Well muthaeffin butrin

Postpartum Depression is tricky. One minute you are sitting there nursing your baby, laughing at his funny bald spot, and then next thing, wham! you are crying about the sorry state of your wardrobe. And you tell yourself, 'I'm a freaking Quaker, I don't care about my wardrobe, its all the same!' but you are bawling your eyes out nonetheless.

And then you think, 'Maybe I'll get a tattoo" and four seconds later it's a tattoo and a new haircut and maybe some hair dye and should I pluck my eyebrows? and maybe if I wore eyeliner I would be a better mother and you're a freaking Quaker for God's sake, you could care less about all of those things!!

Postpartum Depression is like that.

You beat up on yourself for unrealistic, ill-perceived flaws because you have nothing else to be depressed about. No one has died, your husband isn't cheating, you haven't lost a friendship, you have a beautiful family, and you're doing a pretty damn good job raising the monsters.

At least I don't think I'm fat. But that's because I weigh about ten pounds less than when I got pregnant, because duh I have postpartum depression and I don't eat for shit. Maybe a handful of M&Ms in the morning, and then while the kids are eating lunch, half a chicken nugget, but only because I'm checking to make sure its done, and not too hot. Then I totally forget to eat until dinner, and then I'll have like some vegetables or something, but only because I have to.

So the doctor called me to change my postpartum appointment, and I was in the midst of a mommy crisis. See a week before that, I volunteered to help in EJ's classroom, but the school decided to make me head room-parent. Which I was not thrilled about , but what are you going to do? So on October 6, there was supposed to be a meeting for the first grade room-parents. And I totally forgot, until about half an hour before I was supposed to be there. So I called my mom to see if she could sit with the girls while I ran up there, and I would take the baby with me. She said yes but when she got here I realized DH had taken the van to work. So I started crying, feeling like the worst mom ever in the history of mom-hood. Just at that moment the doctor's office called to change my appointment and I'm thinking 'I need that appointment!'

So the next day the nurse from the doctor's office calls me. "Are you okay? Because I have a note on your chart that you were pretty upset yesterday." Well that just made me break down again. I started bawling my eyes out and the nurse said "I'm having the doctor call in something. How about Wellbutrin?" Well, how about it? "Whatever," I said. She made some notes; I could hear her pen scratching in the background. "Oh wait," I said. "I'm breastfeeding." More note taking, then "It's okay. Wellbutrin is safe."

So now I have taken six pills. Six steps toward sanity. I don't know if it's working. I haven't cried in two days and I'm kind of back to my normal neutral self. But if I think about leaving the house I get all worked up, and if I actually do leave the house I have a minor breakdown. Because I look like a fat, sloppy, new mom with unwashed hair and wrinkled stained out of date clothes, and I want to be the with-it mom, the one who is in full control of everything, with perfectly coiffed hair and expenseive, well fitting digs. When I am sane and rational, I like my stained, wrinkled, out of date clothes. In the grip of PPD, I loathe myself as I am and I (falsely) think that major exterior changes will change me.

They won't, but Postpartum Depression is like that.