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9781458200242

One Mom's Journey to Motherhood: Infertility, Childhood Complications, and Postpartum Depression, oh My!

by
  • ISBN13:

    9781458200242

  • ISBN10:

    1458200248

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Copyright: 2011-11-18
  • Publisher: Author Solutions
  • Purchase Benefits
List Price: $42.95

Summary

New mothers need not suffer in silence anymore. In One Mom's Journey to Motherhood, Ivy Shih Leung shares her poignant journey through the not-so-perfect road to motherhood that includes a well-researched look at the biological and sociological roots of postpartum depression (PPD), as well as the correlation between infertility and the risk of perinatal mood disorders. Leung once suffered from such debilitating postpartum depression that she simply could not function on a daily basis. She suffered from panic attacks and insomnia, and she did not bond with her daughter for weeks. By candidly sharing her own experiences of enduring side effects that included shame, helplessness, and despair during a time that was supposed to be one of the happiest in her life, Leung seeks to raise awareness of PPD and to dispel the myths of motherhood. She also includes statistics, research findings, and medical facts that prove that PPD should be taken as seriously as any other disease. One Mom's Journey to Motherhood provides expectant and new mothers with the realization that knowledge is power, especially when it comes to enduring and, more importantly, surviving a potentially dark time after their babies are born.

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Excerpts

INSOMNIA My First PPD Symptom For the first month, my husband and I wanted the baby to sleep in our room. We learned in the coming days why they say that the first three months of an infant's life are almost like a fourth trimester spent outside the mother's womb trying to adapt to the real world, the world outside mom's belly. Sydney could only sleep in her car seat, which we kept in a pack n play next to our bed, which made sense because the car seat kept her in an "in-utero" like position. She also had to be tightly– and I mean tightly– swaddled–also to simulate the in utero experience to which she was accustomed for much of her existence up to this point. She couldn't sleep lying flat. Of course, we learned all this through trial and error. Plus, she made so many sounds through the night (looking back, we probably should've recorded some of those sounds, as they were so strange—stretching sounds, grunts and noises that sounded like sounds from a baby animal or alien, even) that we had to move her to her crib in her own room, even though we wanted to keep her in our room longer. Anyway, every little sound she made startled me awake—preventing me from reaching REM or deep sleep needed to maintain physical and mental wellbeing.. We eventually had no choice but to move her into her room so I could sleep better.– which is something we should have done right from the outset – but the damage had already been done. I didn't know it yet, but PPD was just about to kick in. When the baby was 36 days old, she developed what seemed to be colic. She'd cry non-stop for hours at a time, sometimes after 5:00PM, sometimes starting from 8:00PM. One day that week she didn't stop crying until 4:00AM. It was the scariest experience, not knowing what was wrong with her...what was causing her to cry non-stop like that. We wanted to comfort her, but nothing we did would stop the crying. We had heard some horror stories of babies crying non-stop for 15 hours at a stretch for months. We thought we were doomed to the same experience. Exactly one week later, just as suddenly as her colic started, it stopped. Of course, we weren't sure when/if the colic would return. So I guess you could say we were both quite wary from the time the sun went down and all through the night. Just as with everything in life, there's always a negative where there is a positive. The colic stopped, so we both thought things could go back to normal. I would get up for the late night feedings so that my husband could go to work. Turns out, things wouldn't work out the way we planned. Two days later, on Tuesday, January 25th –or the 45th day (or about 6-1/2 weeks) postpartum– my insomnia started from out of the blue. This was right around the time I finished sending out my birth announcements. It's scary how one day I was fine, and the next I wasn't sleeping. It was like my mind decided to stay on, despite the fact that I was exhausted beyond words. Instead of falling asleep immediately after putting the baby to bed, I couldn't fall asleep for over 2 hours. I couldn't fall asleep until after 3:00. When I finally did fall asleep, the baby was crying to be fed once again. In fact, I wasn't sure whether I slept at all. It certainly didn't feel like it. I didn't know why this was happening. Perhaps I was on high alert, always anticipating Sydney to cry. I thought it was a matter of calming down, telling myself that Sydney's colic was gone and probably would not return. I should relax. Other mothers were telling me that they were always in a state of shallow sleep and jump at the slightest whimper from their babies. I was like, great.....I've got a lot to look forward to. The next day, I thought to myself, okay, I should be exhausted from only having 2 hours of sleep this past night and should fall asleep with no problems tonight. That night, I tossed and turned for 3 hours and after just falling asleep, the baby was up again and crying. The same thing happened the next few nights. I thought at first that I was having a great deal of difficulty sleeping due to my circadian rhythm getting thrown so out-of-whack by my ordeal at the hospital, having to get up every few hours during the night to feed her, and hypervigilance to every little sound Sydney made through the night. Before I knew it, I couldn't sleep at all....I had insomnia. At the time, I had no idea that insomnia was a symptom of PPD. If you've never experienced insomnia before, you'd never know how tortuous it can be. I was unable to fall asleep all night, tossing and turning, knowing that everyone else was asleep, looking at the clock as the time to get up and feed the baby approached, and seeing the sun come up–all the while knowing that this all didn't make any sense because, after all, I was exhausted beyond words. I just wanted to tear my hair out. I wanted to go screaming into the night, running until I reached a point of exhaustion and just pass out. The feeling of loneliness was so overwhelming and almost too much to bear. I was desperate for company, for someone to comfort me and help me overcome this dreadful condition. I couldn't call anyone in the middle of the night and felt guilty waking Ed too many times. I couldn't expect Ed to keep me company much because he had to go to work early in the AM and had long day of work, so he needed his sleep. I only woke him up when I felt I was at the end of my rope. At one point, I think I got about 6 hours of sleep over 3 days. My fear was I'd be physically and mentally impaired from not getting any sleep for so many days in a row that I wouldn't be able to take care of Sydney. I had to do something about this. So, I called my obstetrician who prescribed me Ambien. That night, we kept the monitor on in Sydney's room and put the receiver on Ed's nightstand. I took the Ambien, and within half an hour I passed out and didn't wake up until Ed left for work the next morning. I was amazed. I didn't even hear Sydney cry, which was a scary thing.

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