Flirting with PPD.

So, newborns are hard. Let me be the first one to break the bad news.

Adelyn has spent the last two days in some sort of growth spurt. That or she's made an early decision to train as a champion eater. I've spent the last two days with something attached to my chest nearly 90 percent of the time. It feels like a celebration when I'm not hooked up to the pump or attached to a baby.

It's been sort of frustrating and trying, but I'm proud to say that Adelyn did gain 9 ounces since her last doctor's appointment, putting her at 7 pounds, .2 ounces. Still not up to her birth weight. Almost, though. So we'll continue with the extra supplement until she reaches her birth weight then I'll hope my body can keep up with her sometimes unbelievably insatiable stomach.

I can finally understand why postpartum depression is such an oft-talked about topic with pregnant women. After I had Adelyn, it seemed like every single nurse and doctor and pamphlet that crossed my path had some sort of warning about PPD. And for all of my health problems I have never, ever had actual problems with depression or anxiety. Thankfully. Because I think if it was something I'd even flirted with in the past, it'd be rearing its ugly head with full-force right about now.

The sound of this thing you love more than you could ever love anything crying--frantically crying--when you, the mother, can't stop it, combined with a lack of sleep, and the tenth month of not feeling like yourself, and overwhelming, uncontrollable hormones and a body that's still hanging somewhere in the purgatory of not-pregnant but still flabby and normal yet recovering with doctor-prescribed pain killers all add up to a general sense of delirium and way-too analytical introspection. I've had countless moments these past two weeks where I sit and doubt myself and my abilities, my body and my emotions, but no matter how potentially hopeless it might seem for a fleeting second I'm always lucky enough to be interrupted. For all the women who are not so lucky, who don't have an innate off-switch that keeps your mind from totally submerging into darkness, I truly feel for you. Simply teetering into depression is bad enough.

And now Adelyn has fallen back asleep, and so I must follow suit.

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Melanie Blocker-Stokes and worrying yourself into a depression.

Melanie Blocker-Stokes had just given birth a month ago.

So she stopped sleeping. She stopped eating. She convinced herself that she was inadequate, that she had already failed as a mother, and that everyone else thought so, too.

Blocker-Stockes was hospitalized repeatedly for postpartum psychosis over the next few months, given a potent cocktail of antipsychotic, antianxiety and antidepressant drugs, even treated with electroshock therapy.

When her daughter turned 3 and a half months old, Blocker-Stokes leaped to her death from the 12th story of a Chicago hotel. She'd had enough.

I have no frame of reference for such a depression. I don't know--yet--what it feels like to have the immense pressure of being a mother thrown at you; I only know the immense pressure of the prospect. But I know that something has sent me on a not-so-fun roller coaster thus far, and I don't really know what to do about it.

At first, I was legitimately depressed. I cried every hour on the hour, never sure how to explain to my fiancé what I was feeling. I did (and still have) withdrawn from friends.

I just don't know how to publicly express what's going on in my head without sounding incredibly selfish and ungrateful--not to mention like a future horrible mother who's growing baby can't even seem to snap her out of it.

In the week after the big fat positive, Jason and I tried to maintain some level of normalcy. The first time we went out to eat post-baby apocalypse, it only took ten minutes until I was struggling to hold back tears.

It took Jason telling me that I was "acting like he gave me cancer" for it to really hit me. I was acting like a baby and certainly not like someone who was confident about having a child.

I blame the hormones. And fear. Crazy, intense fear. Of being a mother, of giving up the life I'm used to, of being looked at as accomplishing nothing more than baby-making. Complete fear of the unknown.

I hadn't told my parents or friends yet, and a part of me felt like a 16 year old on the verge of confessing that she'd just thrown her life away.

I--luckily--have never had real problems with mental health.

When I was about 15, I was hospitalized for two weeks because of a Crohn's flare up. They sent a psychiatrist up to see me. And, you know what? I was 15. I was bored. I was starving. The rest of my friends were giggling about boys and my face becoming more and more chipmunk-like with each new Prednisone prescription. I was tired of being sick. I was depressed.

But that man walked into my room, and I remember turning the smile on. Chatting him up like the cheeriest kid in a hospital bed ever. There's nothing wrong with me! I was telling him. Look how amazingly normal I am! And it worked. In fact, I remember him telling me that I was the happiest kid with a chronic illness he'd ever met. I wore that title like a badge of honor.

And then he left the room, and I went back to being pissed off because of how unlucky I was to be in the hospital on a feeding tube while the rest of the world ate whatever they wanted and did whatever they pleased.

I've gotten a lot better about this whole having-a-baby thing. In fact, now, I'm downright excited. But the nagging depression hasn't completely gone away.

Here's hoping it doesn't come back Brooke Shields-style.

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