Kelsi on being bipolar and having postpartum depression during COVID-19

I Will Fight

My mother asked me recently what diet I did to lose my pregnancy weight so quickly. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was from pure neglect of myself.

I joked, “It’s the stress/mania diet. I highly do not recommend.” I am a type one diabetic and have bipolar disorder. Exercise and diet have always been important to me and of course I highlight it on social media, but what I do not highlight is the debilitating depression I have been battling for over a decade.

I was on my way down to a dark place when I found out I was pregnant. My psychiatrist and I both hoped that my pregnancy would put my bipolar in remission, like it has for many women.

Related: It’s time we redefine what it means to “have it all”

I am treatment resistant. Many medicines I have tried have led to many stints in a psych ward. I’ve tried many self-coping mechanisms that were actually destroying me physically and mentally. I was just trying to survive—working a strenuous corporate job and trying to manage relationships I was too tired to invest in.

Like my psychiatrist, I was optimistic that my pregnancy would turn my life around. I loved the man who fathered my child and prayed that this would be enough to bring me out of the darkness that shadowed my life.

It wasn’t.

I spiraled during my pregnancy. I tried many pregnancy-safe medications that once again, exacerbated my depressive state. I couldn’t use those tools I learned previously—drinking and taking pills. I had no outlet to release the tightness in my chest. I cut myself intentionally for the first time when I was six months pregnant—all the while still working full time, still posting myself in the gym to the socials and still socializing.

Related: Social media is her highlight reel-not real life

The dreaded, repetitive question, “How are you feeling?” “I’m tired but excited! Things are going great! The nursery is almost done. I chose purple.” Simultaneously answering these questions while shaking off thoughts of suicide was a full-time job.

It’s a surreal feeling to be so excited and in love with the creation inside you while simultaneously wanting to go to sleep and never wake up. Managing these feelings only became worse when I had to admit to my fiancé and family that I wanted to die. I guess no one really knew how bad I was.

Really, I didn’t either, until recently. I grew up with mental illness. My mother battles crippling depression. She is the strongest person I know. My brother has OCD, depression and anxiety. I know what it feels like to watch someone you love suffer while you stand by idly. The helplessness is loud. I never wanted my loved ones to feel that. I never wanted to be a burden. I internalized what I was feeling and again medicated with substances I should have never touched as a bipolar woman.

Related: Hannah on her postpartum bipolar diagnosis

I was induced early, mostly from begging. My fiancé and I wanted me to have Charlotte so my hormones could level out, and once again, we prayed I would be back to “normal.”

Charlotte was born March 4th at 10:26 after two days of laboring and finally a devastating C-section (my epidural failed and I could feel them operating. They refused to believe me until I was flailing off the operating table in pain).

The first five days I rode an oxytocin train. I was happy. I was ready to take on motherhood and anything else that came my way. Then the powder-keg called Covid came.

Related: How to overcome-and heal- from a traumatic birth

I have always been a hypochondriac with an obsessive fear of dying. I used to get blood work quarterly just to make sure I was OK. If you know anything about depression, you know obsessing over death is a major symptom. Covid knocked the wind out of me.

Any small progress I had made regressed times ten. I isolated completely. For over three months it was only myself, my child and my fiancé. My thoughts would assault me. I’d be washing the dishes and imagine getting Covid and dying along with my child. I was consumed by it. Spraying doorknobs and washing my hands until they bled. Wiping down every grocery item, declining social interaction. 

The first rule for recovery from depression is to not isolate. To stay busy. I decayed in my house—my fiancé, helpless, smelling me rotting. Pregnancy shattered me and postpartum incinerated me.

Related: When I tell you I have postpartum depression, here’s what I want you to know

My previous issues on top of postpartum have completely disarmed and robbed me. I do not recognize myself. My never-ending fear of Covid and not getting the right medicine for my illness has created a rubber banded watermelon. One rubber band will not explode the fruit, but keep compiling them, one by one, and the watermelon explodes.

Living in despair for as long as I have has taken its toll. I neglected the signs when I was younger and now I am paying. Out of desperation, I have been reduced to using some of my old tools. I am regressing. I am trying to meet with family and socialize but it triggers panic. It’s such a conundrum to so desperately want an embrace from my loved ones, yet shake in fear of their presence. When I enter a room with others, I obsessively watch what people are touching, what I have touched, what Charlotte will therefore touch.

I usually end up sobbing on the way home, defeated once again—my fiancé once again trying to console the inconsolable. My despair is becoming contagious. I need to change soon for the sake of my family. 

Related: The pandemic drastically increased rates of postpartum depression. Dr. Harvey Karp shares what could help mothers now

I want so badly to regain who I was. I have medicine to take, but the fear of the outcome usually wins and I tell myself “tomorrow.”

I am realizing the path I am on will only lead to more pain. Therefore as much as I fear, I have to try. Every day I wake up and I try. I often fail. But I will wake up and do it again. I have to. For Charlotte.

When I look at her there is an overpowering rush of love I cannot explain. In those moments, when I stare into my child’s eyes, I am finally at peace—if only for a moment. I knew from the moment I looked into her eyes that I will endure all the pain, all the worry, to be able to be her mother. Progress and healing isn’t linear. I know that I may progress only to backtrack. I am fighting for my life right now.

I have never been one to turn down a fight and if Charlotte is the prize I will keep fighting no matter how tired my body is, how anxious my brain feels, and how lost I am. I will not come out the other side pristine. I will be bloodied, bruised, and broken, but I will fight for her.