Therapy

Trigger warning: intrusive thoughts, harm, death

I had a hard time finding a therapist. And I know now how important it is to truly find the perfect therapist, someone you can connect with. I tell friends who seek therapy, it's like Goldilocks, you have to find someone that's not too big or small, but just right! It was a combination of finding someone who would take my specific health insurance, would offer telemed, and would work with my schedule, that of a new mother. 

It was winter and we had celebrated family holidays together in a new city, in our apartment, as a small family of three. My days were filled with reading books, pushing the baby in a stroller on walks, nursing, learning nap schedules, putting baby in her jumper, and going to the grocery store. 

I wanted to find new mom friends, to be able to talk to someone that I could confide in and who would understand me, because I felt so alone. 

My nine month old was now able to sit up on her own and was trying to crawl. I started to worry excessively about her choking, suffocating from a plastic bag, getting sick (vomiting, diarrhea), and her sleeping schedule to be disrupted. My mind would spin with the worrisome thoughts, “was she safe, having good naps, getting enough overall sleep, nursing properly, or learning enough?”

I tried to escape by reading. I received a kindle over the holidays and made use of it right away. I read a psychological thriller that really made me believe I was capable of murder. "Could I ever become a killer because I could relate to the character in the story?" I felt like I was going insane and it seemed like I had hit my breaking point; I was desperate and burned out. 

I found a therapist that I warmed up to. Luckily I was able to do therapy via telemed because everything was extremely hard with a 9 month old. I had a session with the therapist one morning and was retelling her about my recent experience of a scary thought. My thought occurred to me as I was nursing the baby. I would get extremely hot, almost start to sweat, I would shake and then I’d imagine pushing the baby off of me. I’d then grab her and squeeze her neck until her head popped off! I broke down, sharing something so intimate and scary.

As I retold my therapist this thought, she suggested that I contact my doctor and ask about postpartum depression and antidepressants. She wanted me to explain to the scheduler that it was important for me to been seen as soon as possible because I had thoughts of death and suicide. 

I went to my doctor’s office that afternoon but because my doctor was out of town, I was seen by a nurse practitioner. Through tears and shame I retold the nurse about my thought of murder and depression and death. She asked me if I knew these were not normal thoughts and if I knew that murder and death were not appropriate behaviors. I said, “yes of course, I don’t want these thoughts, that’s why I’m here.” She left the room a few times to ask other professionals about postpartum depression and wrote me a script for an antidepressant that was considered safe while breastfeeding.