The Noonday Demon

I have suffered panic attacks since elementary school. I finally talked to a counselor about it when I was in college. I have sense been on medication that has really helped the whole anxiety/panic attack thing. I have done some talk therapy, too, that has helped me cope with it.

Even though I know my mom was diagnosed with the euphemistic "genetic chemical imbalance,” and I know I have dealt with the anxiety and panic attacks, my first bout of post partum depression thoroughly confused me. I was diagnosed 6 months after baby number one. I attributed it mainly to a need to readjust my anxiety meds. Not so much a “true” post partum depression.

With my second pregnancy there was no question. It was a full blown noonday demon. I spent most of the first few months in our new house in the bedroom. We would limp through the morning and then scrounge for food. The baby would go down for nap while the toddler watched Nick Jr. Then the toddler would fall asleep next to me. I prayed we would all sleep until my birdman came home to rescue me at 5 pm.

It was so awful but so so nebulous to me. I would be beaming with love and joy at the sight of my nursing babe and then the cheerios would spill and I would feel like a complete failure and mess. I suffered through a three week period on a new drug that did not help at all. After we finally got a good one it took a few weeks to stabilize.

I know so many situational things were messed up during that period. I had no car, we had moved halfway across the country, I was just starting to stay at home… I had the hardest time admitting it was depression.

The intake psychiatric nurse took all my objective data relating to sleep and activity. At the end of the interview, I said I was not sure if I was depressed. The nurse just looked at me and said, um yes you are.

My panic attacks were scary and erratic. I was afraid of the loss of control and how it made me feel. But it was something I could count and knew when it happened. I felt kind of normal in between. I had some semi-weird quirks to avoid locations that provoked the attacks (bathrooms and basements, fwiw) This depression baffled me. It as all around but then I would be happy for a bit.

I read some of the book by Andrew Solomon The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. He said the opposite of depression is not being happy but is just feeling in general. Being depressed is sort of numbness. He said when you feel depressed simple things like brushing your teeth would be like asking a regular person to jump out of a plane. The task of brushing your teeth seems that insurmountable.

So here I find myself almost a year postpartum. I have not hit my usual 3-year mark when the meds don’t work so good. I am still terrified that it will come back again. But how will I know? How many bad days in a row equals an awful depression?

I have a better support system now. I am better equipped as a stay at home mom. I have a car and know the favorite places around town to let the kids run off steam. I have a house that is a “bear pit.” (a la Mary Poppins). I have days like today when just getting everyone up and dressed and diapered and out of the house seems like I am swimming upstream in molasses.

So is all this because I was 3 hrs late taking my meds yesterday? Is it because I am having some more conflict in my moms group? Is it because being thrust into this role of mother has worn me down too much? Or is it just a bad day?

I think that is what I miss the most about life before I was diagnosed with depression. I used to just have bad days. Now every bad day could be the first day of another fall into the pit.