Re: The Fun House

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Re: The Fun House

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Re: The Fun House

Insomnia, Mania, Postpartum Psychosis & The Importance of Sleep for Mental Health

Sophia Elizabeth

Mar 10, 2023

Please enjoy the latest episode of…

Mother Crow Connection:

A Mother Crow podcast installment featuring conversations with writers, artists, healers, thinkers, and mothers on the topics of expressing oneself, mental health & motherhood.

In this episode, Re: The Fun House, I speak with J (a mother of two and a friend I’ve known and loved since early childhood) who shares the harrowing details of the postpartum crisis that followed the birth of her firstborn daughter.

J’s story is unusually painful, and although what she went through is uncommon, Postpartum Psychosis1 is not unheard of. Her goal in telling this story is to spread awareness of PPP in hopes that one day its symptoms will be included on hospital surveys, that hospitals will allow mothers and babies to navigate postpartum trauma together, and that mothers will be given the best care, support, and forgiveness they need (from loved ones and medical professionals alike) to heal and enjoy life with their children thereafter.

Join us as we explore the topics of Insomnia, Mania, Postpartum Psychosis, and the Importance of Sleep for a mother’s mental health.

I am your host, Sophia Elizabeth.

Let’s connect and Mother Crow!

***People experiencing postpartum psychosis are at a much higher risk of harming themselves, dying by suicide, or harming their own children. People with PPP can’t recognize or understand their own symptoms, so in order to help them, you must stay calm, don’t judge or argue with them, don’t leave them unsupervised, and get them medical attention ASAP. If someone you know is exhibiting the signs of postpartum psychosis, it is extremely important to immediately seek emergency services. With treatment, postpartum psychosis is reversible, and with treatment, many women have more children in the future without it re-occurring. The ideal form of treatment for a mother with postpartum psychosis is in a specialized psychiatric unit called an MBU, or a Mother and Baby Unit. However, MBUs are not widely available nor commonplace practice, so general psychiatric wards - ones in which the baby will not be permitted- are usually where mothers with PPP end up receiving their treatment, an unfortunate but often necessary route in most urgent circumstances. That is why it is so important for mothers- like J- to tell their stories and shine a spotlight on the need for more specialized support in postpartum psychiatric care.

***For more information on Postpartum Psychosis:
—> https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/post-partum-psychosis/
—> https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24152-postpartum-psychosis
***For more information on the need for MBUs, or Mother & Baby Units, in postpartum psychiatric care:
—> https://www.app-network.org/what-is-pp/getting-help/mbus/#:~:text=What%20is%20a%20Mother%20and,care%20and%20treatment%20they%20need.
—> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9567947/

*If you haven’t already, you can read or listen to the “The Fun House” issue of Mother Crow:

Here

Re: The Fun House

(Insomnia, Mania, Postpartum Psychosis & The Importance of Sleep for Mental Health)

Transcript:

00;00;04;20 - 00;00;30;17

Sophia Elizabeth

Welcome to The Funhouse edition of Mother Crow Connection, a Mother Crow podcast installment that features conversations with writers, artists, healers, thinkers and mothers focusing on the topics of expressing oneself, mental health and motherhood.

I am your host, Sophia Elizabeth, and on this episode, I’ll be speaking with a close friend of mine who shares with us one of her birth stories, as well as the postpartum crisis that followed.

00;00;30;26 - 00;00;40;29

Sophia Elizabeth

Join us as we explore the topics of insomnia, mania, postpartum psychosis and the importance of sleep for a mother’s mental health.

00;00;40;29 - 00;00;50;24

Toddler

Mommy, I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry (woman laughs, accordion plays)

00;00;50;24 - 00;00;55;02

Sophia Elizabeth

I’m here with my darling, dearest friend. We’re going to call her J.

00;00;55;10 - 00;00;59;24

I think so. I mean, my voice is... if you hear it, you know it.

00;01;00;12 - 00;01;03;29

Sophia Elizabeth

We’re about to dive into something that is a lot of Mom’s worst nightmares.

00;01;04;12 - 00;01;30;27

I don’t even think...nobody brought. Postpartum mania was never a word mentioned in any of my doctor’s appointments. I was depressed a lot. I don’t know how many women are told. Like, you go into a doctor’s appointment, they do that little well check. How are you feeling? Happy face to sad face, right? And you fill out the numbers and then they judge the numbers and it’s {to me} it looks like it’s more about depression and anxiety.

00;01;30;27 - 00;01;31;16

Sophia Elizabeth

Anxiety. It’s always just, Are you anxious?

00;01;31;18 - 00;01;53;06

What about, I feel so good, I feel like I’m on ecstasy, and I am having visuals like I’m on acid. Like, I feel so amazing. I’m talking a million miles a second. You know, there should be. Even if it’s 1% of the women that have postpartum mania, it’s. I mean, my cousin’s experiencing it right now, and she’s just now a terrible mother without her kid.

00;01;53;06 - 00;02;04;10

And she’s just and it just breaks my heart. I don’t want any women ever and their families and their children to ever go through something like this. And I feel like it’s an important thing to talk about.

00;02;05;00 - 00;02;27;01

Sophia Elizabeth

Well it’s clearly an important thing to talk about when we’re in a state like California and they don’t have postpartum mental health care where they have a facility that specifically works with women who are dealing with a postpartum crisis. They just treat it like any other mental health crisis. And it’s not like any other mental health crisis. I know they’ve done a big push.

00;02;27;10 - 00;02;48;00

Sophia Elizabeth

And that’s why, like if I say the word postpartum around someone who doesn’t have kids, they automatically in their brains assume it’s depression. And that’s, you know, that’s society. They’re going, okay, more people need to know that this exists, postpartum depression exists. So they’ve made it a goal in media to make it known, so now everyone associates. Oh, the word postpartum means depression.

00;02;48;00 - 00;03;02;26

Sophia Elizabeth

When I you know, I’m just like, no, it’s a period. There’s a postpartum period. Then there’s postpartum depression, then there’s postpartum mania. There is a whole category of postpartum stuff. But in this world, it’s kind of just like, oh, postpartum. So you’re sad after having a baby. That’s it.

00;03;03;05 - 00;03;03;16

Yeah. Yeah.

00;03;03;18 - 00;03;14;02

Sophia Elizabeth

And that’s also what I thought. (Yeah) I thought that’s what I was avoiding. As someone who does have a history of mental illness, I was like, I can’t get postpartum depression. That can’t happen.

00;03;14;02 - 00;03;14;12

Yeah.

00;03;15;02 - 00;03;21;02

Sophia Elizabeth

But not the (flipside) other side of the coin (yeah) the side of the coin where you think that things are really great.

00;03;21;26 - 00;03;45;29

I mean, it was probably besides doing, which I have done, ecstasy and acid together before and it was a lot of I mean, besides, like something false that I put in my body like experiencing that, that was probably like the happiest I truly felt. And I just felt like so much love and I felt like the world was fucking ridiculous.

00;03;46;05 - 00;04;07;00

Why are you at war? I felt like a little mushroom person. What are we doing here? Why can’t everybody get along? Like you’re all full of shit, you know? But it’s not. I felt great, but it’s like no filter. Like, you can’t just walk , with no filter in this world. Trust me, it doesn’t work... it’s really toxic.

00;04;07;00 - 00;04;22;07

And you just, you know, Yeah, part of mania is just not shutting up, basically. And just whatever you feel, whatever you think, let everybody know. And it’s not part of what we do. But in the mania state, you’re like, Why don’t we just talk about everything all the time? You know?

00;04;22;14 - 00;04;24;06

Sophia Elizabeth

You know what? There might be something to that.

00;04;24;26 - 00;04;26;12

Well, that’s what I thought when I was manic.

00;04;26;12 - 00;04;37;20

Sophia Elizabeth

I’m also a big believer in the fact that in a lot of tribal communities, people who show signs of schizophrenia or mania, they’re actually seen as someone who’s connecting to a spiritual world.

00;04;37;21 - 00;04;38;08

They didn’t have the internet then, so...

00;04;38;08 - 00;05;03;06

Sophia Elizabeth

I know, but I do find there to be a certain piece of it where it’s like, you weren’t wrong. It might not have been cohesive with social standards, but you weren’t wrong because, I mean, I’ve witnessed you as your friend go through this. And I saw someone who wanted...you wanted to wrap your arms around the whole world and give them a hug and give them a place to stay and let them know that it could be okay if we could all just love each other.

00;05;03;06 - 00;05;07;21

Sophia Elizabeth

And it was just...it was so much love. So much love.

00;05;07;25 - 00;05;24;00

Yeah. For for a while I think it was like that. Yeah, well, it was. I mean, that was around Christmas time. [It’s not sustainable.] I like all the people on the street with their families. Like I just gave them whatever I had on me. I just was like, Why don’t we just help these people? And there’s so many layers, though, to the world.

00;05;24;00 - 00;05;34;20

It’s not simple. [yeah] When I went through therapy after, my therapist that I had, it was like childlike thinking in that I that’s how I would describe it, for sure.

00;05;34;20 - 00;05;37;01

Sophia Elizabeth

But again, my gut just went, well that’s beautiful.

00;05;37;27 - 00;05;40;23

Yeah, but not for an almost 30 year old woman who’s a mother.

00;05;40;26 - 00;05;56;20

Sophia Elizabeth

I get that it’s not sustainable again to the social standards, [yeah] but there’s also something where maybe it wouldn’t have led to such a psychotic state if it wasn’t deemed abnormal for adults to have childlike thinking at times. Maybe, I’m not meaning to minimize...

00;05;56;20 - 00;05;58;27

No, no. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer.

00;05;58;27 - 00;06;02;01

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s just sort of, like [Yeah] my gut went childlike thinking?

00;06;02;14 - 00;06;06;09

Yeah. It was like using your imagine, you use you imagination too much.

00;06;07;13 - 00;06;08;05

Sophia Elizabeth

Don’t we want to encourage that?

00;06;09;02 - 00;06;19;10

Maybe. Yeah, I can’t judge any of that because where I was in that space, like lost me being able to be around my daughter by myself.

00;06;19;25 - 00;06;20;24

Sophia Elizabeth

Yeah, So it just doesn’t matter.

00;06;20;24 - 00;06;37;08

So it doesn’t. Yeah, it’s just not I wasn’t healthy is what it comes down to. And there I underst- I love what you’re saying and I, I felt at the time like that we did overcomplicate things in this world and things could just be so simple. You could just have a conversation and heal each other and we could just give people food.

00;06;37;08 - 00;06;44;17

And who gives a fuck about money? Like, let’s just, you know, people are don’t have a home, let’s get them a home. It was simple things.

00;06;44;18 - 00;06;45;00

Sophia Elizabeth

The idealism....

00;06;45;04 - 00;07;01;10

It’s beautiful in that. But for me it’s like maybe if the whole a bunch of people felt like that at once, we could change things. But for me, on my own, it just was like, I mean, she’s crazy and I was not well, you know? So yeah, umm I don’t know.

00;07;02;12 - 00;07;20;04

Sophia Elizabeth

I know that it was not healthy. [I know you do] but it also showed this deep inside core aspect of you that is just the exact reason why I love you so much. It was like a light. I saw light that I clearly know that was not, you know.

00;07;20;06 - 00;07;20;18

Yeah.

00;07;20;28 - 00;07;23;19

Sophia Elizabeth

Right. Yeah. It wasn’t the right like. But I saw.

00;07;23;19 - 00;07;23;27

Light.

00;07;23;27 - 00;07;26;11

Sophia Elizabeth

Yeah, I saw it.

00;07;26;11 - 00;07;49;19

Um, My great, my great great grandmother. So this definitely runs in my family and it seems like on both sides, um postpartum issues. My great great grandmother, after she had my great grandmother, she stabbed herself in the stomach and died [Jesus] My dad’s side of the family. My cousin. Right now, her baby’s a couple months older than my youngest. I talked to her sister and yeah, she told me she’s not well.

00;07;49;19 - 00;08;07;03

And when I heard about this happening, I texted my aunt, I messaged my cousin. I was like, I think this is similar. But yeah, my aunt never texted me back. You know, my cousin, just like every time I after her just kind of like, doesn’t want to talk about it because it’s painful and it’s hard. But I’m like, you guys are telling.

00;08;07;03 - 00;08;10;18

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s a lot more painful and harder if something were to happen and no one were to...

00;08;10;18 - 00;08;12;04

I’m so worried she’s going to kill herself

00;08;12;11 - 00;08;15;14

Sophia Elizabeth

If you are seeing red flags that you, you know..

00;08;15;18 - 00;08;33;02

I was in the hospital for two weeks in a mental ward for my daughter’s first Christmas. I have been to this horrible place. I- that’s where she needs to go now. She needs to be in a hospital and she needs to...they need to [monitor her] do something. Yeah, because what I’m worried is not how she is right now.

00;08;33;19 - 00;08;52;25

I’m worried about one day if she kind of like comes out of her stupor and she’s like, What have I done? And she doesn’t have her child and she doesn’t have her mother and her sister and her nieces and nephews and all the people that she loved. And, you know, that’s what I worry about, is that like awakening because I had that I had one of those and it was the only.

00;08;52;25 - 00;08;56;02

Sophia Elizabeth

Way to get through it is to be surrounded by you need your child there.

00;08;57;10 - 00;08;59;02

Yeah, you do.

00;08;59;05 - 00;09;09;23

Sophia Elizabeth

Or you come out [You do.] it feeling the exact reason you went in is that you’re not a good mom. And if you come out of it feeling that way, then how are you supposed to just. How you supposed to even begin the healing process if you’re [not surrounded by...]

00;09;09;25 - 00;09;25;19

Everybody hates you, Everybody told you a horrible person and a horrible mother and you’re crazy and you’re a bitch, and you have Lucifer inside you, like, And then you start believing these things and then you look back at the things you did and said your child’s not with you and yeah, you fucked up. How do you even begin to, like, start over?

00;09;25;19 - 00;09;45;16

And I’m hoping they will let her. I’m hoping they let her be if that’s what they think is right. I don’t think it’s right. But I am. I’m not her mother and I would like to find her and like shove her in the fucking hospital, you know? But she’s an adult. You can’t. It’s hard, you know, I just.

00;09;45;26 - 00;10;06;04

I wish I could be there for her in a different way. And I hope they allow her the space to come back and try to be a part of her family when she’s ready. So with my story of being in the hospital and being manic and it took me until honestly hearing about my cousin going through it and how she’s not with her child.

00;10;06;04 - 00;10;32;03

And for me to finally be like, okay, obviously it everything that happened had to happen the way it did or I wouldn’t be with my child now, [wow] I would be where she is. I was mad, mad for so long. Like I you know, I know Christmas is just a day, right? But it was my daughter’s first one and I nobody brought my daughter to me on the day.

00;10;32;05 - 00;10;47;26

It was like 40 minutes or a 30 minute drive from my parents house where my husband was at living with them. Nobody could take the time because they had plans. It was really hurtful. And New Years, through New Years, like I was in there, it was...

00;10;47;29 - 00;10;50;01

Sophia Elizabeth

How could that help someone in your state?

00;10;50;02 - 00;11;11;07

Well, what I was told by the therapist that I was mandated by CPS, I had CPS in my life until my daughter was one, um, is that there’s only two hospitals at that time, at least. And this is what she told me. I’ve never done research on this, that allowed you to have your baby in the hospital with you when you were getting postpartum care.

00;11;11;25 - 00;11;21;20

And so obviously the baby’s monitored. You are monitored. [Yeah.] You’re not taken away from your baby. I think it would be a way to be like, look at your baby. What does your baby need?

00;11;21;21 - 00;11;23;24

Sophia Elizabeth

Which is statistically the

00;11;23;25 - 00;11;24;12

How are you feeling when you’re baby is screaming in your face right now?

00;11;24;14 - 00;11;38;03

Sophia Elizabeth

Only way to help a woman in that postpartum state. You don’t take their baby away! That’s just been that’s been proven in studies that, oh, would you like to make a postpartum crisis worse? Take the baby away, see what happens and call it helping them.

00;11;38;03 - 00;12;23;03

[It’s] It was bad. It just took me this long to to realize, well, maybe if [sigh] like that whirlwind of pain and, like, torture, at least for my my psyche, it’s, you know, if that didn’t, who knows it? Maybe it maybe it had to be that bad. Maybe all of it. Like, so I could be like, if if I’m not feeling well, which for me triggers number one is not sleeping number one, if I’m not getting sleep and I can feel myself get more agitated, I can feel myself being on the street and somebody does something stupid that usually be like, whatever, they’re an asshole

00;12;23;03 - 00;12;28;28

in my head, the filter is gone when I start. Like, What the fuck? What are you doing? You know, you.

00;12;28;28 - 00;12;30;12

Sophia Elizabeth

You let them in, you interact.

00;12;30;12 - 00;13;01;10

When I, when my my filter around other people is down. When I’m starting to like over, little things get more frustrated with my kids and it’s hard because PMS can do that to me as well. But there is a difference because I know I haven’t slept. Um...not sleeping...is for me. And I think especially postpartum and I would like women to really be aware of, and all the women in my life that have been pregnant in the last year that have my number and text me, I say, you have to sleep.

00;13;01;25 - 00;13;19;27

You have to [absolutely] if you do not sleep. For me, it’s the difference between being in a hospital. Who knows if CPS is ever involved in my life again. God forbid that ever happens. How? It’s like one and done. It can’t happen ever again. I don’t think I would, but the fact that it could is very real to me.

00;13;19;27 - 00;13;21;21

And it’s, I think, a healthy fear.

00;13;22;00 - 00;13;29;19

Sophia Elizabeth

Well, you were [an important fear] traumatized to the point that you are... I’ve seen you be scared of a normal, happy emotion. So [I] you.

00;13;30;01 - 00;13;50;10

Oh, that, no, But that’s, not sleeping. Also, if I feel elated, I have to keep that in check. And it â€˜s... and that was really hard for me to understand when I was in therapy. It was very difficult. Like, what do you mean I... I feel great. I didn’t I couldn’t get it. Like everyone told me, my whole pregnancy, you are going to be depressed.

00;13;50;24 - 00;14;20;07

You are on watch. Your little stupid surveys. You’re you are showing depression like you are not going to be good. And I’m like, I feel so good. I feel great. That is also something I have to be aware of and sleep without it. It just everything. Gets off in in such a scary, like, life altering way. [Yeah.] So every mother that, that I speak to, I, it’s like if you can’t sleep because the most annoying thing is the new mom.

00;14;20;13 - 00;14;42;05

When the baby sleeps, you sleep. That’s what everybody tells me still, it’s like that’s when I. Maybe I could take a quick shower. Maybe I could go to the bathroom by myself or do some dishes or get some shopping done online or that’s my time. But when people tell you to sleep, when your baby’s sleeping during the day, that’s not if basically it was impossible for me.

00;14;42;14 - 00;15;01;25

And then with my first daughter at night, I was changing her diaper every couple hours and I was awake and I’d be like, Did she pee, did you pee? Is she breathing? The first couple, maybe two months, two and a half months, then getting home and not sleeping during her naps. I was also so excited just to hold her and watch her sleep.

00;15;02;02 - 00;15;03;05

She was amazing.

00;15;03;05 - 00;15;15;29

Sophia Elizabeth

You were the most like jubilant mother and this was not a manic jubilant. The mania from what I from what I experienced as your friend didn’t come until the fall. It took a couple of months.

00;15;16;08 - 00;15;18;16

But it was a buildup. [it was a buildup] And you didn’t see me a lot, you know...

00;15;18;17 - 00;15;33;27

Sophia Elizabeth

But prior to the buildup, who I did see was someone who was just like, so genuinely, madly in love with your child. [Yeah.] And in a situation where it’s difficult, living at your parents in a small room is really difficult during that time.

00;15;34;00 - 00;15;39;25

Especially when my mother was really mad at my husband. [yeah] And I felt every second of that.

00;15;40;01 - 00;15;52;03

Sophia Elizabeth

The tension and stress in that household was [it was not good] not a good environment when you are someone at risk of a hormonal dip causing a psychological reaction.

00;15;52;18 - 00;16;11;23

Yeah. So. So the sleep wasn’t happening and so my suggestion to new moms is and I mean, this is what I tell... I’m not speaking to all moms, but the women that I know when I talk to them, you know, if you aren’t getting sleep for a few nights in a row, then you need to take something, take a Unisom, you have to force your body.

00;16;11;29 - 00;16;13;09

You’re going to feel like shit the next day, but...

00;16;13;15 - 00;16;19;19

Sophia Elizabeth

I’ve learned I mean, I’ve learned that with me too. [You have to] You get to day three and four of not sleeping...[you can’t, no]

00;16;19;19 - 00;16;39;20

And that’s really dangerous, too. I’d say two days of... by two days. You’re not, two nights you haven’t slept. Then it’s time to ask for help. Which is the hardest thing to do. You want you want to be supermom. You want to be able to handle everything on your own. You don’t want to have to say, Babe, I’m so tired.

00;16;39;20 - 00;16;59;02

Especially if you’re at home and they’re working. That sucks. Like, Babe, I’m so tired. I need sleep. It doesn’t feel good. But you have to suck it up and you just have to tell them I’m not well, I’m stressed out. I’m sure they feel it too. When you’re just, like, agitated, it’s like I need to sleep. And my husband now is very good.

00;16;59;02 - 00;17;00;11

When I tell him that, he’s like, Yup.

00;17;00;23 - 00;17;01;05

Sophia Elizabeth

Oh yeah.

00;17;01;06 - 00;17;21;21

Then you need to sleep, And it’s. I mean, I. I’m lucky he stayed with me after everything we went through, and had a second baby with me. You know, a mother’s birth story is very important, but the father’s is...they’re going through stuff too ,and men should.. Don’t talk about what they’re going through a lot of times. I think it’s important for them to have their voice heard sometimes, too.

00;17;21;21 - 00;17;48;21

Sophia Elizabeth

Absolutely. Because they’re, they’re expected to witness, hold and support you while also step down and recognize that it’s like they’re not the mother. They don’t have the breasts. They don’t have this kind of natural know how. I know there’s a lot of mixed messages and mixed emotions happening for men. And when they don’t in a society get nurtured to express their emotions properly, then it’s going to get bottled up and come out onto the children.

00;17;48;21 - 00;18;08;21

Sophia Elizabeth

So if anything, it’s just good for everybody just to get it out of you. [Yeah] Get it out of you so you can bring it from the primitive part of your brain where you just feel it. You just feel the anger, or the sadness, or the the fear or the trauma and bring it to the front. And when you tell the stories and when you do it with someone, when you share those stories.

00;18;08;21 - 00;18;18;29

Sophia Elizabeth

Now you’re thinking about it with executive functioning and you can rationalize it in a different way. And so you can, if you put words to your anger, you’re rationalizing your anger rather than punching your fist through a wall.

00;18;19;16 - 00;18;28;13

Thank you. It has been like a relief to hear you. The woman I’ve known since I was, what, two? Be able to like.

00;18;29;05 - 00;18;29;22

Sophia Elizabeth

00;18;29;29 - 00;18;49;09

Rediscover her words, her poetry, your passion, you’ve always been incredible at this. I’ve seen you read poetry live in front of people and art studios. And then, you know, things happen. And you tucked it away. And to see you bring it back out like it inspires me. Like I’ve been writing, I don’t write. And it’s just it’s really important. I...

00;18;49;13 - 00;18;56;29

You cannot stop. You’re not allowed to at this point like, you got to keep the train going. You know, it’s important. So, yeah, you have to. It’s the rules now.

00;18;57;10 - 00;19;26;26

Sophia Elizabeth

Well, I couldn’t, I couldn’t have like, asked...even...from the people who know me so well how they’re impacted as mothers or even as just people. They don’t even have to have children. And knowing that I’m releasing these stories, that I’m rediscovering that part of me that does need to happen. The writing, the speaking, the exploring these topics. [You need that outlet] But I also am just releasing something inside of me that I want other people to do too.

00;19;27;01 - 00;19;29;13

Sophia Elizabeth

And that was Birth Stories. That’s this conversation with you.

00;19;30;01 - 00;19;57;08

Okay, so my birth story is, like... it’s not so much, the trauma from it isn’t the physical trauma. For me, it was the psychological trauma that lasted. And I mean, it’s still around and I found out that I was pregnant January 1st. What was that? 2018. So I was like, already like pretty far along. I was like, what, ten weeks when I found out? [Mm-hm]

00;19;58;18 - 00;20;14;07

And the first things that came into my mind were excitement. I also had miscarried once before, so I didn’t know if it was going to happen. And then we were living at our friend’s house and like, they were growing weed. And I was like, Where the hell are we going to have this baby? So it was a lot of that.

00;20;14;07 - 00;20;32;01

And then my parents offered for my husband and I to move into their house and I didn’t want to do it. I knew it was going to be bad, it was going to be stressful. He grew up very poor and he realized logically, this is going to be really hard for us to do, on like... where we were, how would we get a place, blah, blah, blah

00;20;32;01 - 00;20;50;03

It was a lot of so, you know, he convinced me. We moved and I spent a very lonely pregnancy watching my parents and my husband drinking together and hanging out and watching games and, you know, like football games. And and I was like used to being able to do that with them. The night I went into labor, I went into labor at 11.

00;20;50;17 - 00;21;05;24

I started having contractions and I laid in a recliner chair and I had a little sticky pad note and pen, and I would just like timing my contractions. And then I sent my husband to bed. I said go [the sleep now] Get the sleep you can â€˜cuz who knows when we’re going to get it again. My mom woke up.

00;21;05;24 - 00;21;23;26

I, I don’t know what time. I think it was around like six or 7 a.m. And she’s like, Are you sure you’re in labor? And I was like, I’m sure. I mean, there’s false labor, but I was trying to basically take naps in between contractions because they were pretty far apart at first. Oh, what happened though was two nights before we were living with my parents and we were trying to get this baby out.

00;21;24;05 - 00;21;39;08

So we went to a hotel. We had sex, we ate spicy food, bunch of baths. Two nights later, I went into labor. But that night, the fucking toilet in the hotel room kept running. I was awake all... I was already anxious. I think I was, what, a couple days late, I think. I think I was getting up to my due date.

00;21;39;08 - 00;21;40;06

I was a couple of days late. So I was like...

00;21;40;14 - 00;21;58;19

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s so cruel. At the end, they’re like, [ Ugh, you feel like they’re not going to come!) You’re supposed to be getting rest before you go through [it’s bullshit] one of the most difficult [you can’t!] experiences of your life and you cannot sleep. You cannot physically rest. You can’t even, you’re like, Can I just lay here calmly? No, my legs are going to be restless all night, and start jumping and moving about and twinging with pain...

00;21;58;20 - 00;22;05;16

And just peeing all the time. [Oh, yeah, there’s that]. And just thinking, is this baby coming? Is this baby coming? Like. Like you’re going to sleep through it? I don’t know what that is.

00;22;05;16 - 00;22;06;10

Sophia Elizabeth

No, You’re just in pain.

00;22;06;15 - 00;22;25;28

I don’t know. So I didn’t sleep then. And then I didn’t sleep again because I was I think it was the next night or two nights later. So I don’t know what one of those things. It was just her time to come out. But we tried everything, you know, all the little fables, right, to get the baby out. So, yeah, we woke up and then my water broke around nine.

00;22;26;03 - 00;22;32;03

We got in the car and we just had to drive like around the block. And it was like the worst thing in the world That was horrible.

00;22;32;11 - 00;22;33;17

Sophia Elizabeth

It just hurt to drive?

00;22;33;17 - 00;22;48;02

Oh, God. Just getting in the car. We had, like, a Durango, a Dodge Durango. We had to, like, step up into it. And that [There were no shocks?] Yeah. And then, like, the ride to it was there was, like, speed bumps, not speed bumps. What is it? The dips [Mm-hm]... you know?

00;22;48;12 - 00;22;49;17

Sophia Elizabeth

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;22;49;17 - 00;23;05;12

It was like, like so much pain. My mom’s there and then my dad’s there and it’s a big room, at least. So there’s almost like a waiting room with, like, a couch. And then there’s a room where you have your baby. So it’s a one room, but I’m just saying it’s big. So it’s not like my dad was right there because he didn’t even I could tell.

00;23;05;12 - 00;23;15;19

He was like, Why am I, I don’t know if I want to be here. My sister had an emergency C-section and then a planned C-section, and then my sister in law didn’t have my mom in the room.

00;23;15;19 - 00;23;20;01

Sophia Elizabeth

He’s like give me the waiting room with the TV and let me know when the grand baby’s here. [Yeah.]

00;23;20;01 - 00;23;27;23

So my mom wanted to really be there. [Yeah, of course] And I think She really wanted my dad to be there. So we got there. I think I was like, So I don’t remember seven centimeters dilated.

00;23;27;23 - 00;23;29;27

Sophia Elizabeth

[I’m not sure] Wow! That’s when you got to the hospital? At 7 centimeters?

00;23;29;27 - 00;23;38;24

I don’t know, because I had her at 5 p.m.. I was enough to where they didn’t make me leave at 9:00 in the morning. But it took a long time for her to come out. I didn’t want drugs.

00;23;38;24 - 00;23;41;14

Sophia Elizabeth

You birthed completely drug free for your first [100 percent].

00;23;41;22 - 00;23;45;00

And my second. [Both girls] by accident. My second. I wanted drugs

00;23;45;00 - 00;23;47;29

Sophia Elizabeth

I know you wanted. You wanted them. You’re like, I’ve already done it. I did it once.

00;23;48;11 - 00;23;56;19

I didn’t want an epidural because I’ve been told, you know, you don’t feel. I liked feeling that I knew when to push my body knew when to push.

00;23;56;28 - 00;24;12;00

Sophia Elizabeth

A big reason why I, I personally wanted to experience the ring of fire is because you had and you were like that was pretty cool. [Yeah.] You said it was this incredible, it overtook your body and you felt her coming through you. [Yeah.]

00;24;12;00 - 00;24;13;20

[And that] that was my favorite part.

00;24;13;20 - 00;24;21;10

Sophia Elizabeth

Yeah, [I would do that again. And I...right there, that quote, that was my favorite part. And I was like, [I’m so sorry,] Ooooo, I want that!

00;24;21;13 - 00;24;48;17

Okay. So in the hospital, my mother in law shows up, and my husband and her have experienced a lot of loss in their life. My mother-in-law lost her daughter and my husband, his sister, I think 13 years ago now. Her name was also my name. And then they also, in the same year, lost his father and then his grandma, who lived there.[In the same year?]

00;24;48;24 - 00;25;07;25

It was the same year, year and a half. It was basically just like one loss after the other. [wow] And he had his son that was really little. So I always heard my mom talk about how different it was for her to have a daughter vs. a daughter in law. That she wishes she could have been in the room with her daughter in law.

00;25;08;03 - 00;25;18;13

I feel for my mother in law that she won’t ever get to do that. She’ll never get to. There’s that can’t happen for her. So I wanted her to be there.

00;25;18;13 - 00;25;22;29

Sophia Elizabeth

Very gracious of you to share [in the room] your birth plan moment and to make decisions...

00;25;22;29 - 00;25;23;14

I wanted her to be in the room.

00;25;23;14 - 00;25;27;04

Sophia Elizabeth

Decisions around your birth plan for someone else like that. That’s...

00;25;27;04 - 00;25;46;02

Yeah, I mean, I. I just. I know. I just can’t. I was about to have a baby, and I was just can’t imagine. I could never imagine losing anybody but your child. Like, I don’t even like going there in my head. It’s really I mean [it’s unfathomable] you’ve, you’ve dealt with great loss and yeah, it’s unfathomable. So I...

00;25;46;07 - 00;25;47;27

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s a tsunami of shift.

00;25;48;02 - 00;26;07;16

It’s not supposed to happen like that. So I thought about her. I wanted her in the room. Now when it came time for me to push my husband started like gagging fiercely. And then his mom said, [burst of laughter] [ I’m sorry] Oh, no, it’s fine...But he does this; it’s like he was crying because he and he was holding my hand for a long time.

00;26;07;16 - 00;26;12;02

It’s like he just a w- out of the room. He’s holding my hand and he starts crying and he gets this phlegm and then goes [coughing noise]

00;26;12;12 - 00;26;13;00

Sophia Elizabeth

giggles

00;26;13;06 - 00;26;31;29

[loud hacking up phlegm noise] And he’s like, choking. He’s like, choking. And he can’t breathe. Right? And his mom is like, Oh, just trying to explain for her adult son. Oh, it’s just like a mommy explaining like he’s a little boy. And it was a sweet moment. While I’m fucking in the middle of the shit. I’m hearing all of this happening.[Are you?]

00;26;32;02 - 00;26;33;19

I am aware of everybody.

00;26;33;19 - 00;26;34;20

Sophia Elizabeth

Are you crowning? Is her head crowning?

00;26;34;20 - 00;26;50;29

Almost, like they they said it’s time to push, right? And he’s having this thing. And honestly, can I say and I tried to explain this to my own mother and she maybe didn’t believe me. I didn’t want him to witness a baby coming out of my body. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him to. In the back of my mind, I...

00;26;50;29 - 00;26;58;01

Sophia Elizabeth

I didn’t want it either. I said, [Ok.] You stay up with me. [Really?] I want to... [yeah] I want you to see what I see. [I felt like that made me weak] He saw things.

00;26;58;15 - 00;26;59;06

He saw things.

00;26;59;08 - 00;27;02;17

Sophia Elizabeth

Yeah. He saw my... He s- He looked like he saw things.

00;27;02;17 - 00;27;06;13

Yeah, [laughter] Oh, Poor hubby.

00;27;07;04 - 00;27;08;27

Sophia Elizabeth

But yeah, I completely understand.

00;27;08;27 - 00;27;26;09

Yeah, I just it was a personal thing and I never discussed it and or anything. So when he was like [hacking noise] and I didn’t give a fuck at all at that point, I was just like, I don’t care. This baby’s coming out. The baby needs to come out. You guys so figure your shit out everybody. [Yeah.] So and I’m I’m literally just like, I don’t care.

00;27;26;12 - 00;27;41;22

I don’t care. You know, my mom’s like, w- You should walk; the nurses, You should walk around. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to. I just laid in the bed and I just held on to the side or to my mom’s hand or to my husband. And I just like every time I had a contraction, my feet would start before it started.

00;27;41;22 - 00;27;57;08

Would just start moving around. And then I would have a big contraction. [woh] And so my mom knew every time she’s like, I knew when you were about to have one because your feet started going. So then they wanted instead of nurses or whatever they had, they wanted my mom and my husband to each hold a leg up so I could get this baby out.

00;27;57;14 - 00;28;09;04

My husband couldn’t. And so my dad, like, took him into the other room and they’re starting to watch a football game. And they’re like, [Oh], no, no, no, but I’m fine. I was fine, [That’s what I actually pictured]

00;28;09;04 - 00;28;11;23

Sophia Elizabeth

I totally pictured your dad in the waiting room watching the game.

00;28;11;23 - 00;28;40;26

And they went into like [let me know the baby’s born] another room around the corner and the game was on. And I hear [hacking noise] in the other room...So yeah, he couldn’t. So my mother in law was like, I’ll do it. And her back was hurting at the time. I was like, No, she can’t do it. Her back hurt. [gosh] And then after that, she, by the way, she blames me in her Facebook posts why her back is messed up because she held her daughter in law’s leg during her labor for an hour.

00;28;40;28 - 00;28;54;00

[oh my gosh] Even though I remember, I just need this said into the universe. I said her back hurts. She shouldn’t do it. And she’s like, Oh, I’m fine. And I could tell in that moment my mother was not happy that she was there for whatever reason.

00;28;54;00 - 00;28;55;19

Sophia Elizabeth

Oh you were juggling layers of stuff!

00;28;55;20 - 00;29;19;18

And for whatever reason, she just I don’t I don’t know if it’s because she just wanted her and her daughter. I don’t know if it’s because my mother in law’s not always the easiest person. She has trauma on trauma. On trauma, like built on layers upon her life. I’m not trying to place blame, but there had been interactions in the past for them to maybe not just be like best friends.

00;29;19;18 - 00;29;38;02

Okay, [giggling] is what I’m trying to say. And I know this in a way, and I know she is. I yeah, it’s a lot. But you can tell I was juggling all of these things while I just... I kept crying during my labor when I get a break because I was so excited to meet her. And they’re like, Why are you crying?

00;29;38;02 - 00;29;50;02

I’m like, I get to meet her today. [aw] It was beautiful. I couldn’t wait. I knew it was a girl. I wanted...I did not...I commend you for waiting. Yeah. So it took me an hour from beginning to end. It felt about like 15 minutes.

00;29;50;02 - 00;29;50;26

Sophia Elizabeth

An hour?

00;29;50;26 - 00;29;51;15

An hour.

00;29;51;28 - 00;29;53;18

Sophia Elizabeth

From beginning to end of [Pushing] pushing?

00;29;53;21 - 00;29;57;24

[Ok] And it felt like 15 minutes. It didn’t feel like an hour. They said it was like a good amount of time.

00;29;58;04 - 00;30;00;03

Sophia Elizabeth

You were probably in, like, a rhythmic state.

00;30;00;03 - 00;30;30;15

Yeah. I mean, it was like... it was so crazy. It felt like rolls of energy of my body. Like. Like an earthquake, a wave. It felt like an electromagnetic wave, [wow] like pulsing down my body. And it was like doing it by itself a lot. Like I had to push, but my body told me when to push it, like started up here and then like, move down and it and then I would push, you know, I mean, I heard my mom, like, you can do it.

00;30;30;16 - 00;30;49;09

You’re doing great, honey. And then my mother in law saying you’re crowning. But then one of the nurses, like she’s not crowning yet, so I don’t know what the fuck was happening. [laughter] I didn’t have a mirror down there, but I’m sure what she saw. I’m guessing she thought she saw the top of my daughter’s head, you know, So finally I push her out, and it felt like a flopping fish wet- whhooooshpp!

00;30;50;03 - 00;30;54;27

I don’t know how they catch these babies. It seems very dangerous. Like on top of a table to give birth.

00;30;54;27 - 00;30;59;03

Sophia Elizabeth

Once they get past that point, it is just like a very rapid flooph!

00;30;59;08 - 00;31;17;14

It was just out. And it was just like this wet. I just remember. Yeah, it was just very I don’t I mean, I don’t know how else to explain it. That’s immediately what came into my head. Like I just gave birth to a fish. It was very strange. They put her on me and it was just kind of surreal.

00;31;17;15 - 00;31;34;18

It was just like, Did this really happen? And then that’s kind of when I started to fade out a little bit of the people around me, the things happening around me, cuz I was on cloud nine, I did it, but the afterbirth got stuck. So I’m holding my baby. [Really?] Yeah, I think it did both times.

00;31;34;18 - 00;31;38;13

Sophia Elizabeth

I actually I remember you telling me this because this was more pai- like in a lot of ways it was

00;31;38;13 - 00;31;56;28

I was like, I’m done, I’m done. I just gave birth. This is amazing. And then she starts pushing on my stomach to get out. It hurt so bad, I just gave birth. And somehow I really believed the pain with the purpose. I knew I was going to hold my baby soon. Fucking Let’s go. [Yeah] vs. I just had this like, what’s going on?

00;31;56;28 - 00;32;13;23

But obviously you have to get it out, you know? And then it finally did. But she was pushing so hard on my stomach and that really hurt and pissed me off. And then they gave me, I think, oxytocin. It’s a happy I.V., you know. And I went over this with my therapist after. I didn’t know what was going on.

00;32;13;23 - 00;32;20;26

I felt like on ecstasy, like I took a pill or something. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it.

00;32;20;26 - 00;32;21;21

Sophia Elizabeth

You didn’t like the high?

00;32;21;21 - 00;32;23;01

No, I don’t know what it was.

00;32;23;01 - 00;32;27;01

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s a weird period where you’re kind of like, just like they’re doing things to you. [Yeah.]

00;32;27;13 - 00;32;48;12

[You’re out of it] Yeah. That’s my baby. I did it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s exhausting. You kind of finally get to, like, collapse a little bit, and then my baby wasn’t breathing properly, and I didn’t know that cuz she was on me for a while. And I’m smiling. But my brain is not. My brain was like, Hey, is everything okay? But I, like, look happy.

00;32;48;26 - 00;33;05;28

Event- like, we wanted to leave the hospital after one night and they made us stay two because of that, because of her breathing. So then we’re done. I get showered, we go into the room and I just have this baby now I’m just like, know how to take care of baby. She latched pretty easily, which was nice.

00;33;06;13 - 00;33;14;03

Eventually, you know, holding my daughter, loving every second. But then I could put her in that little wheelie thing, the bassinet, and I didn’t...

00;33;14;03 - 00;33;15;15

Sophia Elizabeth

The one with the, the clear tub sides? [uh-huh]

00;33;15;15 - 00;33;29;22

I was like, worried about waking her up and she fell asleep. So I was like, trying to have her sleep next to me on me. In a weird way. And the night was a very long night for me. It was freezing cold in the room. I was too afraid to ask for help and get a blanket or have somebody do anything. [do the thermostat]

00;33;29;28 - 00;33;46;23

I didn’t want to wake up my baby, which, looking back like the baby’s just going to fucking sleep when they’re that tiny. But I was. [20 hours] Yeah, I just had this repeated image of my daughter falling on the ground and cracking her head open on the cement because it was cement floors and it was just fear. And all night I didn’t sleep, [the first night] but I also hadn’t slept.

00;33;46;23 - 00;33;54;02

Because we were in the stupid hotel room the couple of nights before that. Then the night before that, I hadn’t slept. So it’s really just like, that’s the beginning.

00;33;54;06 - 00;33;55;17

Sophia Elizabeth

A build up of a lack of sleep from the get-go.

00;33;55;17 - 00;34;14;05

Of not sleeping. And then you think you get you adjust, but you don’t. [yeah] But you can, you can stay awake without being tired longer, if you know. And I was really excited to go home and they had put like balloons out but that we walk into the house and the energy just felt weird towards my husband. I felt energy and like that.

00;34;14;05 - 00;34;19;26

It was just like you left the room, you couldn’t handle it. But that’s how it felt. And I that’s.

00;34;19;26 - 00;34;21;23

Sophia Elizabeth

But that’s what needs to be validated is that’s how it felt.

00;34;21;25 - 00;34;29;06

Yeah. There was also going on my brother and his wife and three kids that we were very close to. They were moving away.

00;34;29;20 - 00;34;30;05

Sophia Elizabeth

Across the whole country?

00;34;30;07 - 00;34;43;01

Across the country. August, they’re moving away soon. We definitely knew in October that they were moving, but I know he was looking for a job around that time and we might have already known that he was leaving, I’m not sure.

00;34;43;01 - 00;34;47;18

Sophia Elizabeth

multi-layers of tension and and familial things happening.

00;34;47;18 - 00;35;11;01

Yes. In the house there’s um a lot of emotion from both my parents, but especially my mother, about them leaving my parents to go to work. And I was on maternity leave. My husband didn’t take any time off right away. He saved it until she was a year old. That was lonely for me and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

00;35;11;01 - 00;35;32;24

I didn’t. I was so happy in love with my daughter. Oh, my God. So cute and beautiful. Just watching her sleep, watching her just fart was so freaking cute. Everything like watching her stretch her little arms and her body all the way out, you know? I mean, it was beautiful and magical. And I hate I hate that like, what came after makes that part of, like, her first year of my life.

00;35;33;03 - 00;35;52;13

It was really hard for me. And I just have a lot of pain towards it and I really hate that I don’t have the amount of happy memories that I feel like most people would get. So my father had come home from work and he would, and I was a smoker big time. I, you know, and I waited and waited.

00;35;52;13 - 00;35;57;27

And then I started smoking probably because I wasn’t sleeping and I was stressed out right. [Yeah]

00;35;57;27 - 00;36;00;11

Sophia Elizabeth

Cuz you hadn’t been smoking during your pregnancy?

00;36;00;11 - 00;36;17;14

No, no, no, no. Once I found out it was, I tapered down. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want moms to think you’re bad if you don’t If you don’t go cold turkey. I stopped drinking for sure, you know, and partying because we were like I said, we were partying a lot before that. But it was a couple of weeks and then I started smoking.

00;36;17;14 - 00;36;32;08

Yeah. So I was very stressed, wasn’t sleeping, started to smoke, and then my dad would come home from work and I’d be like, Dad, can I have a little smoke break? Like a little break? And he would immediately walk in the door like work clothes still on. How is my grandbaby? [aw] Swoop her in his arms. Go away. Go.

00;36;32;08 - 00;36;51;12

15 minutes. Whatever you need. Go away. Very supportive. I really needed that. [That. Mm-hm] I felt like because I felt alone all the time and very Yeah. So my but when my mom would get home from work she would walk into the house and walk straight to her room and walk into the backyard and have a smoke and talk on the phone or whatever.

00;36;51;23 - 00;36;57;13

I felt like there was like animosity, anger, bitterness. It was... I felt like, why would you...

00;36;57;13 - 00;36;58;10

Sophia Elizabeth

Was she making a statement?

00;36;58;15 - 00;37;10;26

I don’t I don’t know. I just was like, why do you not want to see your granddaughter? [Mm-Hm] It made me feel really sad because I’d seen her with her other grandbabies and she was the perfect and she is the perfect grandmother now.

00;37;10;26 - 00;37;14;16

Sophia Elizabeth

She wasn’t juggling her emotions well [No, but...] with your brother leaving.

00;37;14;19 - 00;37;16;08

She also has a lot of trauma.

00;37;16;09 - 00;37;23;24

Sophia Elizabeth

Your brother leaving, with whatever she was holding against your partner. [Yeah] She was not handling the mixed emotions

00;37;24;11 - 00;37;40;22

Yeah, it’s. And maybe that was her way of trying to hide how she was feeling was by not walking in. And she had a stressful day. And to come straight to us, she might have, like I needed a break. She might have needed the break, but I wish there was communication because I felt, it felt personal [Mm-Hm] to me.

00;37;40;29 - 00;38;03;11

And I kept trying to tell myself that it wasn’t...My husband could for sure feel something was different. Something was off. And then my daughter started like not sleeping and crying all night. And I was very worried about waking up my parents, even though they said they didn’t care. And I was worried about waking up my husband who had to work.

00;38;03;15 - 00;38;21;11

So I would like, I took her on a couple of walks. That’s probably not the smartest thing to do. It’s the neighborhood I grew up in. I knew where I was going, but it was like 11:00 at night. She’s all bundled up [Mm-Hm] and I took her on the front pack and put blankets around her and hats on. But she was screaming and yelling, and the only way she wasn’t is if I was walking around.

00;38;21;11 - 00;38;38;01

It makes me wonder so many things. If we had our own place, would I have been able to sleep a little better? Would have would I have not felt so judged on my actions or inactions or whatever? I don’t. Would I have gone through That is what I’m trying to say, [yeah] probably. And it could have been really bad then.

00;38;38;02 - 00;38;55;06

[I don’t know.] I don’t know either. And then everyone to this day still downplays how much she cried. And I wanted to tell them you were drinking until you passed out. You don’t know. And maybe it wasn’t. But for me, as a mother, even now, when my children cry, it’s like overtakes my [Yes] entire being and body.

00;38;55;15 - 00;38;57;24

Sophia Elizabeth

Sweaty, confused. [yeah] You’re nervous. [uh-huh]

00;38;58;06 - 00;38;58;19

It shocks me still.

00;38;58;19 - 00;39;05;11

Sophia Elizabeth

You are on high alert. You’re supposed to get really stressed when your child is stressed. [Yeah. It dysregulates me a lot]

00;39;05;11 - 00;39;27;12

And its, then, that was kind of when I first started fleeing my home was taking her on walks, taking her on drives, and we go. We fast forward to like the holidays and Thanksgiving. My sister flew out. My brother, we knew for sure by then they were leaving right after Thanksgiving and they were moving away across country before they came.

00;39;27;12 - 00;39;46;04

There’s this whole ordeal about where where they were all going to sleep. I knew my husband and I would stay up later. And there’s always been judgment. My whole li- I’ve always been a night owl and my mother with us staying up late. You need to go to sleep. And I’m sure in her mind she’s like, You are not. She was not well, S he was in pain.

00;39;46;07 - 00;39;49;05

A lot of deep pain. It was. It was a lot.

00;39;49;05 - 00;39;56;09

Sophia Elizabeth

And I’m sure your mom was like, I’m worried about my daughter and she needs more sleep. But because of what she was going through [She couldn’t] It didn’t come off as supportive

00;39;56;09 - 00;39;57;05

She was not able to.

00;39;57;10 - 00;39;58;16

Sophia Elizabeth

It came off as an attack.

00;39;58;16 - 00;40;18;16

And telling... And yeah, it wasn’t it wasn’t helpful at all, honestly. And I’m sure she would agree with that now. She didn’t like th- I wanted to wait to get my daughter vaccinated a little bit. I didn’t want to pump her with everything right away and that was like really frowned upon. [Mm-Hm] So it was like, I’m making dangerous decisions for my child.

00;40;19;00 - 00;40;22;06

And then I just started having more imaginative thinking.

00;40;22;26 - 00;40;30;21

Sophia Elizabeth

You had a baby and then you had a birthday, and then you lost your cat and then your brother up and left with his whole family and stressed your mom out.

00;40;31;00 - 00;40;32;29

It was a lot. It was just the holidays in general.

00;40;32;29 - 00;40;39;29

Sophia Elizabeth

And, and this was all in close quarters, in a small space where you don’t have your own home and you’re on top of each other in one little bedroom.

00;40;40;05 - 00;40;56;25

And it was a lot for everybody. And I just started getting really sick, really sick, like thinking people’s pain over time, like was kind of silly. Like, why do we hold it? Why do we spend so much time holding on to pain? What is the use of that? That’s was what I thought in my mind, but it came out harsh and mean.

00;40;56;28 - 00;40;58;16

It’s like having...

00;40;58;22 - 00;41;00;26

Sophia Elizabeth

Like you didn’t have patience for that kind of thing?

00;41;00;26 - 00;41;22;13

No, no, I was like, This is bullshit. There’s a beautiful baby in this house and you guys are worrying about that! Um, one time. So my mom thought I was just like chugging booze and then feeding, breastfeeding. So she insisted on having, she bought formula and put it on the counter. And I, my baby was crying and I walked into the room, what I could see, and I was not well.

00;41;22;13 - 00;41;41;13

So I’m not trying to say this is reality, even, Anything I’m saying right now could not be reality. I was very ill, but what I saw was my mom trying to give my baby this bottle and she didn’t want it. And my daughter’s screaming and crying and I see my mom like trying to make her drink out of this bottle because my mom probably thinks she’s poisoned by her mother!

00;41;41;13 - 00;41;48;12

She’s, you know. No, it felt like she was hurting my baby. [Yeah.] What the fuck are you doing? Why are you force feeding her?

00;41;48;12 - 00;41;50;28

Sophia Elizabeth

Had you also given her permission to give her formula?

00;41;50;28 - 00;42;08;29

No, not at all. [So, so, that’s...] I had not given her permission to give formula. I had milk in the freezer that I had pumped. I, like, wrote in sharpie on top of because it says Similac. Similar to lactation. Right? And I was like, not breast milk circled it, you know, And I kept like putting it by the garbage can, like I don’t.

00;42;08;29 - 00;42;19;21

And I don’t want her to have fucking Similac give her some organic good shit. I don’t want her to have that. I understand if we had to that like, because that’s what my mom used for us. So she’s like, Oh, it was fine for you guys.

00;42;19;21 - 00;42;21;06

Sophia Elizabeth

But,I mean, she, you’re the mother, she should be asking you.

00;42;21;06 - 00;42;37;07

It didn’t matter. I was not at that point. I was just not. I was talking a million miles a second. My dad would get really frustrated with me. I was pretty witty at times. I was very. I’d be sitting in the garage. My brother in law is there, and my dad, my sister and my kids are all like asleep or whatever.

00;42;37;07 - 00;42;57;04

When they were hanging out. And I would be on my phone typing a million miles a second and then hearing bits of conversation and able to like respond to little bits of conversation while at the same time writing out whatever the fuck garbage or that I was writing out [Mental multitasker]. Yeah, like I felt like, I felt like powerful.

00;42;57;04 - 00;43;26;08

I felt like I could multitask. I felt like my baby brought me luck and strength and, and, um, magic in the world. But my vision was definitely different, and I felt like I was on ecstasy because I felt so elated all the time. I didn’t need to sleep. I don’t need to sleep as much. I had a baby. Now I’m just this magical, amazing human, you know, like and then, yeah, the the acid part of it was like the it was like psychedelic in a little bit of a, in certain aspects.

00;43;26;27 - 00;43;48;02

So yeah, we stayed there after the Thanksgiving Day. My husband and I said we, we shouldn’t stay here. My mom had threatened to call CPS on me for feeding my baby breast milk. And then she, I don’t know if it’s true, and I don’t know if she’d admit made it. We don’t talk about it. And I don’t really find the need to.

00;43;48;14 - 00;44;07;24

There are times where she would, like, try to bait me. Everyone would be asleep and she tried to come into the room and like, into the kitchen or wherever I was because I was still awake, of course, just on fucking Facebook or listening to music. And I would see her phone be on and she would like, slip into her pocket and I felt like she was trying to record me and get me 5150.

00;44;07;25 - 00;44;10;24

That’s what I felt. I don’t even know if it’s true.

00;44;11;08 - 00;44;12;07

Sophia Elizabeth

Whether or not that’s a para, para-, para-

00;44;12;07 - 00;44;39;00

Paranoia started eventually. Paranoia for sure. [A paranoid point of view?] Yeah, started because I didn’t feel safe at all in that house. We stayed at a motel six. Oh, I kept, like, taking pretty. Everything so beautiful and bright that I had these, like, vitamins. My parents, thought I was taking...I was taking alpha brain and beetroot powder together and they thought, these vitamins were making me a crazy person.

00;44;39;00 - 00;45;00;27

And I was like, That’s not it, guys. I know that’s not it. And then I went and I like was putting little flowers everywhere and like, decorating in pretty ways and setting up little spots to, like, have people hang. You’re just like in your own little world doing things, you know? And right when I put it on my mom’s white statue and it did look pretty, I think it looked pretty at the time, because there was like red roses.

00;45;00;27 - 00;45;16;06

And then I put... but it almost looked like blood, I guess. And she was like, What is she doing? And I felt like being on a front porch, being away from people. I felt like because everyone kept telling me like, You’re too much, shut up. You’re stu- like, That’s not right. You’re stupid. I had ideas of how to make money and how to be successful.

00;45;16;06 - 00;45;18;05

Sophia Elizabeth

Is that what people were saying or did you have?

00;45;18;10 - 00;45;21;15

No, I was, I was shunned a lot, but I didn’t care. I was like, no guys are crazy.

00;45;21;15 - 00;45;24;08

Sophia Elizabeth

So this wasn’t an internal narrative.? This was, this was sort of an outw-

00;45;24;08 - 00;45;43;16

No, no. I felt fine. [Got it.] I felt like they were the crazy ones. That’s when, you know, if everybody around you is telling you you need help, you should probably. [Yeah,] check your ego if you can, possibly at that time, you should probably get some help somehow and be like, Look, I’m feeling good. These are my, you know, this is what’s going through my head.

00;45;43;16 - 00;45;48;05

These are the realizations I’m having. But everyone around me keeps telling me I’m crazy.

00;45;48;05 - 00;45;49;10

Sophia Elizabeth

Use that as a gauge.

00;45;49;13 - 00;46;09;22

Yeah. So we stayed at a motel six. The next day, I woke and my husband was still sleeping. I was getting the car packed because we had to be out by a certain time. And I was talking to this person, this woman, I think outside, and I had left my diaper bag right there. And in the back of my mind, I think I knew it would be taken.

00;46;10;17 - 00;46;34;01

And then it was like I just immediately forgot it. It had my Social Security card, my money, this, my my daughter had a hat from my friend that had her name on it, like little sentimental things were all in there. And I walked to like the Dollar store because this person was saying like, Oh, they were hungry. So I’m like, Oh, I’ll go and get them a soda or whatever, the food.

00;46;34;07 - 00;46;47;19

And I came back and it was gone. But I didn’t even realize that it was gone. And there was actually a moment that was really scary to me that I’ve never talked about. We were, I was holding my daughter and we were about to leave. And this person, I don’t know if it was the same person and maybe they came back.

00;46;47;19 - 00;47;06;29

I’m not sure. I don’t really remember. I’m holding my baby and my husband is there and she they, they asked to hold my baby, and I would have let them. That’s the scary moment. That’s like, yes, I had good intentions. Yes, I was being a nice... Blah... that’s how your children get kidnapped.

00;47;06;29 - 00;47;08;00

Sophia Elizabeth

You can trust everyone [Yeah.] Everyone’s here to have, [Everyone’s here] to-

00;47;08;00 - 00;47;32;11

Yeah. So, that’s a really sc-... that I don’t know who that person was. They maybe they, that it was a different person. I don’t remember. But I have this memory of, I probably would have been like, You can hold my beautiful baby. That’s scary. That’s mania. That’s, that’s not understanding reality. That’s being out of touch with the reality that not everybody is good, bad things do happen.

00;47;32;11 - 00;47;34;11

Sophia Elizabeth

clearly risk analysis was not...

00;47;34;12 - 00;47;34;26

Not there.

00;47;35;05 - 00;47;36;21

Sophia Elizabeth

Functioning properly.

00;47;36;21 - 00;48;02;19

Not at all. No. So we ended up going back to my parents, eventually., I don’t know all the time, I just know from after Thanksgiving to I think it was December 22nd is when I went to the hospital. I was taken to the hospital. So between that time we had moved out of my parent’s house into a little studio apartment with my mother in law.

00;48;03;09 - 00;48;11;22

It was only a couple of days before my husband was drinking the night before, I had to wake up for work and be there by 5 a.m.. He wasn’t really awake.

00;48;11;22 - 00;48;13;18

Sophia Elizabeth

Oh yeah, you’re working at this time.

00;48;13;18 - 00;48;15;18

Yeah. I went to back to work after 8 weeks?

00;48;16;00 - 00;48;17;10

Sophia Elizabeth

And your work day starts at f- what time?

00;48;17;10 - 00;48;38;24

At five. [Okay,] So this was five a.m., and I didn’t have a car then, my car stopped working, so I had to, like, walk or share my husband’s truck, which wasn’t always working. So anyway, I wake up and he’s not getting up, so I am like, okay, well, I’m can’t leave my baby here if he’s passed out.

00;48;38;25 - 00;48;53;16

What am I going to do, is what’s going through my head.[mm-hm] Okay, once again, I don’t know reality. This is just what I’m thinking. And then my mother in law comes out, and was like, you leave that baby here. You can’t take that baby on a walk. It’s cold. And I was like, She’s bundled up, it’s fine. And I was really...

00;48;53;20 - 00;48;55;15

Sophia Elizabeth

You were thinking you’re doing the right, safe thing for your child.

00;48;55;15 - 00;49;13;08

Taking her with me to do a reset. Where, it’s not like I have to do customer service. This is just what was going through my head. She’d be safe with me, whatever. So I walk out the door. I maybe had to be there by six. I don’t know. Anyway, and. And she tells me, I’m going to call CPS on you now.

00;49;13;24 - 00;49;33;11

So then I no longer felt safe there. I was just like running away. Constantly running away. Then we stayed in a hotel. I didn’t feel safe at home. My husband was.... It just breaks my heart thinking about what the fuck he was going through. He didn’t have anywhere safe to go either. He went to his mom and they’ve been through a lot of shit together and he didn’t want to go there.

00;49;33;17 - 00;49;54;25

And he did. And I’m really glad that he had somebody otherwise, what would he do? Go to like a friend’s house? It was... His friends weren’t in the right place to have a baby over there, you know? He was just doing the fucking best he could. I really feel that. He, we had a lot of fights. We started staying in a hotel, and we had some money.

00;49;55;07 - 00;50;08;14

Like, not that much money, but enough for the hotel. And then I would like go shopping and buy, like, pretty things for, like, we were going to live in the hotel room. And. And then I, like, wanted to go, Oh, and then I was smoking a lot, too, and I wanted to go downtown and, like, have a drink.

00;50;09;05 - 00;50;22;03

And that’s when that kind of started. I would just like, because he would get really mad at me and, for wanting to go have a smoke, wanting to get out of there. What are you doing, it’s your baby? Why don’t you- I mean, how confusing is that? Like, why do you not want to be around her right now?

00;50;22;08 - 00;50;54;29

I was. I was with her while he was at work, I’m sure. Yeah. I can’t imagine this poor guy, what the fuck went through his head. You know, like, what happened to this person? And we were there for like a week. Then we went home, back to my parents, and I did not want to be there. So I told him one night I was going to go to my friend’s house in Sebastopol with my daughter, and I drove to Sebastopol then I decided to keep driving, and we went out to the beach, and I went to goat’s rock and it was dark and dark.

00;50;55;06 - 00;50;56;07

I don’t even know what time it was.

00;50;56;08 - 00;50;57;25

Sophia Elizabeth

That’s a dangerous beach to go down to too.

00;50;57;28 - 00;51;17;00

So it was closed. They, like, closed it. And I’m in this big truck. I’m not very comfortable driving in, and I’ve never told anybody this. I don’t know if I to want this to be heard. So, I also felt like really close with his father, who had died, like I knew that he was dead, but I felt like his energy was with me.

00;51;17;03 - 00;51;20;07

Sophia Elizabeth

I remember that. And you were driving. That was his truck, right? [Uh huh.]

00;51;20;13 - 00;51;39;27

And it was having legit issues, but I was just like, felt like his father was speaking through the vehicle in a way, not words, but energy. I felt very connected to him in a very strange way. So, we’re in the truck and then I’m starting to, like, hear voices because we’re stuck. I’m trying to pull out and we’re stuck in this ditch.

00;51;40;06 - 00;51;59;26

And I told myself, You’re not going to be the mom who is, kills your daughter and yourself going off a fucking- you know, you’re not doing this. This isn’t fucking happening. I don’t have a phone. I couldn’t find my phone for days. I thought my mom, like, took it to look through it. Who knows? It was just found when I got back out of the hospital, I didn’t have a phone.

00;51;59;26 - 00;52;19;20

They had, like, OnStar in his truck, but we didn’t pay for it. But I’m just all confusion. Pure confusion at that point. I hadn’t slept. I don’t even know. I have no... I did not sleep [How many days?] It was so bad. Like horrible. I was just, I was a literal, like, mess. Unstable. I had my daughter with me in a truck at a very dangerous place.

00;52;19;24 - 00;52;37;08

So, I’m hearing, like, what I thought were voices, like, outside the truck trying to help. I was just like, didn’t want to look out. I was scared that something, what if there is a bad person there, and my daughter starts crying. So I feed her, then all of a sudden, I get my I’m like, okay, well, we can’t be here now.

00;52;37;17 - 00;52;56;11

We have to go somehow. So I’m like, I take the truck and I like, hit it just enough. So we get out of this little ditch we were in and we’re good and we go, [Wow.] And then, I get, I, I thought I stopped in front of his mother’s place because I told him that day, like, I don’t want to go to my parent’s house.

00;52;56;11 - 00;53;15;20

I’m not going to be there. Like I. But I didn’t have a hotel room. I thought we could, like, communicate just by being connected. [Yeah,] My husband and I, you know, it’s really hard to talk about this right now...because it’s really scary to know, like, these, these like, things can play in my head, and it did.

00;53;16;23 - 00;53;17;04

Sophia Elizabeth

That this is possible.

00;53;17;04 - 00;53;18;03

Yeah.

00;53;18;28 - 00;53;29;12

Sophia Elizabeth

Because this is, what you’re explaining, is the postpartum psychotic break. [I mean it’s] that’s, that’s psychosis [It’s so scary... So] And you haven’t told me this before. You didn’t-

00;53;29;12 - 00;53;31;03

No, I haven’t told anybody.

00;53;31;03 - 00;53;39;17

Sophia Elizabeth

I didn’t know you were out at the beach. [Yeah,] and that’s scary. That’s scary whether or not you’re going through this in your mind or not, [yeah] if you’re alone out there in that situation.

00;53;39;17 - 00;53;49;01

I just knew. I felt like I wasn’t safe at home. I felt like he knew that, and that for some reason I don’t know why. I thought he’d be at his mom’s. I didn’t have a phone. I don’t know. I don’t know at that point.

00;53;49;07 - 00;53;52;17

Sophia Elizabeth

You said it, you said that you were running and you just didn’t, you didn’t have a safe place to go.

00;53;52;17 - 00;54;10;16

And by then, I was like, so exhausted, and I thought I parked out front of her house because I. Oh, and I was trying to find my other shoe. I didn’t have my fucking shoes and then I couldn’t find them. So I just said, Fuck it. And I got my daughter and I put her in a stroller with all her blankets and diaper bag.

00;54;11;11 - 00;54;44;12

And I walked from what I thought was her house, I left the truck with the keys in there. I was pissed. I fucking hated. I felt so scared, and confused and alone and scared at that- I hadn’t felt a lot of fear before then... but I didn’t like go up to her door. I just fuckin’ left it, I was like, fuck you. This is all you care about is your stuff, that’s just like this petty shit that was going through my head.

00;54;44;13 - 00;55;12;09

I don’t even. I actually. I’ve never asked where the car was. I have no idea how he got it, [[pause to catch breath]] Sorry [Don’t apologize]. So I walked over the overpass to the Target shopping center because I didn’t have a phone. I didn’t want to go to my parent’s house, which was actually closer. and I should have just done that. But I didn’t, and I don’t think I should have.

00;55;12;09 - 00;55;29;16

I think what I did ended up being for the best. So, it was like holiday times shops were open late. I was going to the job that I used to work at because I knew they would know me and would let me borrow a phone. There was this creepy guy like staring at me and I’m like yelling at him from afar, you know?

00;55;29;17 - 00;55;46;22

Like, what are you doing? Don’t yell at me, or don’t look at me like, you know, And then I get over there, they’re closed. So then there’s the place right next door. I start, like, knocking on the windows, and I’m just, like, waving. And I was like, can y-. I was like, baby, call. Like, I knew I needed to call the cops.

00;55;46;22 - 00;56;07;02

[Yeah,] I knew it. I didn’t. I didn’t know if I thought, I just knew I needed to get home and I was tired. I think that’s what it was. And I knew the police would be helpful. They’d help me. And these two girls come by in a car, and they’re like, Do you want us to take you home? and they were younger girls in their twenties.

00;56;07;12 - 00;56;29;05

And I was like, No, you don’t have a car seat for me, baby. Like, but thank you, you can just call the police. And like, three or four cops show up, and and eventually we get in the cop car. And by the way, there’s no seatbelt or baby place for my b- so she’s just on my lap and we, they drive us home and they knock on the door.

00;56;29;05 - 00;56;45;27

I feel like sick to my stomach, like I want to throw up. And my husband opens the door and he takes the baby and they handcuffed me, and I asked him to move the baby away. So. So, she wouldn’t see. I mean, she was like four months old or three months old, like she wasn’t-. But still.

00;56;46;13 - 00;56;48;25

Sophia Elizabeth

Just thinking about her, though.

00;56;48;25 - 00;56;58;21

Yeah. And, my husband says I refused to walk in the door. Um, I, yeah, I like, I just started walking away, like here, the baby is safe. Like, I’m going to go.

00;56;58;28 - 00;57;00;06

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s like you just turned yourself in.

00;57;00;06 - 00;57;03;06

Yeah, but it was good. I needed to.

00;57;04;01 - 00;57;07;05

I needed to. [You just-] Like, I called the cops on myself.

00;57;07;05 - 00;57;07;29

Sophia Elizabeth

Yeah, you did.

00;57;08;03 - 00;57;30;11

The police report doesn’t say that. It says I was, so, And I talked to my, my cousin, whose husband is a police officer, and she said people don’t always know what they’re doing. I really felt like I remembered what happened. I know I was talking a million miles a second and going off on like politics, and all this crazy shit, to the police officer on the way to the first, um, psych ward, where it’s like temporary.

00;57;31;05 - 00;57;35;24

Sophia Elizabeth

You just never stopped having her, at your- She was your prior-

00;57;35;25 - 00;57;36;23

I always loved her.

00;57;36;23 - 00;57;38;25

Sophia Elizabeth

She was your priority [Yeah,] the entire time.

00;57;38;25 - 00;57;44;13

Yeah, I. I didn’t feel a disconnect from her at all. I felt very connected to her. I loved her very much. I just...

00;57;44;24 - 00;57;49;07

Sophia Elizabeth

She wasn’t what you disassociated from, you dissociated from reality. [Yeah] Not her.

00;57;49;09 - 00;58;10;00

No, She was who I, yeah I needed to. And Oh, I remember. So, there was a blanket that one of my husband’s coworkers had hand crocheted. And when I took that walk, I like, ripped the top of it and put it around her to make like a poncho to make her warm. And the, the police officers were like, you know, and I was barefoot because I didn’t, couldn’t find my shoe and said, fuck it.

00;58;10;00 - 00;58;26;00

[Yeah] You know, it’s really dangerous to be walking barefoot, like there could be needles on the ground. And I was like, what? No? It’s fine, you know? And I did used to do that as a stupid, gross hippie teenager like, walk around [Yeah] but they were like, How is your baby? And I was like, feel her. She’s warm. Like, I wanted to make sure she was warm.

00;58;26;00 - 00;58;46;18

I had changed her diaper like, but still, it’s not. She was, she obviously, she shouldn’t have been with me alone, for sure. But, I got her home. We get in the police car and I slipped my handcuffs off. I thought it was like a joke. I thought, [What?] yeah, this poor police officer that had to drive me. I would not shut the fuck up.

00;58;46;18 - 00;58;48;29

I didn’t know where we were going. I was just like...

00;58;49;08 - 00;58;57;14

Sophia Elizabeth

I’d have a couple conversations with you during this all this time and I know you were definitely, [on one] it was amazing how many words you could fit within a breath.

00;58;57;14 - 00;59;15;20

Yeah. I think I spoke so much in those, like, real two months of mania. I didn’t speak for a year almost after that. [yeah] I really didn’t. It’s like I talked myself out. Yeah. So yeah, I, and he was like, oh, if you, he’s like, if you do that again, I’m going have to make them tighter. And I was like, Fine, you know? [What?]

00;59;16;00 - 00;59;30;24

Yeah, like my handcuffs. [It’s like hey, I called you guys] He didn’t know. He didn’t know. I get it. I know this is where they say mental health, blah, blah, blah. But who knows? What if I? I think police officers need to be there. Maybe along with a therapist in a psychiatric-.[There has to be a

00;59;30;24 - 00;59;33;02

Sophia Elizabeth

Nurturing factor there, There has to be some form of nurture....

00;59;33;02 - 00;59;50;03

But there have to also be a police officer, because I could have been violent, I could have hurt my baby. [yeah. yeah] You can’t just have these people that aren’t trained who just want to talk about shit. You have to have somebody [yeah, it’s definitely like a team] that might be able to pin me the fuck down. You need both! You need it all. [A team] So he took me and I didn’t.

00;59;50;03 - 01;00;07;11

I had like jewelry on, this beautiful brace my, my grandmother gave me. Actually, I wish I didn’t have it on. So, I’m sitting now, very not well, in this room, waiting room. They wanted to give me drugs. I did not want their drugs. I didn’t know where I was at. I kept thinking my, my husband would just, like, pick me up.

01;00;07;14 - 01;00;24;25

At a point, I thought like, oh, he’s going to come and get me, you know? And obviously he didn’t. He just went back to sleep. I guess. I took apart this bracelet. There’s a tic tac toe board and they didn’t give me anything to do. So I took apart my bracelet. I was like, going to play with my-.

01;00;24;27 - 01;00;43;00

And then they thought I was going to, like, cut myself. So they took all my jewelry, everything on me away. I screamed like, all night. Where is my husband? Where is he? Where? Like, I don’t know. Hours. And finally, they got this one woman then- Yeah, it was scary. There was, like, this big guy that, like, it looked like he wanted to, like, take me down like that worked there because I was screaming.

01;00;43;00 - 01;01;01;02

It was very scary and I was very confused. I didn’t know where I was at all. Like, I had no idea in the world where I was. I didn’t know if my family knew where it was. I, I don’t know. It was just so scary. I was like the most anxious I could even imagine feeling. And I’ve felt a lot of anxiety.

01;01;01;02 - 01;01;24;22

It was, it would like, took me over. So finally this woman, she’s like, I think if you take these, I’m a mom. [oh] She said,[my g-] Sorry, She said, I’m a mom. I think if you take these, it’s going to help you. I was like, okay. So, I did. And then finally I calmed the fuck down and Stopped fucking talking a million miles a second.

01;01;24;24 - 01;01;42;26

And I spent, I think, two nights and I still wasn’t sleeping all the way. They had rooms. It was scary there. I didn’t know these people, men and women in the same place. And I didn’t have my own room, you know, so I just. There was like, these couches and I just sat there for like one or two days just like waiting.

01;01;43;09 - 01;01;53;17

I didn’t know what was going on. And then they took me to the place in Marin. I stayed there for 14 days and that was over like, like.

01;01;54;12 - 01;01;56;27

My daughter’s first Christmas. I should really stop crying. This is [No] going to be annoying.

01;01;56;27 - 01;01;58;24

Sophia Elizabeth

No, it’s not.

01;01;59;13 - 01;02;13;09

Okay. I was not well in the hospital. My husband came to see me once and then we got in a fight like immediately. Like, wh- like they should have had a therapist there. I don’t know. It just was kind of a jacked up system I think.

01;02;13;09 - 01;02;22;04

Sophia Elizabeth

No, there was no- I mean, the fact that just one person said, I’m a mother, take this there, that needed to be ever present. There needed to be a nurturing, supportive factor

01;02;22;04 - 01;02;24;26

Yeah. [to mediate] I don’t know. I didn’t trust these people at all.

01;02;24;26 - 01;02;26;18

Sophia Elizabeth

Mediate You and your husband. To mediate-

01;02;26;21 - 01;02;42;15

I didn’t even trust my own family. I didn’t know who these fucking people were. I didn’t know where I was. They probably tried to tell me. I don’t know. You know, I’m not trying to say these people didn’t do their job correctly. I just don’t know. And it was so much anxiety and fear. That it overtook any reasonable. [Yeah.]

01;02;42;15 - 01;02;59;09

When my husband came, because it was so hectic, like between everywhere we were and we’re living. and with him and everything was- there was a moment and he said, like I always thought it’d be interesting to like, stay here in a place like this. And I was like, Yeah, it’s kind of a break. And he thought I meant a break from my daughter.

01;02;59;17 - 01;03;17;27

[Oh] Yeah, so he took that away, like, yeah, she just wants a fucking break, you know? That wasn’t good. My parents came to see me once. I kept talking about my dad and how awesome he was and funny. And then he came and he just cried immediately. Seeing me in there. And That was. That was, like dad, Like I always tell people how funny you are, you know, I was still very sick.

01;03;17;27 - 01;03;28;22

They had me on five or six different medications, doing their best they could. They didn’t, you know, you don’t know. That’s what’s fucked is like people don’t even know what the right. But everyone deals with medication differently.

01;03;28;22 - 01;03;32;09

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s like firefighters. You’re on fire. [Yeah,] And they’re trying to put out.

01;03;32;09 - 01;03;48;02

Yeah. Yeah, it’s. They’re just doing the best they possibly can. What- I called a nurse. This one nurse. I remember I called her Nurse Ratchet. She was a fucking bitch, but I’m sure I was so annoying. Don’t get me wrong, you know, And I would ask, like to pump. And they brought it to me like, twice a day.

01;03;48;29 - 01;03;52;04

That was it. And I had a young baby that was eating a lot more than that.

01;03;52;15 - 01;03;53;00

Sophia Elizabeth

It has to change. They have to change.

01;03;53;09 - 01;04;15;05

I hope it does [that] I wi-I wish I could have at least seen my baby. They brought her- They told me I could see my baby for half an hour, and they’re like observing me with my parents and my baby and then a therapist and I, I was still feeling after I came down from the fear, I was like, trying to act as normal as possible because I felt like, oh, if I’m normal, they’ll let me go.

01;04;15;20 - 01;04;27;04

And they kept telling me basically they would let me go, right? So I kept trying to like, I was like trying to find all these phone numbers and be busy. And because I’m sitting there, I’m a mom, I have nothing the fuck to do.

01;04;27;04 - 01;04;28;28

Sophia Elizabeth

Other than to try to get back to your child!

01;04;29;03 - 01;04;43;03

And I’m like, Oh, well, you know, credit cards need to be paid. It doesn’t matter right now. And I was like, Well, it kind of does. I have to pay my fucking credit card, you know, I have to let my boss know I’m stuck in a hospital and I can’t come to work. These are important- I get that it’s not as important, especially now looking back.

01;04;43;03 - 01;04;46;19

But in the moment, I’m like. Like. But these are things I have to be doing.

01;04;46;19 - 01;04;47;29

Sophia Elizabeth

You’re still juggling responsbilities. Yeah.

01;04;48;13 - 01;04;51;27

You know, I would ask how. How my daughter is doing. She’s fine! That’s all I got.

01;04;51;27 - 01;04;54;08

Sophia Elizabeth

You were still a mother through and through.

01;04;55;00 - 01;04;55;12

It was scary.

01;04;55;27 - 01;04;56;07

Sophia Elizabeth

You were still a mother

01;04;56;07 - 01;05;14;00

So scary. Like my brain is capable of doing that again, that it doesn’t have to be a one time thing. I could go through that again. But what’s so scary is, like, I have a four year old now, she wouldn’t know. And she would remember, and she would be like, What’s wrong with Mommy? And she- there’s another baby.

01;05;14;06 - 01;05;22;14

It’s just can’t happen. It can’t, like, it can’t happen. It’s a very frightening reality that I have to live with every day.

01;05;22;24 - 01;05;24;27

Sophia Elizabeth

[So-]What you do is you ensure your sleep.

01;05;25;09 - 01;05;51;17

I, I do that. I have both Seroquil and Lithium always in my house. It’s a danger, though, if you just like start taking meds, it could cause mania. So , I ju-- But I have it there and I would, I would talk to a doctor if I was feeling a certain way. My family’s on high alert. Um, I mean, it’s- there’s been at least three times since I’ve had my first daughter where I felt like this is- I’m not-, I’m getting to an unhealthy state. [You immediately get on it.] And that’s when I sleep.

01;05;51;27 - 01;06;22;04

Yeah. Either irritable, little things stress me out when they wouldn’t. And just when I’m different, I’m feeling different from my normal. [Mm-hm]. You know, I have a normal state and when I’m feeling wigged out either way, depressed, whatever, is when I check in with myself, and the doctors know and meh- but then I have doctors that say, you won’t know if you’re manic, and I’m like, if I feel like I’m really happy, if I feel like I’m on ecstasy and I’m not taking ecstasy, I think I would know.

01;06;22;10 - 01;06;39;26

But I don’t know. That’s the scary thing. I mean, all these people are basically telling me not to trust myself. I would honestly give birth without drugs...I don’t know how many times over to never go through that again. Probably just consecutively until I died. I never- that’s how much I do not ever want to experience that again.

01;06;40;16 - 01;07;03;18

It’s not okay. It’s not healthy, it’s not pleasant. It’s scary. It ruins your life. It ruins the people around you, your children, your loved ones. I mean, I got out of the hospital. I wasn’t in better. The medication made me worse, that they put me on. I’m really been trying to remember the name of it. They officially have me as being allergic to it, so it made me like more manic.

01;07;03;18 - 01;07;21;17

Plus they gave me gabapentin, which, that’s when I started seeing pretty bubbles in front of my eyes. They gave me Ativan and Benadryl, and they gave me this other one because I was still trying to breastfeed. So they were trying to help me. Lithium, a lot go through the breast milk, so they didn’t want to give me that.

01;07;22;17 - 01;07;40;16

But then they gave me something, and I’ll try to find it and tell you and you can- But I basically had like a restless body. I couldn’t stop moving, if I stopped moving my legs just like itched, and like, It’s like I had to constantly move. And it was like a different state of mania. I th- you know, I wasn’t like

01;07;40;16 - 01;07;41;20

Sophia Elizabeth

A more physiological one?

01;07;41;21 - 01;07;59;07

Yes, and it was terrible. And it got to the point where I was just like, I can’t take this. But either way, by the time I did get home from the hospital, my sister had flown out and that was nice. I was still not well. I was told my mom didn’t want me home until I was better, and I don’t blame her.

01;07;59;07 - 01;08;19;13

But, I mean, what the fuck does that mean, you know, I didn’t- I still didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel loved. I felt abandoned. I felt angry that I only saw my daughter once for 40 minutes in two weeks when I would call and people didn’t want to answer my phone calls, And I’m not blaming anybody for how they reacted to me.

01;08;21;00 - 01;08;23;04

Sophia Elizabeth

[I’m not] That doesn’t mean it didn’t impact you.

01;08;23;04 - 01;08;42;02

No, I don’t because I wasn’t well, and it’s hard to fucking deal with people that aren’t well, it’s so hard. My heart goes out to all of them dealing with me. It’s not easy. And I’m Sorry, But it’s like, that doesn’t also mean anything because then people are like, Oh, well, it wasn’t you. It’s like. But it fucking was.

01;08;42;27 - 01;09;15;13

It was me. It was my words, and my brain, and my body, and my hands, and my feet walking away from everybody. It was me. So, I am sorry. I got home. They put me on this medication, like I said, it didn’t make me better. My mom and my husband were not doing well. He told me he was going to go stay with his mom, with my daughter, and I obviously wouldn’t, couldn’t go there and.

01;09;15;13 - 01;09;37;00

Then I told my mom and she’s like, Well, if that’s it, then. And he said, he was going to go away for two weeks. And I had just been away from my daughter. And, and I understood, I actually helped him pack. I made sure she had her bath soap and her diapers, and her clothes, because I understood. It’s like, I don’t want to be here either.

01;09;37;00 - 01;09;45;21

And then it hit me when they left because I was in the house, like I had been away in the hospital. But it was in the house in the room where, you know, where I grew up in.

01;09;47;26 - 01;10;08;28

But it was like the fucking silence and emptiness, like it just filled in and, my mom was like, just tell him, like, he can’t come back. And I was so mad at him. I was like, Sure, yeah. He and then we, we weren’t together, but then I, I still wasn’t well, then I was very lonely. And then I started drinking, for sure.

01;10;09;14 - 01;10;24;28

When she wasn’t with me, it would be days where I woulnd’t see her. I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to do. I felt like I had to get a job. All of a sudden, CPS was in my life, I had to go to like CPS mandated therapy. I wasn’t allowed to be alone in the same room with my daughter, at all.

01;10;25;13 - 01;10;45;07

I wasn’t allowed to be alone with her. Then my parents talked to CPS because they wouldn’t. They, I mean, they were doing what was right. You don’t want CPS to show up when you’re doing something you’re not supposed to be doing. [Yeah] But it hurt me that they needed permission to let me be alone in the room with my daughter. [Of course]

01;10;45;07 - 01;11;08;16

So they bought a video monitor, and set it up, and then, like had it on and were like, well, the video part’s not on. I was just like, watched. I just felt so incompetent, you know, and then I didn’t have her, so I’d go down, and I would start, and I had drinks and then I met friends which are not fucking friends.

01;11;09;09 - 01;11;15;11

They’re just people to talk to. And I would like text them like all day. I would just-

01;11;15;18 - 01;11;16;04

Sophia Elizabeth

Fill the time [Random, random people]

01;11;16;04 - 01;11;46;02

[They were just time-fillers] Just random people, like that were friends, quote unquote. I was so lonely. I don’t know. I was a fucking mess. I was still sick, I was still manic. I was like- And that’s embarrassing. I have to see these people sometimes. And I have to sit with this, them knowing, this insane person, and then seeing me like as a mother with my children and my husband, like walking down the street and they’re like, Oh, that bitch is crazy.

01;11;46;02 - 01;12;09;06

And I’d be like, You’re right. And I want- You think I don’t want to go up to these people and explain to them? [Explain, yeah] But you know what? I don’t get that, and I have to be okay with it. That’s where I think that started in me is- I mean, Facebook, six Facebooks, strangers, friends, friends of friends, like, saw me write the craziest things, like, and I just have to be-

01;12;09;24 - 01;12;12;23

Sophia Elizabeth

There’s only so much to the point where you’re like, how can you care anymore? [What are you doing to do?]

01;12;13;09 - 01;12;31;25

I have to care about my kid. I have to care about my family. I know I have to live in fucking horrible embarrassment all the time. And then there’s a point where it’s so much from all sides that you, it’s like, ehh, Fuck it. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do about all that. They’re not wrong about, you know, thinking what they think.

01;12;31;25 - 01;12;49;12

So, I don’t know, I just have to do me, you know, I had to go to that therapist every week and I hated it. I dreaded it, I- because if, her, my CPS lady would talk to her. So if I said something wrong to her, if I was feeling too sad or too whatever, then she would tell it- Well, it’s not a very good system.

01;12;49;12 - 01;12;57;06

If you want a mother to be able to be honest with [Yeah] how she’s feeling.I was so worried about what to say. It wasn’t helpful.

01;12;57;06 - 01;13;08;28

Sophia Elizabeth

It doesn’t make you feel more secure. It doesn’t make you feel safe, doesn’t make you feel supportive or loved? It just makes you feel observed. A spectacle. Questioned. Threatened. Always on the, uh, Am I doing this right?

01;13;08;28 - 01;13;30;18

Yeah. It took me like a long time to trust myself in a lot of ways as a mother, just in general. Eventually, my parents left on a vacation and my husband- ex at the time- he came over, um, I had to have my aunts come and stay with me so I could see my baby because I couldn’t be alone with her.

01;13;30;18 - 01;13;49;11

And that was just like that- That’s really when I started not being able to speak very much. So the idea of people coming into the house, me having to talk to them made me feel sick to my stomach. I felt sick. My husband came over and he like, spent the night for for me to be with her. And then he let me use his truck because I did get a job, which was stupid.

01;13;49;25 - 01;13;54;26

I felt like if I wasn’t working, that I wasn’t worthy because I didn’t have my kid half the time.

01;13;55;05 - 01;14;00;10

Sophia Elizabeth

[Eventually] But then this all stems from lacking sleep and here you are [yeah] getting to a job by 4 a.m.

01;14;00;13 - 01;14;24;12

Yeah. It was so stupid. It was dumb. It was just a lot of- then, Then, like, it’s almost the way I describe it, is it’s such a high, mania is such a high, or it was for me, that I basically, eventually came down [yeah] and I came down hard [crashed] and I wanted to die. I wanted to not be alive anymore. I didn’t have suicidal- like, how I was going to do it.

01;14;24;18 - 01;14;52;20

I just wanted to not be alive anymore. I just didn’t want to be alive, like, ever again. But, I had my daughter. And, if I didn’t have my daughter, and if I couldn’t have my daughter, I don’t think I would be alive. Honestly, I never have been a person to imagine ways to die or kill myself. I just think if I wasn’t allowed to see her and that darkness set in, finally, I just would have figured out a way.

01;14;52;20 - 01;15;12;16

I don’t know. I just think it would have been something I couldn’t deal with and, you know, life is about perspective and just giving shit time. You just have to give it time because what you’re experiencing now isn’t necessarily what will be in a year from now, but it’s so hard when you’re so deep [When you’re in it] in that pain. It’s like you’re gonna to feel that pain forever.

01;15;12;16 - 01;15;33;29

But you’re not. You’re really not. But it takes a long time and a lot of years to understand that what you’re feeling now, it’s not going to be what you’re feeling. And it might take a really long time, but you just have to keep living. You just have to keep fucking waking up and doing menial tasks, taking a shower and making food and doing little things and then eventually it gets better.

01;15;33;29 - 01;15;51;22

It took me a long time. I had CPS in my life until my daughter was one. I got another job by then. Every- If I didn’t have headphones in at my job, just everything I said and did, and every- it would just like haunt me. And I was haunted. Haunted. I’m still haunted, but it’s not how it was. And I thought I would be haunted forever.

01;15;52;05 - 01;16;12;06

Eventually my husband and I got back together. He was able to- no, I don’t think forgive. I mean, I think now he has, but God damn, it’s hard. How do you forgive what people say? I’m sure, I said harsh things to him. I don’t really remember, but I’m sure that it got to a point. You know, you don’t sleep and then you’re fighting.

01;16;12;06 - 01;16;14;20

Who knows what the horrible things that came out of my mouth?

01;16;15;06 - 01;16;16;07

Sophia Elizabeth

Mutually, though.

01;16;16;08 - 01;16;18;07

But, I, I don’t blame him .

01;16;18;07 - 01;16;20;12

Sophia Elizabeth

Either parties can can definitely. [Yeah.]

01;16;21;07 - 01;16;49;26

I don’t blame him. He saw a version of me that was scary and not well. So my message, I guess, to potential mothers, to mothers, to any, you know, just get some fucking sleep, Number one! Number one, you have to sleep. If you don’t, you might not go even close to- you 99.9% won’t go through anything I went through.

01;16;50;10 - 01;17;11;15

But you won’t have the same experiences if you were getting good sleep. You won’t be able to appreciate things the same way You know, you’re gonna be negative. You can get depressed. You can also feel too good, which could lead to bad things too. If you notice people in your life that are just different when they get pregnant, like they need help, they’re going to probably need help.

01;17;11;15 - 01;17;29;15

And you shouldn’t abandon them, no matter what the fuck they say to you. And I don’t think we should. I think we need to be really careful calling mothers bad moms, crazy moms that don’t want to be around their kids. I didn’t experience that, but I just- I don’t think that’s normal, and I don’t think they’re bad. I think they need help.

01;17;29;16 - 01;17;58;10

[Yeah.] And I hope they get it. I hope my cousin gets it. Yeah, that’s me. That’s my birth story. That’s my, I would say After Birth Story. My, my, I- I’m, my daughter. My baby’s almost a year. My second, and I was on high alert. Everybody’s been on high alert. She’s doing amazing. My second birth story was like rapid birth, rapid labor.

01;17;58;10 - 01;18;13;01

I wanted drugs and they got IV in, and then they said, Oh, it’s too late. You can’t have any. They gave me nitrous. I put it on my face and it was like this tiny mask, and I was like, Fuck that, I don’t want it. I threw it. And then I had my baby.

01;18;13;01 - 01;18;21;18

Sophia Elizabeth

You were on a real high alert pregnancy, leading up to this, getting yourself ready, which is not a bad thing.

01;18;21;18 - 01;18;22;28

No. No [You] I.

01;18;23;08 - 01;18;28;01

Sophia Elizabeth

Did everything in your power to ensure that that could never possibly happen. Not even get close to it.

01;18;28;06 - 01;18;35;03

Yeah, I hope not. I pray. I’m, I just don’t like saying ever. [Yeah] I feel like it made me think. Never makes things happen.

01;18;35;03 - 01;18;36;04

Sophia Elizabeth

I understand that.

01;18;36;09 - 01;18;39;16

But, it was a hell of a ride. And you know-

01;18;39;22 - 01;18;42;29

Sophia Elizabeth

But you also conquered it. You are the mother of two beautiful girls.

01;18;42;29 - 01;18;45;04

They’re amazing. I love being a mom. [And.]

01;18;45;04 - 01;18;45;23

Sophia Elizabeth

You’re amazing!

01;18;45;23 - 01;19;07;18

Thank you. [You are.] It’s my. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done is be a mom. I’ve done things. I’ve had fun. I’ve partied, I’ve- I don’t know. Nothing comes close to being a mom. And just like watching them, watching them, like, [yeah] figure shit out is really cool, and laughing together.

01;19;07;18 - 01;19;12;18

Sophia Elizabeth

Uh, figure their sleep out and our role in helping them sleep, if we get back to the topic of sleep. [yeah] Good Lord.

01;19;12;18 - 01;19;20;17

I’m not good at it- That’s my least favorite thing, actually, as a mom, is getting my kids to sleep [Me too.] Yeah? [Me too] Because you’re, like, really good at it.

01;19;20;17 - 01;19;42;19

Sophia Elizabeth

I think I’ve maybe figured it out this time around because of how, like, difficult it was with my first. Yeah. Not just getting him to sleep, but how difficult it was for me to regulate my emotions around him sleeping. [Oh my god, it’s so hard] My need to, like, accomplish something, like if he fell asleep, I did something right. If he didn’t, I did something wrong. [oh, connecting them]

01;19;42;19 - 01;19;54;17

Sophia Elizabeth

And how that could translate [together]. Yeah, it was just it was. It was all like, personal. It was some weird personal thing. And when I finally decided to give up on naps, it was so glorious.

01;19;54;17 - 01;19;56;00

Oh, give up on naps, moms.

01;19;56;00 - 01;19;56;19

Sophia Elizabeth

He was like two and a half.

01;19;56;26 - 01;19;57;19

Give up on naps

01;19;57;20 - 01;20;13;24

Sophia Elizabeth

Two and a half and it was [Yeah,] like I just got back a level of sanity of just caring way too much. And now with my second, he sleeps in the car seat. He sleeps in the light room, he sleeps without the noise machine, he sleeps on his own. I watched him just, like, bluh-bluh-bluh, flutter into sleep, and-

01;20;13;24 - 01;20;32;13

Ah, that’s so nice. I, I’m struggling already with my baby, like, taking naps. But today it took about 10 minutes. The other day, it took half an hour. But she’s- the thing is, is when it takes you more time to get them down versus them napping. Right? [Yes!] So it would take 45 minutes to get her down and she sleep for 20. Finally, I was like, eh, not worth it.

01;20;32;13 - 01;20;43;14

Sophia Elizabeth

Not worth it! [It’s not.] And that’s where it got when I decided to No more do naps. I said, if I’m spending this much time and then I’m also getting angry, and then I’m also getting mad at him for not napping. And I’m mad at myself for not.

01;20;43;26 - 01;20;44;25

For being mad.

01;20;45;14 - 01;20;49;01

Sophia Elizabeth

And it’s like, this is Just how could this possibly be worth it?

01;20;49;01 - 01;20;50;04

Yeah, Yeah.

01;20;50;12 - 01;21;12;24

Sophia Elizabeth

I love you. I am, um, processing all of that. I know you are too, but being so close to you and your friend through all of that, and witnessing a lot of it from my own point of view, going, going to the motel and hanging out with you with you in that little corridor, and doing a lot of listening and having a lot of my own kind of confusion on what I could do, what could I do for her?

01;21;12;24 - 01;21;49;01

Sophia Elizabeth

What can I do for my friend and this beautiful mother, who, from the beginning of when you started to show symptoms, through and through, I only ever saw a die hard mom who was going through psychosis. I never saw someone who wasn’t a mother, who didn’t put her children first. And that’s what I just even was what you reiterated to me and telling me, de- details that I didn’t know, is that you just trudged through some fucking hell and still was like, dial nine one one for my daughter, you know, like you were still just, couldn’t let go of that.

01;21;49;01 - 01;22;09;20

Sophia Elizabeth

You wouldn’t let go of that. And that’s that light. That’s that maternal light that is you. You are mom. And this is this is your birth story. And part of this is owning it. And yea, I am like, I’m really grateful that you’re kind of entrusting my ears to take that because this is a big process for you to own it.

01;22;10;08 - 01;22;31;11

I mean, like, it’s something that’s been so shameful and difficult and embarrassing all the bad emotions in one and then, yeah, hearing you tell yours and I didn’t really know how bad yours was. I really did not know until I heard your birth stories. And then you and your husband talk about it.

01;22;31;11 - 01;22;38;14

Sophia Elizabeth

I don’t think I knew. [I mean] you know, I don’t think women actually get to wrap their head around what they go through.

01;22;38;14 - 01;22;38;25

Yeah.

01;22;39;09 - 01;22;47;15

Sophia Elizabeth

I don’t. I think you jump right into. You’re not really sleeping and now take care of this baby and you chose this. Right? You wanted this. Okay. Don’t complain. [Yeah.]

01;22;49;17 - 01;23;04;24

Sophia Elizabeth

And it’s like, well, I’m not complaining, but that happened, right? Did that just happen? And then when the trauma starts to kind of tumbleweed and pick up on itself and become more and more, and in your case, become- a traumatic nightmare for a mother. [Yeah.] I mean.

01;23;04;24 - 01;23;29;26

I, I, I wanted to talk about it because I want to talk about it for myself to get it off my chest and for other mothers and women and people and for my daughters, too. Because if something happened and I wasn’t around when they were older and when they had babies, which please, let me, if that’s what they want, just let me be around for that.

01;23;30;12 - 01;23;51;05

But I mean, this is a potential genetic thing. I want them to know, they might hear a lot of stories. I have people- my mother in law says things about me being crazy and around my stepson and probably my daughter. And she’s not wrong, but it’s not appropriate. It’s not okay to talk about it in that way without the person there.

01;23;51;05 - 01;24;06;29

[It’s your firsthand experience.] So I wanted, I wanted somebody to hear. People definitely have their own experiences with me and they can talk about it. But I want, I wanted there to be some record of at least my, what I went through for my kids to hear one day, [Yeah. Absolutely] So Thank you, and I love you. And thank you for doing this. [It matters]

01;24;06;29 - 01;24;34;11

Sophia Elizabeth

It deserves space to be had, so it can also leave your present moment because it is in the past. It’s not your present moment. It doesn’t define your present moment. And if anything, um, what you’re doing with your story is repurposing a truly, um, unfathomable amount of pain that you took on and you’re repurposing it so that maybe someone else can just like, not.

01;24;34;12 - 01;24;36;03

Yeah. That would be better if people didn’t have to go through that.

01;24;36;03 - 01;24;57;09

Sophia Elizabeth

You know? Because all this comes down to is just like, I didn’t know, I didn’t know. And if, I hear a lot of mom just say, I didn’t know that existed. I didn’t know that term. I know that could happen. I didn’t know. And these are people, pregnant women. Pregnant women want to know! We’re like, give me every goddamn book you can possibly put in my hands.

01;24;57;09 - 01;25;10;13

Sophia Elizabeth

My brain needs to suck this up. I- because you’re going into the unknown. And if trauma can have purpose in maybe preventing that for someone else, then [I’m] just.

01;25;11;02 - 01;25;23;01

Because I’m okay now, I’m happy too. I’m happy to do it. I’m happy to have done it. It’s in the past. If I could help anybody not go through it or go through it less or stop the madness sooner.

01;25;23;08 - 01;25;25;10

Sophia Elizabeth

Or have already gone through it themselves.

01;25;25;11 - 01;25;26;25

And know it’s not just them.

01;25;27;05 - 01;25;29;05

Sophia Elizabeth

Yeah! You put into words what I went through.

01;25;29;09 - 01;25;45;16

And you’re not a bad mom. And if you don’t have your kids and you want to be around your children, then I want you to be around your [Yes!] children. And You can. You just have to work really fucking hard. [Yeah, because you are not a bad mom.] Thank you. You are not a bad mom either, [Thank you] I know we need to hear that from each other sometimes [God, dang it, yeah]

01;25;45;17 - 01;26;05;20

Sophia Elizabeth

And that’s the thing with sleep. When I lack sleep. When we lack sleep, I feel like a worse mom. [Yeah] It’s hard. You need a level of patience that comes from an amount of sleep you don’t get. And it’s sort of this twisted catch 22. Then how are we supposed to do it then?

01;26;06;08 - 01;26;12;17

Get sleep, bitches. That’s really what it comes down to.

01;26;12;17 - 01;26;41;03

Sophia Elizabeth

The postpartum period or the first few months following childbirth can be a tumultuous time of healing and change. A new mother is often juggling several emotional and physical challenges all at once, such as healing from a birth injury, recovering from major surgery, riding hormonal waves, breastfeeding around the clock, rocking a colicky baby, managing the needs of multiple children, a partner, a home, finances, a profession, let alone her own hygiene.

01;26;41;19 - 01;27;12;18

Sophia Elizabeth

It’s a period that ought to be nurtured and honored. And yet too many women are going through it mentally ill, improperly supported, and completely sleep deprived. And those who do require medical intervention are more often than not further traumatized by the process, primarily through separating a mother from her newborn baby during her postpartum crisis. In America, postpartum depression affects about one in seven women. Postpartum psychosis, however, is a psychiatric emergency that is far more rare.

01;27;12;28 - 01;27;43;17

Sophia Elizabeth

It affects between 320 and 9400 births each year, or about one in five hundred mothers. Risk factors include a history of mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, hormonal changes, and sleep deprivation. Symptoms may appear moments to months after giving birth. These include a disrupted sense of reality, mood shifts and mania, loss of inhibitions, restlessness and insomnia, confusion, paranoia, fear, and a general acting out of character.

01;27;44;01 - 01;28;06;21

Sophia Elizabeth

People who are experiencing postpartum psychosis are at a much higher risk of harming themselves, dying by suicide or harming their children. So it is extremely important to seek out immediate medical attention if someone you know is exhibiting the signs of postpartum psychosis. People with PPP can’t recognize or understand their symptoms. So in order to help them, you must stay calm.

01;28;07;00 - 01;28;29;25

Sophia Elizabeth

Don’t judge or argue with them, don’t leave them unsupervised, and get them emergency help, because with treatment, postpartum psychosis is reversible. And with treatment, many women have more children in the future without it re-occurring. The ideal form of treatment for a mother with postpartum psychosis is in a specialized psychiatric unit called an MBU, or a mother and baby unit.

01;28;30;09 - 01;28;55;05

Sophia Elizabeth

But these are not widely available nor commonplace. So general psychiatric wards, ones in which the baby will not be permitted, are usually where mothers with PPP end up receiving their treatment, an unfortunate but often necessary route in most urgent circumstances. That is why it is so important for mothers, like J, to tell their stories and shine a spotlight on the need for more support and specialized postpartum care.

01;28;56;00 - 01;29;13;01

Sophia Elizabeth

When we share our stories, we connect our experiences and inspire change. I am your host, Sophia Elizabeth. See you next time on Mother Crow Connection.

For more Mother Crow, please visit Mother Crow Poetry dot com.

MotherCrowPoetry.com

For more information on Postpartum Psychosis:
—> https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/post-partum-psychosis/
—> https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24152-postpartum-psychosis
For more information on the need for MBUs, or Mother & Baby Units, in postpartum psychiatric care:
—> https://www.app-network.org/what-is-pp/getting-help/mbus/#:~:text=What%20is%20a%20Mother%20and,care%20and%20treatment%20they%20need.
—> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9567947/

***People experiencing postpartum psychosis are at a much higher risk of harming themselves, dying by suicide, or harming their own children. People with PPP can’t recognize or understand their own symptoms, so in order to help them, you must stay calm, don’t judge or argue with them, don’t leave them unsupervised, and get them medical attention ASAP. If someone you know is exhibiting the signs of postpartum psychosis, it is extremely important to immediately seek emergency services. With treatment, postpartum psychosis is reversible, and with treatment, many women have more children in the future without it re-occurring. The ideal form of treatment for a mother with postpartum psychosis is in a specialized psychiatric unit called an MBU, or a mother and baby unit. However, MBUs are not widely available nor commonplace, so general psychiatric wards - or ones in which the baby will not be permitted- are usually where mothers with PPP end up receiving their treatment, an unfortunate but often necessary route in most urgent circumstances. That is why it is so important for mothers, like J, to tell their stories and shine a spotlight on the need for more specialized support in postpartum psychiatric care.

Discussion about this podcast

Mother Crow

Poetry, Art, & Storytelling for Mental Health & Motherhood

www.mothercrowpoetry.com

"The mediums are mixed and the style of writing is diverse- spanning from incoherent and bizarre to sharp and polished- highlighting themes of mental illness and wellness from childhood to motherhood, including anxiety, trauma, death, grief, anger, guilt, panic, addiction, obsession, insomnia, therapy, birth, acceptance, forgiveness, and healing."

Mother Crow Connection features conversations Re: Mother Crow with writers, artists, healers, thinkers, and mothers, as well as poems and stories from Mother Crow listeners.

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