Kelly's blog

What is it with the tone of a voice that individually wraps words in emotion? Let me explain. Today I was doing bill pay while my husband was breathing over my shoulder. And since I don't do it exactly the way he pays a bill, he says, "Why would do it that way?"

Now, I know you think this sounds like an innocent question, but trust me, it's not. It was the tone that sacrificed the innocence of the question. It became an accusation with just a slight variation on his voice and where the emphasis lies.

If you've ever wondered what postpartum OCD feels like, here it is. Melissa McGarry does an amazing job articulating the experience. I honor her strenth and courage for breaking the silence barrier!

http://drshosh.com/media/video-media/i-saw-myself-hurt-my-baby/

Be well!

My head is a crowded house lately. It's Christmas and I need to get my shit together, but can't seem to accomplish anything. I'm a gerbil on a wheel.

Last week I needed to send Christmas cards, balance my bank account (which is on cardiac arrest), and clean the house. Instead, I went down to the basement and drew three huge pictures on the brick wall. We host a New Year's Eve party every year and I thought it would look cool. It does look cool, but what the hell was I doing playing with chalk when I have adult responsibilities?

I'm not sure if it's the long Thanksgiving weekend-with-wine or what, but I'm going to compare the postpartum experience to a drink. This may be wrong and offensive, but I'm going with it. I'm calling it "The Postparty".

My story changed. I was convinced I had postpartum psychosis, but two therapists on the PSI board visited the site and read my story. Independently, they both reached out to say, "Kelly, from what I've read, it appears your experience was more OCD and not psychotic. The difference being, you were aware and scared of your thoughts. You knew they were wrong. Someone with psychosis wouldn't know they were wrong."

Keep in mind, they were not diagnosing me in any way, shape or form. Rather, they invited me to take a look at symptoms of OCD to see if that fit well with my personal exprience.

I opened Parker's bedroom door to smell that "golfish death" odor hanging in the air. But here's the tricky part: Daffodil isn't dead yet. She's laying on the top of the water, slowly gasping.

In one hour, from 4:00 to 5:00, on the afternoon of March 2, 2009 flipped my life over. I lost my position at the advertising agency, a place I worked for twelve years. I'd been working since I was 15. I'd never been without a job since McDonalds in 1985. I love working. I like the structure and rules and work gave that to me. Now there was no structure, no rules, no expectations. I was floating without an anchor, totally shocked. I was lost.

For eight years I've been hanging around campfires telling my story about how I survived postpartum psychosis. I am woman! Hear me ROAR!

Only now I'm realizing two things:
A). I'm actually not able to diagnose myself.
B). It appears I had a big scoop of postpartum OCD, drizzled with some depression and a possible sprinkle of psychotic tendency. Apparently, I'm comparing myself to a pospartum sundae for some reason.

I was running errands with my daughters, ages nine and seven, this week. I gave them gum to keep them preoccupied so they wouldn't realize we had three more stops to make before going home. I looked in the rearview mirror ten minutes later to see them not chewing gum. I asked, "Did you swallow your gum?"
The both looked at each other in a conspiracy, like, "Should we tell her?"

I started getting alarmed. Was it in their hair? Did they throw it out the window at the police car next to us at the red light? Was it on the window? Were they choking on it? Where did the fucking gum go??

I'm the happiest person I know. I'm a radical optimist, lover of life. Even road-ragers. I love them too. So when postpartum psychosis hit me after my daughter's first birthday, I fell very far from my "happy tree".