PPD with an 8 month old?

[ekblad9]

My youngest baby is 8 months old. I suffered with PPD severely when my fifth baby was born. I've been on prozac ever since. I thought I would "get out" of PPD this time but I feel awful. I scored a 68 on *the* test which isn't horrible (I scored like 90 with my last baby) but it's still pretty bad. I don't know what to do. I am so short and angry with everyone close to me. My kids irritate me. I don't want to go on a higher dose of prozac. I just want to be able to control this myself. I guess I feel really lost and alone right now.

[jstar]

do you have a counselor or psychiatrist? prozac might be helping it to not be as bad as last time but you might need more support than just the medication. you could try that before increasing your dose.

you're not alone, don't worry.

[Gale Force]

Amy,

Your body has produced many babies and it is very likely that your nutrition is a bit compromised. It happened to me in pg with #1, so you have done very well. And it's not to say that your diet isn't good, but in most cases, our diets are not good enough and that's why we end up here.

For the short term, more prozac may or may not be a good idea, but some other options are to load up on essential fatty acids and B vitamins. Babies and stress take so much of those things out of us that most moms are probably at least marginally deficient in them. I take about 1 tbs of cod liver oil every day. I take a B complex and eat foods rich in B, including liver (I don't like it either, I know it sounds terrible, but I get a huge energy boost from it). B is water soluable so you will just pee out what you don't use so you don't have to worry about ODing on B (with the cod liver oil and Vitamin D you have to be more careful).

The whole diet approach is really a lot more complicated than that, but fats and Bs are a really good place to start particularly since deficiencies in them are strongly related to depression. I second the vote for therapy as well. It helped me organize my life a little differently so that I could manage it a bit better.

Amanda

[newcastlemama]

I'm so sorry you're going through this again Can you tell anyone near you how you feel, have someoone take over the kids maybe while you get help? Try and get in with a professional right away so you can stop this in it's tracks and start to feel better again.
I was so upset when I had to increase my meds, I felt like such a failure, like I couldn't handle my life....The women here, my dr, and family said it's not like that. It's like other illnesses people have except people blame themselves more for mental illness when there are so MANY reasons why it can happen and I believe some of them are out of our control because we would never choose to feel this bad.
The good news is that I get to start lowering my dose again in a few months.....just because you increase now doesn't mean it's forever, maybe just for right now, then you can lower it again later.....I hope you feel better soon and keep communicating with the people who love you...

[ekblad9]

Thank you all so much. I'm going to increase my vits, get some cod liver oil, and consider returning to counseling. I know alot of this has to do with having too much on my plate. I'm going to slowly phase things out that aren't absolutely necessary and go from there.

[Gale Force]

Originally Posted by ekblad8

I'm going to slowly phase things out that aren't absolutely necessary and go from there.

THAT is a very good idea. You might even try to do it in a not-so-slow fashion. All the meds or cod liver oil in the world can't help you when your schedule alone would frazzle most people.