We had our last postpartum visit on Tuesday. I have to admit, I feel kind of sad about it! Going to the birth center was my life for the past 11 months and now I won't be going there anymore. Elijah weighs 12 pounds now! Mother's milk is doing that boy good.
The birth center costs $4500 to go to. We paid $2800 out of pocket. Turns out my insurance paid about $3300 of it so I emailed the insurance woman at the birth center and inquired about a refund. She emailed me back saying we would be getting a refund, they are just waiting for insurance to pay some other claims. I don't know what other claims they need to pay since the whole thing is supposed to cost $4500, plus the shot of nubain that I got. I guess we'll see. We need to use that money to pay other stupid medical bills.
I can't wait until I don't have to see doctors all the time. I had the dermatologist on Thursday at 7:30am, way too early. Who makes 7:30am appointments!? Apparently I do. Ugh. PET scan was on Friday. That went as well as it could go. I had my oncologist prescribe me some medication to take before the scan for anxiety. He prescribed me a xanax, one of the strong ones. I fell asleep during the scan and then came home and went to bed pretty much immediately and slept until this morning (well, Saturday morning since it's technically Sunday now). I think I am still feeling some after effects because I took a 4 hour long nap today. It's been nice catching up on sleep since it's pretty rare these days, but I missed breastfeeding Elijah. I was finally able to feed him today, and I cheated and did it a few hours early (after much research I concluded that I was no longer radioactive and 3 hours wasn't going to make all that much of a difference). I love breastfeeding. The bond is just so great between you and your baby, and the being able to give that to Elijah is just awesome. I have my follow visit with the oncologist on Thursday. We will be talking about treatment options and the results of my PET scan (which I really hope are good. I don't think I can handle any more bad news).
After that I have an appointment to get an IUD and then a general checkup with my new GCP on September 1st. You can just call me exhausted. Seriously. I have a 7 week old and I feel like I have been running a marathon.
I am finally getting adjusted to driving again. The freedom is great, and being able to do stuff like go grocery shopping while Jason is at work makes things a lot easier. It's pretty hard with an infant, but I can get it done.
Our washing machine just "broke" again, I say broke in quotations because you can get it to work if you watch it, but that totally sucks. I guess the water valve is broken. It fills up with water then doesn't stop and overflows. I looked up the parts to fix it and they are quite a bit more expensive than the other part we got, so it might just be better to buy a machine off craigslist. Money, money, money, money. It doesn't grow on trees, but it should. A washing machine is one of the most important things to have with an infant! Especially when you are using cloth diapers.
We have to pick up Elijah's birth certificate soon. For some reason I thought they were going to send it to us, but nope. Have to pick it up, and it costs $23. At least his social security card was sent to us and free! I still have to change my name on my ss card, and my license. I've only been married for almost a year now. At least my debit card and insurance card have my married name on them.
Ok, on to bed for me. Elijah will probably be waking up soon to eat anyway!

Postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression (PPD) is extremely common, yet it's not so commonly talked about. 10 to 15% of women will suffer from PPD. If you have had a history of depression or anxiety, if depression or anxiety run in your family, or stressful events during or after pregnancy you are at a higher risk for PPD. Some other things that also affect risk factor are age and social support.
With that being said I was high risk for PPD. I have suffered from anxiety and depression in the past, depression and anxiety run in my family, and cancer is a pretty stressful event.
So at my first postpartum visit I got a prescription for Zoloft. I started taking one pill a day and I was going to move up to two. Well, if you have ever had a newborn then you know how easy it is to forget stuff like taking a pill at the same time every night, or at all. I have always been bad with remembering to take medicine. So I kept forgetting to take it, and finally I felt like it would be better to just not take it then to keep forgetting it for a couple days then take one and repeat that process over and over.
A couple days went by and things slowly started to go downhill. I am not sure if the Zoloft was making a difference yet (I was taking a pretty low dose) or my depression was just starting. Whatever it was it was bad. I felt really angry, resentful, irritable, hopeless, worthless, overwhelmed. I would cry all the time, yell. I was just so ANGRY. Angry at the world, angry at myself, angry at my husband. There's no reason for it, and you can't make it stop and go away. It's just there.
So after a bad few days I finally went to go see a therapist and I started taking the Zoloft again. I scored extremely high on both the depression and anxiety checklists (of course I did. I am a textbook case of PPD right here!). The therapist put things into perspective for me. I would say something to her and she would tell me that it was the depression talking. Things started to make sense. I am not me all the time.
I felt fine this entire past week, then I upped my Zoloft dosage to two. I don't know if it was the change in my medication, or just how PPD works, but it started to affect me again. I guess it's normal to come in waves.
I am glad that I am not suffering from the disconnected symptoms. I have not had any trouble bonding with Elijah. The only person I want to consistently be around seems to be him.
I am not on the other side of this illness, so I have no idea how hard it is. What I do know is how important a support system is when you are suffering with PPD. If your significant other is going through this you need to be supportive. I can't stress enough that when a person is going though a depressive episode they are not themselves, don't take it personally and just be there for them. Getting angry and yelling back at someone who's going through an episode is only going to make things worse. I know it might be hard for some people to not react or take it personally, but this is an illness.
If you start to have any signs of PPD I urge you to seek out help immediately. It will eat you from the inside out. No one should have to suffer alone or without help. Just know that you are NOT alone too. There are so many women out there who are going through the same things that you are. It doesn't make you a bad mother, partner, wife or girlfriend. It's an illness and there is a way to overcome it. It won't get better overnight but with a good support system and professional help it will get better over time.