My experience with PPD

This is really hard to share and type out but I want to put it out there in case any of you ever feels this way - I want to be able to help someone else. Its also kind of therapeutic for me to talk about.

Ughhh...where to start.

Everything pissed me off - everyone and everything. I had a super, super short fuse. I had very little patience with Natalie.

Every time Ava would wake up in the middle of the night (even in the morning sometimes) my first thought would be "God hates me." followed by "My Baby hates me." NOT normal!! I thought maybe I was just over dramatic and wasn't cut out to be a mother.

I didn't like Ava. I didn't want to be around her. I didn't want to deal with her.

I kept having visions of dropping Ava on the floor, throwing her down the stairs, throwing her at the wall. HORRIBLE. It was scary that these images kept popping into my head - I had no desire to act on them. I just thought I was an awful person.

I was constantly having thoughts of "someone just kill me, take me out of my misery, I'd be better off dead" - again, AWFUL thoughts but I just thought I was a weak person.

Sometimes I would be driving and I would think about driving off the side of the road, off the bridge, etc. I never would have actually done it, but again, the thought would just pop into my head.

I was constantly agitated, constantly worried about something. To the point where I would be shaky and unable to concentrate on anything.

The simplest things would make me furious. I'll never forget the one day, DH said he was coming right home from work. He gets out at 3 and works less than 5 minutes down the road. When he wasn't home by 3:15 I was FURIOUS!! Seeing red! He got home at 3:20 - he was stuck behind the buses at the school. But I would get so angry about stuff like that all the time.
I felt like a total and utter failure. As a woman, as a wife, as a mother. And I thought the reason I was having the awful thoughts and feelings was because I was failing as a Mom - that I wasn't cut out to be one.

It hurts to talk about - its kind of embarassing. If I mention it in real life, people don't seem to take it very seriously. I actually had someone say "weird" the other day. So I feel kind of funny when I talk about it - but I want people to hear some examples of emotions and behaviors, just in case you ever go through it. I wish I had known more about PPD and some of the signs to look for so I could have gotten help sooner.