Beyond the Baby Blues by Rebecca Fox Starr

Author:Rebecca Fox Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442273917
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2017-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

7

A Bicycle Built for Two (If That Bicycle Were Actually an ER Suite)

My Severe Postpartum Depression

As I pressed my cheek against my son’s head, and then his stomach, I felt intense heat emanating from his soft skin. I undid his long-sleeved, one-piece bodysuit and felt his stomach. More heat. I took him upstairs and set him on the soft muslin changing pad cover.

I took his temperature, and it was 100.4, the magic number for a baby under two months old. He was just three days shy of his two-month birthday. It was a Saturday. Our pediatrician’s office was closed. We had to take him to the hospital.

At my own darkest moment, I had a sick baby for whom to care. At the emergency room they gave him urgent care immediately. I can remember the triage room, and I remember being so scared. They tried to put a monitor that looked like a cloth bandage on his little toe and it wouldn’t stay on. He cried. I cried.

We were brought back to a private room immediately, and we were never without a member of the medical team.

Once the staff pediatrician saw us, she explained that they had to do a full septic workup, including a complicated blood draw, a catheterization, and, worst of all, a spinal tap. This took three tries. To get an IV into his chunky little arm, they had to use a light that looked like a laser pointer to find his veins. It was all so alien, and surreal. And scary. Terrifying.

His blood oxygen level was low, and he had monitors all over him. One of the tests performed was a nasal swab. From this, he was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which had presented itself in my daughter as a cold earlier in the week. I knew about RSV, as my daughter had suffered from it at two and three years old, and for her it was a bit scary and a huge pain. We had to nebulize her with a steroid mist, and the noise of the loud breathing machine and the mask she had to wear made it nightmarish for her. When the doctor gave me my son’s diagnosis, I felt myself hating those three letters more than I could have ever imagined.

And then, moments after his diagnosis was presented, while standing beside his bed in the ER, out of sheer stress and malnourishment, I passed out. I had to be admitted. My son and I spent a cold night in December in adjoining rooms of the emergency room, each hooked up to tubes, each receiving a myriad of tests, and each fighting.

They took my pulse and my blood pressure and my blood and gave me three bags of IV fluids.

“Do you ever have any thoughts of hurting yourself?” asked the nurse.

“I am dealing with severe postpartum depression,” I told her.

She made sure that I was being cared for by a doctor and, although I did not always feel safe, that I was, in fact, safe.

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