I’m writing a brief postpartum update. Things went bad about 2 months ago for me after suddenly weaning multiple breastfeeding night feeds (hormone hell I was not warned about!) and I (eventually) got diagnosed with postpartum anxiety and insomnia. I had to go to the hospital after 4 days of only 1 hour of sleep each night and was prescribed trazodone off-label for sleep for a few days. It was terrifying. Then things got worse. I still wasn’t sleeping and I began panic calling family members at odd hours of the night about not being able to sleep. Then I started really losing my ability to cope and saying I wanted to give Esther up for adoption (a truly awful intrusive thought) and becoming very suicidal. That’s when I had to accept I needed long-term medication and things have slowly gotten better, but it’s still been incredibly hard. My mother had severe postpartum depression after each child and had to be hospitalized sometimes for months at a time postpartum. (I’ve written about her health struggles and her eventual suicide here.) I’ve been waiting to do an update because I didn’t want to add even more anxiety to my days. I’m now part of a perinatal psychiatry program and will be followed for a year postpartum. I’ll write a longer essay at some point when I have more emotional space — probably titled Traz wife since I’m still taking trazodone for sleep 💁♀️.
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