Haunted by the experience. Anyone else?

[Valerie928]

My name is Valerie, I have been married for 12 years and have 3 children.  Samantha is 9, Peyton is 6 and I just had our beautiful surprise baby boy Anthony this past February.  He is 9 months old.  When I had my first baby I just had some minor baby blues that went away after a couple weeks after her birth.  The same with my second.  After Anthony came the baby blues turned into very intense sadness and crying all day, every day.  I felt so physically and mentally "off"  I was in a dark place, I was depressed and having horrible axiety.  I lost the baby weight so fast because I was too distressed to eat. I was so low, I had thoughts of just crashing my car.  I wanted to die because I thought that if I had to spend the rest of my life feeling like I had been feeling, then I did not want to live.  I never had any bad feelings towards the baby, I loved him and took the best care I could of him even through all that ordeal. I went straight to my OB 9 days after his birth.  There, I was even asked if I felt like I wanted to harm myself.  I lied and said no because I was afraid they were going to try to send me away to a hospital.  I didn't want to be away from my baby.  I was given Lexapro.  I took only 3.  That medication gave me horrble side effects.  It made me feel worse mentally and it gave me paresthesias in my legs and feet. I still 9 months later have pins and needles (paresthesias) in my feet.  I was then given Cymbalta but I could not bring myself to take it.  I was scared of the side effects. 

I honestly don't know how I got through the depression that time, I just went through  the motions of life.  I started feeling better 3 months after it all started.  My husband did the best he could to support me.  I probably should have talked to a therapist. It feels good to type it out here.

I feel like my old self again, I am not sad or depressed.  A little anxiety still but not too bad.  EVERY day I think about that time and how low I was.  It was such a bad place to be.  The fact that I wanted to die haunts me.  I can't believe that I felt that way. 

Anybody out there over their PPD but still haunted by the experience of it?

[Petie1104]

After ds 1 was born (9 yrs. old now) I had HORRIBLE PPD.  I honestly saw myself killing him, not purposefully, but I kept having these horrible images of me giving him a bath and him drowning going through my head.  It hurt me bad enough that I was afraid to change his diapers, afraid to hold him, afraid to bathe him because I kept thinking I would accidentally drown him or drop him.  It wasn't simple like a fear, but I actually SAW these things happening when I went to pick him up.  So as I'm picking up my child I feel like I'm dropping him, when I bathed him I SAW him drowning.  It was horrible.  With dd (7 yrs. old now) I had no ppd no baby blues so I thought I was good.  Then ds 2 (now 4 yrs. old) came along and though it wasn't AS bas as with ds1, I was in a bad place.  I cried constantly (and I DON'T cry, I was in the military for 5 yrs. and there's no crying in the army just ask my drill sergeants), I was so depressed I wanted to leave without the kids.  DH offered to move into the barracks and I told him "that won't help because the kids will still be here".  I wanted to get into my car, drive away and never look back.  What's bad is that there are days when I can still feel that.  I never took meds and maybe that's part of it.  But at least now it's only on a rare occasion and only in the very back of my mind.  So yes, I'm well past my PPD days but I am still haunted by it.