empathy for knowing how important it is.
when she was pregnant with her son, she felt great at first. but around the time of her second trimester, she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and the feelings of disconnection from her body began.
“i felt very anxious about it because i’m a very active person and there were no kind of early indication that i was going to get this,” she said. “i remember getting that diagnosis and just crying in the doctor’s office, being like, ‘what have i done wrong?’”
because she had never experienced anxiety or depression prior, it was challenging for her to really pinpoint exactly what her feelings were at the time. the weight of it became difficult to bear, but that was only the beginning.
“my mind and my body went straight into survival mode,” she said.
she was due to deliver her son in april, right at the height of the pandemic when hospital visitors were kept to a minimum. thoughts of who would be there with her, whether her husband or midwife would be in the room, and whether she would be able to see her parents and family all loomed in her mind.
fortunately, with her husband in the room, she had an easy and straightforward delivery.
“i thought at that point, again, like done and dusted,” she said. “i’ve delivered a healthy baby. i got over my diabetes, and then it was in that postpartum period that i was like, ‘i’m still not feeling right.’”
getting diagnosed with postpartum depression (ppd)
the negative mental health effects li experienced after being diagnosed with gestational diabetes lingered with her into the postpartum period, getting more intense as time went on.
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her mind continued to question whether she would be able to take care of her son, racing through all the potential what-if scenarios about how things could go wrong. at the time, she was heavily isolated because of the pandemic, with visits being forced to virtual meetings, and she was getting little to no sleep.
“i found myself crying all the time. i just didn’t know who i was. i really felt so disconnected with my body, with my mind,” she said. “i just kind of felt like i was floating through every moment; nothing felt material.”
by mid-june, li was a “wreck”, and even though she didn’t know what was wrong, she felt the need to book an appointment with her doctor. li’s not alone in this, either, as many women who go through postpartum depression often feel as if it’s possible that these emotions are simply normal and part of being a new parent.
“i think that women will often feel like, ‘oh, i’m just so exhausted, and this is what it’s supposed to be like,’ or, ‘this is just what having a newborn is like,’” said melissa gallagher, co-founder of alma care, a post-natal care service in canada. “there might also be confusion. there’s the baby blues, which most new parents experience within the first two weeks of delivering their baby and postpartum depression.”
although the symptoms can be similar, postpartum depression is a unique monster when compared to the baby blues, and it’s what li would eventually be diagnosed with after seeing her doctor.
when she told her doctor what she was experiencing and attempted to minimize it as baby blues, she was quickly shut down.
she asked her doctor, “doesn’t everybody spontaneously start crying?” when her doctor said no, her whole ordeal began to make a little more sense.
“in that moment, i felt so extremely validated and safe because she told me that i was not silly or i was not just inexperienced,” said li. “what i was experiencing mattered.”
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her doctor began booking appointments with mental health services and other postpartum services, sending referral after referral, so that they could “get underneath” it together and advised li that if anything escalated, she should go to the emergency room.
one of the steps she had to take in recovering from her ppd was getting on medication, which she opposed at first because of the stigma often attached to both mental health medication and ppd. she felt a sense of shame because it felt as though her body and mind were working against her. eventually, though, her doctor and therapist helped her understand the importance of medication in treatment.
“i really think she [her doctor] saved my life and she saved my entire postpartum journey and she changed all the outcomes,” said li.
the medication, along with therapy and other mental health and postpartum support, helped her get through ppd with her first child, and she’s been on the medication ever since.
living with a ppd diagnosis
at first, li thought that ppd would “appear in this neat tiny box” that would alert her to not being well, but it wasn’t just one thing. it was “a series of actions, a series of moments that finally caused” her to see it for what it was.
because it doesn’t always develop the way people expect. according to gallagher, the symptoms themselves can come on gradually until they compound into something bigger.
things such as feeling disconnected from one’s body and mind, feeling disconnected from their newborn, and persistent feelings of low mood, fatigue and irritability are just a few things women can experience.
for li, she experienced the telltale signs of low mood, disconnection from both her and her son, and severe exhaustion from not sleeping. she became obsessed with her son’s sleeping as well as her own lack of sleep, “counting down to when he would next wake up” while she sat beside his bassinet night after night, making sure he was getting sleep. she only slept when her husband was caring for their son.
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she experienced mind fog, forgetfulness and got distracted easily, sometimes leaving her keys in the door, which grew into a much bigger problem in her mind.
“those mistakes that i would make … all of a sudden felt much more severe in my mind. i started losing perspective of it,” she said. then her mind would run away with catastrophic thoughts once again.
“what if somebody saw that and then walked into my house? i started getting very paranoid about my family’s safety, and i was like, ‘what if they took my baby? it was all of a sudden; the smallest things could spiral,” she said. “i’d get so stressed, i’d forget to eat.”
li began neglecting her own health because of her symptoms. and she’s not alone in that regard. it’s common for new mothers with ppd to put their care on the back burner.
“there’s this thing where … the desire goes away to take care of herself,” said gallagher.
another severe and detrimental experience of living with ppd is how it affects parenthood.
“it can affect the bond that you’re building. it can affect your responsiveness to your baby. it can affect your confidence and your instincts as a new parent,” said gallagher. “it has nothing to do with how much you love your baby, but it just flattens that energy that you have and the emotional bandwidth that you have.”
li knows this feeling all too well, noting that she was “entirely disconnected” from her son.
“i was like, ‘why did i do this? what is happening? is this what motherhood feels like?’ i knew it would be hard, but this is like beyond,” she said. “i missed joy. i was unable to see the joy. i thought motherhood would look–not only look, but feel–a certain way; it was nothing as i had imagined.”
finding slivers of silver lining with ppd
while the experience of living with ppd is incredibly challenging, finding slivers of hope throughout it all while going through treatment was a saving grace for li. she recalls one afternoon in early may, a few weeks after he son was born.
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“the windows were open in our house, and it was just a beautiful breeze going through. my husband was like, ‘please just sleep, okay? get some rest.’ and i took a hot shower, and i laid in our bed, and my husband held my son, and then somebody just started playing violin outside the window,” she said.
“it was one of those moments where my husband and i looked at each other, and we were like, ‘okay, we can do this, right?’ i felt a glimmer of my old self in that moment.”
that moment became of great importance to li because it gave her the opportunity to just be herself while also making it clear “what was worth fighting for.”
she also leaned on community, even though the pandemic made it difficult, joining a whatsapp chat group with a woman she had crossed paths with at work. they were both new moms, and through that group she met others, including one of her dearest friends today, who would become a great friend who “guided each other through a lot of tough moments.”
“she was also a first-time mom and the magic of finding a person in your moment of need, in a moment that felt very dark, is indescribable because she understood things in a way that my husband could not,” she said. “my husband was there along the way, and he’s a wonderful partner but … she was going through everything in that exact moment.”
the women li met in that group remain good friends today, six years later, and she calls them a “gift.”
the experience she had with her firstborn, through ppd and treatment and establishing strong community relationships, also helped her go through her second pregnancy with ease a few years later.
“it is what allowed me to kind of prepare myself and navigate both pregnancy and childbirth and all of that so differently with my second,” she said. “i knew now those feelings that i was dealing with, like i could recognize and name them in a more articulate way. i had the medication. i had a therapist that i’d grown very close to, and he guided me through … and then, the context of having the support systems that were not available to me during the pandemic made everything so much more joyful that it ended up being probably one of the happiest periods of my life.”
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she notes that along with the treatment and her friends, being able to see her mom was a significant positive difference during her second pregnancy because she took care of her while she took care of her family.
“she brought me food. she helped the baby while i took a shower. she was like rubbing my back until i fell asleep, like the ways in which we all love; i was so fortunate to be mothered by my mom,” she said.
while her first pregnancy wasn’t as easy as her second, dealing with ppd and the lack of support that she would have otherwise had, after she sought treatment, things changed so drastically for the better.
“by the summer … my god, my heart just exploded and just seeing him [her son] and being able to form those relationships with him and understanding him a little bit more, just day by day,” she said. “i was very fortunate the strategies i had in place were very effective, and i started to be able to see the benefit of it quite soon.”
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