A Story About Postpartum Depression and Healing with Hannah Hancox

Like most of us, Hannah imagined and romanticized how her birth might go when she was pregnant with her son.

Maybe she’d go into labor in the grocery store and her husband would drive her to the hospital. She’d be past her due date and the labor would be just fine, a magical moment of becoming a mother. Her dreams were interrupted by severe preeclampsia, 30+ hours of Pitocin-induced labor, a failed epidural and a baby who seemed too small and too sick to be ok. The experience was traumatic, and postpartum depression coupled with invasive thoughts and lack of sleep acted as a crippling force as she took care of her newborn. I am beyond grateful Hannah shared her story with me about her experience.

AH: Can you tell me about your pregnancy and the birth of your son, Beckham?

HH: I was a terrible pregnant person. I felt trapped in my body and I puked 3-4 times a day until 20 weeks. When I look back, I realize I was a little depressed even then. Before, I’d trail run and bike and enjoy every day, then everything felt so different and I was waiting for this glowing moment. From 20-30 weeks I had a brief honeymoon stage where I felt better but wasn’t so big that I couldn’t do things. I looked pregnant and it was fun.

Then I got preeclampsia. I was really puffy. I could press my fingers into my skin and they would leave an indent. I took my blood pressure at home, I just felt really weird and bad, and it was high. I called my doctor and she told me to come in to labor and delivery (L&D) and monitored me for a few hours. They put me on bedrest and told me I wasn’t going to go past 37 weeks if I even got there. Right away, I felt my beautiful story about how I was going to give birth—going into labor in the grocery store, my husband calmly and excitedly driving me to the hospital—I felt that it was gone. I was so crushed and worried. What was going to happen?

I kept going back in to L&D every week and I went downhill at 34 weeks. My blood pressure was 180/120 or something. My doctor told me I needed to spend the night at the hospital, get the shots for my baby’s lung development and that I was probably going to have this baby now.

My husband was out of town and I told them I can’t have this baby now and I don’t want to be in the hospital, please let me go home.

I made it to 36 weeks + 6 days. I went in and had 30 or so hours of Pitocin-induced labor. I had wanted to birth as free of interventions as possible. I wasn’t close minded to other options, but I wanted to do as much as I could.

I labored until I was 7 cm dilated and was so tired and I wanted to sleep. The doctors and nurses encouraged me to get an epidural, they said I’d be able to rest and when I woke up, maybe it would be time to push. I got the epidural, but it didn’t take, it was partially effective on my left side, so the nurses would come in and roll me every 20 minutes.

I was still feeling everything and then I felt like I pooped the bed. I told the nurses, “I shit the bed!” I kept telling them I was pooping. Finally, the nurse checked me and there was Beck’s head. They told me I might push for 1-3 hours, but he was having major heart rate decelerations, and I was out of energy, and I pushed him out in 19 minutes.

AH: What was it like when you met him?

 HH: The doctor put him on my chest and he was tiny, he looked like a gerbil, he didn’t know how to eat and he was extremely jaundiced. On the second day, he started pooping blood. Right away I felt anxious. I looked at my little baby and I was convinced he was dying. He had blood sugar issues, so he was on an IV and it seemed like no one was super concerned, which freaked me out even more. Why aren’t we all more worried about him? Amazingly, I birthed my placenta, and my preeclampsia disappeared immediately.

He couldn’t stay awake long enough to eat a full feed. He would feed for a few minutes on each side, then I’d pump to tell my body to make him more milk. Then he’d be ready to eat again. So, I’d feed him, then give him the milk I pumped, then pump again. He had no brown fat and I lived by the pump.

Everything that I knew and expected was ripped from me and I was crushed and I went to a really dark place.

AH: How did you handle this dark place? How did you find what you needed?

 HH: I went into lactation every day to weigh Beck. I was so tired. And he’d fall asleep so easily while nursing, we had to check to see if he was getting anything from me. One day, I looked at my lactation consultant and I said, I’m going to tell you something, I wouldn’t care if he wasn’t here. She gently put him in his car seat, and essentially carried both of us to the doctor. She sat with my baby and told me, we’re going to get you ok, what you said to me wasn’t ok, but we’re going to get help.

I had an amazing therapist. She tied her therapy into nature. She told me that when a mama deer feels like there is something wrong with their young, they push them away. I looked at my baby and felt nothing, and I felt like nothing was the same as before, and I looked at him and thought, what did you do to me?

I went on Zoloft. My invasive thoughts were nuts and I felt ashamed and guilty. I was scared to push him in his stroller, what if I pushed him into a car? I was scared to bathe him, what if I held him under? I pushed everyone away and was by myself with my baby. I told my husband to go out, go snowboarding, but I needed people around me.

AH: How did Zoloft and therapy help?  

HH: I felt a lot of comfort in having a plan and Zoloft and therapy offered me one. The therapist told me I wasn’t crazy. She told me no one was going to let me harm my baby. She told me someday things would fall into place. He would get better at breastfeeding and sleeping.

Beck was pooping blood for two months and I thought he was dying. When I got pregnant, it wasn’t planned. I thought maybe since I wasn’t trying to have a baby he wasn’t supposed to be here. My therapist told me that if all babies were planned, a lot of babies wouldn’t be here.

She would start my sessions with me imagining myself on a trail run on my favorite trail. And I had so many mantras. We figured out pretty early on that diaper changes were a trigger for me because I would see the blood and have a downward spiral. I knew how many steps it was to my diaper table and the thoughts would start. She told me to move the diaper table around. Put it outside, in the kitchen, in my room, mix it up so I could retrain my brain and my associations. I would pick him up to change him and say my mantra, we got this we got this we got this, otherwise I’d crumble.

She gave me the tools to reframe my feelings toward my baby. Instead of pushing him away, I should pull him in. I went to her twice a week at the beginning and I had her number and could text her and I gradually started going once a week.

AH: When did you start to feel a shift? Was it gradual, or sudden?

HH: It was gradual. I would go to therapy and tell her about all these beautiful stories and things me and Beck did together. Instead of negative things about my baby, I heard myself start to tell her about the cool things I was doing with him, and I thought wait, this is all I wanted. Up until two months though, I still thought something was wrong with my kid since there was blood in his diaper. My therapist told me to stop looking things up on google. She told me, you’re not a doctor, be done with google, it is digging you into deep holes. I increased my Zoloft dose.

Finally, we took Beck to a specialist. He said he sees babies with blood in their diapers all the time. Just hearing him say that right away was a relief. He said he wouldn’t classify the amount of blood as clinically significant. I thought oh my god, how is this possible? We figured out it was an allergy to food I was eating, so I cut out eggs, gluten, dairy and soy. For the first five months he didn’t sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time and I was still feeding and pumping and then feeding again, then pumping on repeat. I was scared to leave my house without a pump. I was hell bent on nursing my baby but breastfeeding was so frustrating and exhausting. I thought it would be glorious and it wasn’t for me. Somehow, we made it through and I was able to breastfeed him for 16 months. I am thankful that the option of formula exists and there were a lot of moments when I was going to give up on breastfeeding and give him formula, but one day in lactation he took a full feed. At three months I finally saw the light as he started taking full feeds regularly. I was so tired of pumping and the nipple shield, and he had nipple confusion and I thought so often, what am I doing? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Do I have too much of an ego to fail? My mom saw me struggle. She lives out of town, but she had the numbers to my friends and checked in all the time. She also had postpartum depression with me and my brother. She told me so much about her experience, how she had the same invasive thoughts and I wondered how much of this was genetic? How much is programmed in? She went undiagnosed and that is heartbreaking.

AH: Can you tell me about how your pregnancy, birth and postpartum depression impacted your transition into a mother?

HH: First, therapy helped me understand that my postpartum depression didn’t define me as a mom. I’m still a mom, the best mom I can be. I’ve fought so hard since Beck was born, its felt like such a constant battle and its been hard for me to let go and let him and his dad build their relationship. I’m practicing letting go of control because of how we started when I worried about every drop of food in his mouth. I fought so hard to keep him alive because in my head he was dying from the moment he started living. My therapist helped me understand that I was mourning the death of my fairy tale birth. This resonated with me so much. She told me I needed to mourn the death of what I had in my head, I had to mourn not having an 8 lb baby who was great at feeding, I had to mourn the anger I felt with myself for getting an epidural. I mourned getting preeclampsia, almost like it was something shameful I had caught like an STD. I was so active and so on it during pregnancy, what did I do wrong? She told me to let it go, it’s ok, she told me I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t catch preeclampsia, it found me.

I was more sad about the things that didn’t go right than the things that went wrong. She helped me be present and stop thinking about how things went with his birth, or even last week, and be with him now. I look back at the first few months and I feel like I burned a lot of good time. When he was four months old, I looked at him and thought, we’re going to make it.

AH: Are you still taking Zoloft? How have things changed now that Beck is no longer an infant?

HH: I weaned off Zoloft when Beck was 1. I liked myself on Zoloft, and I realized that I’m an anxious person. I always managed my anxiety with working out. I couldn’t do that after birth and it was January in Montana, so it was freezing and I couldn’t just go out for a run. I didn’t have a lot of outlets. I felt like Zoloft was kind of magical. I felt like when he turned one, we made it. I was really scared to stop taking Zoloft and worried I wouldn’t be able to be myself but I feel like I have the tools and support to manage my anxiety and I’m able to say, nope we’re not going there today. I now experience rationale fear, like I’m worried about my kid falling down the stairs, but I’m not scared of my irrational thoughts and fears. I regained trust in my thoughts. I didn’t realize how it felt when you lost rationality, and how hard it is for it to come back. I’m three months post-breastfeeding and when I stopped I felt angry and touchy, like I was regressing, because of the hormonal shift. I miss breastfeeding, but I feel a greater sense of myself back.

I have a boy now, not a baby. We do so much together. I feel like our journey together was for a reason, like he was my little test. He’s my son and he’s my best pal and I’m so grateful that I can stay home with him and build our days together. I went back to work when he was four months old, teaching kindergarten, and realized I didn’t want to be at work. I told my husband and he said right on, when school starts, you won’t go back. He didn’t even skip a beat. He has to work more, but he tells me he’s so glad I’m here with our son. I feel like I should have let him in more, I should have told him I needed him, but he can’t read my mind. Even in my craziest highs of manic thoughts, he was stable and I’m so glad I have that in my partner.

AH: You’ve mentioned to me before you want to have more kids. What is your plan next time? What tools are in your toolkit?

HH: Next time, I will leave the hospital with Zoloft, I won’t be waiting. I’ll need to take baby aspirin during my first trimester because of my history of preeclampsia and I’m hopeful it will come later and less severe. My doctor understands that the blood pressure machine can be triggering and she is so supportive and in tune with me. I mourn the newborn days that I cried away, and I don’t want to miss any of it next time.

AH: What are your recommendations for other moms when it comes to postpartum depression?

HH: The second you’re having bad or anxious thoughts about yourself or your baby you should tell someone, get help. I had a friend who felt like she was dying and felt like she couldn’t show up for her baby. I said, tell me all the shit you’re thinking, and I’d tell her the things I thought when I was in my darkest moments, and when you say your thoughts out loud they lose power. When these thoughts are a secret and swirling in your head they have so much power. Let’s talk about it, compare stories, then it’s out in the open, we have something in common and you feel less gross, alone and sneaky. It’s like describing a nightmare, when you say your thoughts out loud they don’t own you anymore. You need to find the people who can direct you to the right place and the right people who have the tools to help you. Someone who says, I know who you can talk to and don’t feel ashamed, this is normal and so many women experience it.

Contact Hannah and see more about her life on her instagram @hvictory10

A note on postpartum mood disorders-

In her book Nurture, Erica Chidi Cohen said, “perinatal/ postpartum depression is the most common complication of childbirth.” If you’re feeling anxious during pregnancy, or not feeling like yourself, talk to your midwife, doctor, or doula, get your thyroid hormones checked, talk to your care provider or therapist about medications, and find your support group, whether its your partner, other new moms, or both.

Hannah also talked to me about how we treat new mothers. Instead of asking them how the baby is sleeping, why not ask how mom is feeling? She told me a story about seeing a new mom out by herself feeding her two week old baby, without even asking, she brought the mom a cup of water. Those early days of breastfeeding are the thirstiest days either of us ever experienced. Reach out to moms, ask them how their nipples are feeling, but maybe ditch the questions about how and where the baby is sleeping for now.