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Do you want the truth?
Welcome to Do You Want The Truth? where we dive deep into the real raw stories from parents in the trenches of parenthood.
Season 2 is brought to you by Sam Strom and Freelance Journalist Zara Hanawalt, along with guest co-hosts such as Jaime Fisher.
Season 1 is brought to you by Paige Connell & Sam Strom. They bring you candid conversations with parents who share their experiences of parenthood and what they wish they knew before having kids. You'll hear the real stories. The stories that are typically reserved for best friends. The stories with TMI. We believe in the power of truth telling because when someone asks, do you want the truth? We always say yes. Join us as we explore the highs and lows and everything in between so you can feel less alone on your journey.
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Do you want the truth?
The Truth About: Postpartum Psychosis with @ayanagabriellelage
After giving birth to her daughter, Ayana Lage felt euphoric—until everything unraveled. Ten days postpartum, she was hospitalized with postpartum psychosis, experiencing delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations. In this unfiltered conversation, Ayana joins us to share what really happened, how she got help, and why she’s choosing to speak out.
We talk about the terrifying reality of postpartum psychosis, the cultural stigma that surrounds maternal mental health, and the systems that fail too many moms. Ayana opens up about being a Black woman navigating psychiatric care, how her husband and family carried her through, and what she did differently with her second baby to protect her mental health.
If you're a parent, if you've ever had scary thoughts after giving birth, or if you want to know what real support looks like—this episode is for you.
In this episode, we discuss:
What postpartum psychosis really looks like and why it’s often missed
How Ayana knew something was wrong—even as everyone else dismissed it
Why she felt safer in the hospital than at home
The truth about intrusive thoughts, rage, and the postpartum spectrum
Cultural and racial stigma around mental health for Black mothers
What Ayana did differently after her second baby to safeguard her mental health
How postpartum care needs a serious overhaul
Resources
Pre-order Ayana's Book
Follow Ayana on Instagram
Ayana’s personal essay in Cosmopolitan: "I Had Postpartum Psychosis and Didn’t Know What Was Real"
Postpartum Support International
The Blue Dot Project
National Maternal Mental Health Hotline (1-833-9-HELP4MOMS)
Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com
Connect with Sam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Connect with Zara:
Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@zarahanawalt
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/zarahanawalt/
What happens when the happiest time of your life turns into a nightmare that no one has prepared you for? We've seen about it in the news, we've heard about it through the grapevine, but you may not have ever heard it directly from somebody's mouth who's actually gone through it. So this week we're joined by writer, content creator and mother of two, ayanna Lage, who opens up about surviving postpartum psychosis, which is a rare and life-threatening mental health condition, and it struck her just weeks after the birth of her daughter. Ayanna tells the unfiltered truth about losing touch with reality and the shame that followed, and how she rebuilt her life through community honesty, therapy and even went on to have a second child. If you or someone you love is struggling after birth, know you're not alone. Support resources are linked in our show notes. Her debut book is coming out soon, but consider this kind of an appetizer. We hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. We're here today for a really exciting episode with Ayaan Khalej. She is a freelance writer, a content creator and a mom of two, and we are really interested today in talking to her about her experience with postpartum psychosis. She's been incredibly open and incredibly brave about talking about what she experienced after giving birth, so we are just so excited to talk to you today. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited. It's great to meet you. Can you tell us a little bit about postpartum psychosis? What is that? We hear a lot of things in the news, but I don't know if there's a lot of misinformation out there. But what is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So postpartum psychosis I mean I'll add a disclaimer that I'd encourage anyone to like look it up themselves, because I'm no expert. You know I lived it but I'm no expert but it's a condition characterized by delusions, hallucinations, basically a break from reality, what you think of when you hear the word psychosis. That affects between one and two out of a thousand women who give birth. So yeah, it doesn't happen super frequently. I'd never really heard of it outside of the terrible tragic stories you hear about women who have a break from reality and hurt or kill their children. So I knew of it in that context, but not as anything that would ever happen to me. Can you take us back a bit, because I know that when I read your story I know you mentioned I knew of it in that context, but not as anything that would ever happen to me.
Speaker 2:Can you take us back a bit, Because I know that when I read your story I know you mentioned having a history of mental health conditions. Can you tell us a little bit about kind of how you prepared yourself to become a mom, how you prepared yourself for pregnancy and postpartum, knowing how vulnerable you are mentally in those periods?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had a long history of depression and anxiety before getting pregnant. So one of the big choices that I made was to stay on an antidepressant throughout pregnancy and I was just very, I felt like I was very on top of things. I was very aware of postpartum depression, aware of the symptoms, of the risk factors, of the potential for me, so that throughout pregnancy was something that I felt very on top of. I had a therapist, I had a psychiatrist, I had an amazing family, an amazing support system, and so I felt very prepared for whatever was going to come my way.
Speaker 2:Did you always know that you wanted children? Was it something that you thought of for a long time before you decided to have your first Kind?
Speaker 3:of. I didn't like grow up so much like thinking okay, one day, when I'm a mom which I know a lot of people do I knew like innately that like eventually, one day, this will be what I want to do. So I had a miscarriage before I had my daughter. So I had a miscarriage before I had my daughter. And so I got pregnant at 25, had a miscarriage and then had her when I was 27. But yeah, I had an idea, especially after the miscarriage, of how much I wanted to have a baby. So I was very, very happy to be pregnant. Did you experience any depression after your miscarriage? Not, I don't know how much of it was grief, honestly. I was in grief counseling for a little bit, but I don't know that it was a diagnosable depressive episode. But I definitely struggled. I had a hard time. I feel like my whole journey with fertility has been a little bit harder than I expected. Just the whole getting pregnant, staying pregnant, giving birth all of that has just been a little bit more tricky than anyone told they would be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why we're here is because nobody told us how hard it is yeah, no, I love it.
Speaker 3:I love the name of the podcast. I love what you guys are doing.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I think I was obviously familiar with your story, but I didn't know. You were so young when you had your miscarriage. I had a miscarriage at 29. And I think one of the things that I really felt in that moment was how isolating it is to have a pregnancy loss or a fertility challenge in your 20s, when everybody around you is either actively avoiding pregnancy or getting pregnant immediately because there is a relationship between age and fertility and age and pregnancy outcomes. Was that something that you experienced as well? I?
Speaker 3:definitely felt, looking back, I was so young and so that's what strikes me about the whole thing Like through that at 25, I'm like and so that's what strikes me about the whole thing Like through that at 25, I'm like I was. I was just so young, just that's just all that I can think. But yeah, it was very isolating because I didn't know until I opened up and started talking to people about it. I felt like everyone around me, like you said, either kind of had their happy, perfect family or were well on the way or were like we're near thinking about having kids. So it was a weird time for me overall. So I can I can relate to what you experienced for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy to me how regionally there are so many differences in timeline. Sam, I'm guessing that for you it was probably everyone around you was doing it later.
Speaker 1:I am still the first person. Our friends are just starting to have kids and my kids almost five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I'm probably somewhere in between. I was in Chicago when I was going through the whole getting pregnant and being pregnant thing and Chicago was very much like when you turn 30, you have a child and you have there's mass exodus for the suburbs, with everyone in the city. But it's so funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like for me. Granted, I live in the suburbs, I grew up evangelical Christian, so that definitely plays a role, but I had my. I just had my son last year at 31. I'm having kids, so my second and my last and I felt I didn't feel. Obviously 31 is not old to have a baby. But looking around at the people that I surround myself with, I was like everyone had babies in their 20s. Either a lot of my friends are still at the point where they're figuring out whether or not I want kids or they already have kids, but a lot of my mom's friends were done having kids by 30, which I know is not a universal experience.
Speaker 1:So this week I binged Mom Talk or the Secret Lives of Morphs 2 this weekend.
Speaker 1:I didn't watch season one. I caught a couple of clips and I was not interested. But I had friends who were like you have to sit down and watch it. I was shocked that some of them had children when they were like 15 or 16 and they have four kids by the time they're 25. It's so to your point, zara, the different regions just within the US, of how different it is. Yeah, so you had your second child. Do you have any struggle mental health struggles like prenatal or postpartum with your son?
Speaker 3:I had a lot of anxiety. I think honestly, I still might have more anxiety than I had before getting pregnant, but I think because the first experience was so remarkably bad that it still just paled in comparison. So I felt like, even though I wasn't doing great after giving birth, I literally told everyone. I was like I feel amazing Because I again, I felt so bad the first time and that was my only experience or reference. So, even though the second time was a little bit challenging, I still was so grateful that I wasn't in psychosis again. So yes and no, I guess Depends on how you look at it.
Speaker 1:So for people who maybe don't know your story, can you just tell us a little bit about that first pregnancy? And you know you realize you're in psychosis because sleep deprivation I know for a lot of new moms. You start questioning your reality and so I'm curious to hear it from you for the audience.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think the interesting thing honestly the dangerous thing with postpartum psychosis at least in my experience is that things are weird. After you have a baby you might act strangely, you might be thinking strangely at baseline. It's normal to not feel like yourself after you have a baby. I had my daughter. I went into labor spontaneously at 36 weeks, then I had an emergency C-section, so it was overall a very terrible traumatic experience. So I think that the people around me maybe waited a little bit longer than they would have if I wasn't postpartum, to kind of flag or sound the alarm like hey, something is might be seriously wrong here. It's all that to say that I was hospitalized 10 days after my daughter was born. Because of it, I was in a psychotic episode.
Speaker 1:And that quickly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it does come on very quickly by the time that you are. Most episodes occur within the first six weeks postpartum. So I was actually with my second child at six weeks postpartum. They were kind of like, okay, this probably won't happen again. So it is usually the first days or weeks of postpartum that someone would experience an episode. So for me it kind of started a couple of days after.
Speaker 3:Giving birth was first really really happy and just like feeling on top of the world, like I remember telling one of my friends like why did anyone tell me that giving birth was hard? The first two days I was recovering from the C-section I was miserable. I was all the things you'd expect to be after kind of a difficult birth. But after a couple of days I felt amazing and I started to wonder why people said that my C-section scar was going to be, or my C-section incision, all that was going to be hurting, like why I was going to be having trouble walking and moving and all that. So that was kind of where I was at. The big warning sign, I guess, is that I didn't feel the need to sleep. I was just up all night. Even when my daughter was sleeping, I was just up, I was on my phone, I was doing different, I was watching TV, I was sending people pictures of my daughter. I was just kind of living my life.
Speaker 3:But things took a turn. Probably around five days postpartum I started to have really weird big mood swings where I was probably into a ball on the ground like crying, and then I was totally fine. And again, I think that for the people around me, this amazing support system that I have, so much can happen postpartum. No one's thinking, okay, she needs to go to the hospital because she's crying. So again, it was just, I think, chalked up to. Maybe this is a depressive episode, maybe there's something weird happening, but no one knows. So my behavior just became more and more erratic. I got paranoid. I didn't want anyone around my daughter but me.
Speaker 1:Even right yeah yeah, no one.
Speaker 3:I didn't trust anyone and I just had a deep feeling of something deep, kind of deep down feeling something bad was going to happen to her. And then, around eight or nine days postpartum so leading up the hospitalization was kind of on the horizon because things were getting progressively worse I started to hear messages, or say that I was hearing messages from God, and that was, I think, the point where things just took a turn very rapidly for the worse. I don't know. I just was kind of losing control of my grasp on you know reality. So I think once I started hearing messages, I my family realized okay, something is seriously wrong. They took away my phone, they didn't allow me to be alone with my daughter. So I kind of was in this weird limbo where I was seriously experiencing something but they didn't know what to do. And then so, for context, I had my daughter in August 2020. So this was the peak of the pandemic. So I'd been hospitalized before for mental health reasons and had a very traumatic time, and I think that my husband especially knew that if I, he felt like I would never forgive him if they took me to the hospital and I couldn't see my daughter because of pandemic restrictions.
Speaker 3:10 days postpartum, what mother wants to be separated from their baby? But I suddenly, again I was pacing the house just very shouting things, very erratic, and I remember all of this. And I had a moment where I said I need to get the hospital right now. And I said that out loud and I think because I was all over the place, my family was like okay, you're going to be, okay, we're going to, we're going to talk to your psychiatrist, we're going to work on medication, all that. And so I said to them I'm going to kill myself. You don't take me to the hospital right now, I'm going to kill myself.
Speaker 3:And obviously I think that that just something just changed in that moment and the severity of the moment became very clear. So they rushed me to the hospital and once I'm in the ER, that's the moment that I start to hallucinate. So I honestly look back at that and I always say that it felt like you know, god, the universe, fate, something in me knew that things were about to get much worse and that I couldn't be at home when things got bad. And maybe that's just me romanticizing the situation. I mean, I wasn't completely coherent, so who knows why I said it, but once I got to the hospital I immediately was just completely incoherent, not at all aware of what was happening around me and then, as I mentioned, hallucinating. So they sedated me when I got to the hospital and then I basically woke up in the psych ward.
Speaker 1:Well, what were the hallucinations like?
Speaker 3:I've only ever hallucinated on like mushrooms, so imagine it's a pretty different experience, I mean so I've never I've never done any sort of drug that would cause hallucination, so I can't compare it, but I mean how people describe like a bad trip. I imagine that that's probably similar to what I was feeling. The voices of everyone around me were distorted. Their faces were floating in the air. It's even hard for me to remember or explain.
Speaker 1:Shadows and things. Yeah, your intuition knowing to take you there. I feel like our intuition is really really strong, especially women, to just know hey, I have to do that. How long were you in the psych ward and was your daughter allowed to visit?
Speaker 3:No, no visitors yeah.
Speaker 1:What did they? Did they diagnose you with anything there and try any new medications?
Speaker 3:new medications. They cycled through a lot of medications to try to stop the psychosis and it just nothing was working. So they were starting to consider the long-term residential situation, or electro I don't remember the official term, but electrotherapy, electroshock therapy. And then they tried me on an old school antipsychotic called Haldol that they put me on a ridiculously high dose of. My psychiatrist said, yeah, this is the highest dose I've ever seen of someone on this medication. She's been practicing for a long time. And then that was enough to not even fully break the delusions but to bring me back enough that I was able to recognize okay, some of this isn't true. Not everything that I've been feeling or saying is true.
Speaker 2:Wow, is this something that always requires treatment, or are there cases where it kind of resolves when your hormones begin to stabilize?
Speaker 3:I think so. I mean it's considered a medical emergency because, specifically because of the danger that women pose to their children in that period, so I mean I think maybe it can resolve with that medication. I mean I'm not honestly sure, but I think that because you have no grasp on reality if your voice telling you to hurt your child, then I mean you know how the story ends. So I mean I think that it's recommended, or strongly, strongly said to take someone to a hospital to receive treatment if you expect post-traumatic psychosis.
Speaker 2:I just keep thinking about how dangerous the lack of surveillance around new mothers is. So many cases our partners are back at work right without paternity leave. The village hardly exists anymore and as we talk about culturally, there is such a focus on making sure the baby is okay that no one's really looking out for the mother, and you know stories like this. It just shows how dangerous that can be. But also I mean, how lucky are you that you had people around you who were able to kind of hold you in that?
Speaker 3:moment. Right, yeah, I mean my psychiatrist has told me you were the perfect example of someone who should not have been hospitalized after giving birth. I had a doula, a psychiatrist therapist. My sister is a nurse. You know my parents are very involved. My husband is very involved. We had extended family friends. There was nothing else that I I can't think of anything, any other resource that I could have had, which is unfortunately not the case for most new mothers.
Speaker 3:So I think how much more difficult would it have been to go through this without the support that I had. Even this isn't a funny story, but it's just something that I always kind of go back to is that I found out after I was released that my dad had catered meals, sent to both the day shift and the night shift, the hospital, because they were worried that I wasn't getting the care that I needed in a psychotic episode. And he said, people started returning our calls faster, which is terrible. It's terrible, but I also like having people around me and in my life who were so involved and so concerned that they were brainstorming. What can we do to make sure that they know that she has people who are in her corner, who love her who are waiting for her to get home. Not everyone has that a lot, so it's it's. I can't think of how much worse it would have been if I didn't have the situation that I'm in.
Speaker 1:I think, like your case is obviously very extreme right psychosis. But I think a lot of women I know myself there's a very fine line between the intrusive thoughts that you get and how close that can get you to the line of. I remember being so anxious with my son that one time I was like I can't watch him alone. I didn't think I was going to do anything, but I was so scared I was going to and it's like this really weird thing and you're like why do I think I'm going to do something that hurts him? I think a lot of women feel that way and nobody talks about it. Because I remember feeling very much like if I tell anyone that I'm having weird thoughts, they're going to take away my child and that's you know, and I'd be. Yeah, have you heard since you've come out with your story, have women told you similar things where they had weird thoughts too?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've heard from a lot of people who were diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, which has been, honestly, just so great I can't think of another word to know that I'm not the only one out there. After I had the episode, I joined Facebook groups, I read books, but having people directly message me to say, hey, I also went through this and I'm okay, my kids are adults now or had subsequent pregnancies, were totally fine. That was so helpful for me to hear. But those are from people who suffered from postpartum rage, postpartum OCD, all of these conditions that we don't know anything about To your point, about intrusive thoughts. If you are suddenly picturing what if I hurt my baby? Then you think, oh my God, I need to be locked up. What kind of mother would think about hurting their child? You know what I mean. So, even apart from psychosis, there's so many things that you can go through that we just really don't talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Even the not sleeping how you expressed that. You really just felt like you didn't need to sleep. Did people chalk that up as just adrenaline?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that again, you get a lot of this is good, you get a lot of leeway as a new mother. In my case it was not great because I think that I would have been hospitalized sooner had anyone really stopped to think hey, this is really out of character for Anna, Something just doesn't feel right about this. I mean, I don't fault my loved ones because after a baby, you're all over the place and you've got what's red and blues, You've got the hormones going down, You've got sleep deprivation. So I think that, yeah, I think that everything could easily be explained away until it couldn't.
Speaker 1:Do you know if this tends to psychosis, impacts women who have C-sections more frequently, or is there no, probably no studies on it, but do you know anything about that?
Speaker 3:I don't know, I know that I read something about traumatic birth experience can be linked more to postpartum mood disorders.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so I mean right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it all varies, right yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you know how rare postpartum psychosis is? Do you have any stats kind of off the top of your head?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's one to two out of a thousand women who give birth.
Speaker 2:That's not terribly rare.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm sure postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety are far more common, but the amount more attention that we give those conditions culturally versus psychosis is it can be dangerous right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think that if you hear a one in 1,000 chance of something bad happening, you feel comforted. I mean, I would have felt comforted Even when I had my miscarriage. I miscarried at 13 weeks, so the risks of miscarrying were very, very low and I felt comforted by that statistic until I wasn't anymore. You know what I mean. So it kind of just reminds you that these things can happen to anyone at any point. You know, none of us are really immune from just having really bad luck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, For your second pregnancy. You mentioned you struggled with some fertility. Did you have secondary infertility?
Speaker 3:Nothing diagnosable? Honestly, it wasn't. It wasn't Really I shouldn't probably use the word fertility. It was just more so With my daughter trying to have a baby after the miscarriage. It was just more so with my daughter trying to have a baby after the miscarriage. It was just. Every period just felt like a reminder of I should be this this far along and I'm not. And I didn't get pregnant this cycle, so it didn't take a terribly long time to get pregnant the second time around. But I think that I just felt like it was so unfair that I wasn't pregnant at the time that it had a really big impact on me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3:And so was there a difference between your two pregnancies. Once you, between your son and my daughter. I was, as I mentioned, preparing for postpartum depression and thinking about it. There was no recurrence rate for me to think about. There's no me having an existing child who relied on me thinking what will happen if something bad happens again and I have to leave her. So I think that I was just really, really anxious about all of the things that could go wrong. I prepared with my son as much as anyone could ever prepare for anything, so I think that I felt comforted by that. But then also, how much is out of your control just in life, and especially with pregnancy and childbirth?
Speaker 2:What do those recurrence rates look like?
Speaker 3:Gosh, I don't know. Off the top of my head, I want to say up to 50%, but don't quote me on that.
Speaker 2:Was there anything you did specifically to try to mitigate that risk? Was?
Speaker 3:there anything you did specifically to try to mitigate that risk? So the big one was that we hired an overnight doula, an overnight help, to watch the baby, so that you know we could sleep, and then my husband handled all of the night feeds for the first month so that I could sleep uninterrupted. Honestly, my most well-rested month ever was the month after giving birth to my son, because I wasn't getting up for anything at all and I also didn't try to breastfeed, which I think. I went straight to formula, which I think was really, really good for me. I struggled to breastfeed with my daughter and I don't think it contributed, but it was just another added stressor that I'm glad I didn't have to worry about the next time around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think glad I didn't have to worry about the next time around. Yeah, and I think we also don't know enough about what the hormones of breastfeeding do to incidences of perinatal mood conditions, right, I don't think we really have any information about that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:No, it's definitely something.
Speaker 1:I'm now in a rabbit hole about postpartum psychosis episodes and things that they say are common, and it says women who have a sister who has bipolar are 10 times more likely to have a psychosis postpartum psychosis, which is interesting, and people with bipolar yeah, so it's interesting because it's even with the studies. I had HG, which obviously is very different and not even in that place.
Speaker 1:But there's just such little research on and I know Zara had PUP which I had never heard of before, I didn't know what any of this stuff was. There's just so little research that when you see these things it's like, oh well, it's caused by this, oh well, it's this, and there's no real true answer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very discouraging, even with, like, the recurrence rate situation. This study found this and this study found that. I mean for me just knowing that it could happen again and that it was more likely to happen again was enough for me to freak out a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you wait a while between your two kids? I did. Did you need time to sort of wrap your head around everything?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was a. There's a four year gap between my kids and I wasn't sure that I wanted to have another, just because of everything. And so for the first two years or so after having my daughter, I was very much like you know, I'd always thought that I wanted more than one child. But if I didn't have another child I would be fine with it, because I just I didn't enjoy pregnancy. You know, childbirth was very stressful and which I mean it always is, but with the emergency C-section, her being born early and postpartum was hell.
Speaker 1:What finally got you over the hump to have another one?
Speaker 3:I could prepare for this. It's possible for there to be a good outcome for me to picture like a situation where things work out for the best.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I'm so glad that it did. Is your work situation different than it was when you had your first one? Do you have a different job or different type of work?
Speaker 3:No, it's actually the same. So I'm still self-employed. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, as anyone who's self-employed knows.
Speaker 1:Zara and I know a thing about that, the mental fortitude that you carried through. I have to acknowledge that, because to me that is just. You're so mentally strong. I'm sure people tell you this all of the time, but I'm really curious what motherhood has looked like for you like for you.
Speaker 3:In the first year or so with my daughter, it was really difficult. I resented myself for missing her first month of life, basically, and then when I got home I had to recover, which was a month's long process. I didn't really which I know it's normal to not feel like yourselves until you're, you know, have a long postpartum, but I truly did not feel anything like myself until over a year, and so I felt like I kind of blacked out a little bit and not given her the experience that I wanted her to have. So that was really difficult. But overall, I mean, I think that motherhood has been more enjoyable than I expected. With all my anxieties and just thoughts about all the things that could go wrong, overall, most things have gone right and I try to remember that thoughts about all the things that could go wrong.
Speaker 2:Overall, most things have gone right and I try to remember that when you came out of the psych ward. Was that an adjustment to kind of get to know your daughter over again after those 17 days?
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. I mean, I was still heavily medicated, so that was a problem when it came to functioning normally. And she was obviously only seven days old when I got out and I she was obviously 37 days old when I when I got out and I definitely felt like everyone else around me kind of had a bigger or more significant connection with her than I did, which wasn't necessarily true because she was a literal newborn baby with no grasp on any of that. Yeah, Just a little potato. Yeah, I think I was still really worried about what my separation might do to her long term.
Speaker 2:Did you you shouldn't, but did you blame yourself at all? Did you feel any guilt or any shame around that? I did.
Speaker 3:I think that I kind of it was in therapy that I had to accept that, okay, if you want to be a parent who protects your child, what can you do in that situation other than remove yourself? You know, if you want to be a parent who protects your child, what can you do in that situation other than remove yourself? You know, if I'd stayed, anything could have happened. I never had any voices or messages telling me to hurt my daughter, but I think that I could have possibly tried to hurt anyone who I felt was going to hurt her. So it just would have been a really bad situation.
Speaker 2:So I kind of try to remember that In what world would I have been able to say it would have to be an alternate universe too, because you feel you failed in some way, but I don't think it's to the level that maybe you experienced, and it just says so much about our culture, where it's okay if you're doing something to take care of the baby, but we have this idea that when you become a mother, it's not okay to do something to take care of yourself, and I think your story is such a powerful example of how taking care of yourself is taking care of your kids, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. I think that I had no choice but to put myself first, which was as a mother. You sacrifice, and I don't. I a lot of that is true, but I also think that we can glorify the idea of giving all of yourself for your children until there's nothing left, and so I was forced to learn that lesson very early on, that sometimes you have to come first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you have a VBAC or did you have a scheduled C-section for your son?
Speaker 3:I did a scheduled C-section, and the main reason for that was that I wanted as few unknowns as possible.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I was worried about sleep deprivation if I did end up with a really long labor. I was worried about sleep deprivation If I did end up with a really long labor. I was worried about another emergency C-section. And so, yeah, I struggled with the decision to have a repeat C-section which is so silly to struggle with but I still felt like I might be making the wrong choice. But it was definitely the best thing I could have done.
Speaker 1:Zara and I are both C-section moms and I remember having so much shame. I read Ina May's book. That was like just loosen your sphincter and you'll be fine. And I remember having so much shame like why couldn't my body do this? And so it's like no matter what happens, whether it's an emergency section or planned one, or there's always something, or if you do give birth vaginally and something goes wrong. But I have heard women who have a planned C-section. It tends to be less traumatic. I don't know if that's true or not, but anecdotic. How do you say that word? Anecdotally, zara, yours was planned and then not right.
Speaker 2:Mine was yeah planned and then it just happened earlier than was planned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Is there anything that? So your recovery obviously was different mentally after your second birth, but physically, how was that recovery from that second C-section?
Speaker 3:So, interestingly enough, it was worse than the first time around, only because I think there was so much going on. And then obviously I was in the state where I wasn't feeling any pain and felt invincible, so physically the first time around, I don't. The first two days I remember being really really difficult post-seasection, and then I have no recollection of the pain because, yeah, it was just very low in the totem pole of things happening. But I, emotionally, I definitely felt just more even keeled and just more ready. So that was nice, being able to prepare and have all the c-section recovery pillows and you know, binders and all of that ready. So that way I didn't have, I didn't feel thrown into it. I felt like, okay, I know what's coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So how was your recovery?
Speaker 2:Was your recovery? I don't really remember, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's relatable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think it was as painful as I thought it was going to be. But I think, similar to you, I think the pain was kind of low on the totem pole because I had a very complicated postpartum. I think that that in some ways, I was like I'm not even worried about my incision right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember I had to get a stool to put my kid in the crib because I did not know until he was out of his crib that they dropped down and come up. I had no idea. So I had a stool and for the first few days my husband had to put them in because I couldn't. I'm very short and I couldn't put them in and I was like this hurts so bad to put them in. And then so for anyone listening, those cribs go up and down. I wish I would have known that.
Speaker 2:I think we're all very short in this conversation, really yeah. I feel like we talked about this actually last time we spoke. Ayana, yeah, are you? I'm 5'1". Yeah. I'm 5'2", so we're in it together.
Speaker 1:I like to say I'm 5'3", but I'm 5'2 1⁄2" Probably shorter. Since pregnancy my feet got bigger and I got shorter. How has your relationship been with your husband through all of this? I mean, you guys have been through so much. I don't know how long were you together and did you have a solid foundation? I just asked you like 15 questions in one.
Speaker 3:No, it's fine, I can answer. I'll answer them all in a couple sentences. So my husband and I are going on 10 years of marriage. We got married when I was 22, which is like kind of wild I don't know that I'd recommend that to like as a general rule but it worked out for us. So we've basically been together our entire adult lives and he was just incredible throughout all of it. He basically raised our daughter for the first. I mean I would say three or four months without very much help from me. So I definitely feel so grateful and so appreciative and loved him even more because we've been through so much together.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I think that also, I can't honestly like this is kind of I don't know. It's probably only to say because no one will ever be in this position but I think that I'd rather be in the hospital or in his position, knowing I'm in the hospital and not knowing if I'll get better. Honestly, I think I would have rather things stay the way they are, because I cannot imagine how excruciating it is to kind of not be able to see your spouse or your partner know that they're in a psychotic episode and have the hospital telling you that they may need to be transferred to a long-term care facility. I don't know how I would have done that, so I not that, you know, not that it has to be either or, but I he was a really I was in a bad position, but he was in an even worse position in my opinion, so I really admire him for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't imagine that either, being told your spouse you have this brand new baby. Yeah, and the how, because I know they put you on that high dose of medication. But that's a pretty stark change from being like she's going to need to go to a long-term residential facility. How quickly did that happen between those two decisions?
Speaker 3:Well, I think that their whole thing was that if the medication doesn't break the delusions, then the next step is going to be the shock therapy. And then I think that that was also hand-in-hand with the long-term care, because the psych board is not designed to care for someone for weeks and weeks, and weeks and weeks. So I think the mentality, at least the one I was in, was more of an emergent. I mean, most of the people were there for only a couple of days. You know in and out, in and out. So I was there for longer than most of the patients that I was. So I think they wanted someone more equipped to care for me long-term if I needed that.
Speaker 3:But when I got home I still wasn't well. I don't think, just looking back at it, I think I still there were delusions from the hospital that I still couldn't shake, that I still had a kind of just nagging feeling of, okay, this might've been true, someone could have been trying to hurt my daughter, I don't know no way of knowing for sure. So I had some of those moments where I still wasn't 100% but I was able, and my psychiatrist tells me that this is a sign that I got better because I didn't tell anyone I was having delusions. So she was like there was a part of you that recognized. Okay, this might be irrational, I'm not going to shout it out. At one point I remember I wrote a note to myself toward the end and I was like I need to shut up, stop talking, and that honestly helped me get out as well.
Speaker 1:Interesting, just being like, nope, we're not going to entertain that. It is hard, though it was telling Zara this last week when I was postpartum. We had just gotten moved into a new house. We got new blinds in the house and when I got home with my baby I realized they all had the cords on them and I was like, oh no, that's not going to happen in my house. And I told my husband I was like replace all of these now. And so he did. He got somebody in there to replace them all and I mean that's actually a pretty big hanging threat to your child as they get older. I think it was once he, once he started crawling. That's when we replaced them. But I think there are so many threats that we see as others especially, and it's hard to distinguish.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is a real one. So it's really good that you had the people in your life to help you distinguish. For me, I had my husband being like oh yeah, that is a pretty big threat, let's get that fixed.
Speaker 1:Just another funny one that I had. I don't know if you guys will think this is funny, but I am a 90s baby, so I'm 41. So I am, or an 80s baby, so I grew up in a time where a lot of the movies now, as I'm going back and watching them with my son they have instances of babies getting stolen out of windows and I never realized that, but so after I had him, I refused to let anyone have a window cracked.
Speaker 1:No-transcript it came from, and there was a case of a girl who was my age getting abducted through her bedroom window.
Speaker 2:I think it all played in. When a lot of us think about postpartum psychosis, we think about Lindsay Clancy yeah, the woman who I think she was in the Boston area and she killed her three kids in an episode and I believe she jumped out the window, the one who sent her husband to go pick up food or something like that.
Speaker 1:It was fairly recently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think I remember at the time really feeling like we, as we should, gave her a lot of grace, right. I think we were able to understand that something was going on that was just completely out of her control. But I really wondered what would have happened if she had not been a white woman. And I wanted to ask you as a Black woman, have you felt that you are more vulnerable to stigma and to criticism with everything you've been through?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that I got lucky in that I have a pretty I mean I don't want to say inspirational, but a pretty linear story, I guess of like I got sick and then I got better and nothing really bad happened.
Speaker 3:But I mean, yeah, I mean to your point, I think that white women living in I think that it was a wealthy suburb, but if not a very nice suburb in Massachusetts who's a nurse and who has kind of all of this going for her, is going to elicit more sympathy, because I feel like people feel like, oh, I can see myself in her in a way that a white woman may not feel that way about a black, poor woman. And this is the same situation. That was a really interesting, heartbreaking case. Even now I think about her and because I think now she's injured, still I think she might be paralyzed, or because she jumped out of a window after and so just and I think New York Magazine this is a tangent but just did a, it was one of those either New York Magazine or the New Yorker did a profile on her husband and it was just so heartbreaking just reading his perspective and how he's handling everything. But yeah, I definitely feel like the more privileged you are, the more slap people are going to cut you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I was growing up, andrea Yates I don't know if you've ever heard of Andrea Yates, but she was not given any grace. I think this is before we knew anything about postpartum psychosis, or because she was also very religious, right she was.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Interesting I'm so, I'm so glad that you've shared your story. I have sent it to a few friends who are planning to get pregnant, where I'm just like, hey, keep this in mind. Like, and I think the more we talk about all this stuff, the more people around someone going through this can be prepared and know the signs, because I think I wouldn't have known, I've been like what is going on. Yeah, yeah, we have talked about a lot of really, really heavy stuff today and again I thank you. But on the other side of it, what is an unexpected joy that motherhood has brought you?
Speaker 3:Honestly, I think I'm surprised. This is going to sound bad, but I think the part of me is surprised at how much time I love spending with my kids, because I think that beforehand, just being around other people's children and like I was never a kid who babysat or anything, as I said, like I never felt maternal the first site where I changed was my daughter's in the hospital and nurse had to show me. So I think I had this fear of whether I was going to be good at it or get bored of it or burn out, and obviously all of those things are very real realities that I've lived. But yeah, especially having two kids now, it's just, it's a lot of fun and I look forward to my evenings and my weekends in a way that I didn't expect to.
Speaker 3:It's just really lovely.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. And then, if you're, if a friend of yours came to you and said I am about to have a baby, what advice would you give them? What's one thing you wish you had known before you had your first?
Speaker 3:I'm very passionate about this, that is, to take time for yourself, which is a privilege, and not everyone has a supportive partner or people.
Speaker 3:You know a village, as you mentioned but if you have the opportunity to do something for yourself by yourself, go for it. The guilt is so easy to fall into, but I feel like I have never. I mean, I've struggled with it and I do feel guilty sometimes, but I have made a point to like one day a week I go to lunch by myself and it's just completely glorious, silent, and it's just great. And then I'll take weekend trips with my husband or go on girls trips and I feel like that has helped me be as well-rounded as I feel that I am when it comes to parenting, that I don't routinely feel like exhausted by it just because I have opportunities to recharge. So again, I know unfortunately not everyone has the ability or opportunity to do that, but if someone says, hey, I'll watch the kids, go do this, I would say if you have the desire to do it, just to do it yeah, yeah, I agree that.
Speaker 1:I think that's great advice, even if it's I'll watch the kids. You go upstairs and nap, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, it doesn't have to be big it doesn't have to be big, but yeah, yeah, go watch reality show upstairs. Yeah, I got the kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly wellanna, thank you so much for sharing your story again and thank you for being here and taking the time to chat with us. Yeah, thank you so much, thank you.
