It comes in many forms?

[spacewoman]

I assumed I would experience post partum depression, because I’m so susceptible to hormonal influence on my emotional stability. I assumed it would happen early after pregnancy, and would involve crying all the time. Imagine how surprised and delighted I was when it didn’t happen

Comments

[cyano]

It sounds a whole lot like PPD to me.

Shifting priorities seems only natural, but I don't that explains the rest of the stuff.

Have you spoken to your doctor about any of this yet?

The pictures of Emily are beautiful, btw. :)

[zagthaar]

It sounds a lot like what I experienced at about the same point after Marcus's birth (~4 months). I was utterly fatigued and stressed out -- I was only getting a few hours of sleep a night -- and I felt like my whole life was a never-ending cycle of no/bad sleep and fussy baby and cleaning up poop, and absolutely no time for me to do anything that I really *wanted* to do, including cleaning the house (which, in turn, became another source of stress, because a messy house drives me bananas).

Luckily, I have (a) a wonderful, amazing, supportive husband, and (b) a good therapist, both of whom helped me realize that I desperately needed to schedule some down-time for myself every day -- even just 15-20 minutes on the elliptical -- and that getting some actual sleep was absolutely critical. Not saying everything was all sunshine and roses after that, but BOY did those two things help me!

... hope this helps. Good luck, and congratulations :)

[spacewoman]

Many years too late I want to thank you for this reply. It took me about 7 months to get off my keister and get a therapist, but I did and I was much better for it. I had to go through more blase days, and then lots of randomly angry days, before I finally realized I really had a problem and I wasn't going to be able to fix it myself. Some if it was just figuring out mommyhood, and some was attached to emotionally recovering from an unexpected and unwanted c-section. So my therapist helped me with that, and I got healed, and I had another baby, and it was a VBAC, and so now things are a lot better. That's the short version! Thanks for encouraging therapy, even passively! It was one of many "get a therapist" seeds that friends planted in my brain throughout that first year, that finally blossomed when I'd finally had enough. :-)