Post Partum Blue

Post Partum Blues
A Post Partum depression is usually associated with childbirth. It is a goulash of feelings that come in like winter waves in Hawaii. They flood both males and females with a confusing and deep depression, anger and fatigue. The initial exhilaration deflates like a balloon. Reality is a complicated psychological pudding that contains many arrows, overpasses, gullies and rocky passes. It’s a whole psychological and neurological landscape that comes out of expectations, tension, release, reality and ruckus. It is not unlike baby puke.
Then you change the diapers.
Its ennui and tedium and stink.
That’s what it is.
That’s not to say that having a baby is not a multidimensional gasaroonie. It’s a giggle and a good time. People like having babies. They continue to make them at the darndest times and for the darndest reasons.
I’m just reminding you what post partum depression is.
It happens.
I use to run a therapy group for parents.
It was just prior to getting table zapped by the chemicals that would change my life. I was gaining weight. I had developed a little water drum around my waste where the dark sludgy liquids of toxin began to collect in my gut.
I was teaching a parenting class one night and one of the little girls that sat around the table with her parents heaved a heavy sigh. We met in an open pavilion between buildings at a local church. Everything was painted a mint green. The concrete plaza was under palm trees and behind flame bushes.
The sun was setting.
I noticed the child staring at me.
She was actually staring at my belly.
“I’m six months pregnant” I said to her.
We were talking about post partum depression.
She shook her head sadly.
“Eight” she said.
Post partum depressions are actually a form of PTSD that can follow any major transition or life event. It’s the let down and confusion that follows anticipation and expectation.
In the Latin language it describes life of sorts.
Post Partum means “after birth.”
Birth in this case is defined as that which creates you, impacts you and changes you.
I left Hawaii in 2000 in a Post Partum purple haze. In the year of our Lord, 2000 A.D. after being flooded with toxins, anthrax and EMF I arrived in Florida.
My heart and lungs were slowly filling up with liquid.
I was drowning.
By the time I had my first crisis and ended up in the hospital I could not stand up to do the dishes or lay down to sleep. I had to sleep sitting up, the fluid levels were so painful up to brim.
I went to the hospital thinking I had bronchitis.
This was not unusual. I always got bronchitis when I moved.
It was a somatic post partum.
After the anthrax exposure I never got bronchitis again and my asthma cleared up. That was probably my selegeline prescription doing it’s magic. It cleared my lungs, liver and kidneys.
As I lay in critical care feeling (post partum) mighty pissed off that I was there at all (I had expected a couple of pills and a swat on the butt to send me on my way as usual.)
A guy wandered into the room wearing blue scrubs and carrying a cheese board with my chart it.
He did not identify himself.
I learned that he was my doctor. That’s what the nurse called him.
He looked me over and said, “It’s broke.”
I was already irritated and wanted to leave.
“Your heart” he said. “It’s broken. It can’t be fixed. You need a heart transplant.”
I am reminded of the Lenny Bruce bit where Jesus is hanging on the cross between the two theirs.
“I tell you this” said Jesus, “You will be with me today in my father’s kingdom.”
The thief on the right sobbed. His tears mingled with his blood.
The thief on the left said “What do you mean in your father’s kingdom. I am the good thief. I’m here for checks…..”
Post Partum stress.
“What do you mean heart transplant?” I said. “I’m in for bronchitis.”
“”She’s broke” the doctor said. He turned around and left the room.
I was livid.
I was in critical care surrounded by medical machinery.
The EMF levels were down right painful.
They were not phased for comfort.
They created muscle tension and irritability.
I hated being there.
“This guy is really grouchy” one of the nurses said.
It went into my chart. “Grouchy.”
I was a bad patient.
I had the anthrax vaccine in 1991 or so.
That was about the time of the Gulf War. One of the side effects is sudden rage.
Gulf War Syndrome is like one huge physical post partum.
It’s like trauma.
The body is invaded by God knows what and the symptoms are classically post partum. Your body knows it has been subtly and irrevocable impacted.
Gulf War Syndrome is one big post partum wash.
The after-effects of the anthrax needle are the same way.
I learned to deal with sudden rage by working cognitively with the triggers.
I had never been a particularly angry person. I had never been in a fight. I had never thrown a punch.
I never spoke above a whisper until I was in my thirties.
After the anthrax shot I was suddenly awakened to the sound of my own voice.
The toxins had filled my ears with Cheese Whiz.
I had to yell to be heard sometimes.
At least that’s the way I felt.
So that’s the heavy duty post partum fallout of my last ten years or so.
I am walking post partum.
The life after the birth was going to be a challenge.
A great big challenge.