Description

Kristin shares how seriously she considered ending her life due to postpartum depression (PPD) and what kept her from acting on this impulse.

Transcript

My postpartum depression got so bad that I really—I got to the point where I thought about ending it all. I just couldn’t imagine going on the way I was. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t care for my kids. I certainly couldn’t function as a wife, as a human being. I was just—I’d reached the bottom of this dark pit and I was so alone and no one could help me, no one could get me a magic pill or bring me—or could even reach in that dark pit to pull me out. And when I first contemplated suicide, I was actually in the hospital and this was a second time I was hospitalized for really awful dehydration and they were running more tests on me. And I got a phone call from my dad and he said, “You need to get off your butt and go home and take care of your babies.” And that just crushed me because I knew that people didn’t understand what I was going through. I didn’t even understand what I was going through. I had no idea it was postpartum depression. I’ve never heard of it. But to know that my dad didn’t understand, that he thought I was doing this on purpose killed me, just killed me. I had not self-esteem at that point anyway. And so when I was discharged, I went home. I really thought about just ending it all. And the thing that kept me was I remember the moment I laid out my daughter on the bed and I was changing her diaper, and I just looked at her eyes and I thought I can’t do it. I have to be here for her and I’ve got to figure out how to pick myself up. And I was really lucky because a nurse came up to me at one point and said, “You know, I think you might have postpartum depression.” And I said, “What is that? Why do you think that?” And she said, “Because you’re so sick and you just had this baby, and I really think this is what you have. You need to read this book.” And she told me about a book called The Postpartum Survival Guide by Ann Dunnewold. So I went out to Barnes & Noble somehow and bought the book. And when I opened the pages, there was my life.