Y'all heard of Postpartum Psychosis?
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Hey guys, welcome back to Friends Anonymous. This week's episode is a little different than our previous episodes. I am interviewing a woman named Rachel who has a background of becoming an LPN after struggling through school and eventually transitions into a registered nurse, but that's not what we're talking about today. I wanted to bring her story to light because I've honestly never spoken to someone who wanted to tell a story like this, and I think it could help

a lot of women out there. Rachel is going to be telling us a hard story of her postpartum psychosis. And I wanted to give you a little bit of a content warning before continuing the episode. This episode contains subject matter, which some may find disturbing, uncomfortable, or maybe a trigger. Content is not limited to, but does contain graphic descriptions and self-harm. Please take care while listening.

Hey guys, welcome back to Friends and Enemas. My name is Lindsay. I'm your host today and who do I have with us? My name's Rachel. Tell them how we met. How we met? Well, we just met. We just met. Lindsay's just met me, but jokes on her. I've known her for forever. So I've been a nurse. Let's see. I graduated in 2015, I think. How many years is that? Nine? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, coming up on 10. So I, my way into nursing was,

Kind of like a, it's very similar to yours. I, from a very, very, very young age, wanted to be a veterinarian. I think 14 or 15, I got hired at the local veterinary clinic that did large and small animal to be a kennel tech. And I thought it was like the best thing ever. And I was making like $5.50 an hour. And I remember telling, like, I was so stoked. And I told my Mimi, which is my grandma, and she was like... My grandma was my Mimi. No way. Yeah. Oh, that's precious. Sorry.

Okay. Well, just another thing, another kick. We are becoming best friends.

So I told my Mimi and I remember the face of shock on her because she's so elegant and like proper. And she's like, you're going to be cleaning up dog poop and you're only making $5.50. You're like, yeah. Have some higher goals, girlfriend. I was just like, whatever. Like, I'm so happy. And so I did Kindle Tech for a little while and then I was able to like move in to being like a veterinary assistant. But same as you, like I very quickly realized that.

like, oh my goodness, none of these people have lives. And I, I don't know if I knew I wanted to have a family. I think I did. But like, I just saw that like with every female veterinarian, it was, and to this day, it's still the same way. So my father-in-law is an equine veterinarian. So he just does horses. And, um, I have yet to meet a

A female veterinarian who is able to successfully balance work life. And even like at that young age, at like 16, 17, their husbands are saying like, it's me or your job. And I'm like, this is not what I want. Like, yeah. Right. And like, they weren't wrong. Their husbands weren't wrong because like they were getting treated poorly.

Their marriages were not successful on a whole level. But it wasn't just like a one-off. It was like the theme. And it's hard to put your soul and passion into something that requires so much of you. And then also you're dealing with such high stress and...

you know clients can be very difficult to manage and the heartbreak of of the profession and all that it's just not very conducive for a family life yeah and so i was like i don't i'm not sure that i want that and then i ended up going on a missions trip to india and i was

I was 17 when I went on this mission strip and I'm like the, I'm the oldest daughter of six kids. Oh wow. So I'm the second family. Yeah. So I'm the second oldest, but I'm the oldest daughter. It's like, I'd been around kids my whole life and never really thought about like, Hey, I like kids because I was just like my life.

And then I went to India and it was around like all these kids in these village and these like super remote villages and stuff. And I was like, Oh my goodness, I love children. Like I am obsessed with these kids. And that's when I decided to, I was already at like the junior college. Um, cause I did like dual credits. Cause my mom's like, yeah, I'm not teaching you math. Sorry. You can go, you can go to Ivy tech and you can get dual enrollment. Um,

So I that's that's when I decided like I want to be a nurse and I want to take care of sick kids and I want to do another. So I want to take care of sick kids and I wanted to be able to do like missions trips for nursing and stuff like that. Okay, guys, we're about to get into something pretty touchy. Rachel's going to dive into her postpartum psychosis and I'm just going to let her take the wheel. I don't know if that's the mic. Yeah, the mic. Okay.

So I am a survivor of postpartum psychosis, which is not a fun title to hold, but I'm grateful to be able to say that I'm a survivor. Many, a lot of people don't know what postpartum psychosis is, even like as nurses or providers, OB, all those things are

We really only, like, learn a very, like, I remember learning about it in LPN school. Yeah, I do too. And I think we all learned the same story. It's the mom in Texas who, so the mom in Texas who shot her five kids, I think it was. I think I heard the same exact one. Like, I've researched it enough that I'm pretty sure everyone learns that exact, like, that's the story unanimously told. Yeah. And so, like, it was a five-second conversation in nursing school.

There was no, like, here's what it actually is or anything. It was just one of those situations where you're like, oh my gosh, that's so awful. How horrible. Yeah. Like monster mother. Like you don't, there's no education for like how to, what does it actually look like in real life? Or like, how do you help these people? So, so anyway, very few people even know about it, but the people who are familiar with it usually have only heard of it

after a tragedy of a baby dying at the hands of postpartum psychosis. I'll say that because after experiencing it, it's very hard to say that that mother murdered her babies. The end result is the same, but it's not done out of the same context. So usually people, if they've heard of it, it's been because they heard of a tragic story in the news. Right.

and of a baby dying because their mother killed them or their mother killed multiple children. And all of the stories that I have heard in the news, the mother is painted in a very poor light. You know, she was well known to the mental health community or she had a history of drug abuse or she was well known to police or something like that. And it just, no one is like really looking at these mom's

At all. And even when they like interview family members and stuff or like the husband, a lot of times he's wasn't present enough to help her. Um, and so the things he's saying aren't accurate either because he wasn't there witnessing or playing enough of a role to, to see what was happening. And so what he's saying about the situation also isn't accurate. And so, um,

It's something that hardly anybody knows about. And it's thought to be very rare, but I disagree with that. I think it's actually a lot more common than we think it is, but we just have really horrible research. And these moms are ending their lives before they're being diagnosed. So it's estimated that like one to two out of a thousand births

will have postpartum psychosis. So it works out to be like 0.1% or something like that. Like, so you think like astronomically rare, like I'm going to go my whole life and I'm, I'll never meet anybody like that. Um, but what people don't know about, we associate postpartum psychosis and mom killing her, her baby, which is infanticide. Um, or it's also called filicide. I don't, I don't know where that comes from, but, um,

Infanticide is when you kill your baby. So we think that those are synonymous. But what people don't know is that way more often than that being the outcome, the mom is committing suicide. And so I would argue, so suicide is the number one risk factor for

for death in the peri and postpartum period. So while you're pregnant and then in your postpartum period. Suicide is the number one cause of death by a long ways. And it's not well tracked because there's different parameters on like what is postpartum. So like how far are they following these mamas? Is it six months? Is it a year or whatever?

So we're losing whatever number of moms to suicide. We have no idea what number of those moms were suffering with postpartum psychosis. And that would have been me. My outcome would have been suicide. And I think that there maybe is a couple of reasons why it causes suicide. For me, it was the hallucinations.

Um, but for, I could imagine for a lot of moms having the process of having psychosis, um, is really terrifying. And if one thing that's interesting about postpartum psychosis is that

It is much different than other types of psychoses, like drug-induced psychosis or related to schizoaffective. And this is a major thing to understand about postpartum psychosis. And one of the reasons why it's really difficult to catch is that it's transient. So you'll have moments of lucidity and then go into full crazy. And so it can be really challenging to catch for that reason. I know for myself that...

When you're having delusions or something, depending on what those delusions may be, and then you come back to reality and you're like, oh my gosh, I really thought those things were real or that I could do that. How on earth would my brain be capable of thinking that I need to kill myself just to protect my child? So I think that suicide occurs because of that. Just like if you're in a moment of lucidity, realizing like I need to

Protect my family from me or like I can't fathom the fact that like I was able to have those thoughts. Yeah when you're in a delusion or or hallucination and The other like what occurred for me was my hallucinations were telling me that I had to sacrifice myself which that's also how babies are killed is because that mom is experiencing a hallucination and

From more often than not, it's like from a higher power. So God or some other, whether or not they were spiritual or had any religious beliefs whatsoever, it's something important enough that this hallucination is telling them that to protect their child, they have to do this X, Y, Z, which results in drowning or, you know, shooting, however, whatever.

But if they don't do it, something really bad is going to happen to their child. So they have to do it to protect them. So it's done out of an act to protect, but they're in a hallucination. And they believe that hallucination. And so kind of like my husband and I got pregnant with our son, Russell, when I was working in the NICU. And he was very much intentional.

And we were very, very, very excited to be pregnant. And I think that there's also a misconception with postpartum psychosis or I don't necessarily think that other people believe this, but I think that if you're a mom in the postpartum period suffering from postpartum depression or potentially postpartum psychosis, that you may believe like that you didn't actually want this child. And that's not necessarily...

Maybe that was true. Maybe you didn't plan the pregnancy, but that's not correlated to postpartum psychosis and it has no bearing on postpartum depression whatsoever, which I'd like to mention that those are two very different things. Postpartum depression is very, very serious and needs attention and treatment right away and can have devastating results if not treated, but postpartum psychosis is not the same thing. They're different. Yes. Postpartum depression...

can get bad enough that it develops into postpartum psychosis, but it's almost like a coma. Like you have two diagnoses. They're not one in the same. Okay. Uh, we were so excited to be pregnant with Russell. We did not plan on having biologic children in our marriage because I had my thyroid taken out. I had to have my thyroid completely taken out, uh, 10 years ago. It

And I learned enough about it, like struggling with managing my thyroid hormones is really hard. And I learned enough about it that it's really hard to maintain a pregnancy without

with, cause like a lot of women will not have any thyroid problems and then they get pregnant and their thyroid's like insane. Um, and that results in miscarriage or even sometimes stillbirth. And oftentimes it can be late in your pregnancy. And so after like learning about that, I'm like, I'm not that kind of person. Like I'm not going to sign up for something that I know is going to break me, especially cause I'm

You know, the nature of my... Like, I just love babies. Right. Like, hand me a block of cream cheese swaddled in a blanket and I'm going to love it forever. Yeah. That's literally what being a NICU nurse is. And I was really grateful. Tyrell, my husband, was on board with adoption right from the beginning, which is really...

Which felt even more empowering to go that route because that's not super common, I don't think. Like maybe that's, I think adoption is viewed oftentimes as like a last resort. But with the chances being high for miscarriage, especially late in pregnancy, I can't do that, you know? And I don't know how those mamas do it and survive that. Yeah. Especially then like if they're having multiple losses, like I don't know how you go through that.

Um, and I, I knew I didn't want to even like chance it. And thankfully we got married young, uh, same as like,

our story like we've both been married like 10 years now yeah I think how old are you uh 32 I had to think about it I don't really know how old I am I think 32 or 33 what year were you born 92 okay I'm 33 then I did that too actually I was like wait what do you mean yeah for sure because I turned 30 when I was pregnant and like going through stuff yeah and it's like it didn't exist like yeah and so now all these years past don't count like they don't count and I don't know where I'm at yeah um so I ended up

I got really bad, when I had my thyroid taken out, I got really bad periodic limb movement disorder, which is like restless leg syndrome, but on steroids. And I didn't know until, like, I literally, we got married, like, six months after I had my thyroid out and lived together for the first time then after marriage. And my husband's like, you're, like, leaving bruises on my legs because you're kicking me so hard. It's not like the...

No one knows what this is. You know, like restless leg syndrome, where they're just rubbing their legs together? It's like full kicks. Or my leg will be up in the air stretching or something like that. It's pretty aggressive. And so I had a sleep study done, and it was very, very severe periodic limb movement disorder. And there's a few treatment options for it, but it occurs once you're in sleep, not how restless leg can happen if you're just...

being still. Um, and it was disrupting my sleep enough. Like in, I only slept for three hours during the sleep study and I had over like 10,000 movements or something like that. Wow. And wasn't getting into any like restorative sleep. Oh wow. And so it's like, Oh, maybe that's why I failed school so hard. Like totally dive bombed because I'm not sleeping. But anyway, uh, went through like different medication trials for that. And, um,

the side effects never outweighed the, like none of them ever actually worked that well. At one point I was on like 1200 milligrams of gabapentin. And like, I would write a sentence and like, there'd be words missing in the sentence. And it was like, okay, nope. Um,

And then the, meanwhile, my primary care is like, you need to be on clonazepam. Like clonazepam is the only thing that works. It works. We know it works. There's no side effects, like immediate side effects. Right. Um, it's effective, blah, blah, blah. I come from a family of addiction. Um, my father's side of the family, everyone who he has known or been related to growing up highly, um,

involved in drugs and alcohol. Um, and I know that I have that tendency in my personality. Like it's just something you kind of know about yourself, right? Yeah. Um, you're full throttle and it's all or nothing. And I think part of it's like growing up with trauma,

Because it's a trauma response. Like when you look into the different types of emotional abuse and the outcomes that it produces in children, one of them is like you can outrun anything bad if you keep going fast enough. And I think that correlates to the addiction propensity. So I knew that.

And about myself. And I was like, I'm not going on a benzo. And it took me a couple of years of trialing these other meds. Finally was like, okay, like I, the lack of sleep is going to lead me to some type of an addiction because I'm, it's, this is crazy. Right. So I went ahead and went on clonazepam and I coupled it with

um, Sinemet, which is for Parkinson's. Oh, okay. And that combo was perfect, like phenomenal for me. Um, but then between my thyroid and like you learn in nursing school, right? Like no Benzos in pregnancy, right? So nope, don't do it. I didn't even think about the Sinemet, but I was like, those two things combined, like, no, I can't get pregnant. Yeah. Um, ended up that we, uh, consulted with maternal fetal medicine and

which I'm not sure, are you familiar with? So the, they abbreviate to MFM. Um, so I'll from here on out, I, I refer to them as MFM, um, just cause it's easier. But, um,

They take care of all of the really high-risk pregnancies. So oftentimes they become involved after a mom has already been pregnant and then something is seen on ultrasound and they get referred to MFM to follow the high-risk pregnancy. So I actually worked really closely with them because...

Usually they're following the pregnancy for a sick baby, not a sick mama. But all of my cardiac babies would go through MFM. And so oftentimes mom has her primary OB because she's already been established with them and then gets referred to MFM. Well, you can consult with them if you have something that puts you at a higher risk for pregnancy to say like, what are, how's this, how does this, how's this looking? Yeah. You know? So we did that and they have like a,

pregnancy pharmacist and like all this stuff and went through all my meds. It was very thorough. And they said, we can manage your thyroid. Like it was nice because they validated. Yes, this, we keep your thyroid in a completely different range than when you're

not pregnant. Yeah. And we bought, they were like, they draw labs like weekly, um, because it changes so fast in pregnancy. Um, but it was nice that they validated and acknowledged that like that does cause miscarriage because it affects your progesterone. I think they, but they said they were fine with me being on clonazepam. It's like, go for it, pop off, but you cannot be on Sinemet.

And you can't be on it for like at least six months before getting pregnant because it affects the absorption of folate. Like you, I don't think your body's able to absorb folate or very little. And folate is what's responsible for like neural tube defects and things like that. Um,

So it was something I had to get off of and had to be off of it for six months before we could try. But we were so stoked that like we could try. And I was like, sweet. And I think that because we just never like got our hopes up for that option, it was like really exciting. And so I had to titrate down on the Sinemet. It took a while.

Because it was like my legs would get bad and I'd be like, I can't. I got to go back up a little bit and then back down. And it was insane. Like so crazy that when I, so I finished, I got off cinema on a totally random day. And then when I calculated out six months from that day, it was our seven year wedding anniversary. Oh.

Okay. You tell me that's not meant to be. Okay. That's cute. Um, and we'd already had a trip planned to Puerto Rico for, I don't know if we had it planned yet, but we knew we were going to celebrate because we didn't have kids. We were, you know, this out in the other. Um, and it was just nuts that it worked out to be the same day, like the exact day as our seven year wedding anniversary. And I was ovulating and it was like,

It's like meant to be. It was so cool. So cool. And the women in my family are fertile mortal. So like you get looked at sideways and you're getting pregnant. And so, um, so you go to Puerto Rico. It was wonderful. It was so exciting. Uh, and I got pregnant right away and came home. Yep. So the point being is that like becoming pregnant was very intentional and something very exciting. And so, um,

So I had some medical trauma during pregnancy. But I don't want to, like, stick on that too much because it's not a prerequisite for postpartum psychosis. Yeah. And so pregnancy was really hard. But there was a finish line, and that was delivery. And once we got, like, delivery was amazing. It was, like, I remember the nurses, like, being in awe of, like,

how it was just like, I just like powered through and I was like, yeah, I've been like, I've been suffering since like the moment of conception and this is the finish line. And I'm so excited to, to be here. Cause now, now everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be amazing. Joe was on us. Uh, that wasn't even the real, that wasn't even like the warmup. We didn't, that wasn't even pre-gaming it. It was like a sip of water before the flood. Um,

A couple days after having Russell, who's now two, almost three, the end of January 31st, he'll be three. A couple days after having him, I started having really horrible nightmares. And they were related to like the medical trauma that I'd gone through in pregnancy. And so it was like, okay, this is like PTSD. And when I...

When I was at the end of my pregnancy, I was like, I want to just have, I want to be proactive and have a postpartum therapist set up just to, just to make sure I have that there, that in place if I need it, because postpartum therapists are like,

Like, if you need help, too bad, so sad. Like, see you in six months, maybe. Or also, we're not even taking a wait list. Good luck. Yeah, exactly. So I was, like, being proactive with it. So I had an appointment set up two weeks postpartum with this lady who specialized in postpartum. And also...

um specialized in like some other things that were related to what I went through during pregnancy and so I was like perfect um and I remember when the nightmares started I was like it's gonna be okay like I'm gonna go through like I've never I'd never seen a therapist before um she'll help me deal with this blah blah blah um and then like the nightmares were getting worse and worse very quickly and they were very scary like I was waking up covered in sweat um

Very scared. And Russell was sleeping in his bassinet in our room. And it was, I remember like feeling so confused. Like just very simple conversation. I was not there for. Not understanding. It was like not even going through the same part of my brain as what conversation would normally go through. And I remember telling this therapist, her name's Angela.

I remember telling her that and she's like, oh yeah, that's really normal. Postpartum. Um, it's, you know, we just went through a pandemic, all this. And it's like, dude, I like transferred into the NICU and started a new whole new part of my career during COVID. Like it's not related to that. Yeah. Um, but she was the expert. And then,

After establishing care with her, she tells me that she's actually a trauma expert as well. Okay. And she's, I don't know if you've, have you ever heard of lifespan integration? I have, but you can tell them if they don't know. Lifespan integration, I'm going to give it a really bad perspective because the way it was used on me was insanely inappropriate. I know that I know of people who have used it

in conjunction with other types of therapy, and it has been helpful, but I don't know of anyone who's used it exclusively. The concept of lifespan integration is, and correct me if you know more of this than I do, because I... I barely know about it. I just briefly know because I saw it online once. Okay. I think it's trash. So...

Unless you're in lifespan integration therapy and it's working for you, great. Otherwise, run away from it. The science isn't there. And any trauma therapist who's like specialized in EMDR or anything like that will be like, that stuff is cuckoo. This therapist referred to it as timeline therapy. And basically, you create a timeline of your memories. So she asked me for all of my memories from pregnancy.

that I had and I gave them to her. And I remember her saying like, don't forget to include the good ones. And I was like, I don't like, I don't have any. I think I gave her like 18 memories and I worked hard to find two good memories. One was when we found out that Russell was a boy and so we knew who's going to be Russell Eugene. And then the second one was when my little sister, I was very

sick in pregnancy and my little sister who was nine at the time just did everything she could to like cheer me up. And it was like this really sweet memory. Um, but otherwise everything I had was, was a scary memory or a bad memory from being sick in pregnancy. And, um, so what they do is they create this timeline and lifespan integration is meant to

Mm-hmm.

six years old we they're trying to go through those memories that you have and and then connect you to current time so the way it starts out the the therapist will read you your memories but they start out by saying today is such and such day it's this time we're at Angela's office I'm

30 whatever years old. And for me, because my trauma was with my, with during pregnancy, she would have me say, I'm not pregnant anymore. Russell is X amount of weeks old, um, to tell my brain to try to tell my brain I'm not in that trauma anymore. And then she'd like a metronome read off these scary memories to me. And you have to acknowledge every memory. Um, and if you don't like, she just keeps braiding you with these. And, um,

So I want to preface this by saying that she was not practicing appropriately. So my experience with lifespan integration obviously isn't how it was intended, but I've researched it a lot and it's not really the most beneficial thing as a therapy option.

But it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot more sense in the context of using it if you're an adult and your brain is stuck at a traumatic moment from childhood. Yeah. To bring it to the present. But if you've just gone through acute trauma, I wasn't thinking of these memories that she forced me to bring up. I had to work hard to give her these memories.

Of like trimester one, trimester two, whatever. And now she's berating me with them. And I remember like being on her floor in her office sobbing hysterically. She wouldn't give me tissue because like you're not allowed to, like you have to cry. And so I'd be like snotting everywhere, like covered in snot. And at this point, like I'm out of it enough that I'm not driving.

So my husband's taking me or my mom or whomever. Um, cause I'm, I'm, um, I don't want to call it catatonic cause that's not like, what would you call like, um, catatonics, like friend, little sister, like so despondent and detached from myself. Um, and just like,

not there. Yeah. Uh, so, so I'm being taken there and she's promising that she can help me. And I don't know anything about trauma. I knew nothing about trauma. Um, and so I'm trusting this person who is an alleged specialist in this area and continues to promise me that she can help me. Um, and she's just abusing me, but I didn't know. And I was desperate to

That makes me sad for you. And I would have done anything. Like you could have told me to do anything and I would have done it. And I wasn't ICU nurse Rachel anymore who could research stuff. And, you know, I couldn't, I was struggling to make a bottle with formula. And so I am delirious enough to

That, like, I'm not able to do anything typical of what I would be doing. Yeah. So I'm going through this torture that she's doing. And, like, I remember the smell of her carpet because I'd be on the ground, like, in the fetal position crying so hard as she's just reading all these bad memories to me. And...

And if I didn't acknowledge her, because when you're in that place, you completely leave your body. You're not there. And she would shake me to acknowledge her because she won't go on to the next memory until...

That does not seem like an appropriate way to help you. So it's not appropriate. Like it's not the way lifespan integration is intended to be used anyway, but then also it was not used in the appropriate context whatsoever. Like even if she had been doing lifespan integration appropriately, that was not the appropriate context to use it. And you don't ever use it for acute trauma. I know this because since going through all of this, I actually...

found the founder of Lifespan Integration. She's still alive. And I messaged her and pretended to be a nursing student doing a research project. And my project was a patient who was myself and said, like, would this be appropriate? Would you use Lifespan? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I just got chills. Never would you do that. What a smart little way to find out. I like that. So devious. Yeah.

Got to know what you need to know. When I like needed to hear it from, it's like when you go through, like that was secondary trauma. Yeah. And when you go through something like that and you're like questioning yourself, like you need to hear it from the source. Like, no, this person did abuse you. Yeah. That was not right. Yeah.

So anyway, well, cause you trusted your, you trusted the licensed professional to do their job appropriately and you don't know what it is beyond you just being the patient. Yes. And it's crazy because like Gus could educate you more on PTSD than she did. Like, I remember asking her, like, why do I have PTSD? Cause I'd been through, like, I didn't have a plush life.

I'd been through plenty, you know, like when I had my thyroid out, it wasn't cancers, but it wasn't like a quote unquote emergent thyroidectomy because it was so convincing that it was cancers. They wouldn't even biopsy it. It was obstructing my airway, like almost 40% or something like that. That's how big it was. And I was just like, I'm 21 living out in North Idaho by myself.

And I'm like, okay. Yeah. You'd been through stuff. Like I remember it was like no big deal. And I remember the surgeon being like, do you understand what I'm saying? And I was like, yeah, like it's got to come out.

And it was like, no big, like, I was like, okay, let's do it. Yeah. And so it was like, it was really frustrating because I just fought this like physical battle of pregnancy and like fought it really well. And then now it's this mental battle. And like, why, why did that happen? Cause I've been so strong my whole life. Yeah. Was it just cause I wasn't strong enough mentally. And that's why this happened to me. Like, was I, I, that's what I believed was that I was just not strong enough mentally. Yeah.

Because I had never known anything about trauma. And I remember asking her, like, what causes PTSD? And she's like, we don't really know. Oh, really? Hello, amygdala. It's kind of in the name, but... Like, hello, hippocampus. Yeah, exactly. Like, Russell, my two-year-old, could tell you more about PTSD than she did. Like, to, like, not even be, like, not even try to explain it, but, like, also just say, like, we don't know. Right. Right.

I don't like that. If I hadn't been in such a horrible state mentally, because this is me going into psychosis. Right. If I hadn't been so out of it, I would have been like, what on earth? Girl, you cuckoo. Yeah. And I remember after every appointment, my husband would come in and I would just cling to him and cry. And she knows to some extent what she was doing to me because...

She would tell him like, she worked really hard during the session. Like she cried a lot and here's what's going to happen afterwards. And like, I didn't get out of like the first time it happened, I didn't get out of bed for like a couple of days and I didn't eat for like a week. And I remember Tyrell like reaching out to her and being like, oh yeah, no, that's expected. Like she worked really, just like constantly reassuring. And he didn't even know the half of what she was doing to me because I knew if I told him, I knew enough that if I told him,

He would be like, there's no way you're going to, I'm letting you do that. But I was so desperate to get better. So the symptoms started relatively quickly after delivery with the nightmares. So that caused a lack of sleep. And then, so the symptoms of psychosis are delirium. So you become delirious, which is like when I was talking about like not being able to understand conversation or just simple tasks being really, really difficult for me.

Um, I remember, so Russell had a very bad sensitivity to formula and every formula on the mark, we went through everything. Um, and he, it wasn't like a little bit of a reaction. It was like his spit up was, even though we were wiping it off immediately was causing like burns on his face. Cause it was so acidic. And so I was able to do, um,

hardcore research and find out this was before the, there was a formula shortage post 2020. Yeah. Um, a while post it was like, took a while to hit the manufacturers or somebody closed for a contamination reason or something like that. There was a massive formula shortage, but this was prior to that happening. Um,

And, um, so goat milk formula was not legal in the U S or not allowed or not something with trans, like something with it being, cause it was manufactured in Germany. So somehow getting it over here was, there was something about it. Um, and the AAP American Academy of Pediatrics doesn't, did not recommend formula. They recommended against it because it's not fortified the same way as U S formulas are.

Um, but we all know that like Europe's standards are way better than us standards. And so I was able to, so like at that time, the formula, the goat milk formula, it was in German. I couldn't even read it. Like it wasn't translated into English anywhere on the can or on the website. And I figured out how to,

Get the information. And it's not like the ratios were not the same for scooping. Oh yeah. Of like, you know, how you mix us formulas or whatever. Um,

Because that was something that connected in my brain to being a NICU nurse. Because in the NICU, we do a ton with formula. We're constantly changing the recipe on formulas to make it higher calorie per ounce and all of these things. So that was an area where I felt very confident. And it directly correlated to my ICU brain. To an old part of my brain that I knew was...

I went to the extreme because it was something that felt familiar. Yeah. And everything else was falling apart in my world. And so I was able to figure out how to mix the concentration to accommodate for the lack of phosphate and vitamin D.

that were it was like a very negligible difference i was ready for my pediatrician to be like no you can't be on this so i was like well i'm mixing it like one plus so that or it was like one plus 0.8 or something like that yeah to accommodate for the phosphorus and it's not overdoing it on any of these other things so i was like calculating all those stupid things out you know like you look at a formula bottle it's like all those and knew that it was like within parameters and

and was ready to show all of my research in a presentation to the pediatrician. And she was just like, great, I'm glad it's working for him. But my brain was able to do that, but I couldn't wash a bottle. Yeah. Or the weirdest stuff. You would hyper-focus on certain things. That made sense to my brain before. Right. There was never a moment where I didn't love Russell. Yeah. I was obsessed with him from the beginning.

And I think that's another thing that people think, and that can happen a lot with like postpartum depression and things like that, is that you can feel a disconnect between you and your baby, but that is not, that's not necessary. That's not, it's not always the case. Correct. And so like, I was insanely obsessed with him, but at the same time, like I couldn't

care for him. The symptoms of, like the big symptoms of postpartum psychosis are, and this is true for a lot of psychosis, but delirium, delusions, and hallucinations. Hallucinations being the most extreme out of all those three. So it started with the delirium where things were just confusing and I couldn't wrap my mind around very, very, very simple. Like I remember driving, like when my husband would drive me back and forth to this appointment and

for the therapist and just being like like a car would drive and I'd be like oh my gosh like that scared me caught me off guard if I had been driving I would I would erect um or just like always being like scared when we were driving because it was like so overwhelming for my brain yeah so it was the first symptom and then and I but I was still pretty present for Russell because he had to have

The way his foreskin formed, he had to have a partial circumcision to release. And then we actually had to have a secondary one because he didn't numb up. And so it distorted...

all of the, it distorted. Cause you do a, for a circumcision, you do a nerve block at the base of the penis and well, he didn't numb up and there's not a whole lot of space there. And so you dump two mils of lidocaine into that and it's all distorted and you don't want to accidentally like you can't put it back. Yeah. Right. And so the first one was very conservative, but you go have to go through all the care of a circumcision afterwards. And then once it's healed, you do the second one.

But obviously I'm going to choose that option versus like taking too much foreskin. Yeah. Um, and I was great at that.

at the diaper changes, at caring for his little boy parts post-circumcision, because I knew that. That was something I could do. I was connected to who I was before and I knew how to do it. And it was complex enough that it required my attention versus like mixing a bottle doesn't, right? Or washing a bottle or whatever, going to the bathroom. Those types of things don't require that level of intellect. Right.

Um, or focus. I was, that was within the first month of life. And so I was able to do those things and, and somewhat like fairly present for those. The first time I like can tell you for sure when I was having a delusion and I know my delusion started prior to this moment that I'm going to share, but this is the only one that I can correlate to like a timeframe. Yeah. I had this belief. So a delusion is, um, is a false belief.

And oftentimes they're scary and they kind of are like, what's that called? Intrusive thought. But the way that they're different than an intrusive thought is that an intrusive thought is concerning to you. Like it doesn't make you feel good. It's like maybe scary or alarming or causes anxiety or whatever. But a delusion is like you, like I'm telling you, the sky is blue outside. And I know that for a fact. And you're like,

The skies are sure black. Yeah. That's a delusion. Like you feel at peace with your belief. Yes. Regardless. And it's like foundational. Like there's no arguing about it. Like with intrusive thoughts, I feel like because I struggle with them a lot since all of this is like you're it's kind of like this constant battle in your brain versus like a delusion. Like I was very confident in my delusion, even though I didn't like it. Yeah. My delusion was that I was not safe for Russell.

And I remember believing this pretty early on. And I didn't have a reason why. Like I couldn't... A lot of times women will experience a lot of intrusive thoughts postpartum. Like common ones are like if you're walking down the hallway, you're going to like bump baby's head into the wall on accident. Or like being really scared to go up and down stairs. Stuff like that. So those are intrusive thoughts. But this belief that I was...

not safe for Russell, but I had no idea why it wasn't like, I'm not safe because X, Y, Z, or I'm not safe because I'm going to do this. I just wasn't safe to be his mom. And I, he needed someone, he needed a mom that could take care of him. And I wasn't that, um, didn't know why, but I knew that was true. And the, so the memory of, of, uh, when I can connect it to a timeframe is, um,

around Easter. So April, right? That's Easter. Yeah. And so I had Russell January 31st. So February, March, it was like maybe three ish months postpartum. My husband's parents were over doing some house projects. Um, and I was in the basement of the house with Russell. And at that point I was like, not really ever alone. Like there was always somebody at the house helping. My mom came from Indiana for like

two and a half months or something like two months, something like that, a long, long time. And then when she left, my, um, we're very close with my in-laws and my mother-in-law was always over. And like, I just always needed help, but I never knew why I never knew why I needed help taking care of Russell. I just knew that like, I couldn't do it or I wasn't the right person to do it. Someone else needed, someone else needed to do it because he deserved better than what I could do.

And, um, and then I would just stay in my room haunted with like all of these terrible thoughts. So your in-laws were over for, they were, they're helping with house projects. Um, and so I was in the basement with Russell, he was sleeping in his bassinet and I remember like, I had to keep myself awake because I didn't want to have a nightmare that woke him up and scared him.

And so I was like crouched down on the ground and the way the base, the basement is, it's like, there was like a pony, like a half wall between these two rooms. And, uh, there was a window on the other side. And the way I knew I was awake was because I could see the shadows of people walking by. And I'm, so I'm sitting in the basement and the way I knew it was like real life was because I could see the shadows from the

From the window. And then I could also like... I could hear everyone's footsteps. Because it wasn't well insulated. So you could hear where everybody was at in the house. And I already knew for a fact that I was not safe for Russell. And then at this moment when I'm hearing everyone's footsteps. I hear them all in the kitchen. The dining room. Which is like right above where I'm at. And I can tell everyone's footsteps are all right there. At least I think I can. And I did this...

was doing this thing it's called uh depersonalization where the best way i can describe it for me is like i was watching a video a movie of myself of my life and i'm like outside of like i'm floating in the air above my house and i can see everything that's happening and i'm experiencing it but there's nothing i can do to stop what's happening there's nothing i can do to change like i'm only an observer and i'm outside of the house um the other way it felt

Was like i'm watching everything happen through a window and no one can hear me Like i'm pounding on the window as loud as I can and no one can hear me And so that's called depersonalization, which that happens with a lot of mental health um struggles illnesses it's it's not like that if Any kind of trauma that that can happen. Yes, because that's how you survive. Yeah survival mechanism, right? um and

So I'm watching as a third party almost. And so I can see, even though I'm in the basement, I can see my husband with his mom and dad on the phone with my mom and dad in our dining room talking about how I'm not safe for Russell to be his mom. But again, no one has a reason.

And how can they create an environment where I get to pretend and feel like I'm his mom, but they're all somehow, they have all these safety checks in place. And I'm never actually, there's never actually a possibility that I could ever hurt him or do anything wrong because someone's always actually there. And maybe they're pretending that they're doing laundry, but they're actually watching me

to make sure Russell's safe from me. Um, so I think I'm doing it on my own cause they didn't want to hurt my feelings. They knew I loved being a mom. They knew I wanted to be a mom. They knew I loved Russell very much, but I wasn't safe for him. So how do we let her think that she's doing it? Almost like how you would deal with a dementia patient. Yeah. Um, I just, that just clicked now. Yeah. Uh, it's like, yeah, almost like how you do it. Like, yes. Uh huh. Yeah. Um, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. Keep going. Sorry. Um,

So it was like this grand scheme. Like they were putting a lot of effort into... And I remember being like, that's so nice that they don't want to hurt my feelings. And that they want to make sure that like I can feel included. Because I also knew that I wasn't safe for him. And if there was the option for someone else to take care of him, I gave them the option. Usually my mother-in-law or my husband at that point after my mom had left. And...

So that's the first time I can put a date on a serious delusion. And I had that, that was a continuous delusion that I had. I had others, but one thing that's... Just to confirm, that was not happening. Correct. Not at all.

Just for the listeners. Yes. No, nobody was doing that. No one thought I was not safe for Russell. I wasn't even appearing scary to anybody. Yeah. Like no one was concerned. Yeah. They just like, no one even, I couldn't verbalize what I was struggling with. They just knew I needed help, but no one knew why. And I didn't even know why. I only bring that up because I've seen other stories, like you said, where

the mother does something to herself or her baby and the family is always like, we had no clue, but they had a thought, they have a delusion that they did know. That's the only reason I wanted to confirm. Okay. And so with psychosis, and I think this is true for all psychoses, but, um, for sure, postpartum psychosis, uh, one of the reasons that makes it so difficult to detect is that you can have what's called bizarre delusions or non-bizarre delusions, um,

And usually the only case, usually the cases that are caught are women suffering from bizarre delusions because those are the women who think the FBI is bugging their house or the CIA. Grandiose delusions. Really like, Oh wow, something's wrong. Yeah. Um, people are following like the same car keeps driving by, but it's not actually the same car. So bizarre delusions are much easier to detect because it's obvious that you're cuckoo. Yeah. Um,

I was having non-bizarre delusions, which are very difficult to detect, especially because it aligned with a lot of postpartum intrusive thoughts. So I remember talking to, like telling my husband, like, I'm not safe for Russell. Like I can't, I can't be his mom. He deserves a mom that will protect him and keep him safe. And I can't do that. And of course he's like, you're nuts. You're an amazing mother. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Well, now I can't trust you.

Because you were just having a powwow with our whole families in the kitchen talking about how I'm not safe for Russell and how can we create this

fake world where I think that I am. And now you're telling me that you think I'm a great mom and I'm perfectly safe for him and all that. And, but I know for a fact, your mind is just working against you the whole time. Yeah. So with delusions, the best way to help somebody is to validate what they're experiencing, but then check the facts. Well, you can't do that if it's an all bizarre delusion, especially one that like kind of aligns with postpartum struggles. Uh, so immediately then like now you're not a safe person.

I can't share these things with you anymore. Um, and so that was, that was April. Um, I was still seeing, I was still seeing Angela and I was seeing Angela up until I was admitted. So I'll just leave that there. Uh, and she was just as abusive and her abuse actually got worse. Uh, but at that point I was also seeing a postpartum psychiatrist who was like the best postpartum psychiatrist you could have in our area of Spokane. Um,

And that's all she did, the postpartum psych. And I will say that, like, she was a wonderful lady, but I was so far out of her scope of practice, it wasn't even funny. So I'm seeing, like, so I'm seeing these two people that I'm supposed to be, should be taking care of me, right? Not to mention, I don't think I mentioned this, but MFM followed me during my entire pregnancy. I didn't actually have, they were my primary OBs.

because I went into pregnancy knowing I would have to be followed by them. So I was like, why have two appointments? Or like, why have two OBs? What's the point of that? I'll just see MFM. Big mistake. They're no different than, like, they see a lot of ugly stuff, right? They are detached.

They're also used to seeing sick babies inside of mama, not a sick mama. And so I was a vessel that held a baby. And as long as that baby was safe, that's all that mattered. Yeah. My wellbeing was not part of the equation. Wow. And I remember going to my six week postpartum check and telling, I really liked my nurse practitioner that I had, uh, with OB and telling her all these things. And I

A lot of my story that I am giving, I don't actually remember. It's me piecing it together through chart notes and things that my husband, you know, from other people, what I remember, like the memories that I have are like that delusion. My brain believes that delusion is a real memory. Yeah. Um,

And it's also remembered as like flashbacks. But like piecing together the actual like how... The timeline. So like not all of this might be 100% accurate. Sure. But it's close enough. That's what you know. Yeah. And so I remember like I have the chart note from that six-week postpartum appointment. And she documented the things I was struggling with. And was like, cool, she's seeing therapy. Refer to...

PCP. She did nothing for me. Out of all of the OB providers, maternal fetal medicine, who is supposed to be the elite, they take care of high-risk pregnancy, they should know the most, should have known about postpartum psychosis, should have educated on postpartum psychosis, should have educated on any type of postpartum mental health, which they didn't. But at six weeks, the documented symptoms that she put

were concerning enough for postpartum psychosis. Wow. And I was open and transparent. As a society, we think that we do so much better for moms with their mental health now than we did, say, maybe 10 years ago or something, which is all a big delusion in itself because the big thing that was implemented is that at well-child checks for baby, there's a screening on there for mom to see how you're feeling.

and to catch postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. So the disorders postpartum are postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis. So it's screening for all of those things. And if you had asked me before going through all this, like before being pregnant and everything, because I was a part of that world as a nurse and I saw those,

And I actually helped a lot of moms when I got those. If you'd asked me if I struggled with my mental health postpartum, if I would have ever answered those questions honestly, I'd been like, heck no. No way. There's no way I'm telling anybody my business. Fix it myself. That's how I do everything. Fix it myself. No. I answered to the absolute most honest you could. And it was the highest red flag you could answer. It's like

like, I don't know, 10 questions. Same as like the depression screening questions, right? The PHQ-9 or whatever. And they didn't do anything? So I remember my pediatrician bringing it up. So Russell had like quite a few visits because you have a lot of well-trialed visits within the first like two or three months of life anyway. And then with his circumcision, there was even, or double circumcision, there was even more. And all of those, I'm filling out the same screening.

And I remember his pediatrician, the first time bringing it up, she only brought it up once, even though my answers were the same then throughout the rest of his care. And I remember this because it was so offensive to me and I wanted to punch her in the face. It looks like you're having a really hard time adjusting to motherhood.

No, I'm just having a really hard time. Right. But I am not able to say these things for myself. Right. Right. Well, cause you don't know either. You don't know what you don't know. And so I was like, yes. Um, which that is a massive judgment. You're having a hard time adjusting to being a mom. Like that's not. It's not helpful. No. And that's mean. Like if you, I wasn't having like, I didn't think I was having a hard time adjusting to being a mom because I loved my son so much. Right. I'm having a hard time.

I don't know. I don't know what's wrong. Right. Um, but like something is really wrong. And I, I was like, yeah, but I'm seeing a, I'm seeing a therapist. And as soon as like, she heard the, she was like, oh, awesome. Great. And documents that.

It's not her problem anymore. Right. And that's the problem with these screenings that now we think we're doing so much more for these mamas postpartum and their mental health. No, we're not. The ball is just getting passed around and these moms are actually just getting lost. Yeah. Because they think that they're being reassured. They're like, oh yeah, that's great. You're doing the right thing. Right. You're getting the help you need, but you're not. Like she didn't ask who was I seeing? Like if she had known anything about the type of therapy I was getting, she would have. Right.

Should have intervened. Right. So what led to the hospitalization? So as the delusions continued, I had, I remember the date of my first hallucination because it was the early morning after work.

Russell or after our eight year wedding anniversary. And I remember celebrating our eight year wedding anniversary and we were at home. I think, you know, whatever we ordered, I have no idea for food. Um, and I like had, I posted on Facebook, like, cause I was so insanely grateful. Like I loved this baby so much and I was so grateful for him. And my husband is like any part of

Like I had the most support you could possibly ask for more than like anyone really deserves. And if you were to have taken like one piece of that away, I wouldn't be here today. And he was the pillar of that. And we're now like three years into this journey and he has not stopped. Like not once has he skipped a beat and he has been nothing but my caretaker for me.

throughout pregnancy and all this insanity of postpartum. That's awesome. And none, neither of us were like advocates for mental health before this, you know, it's not like it was someplace we knew or familiar. And so it's like, that's kind of a hard adjustment to like your wife's fine. And now like everything's crazy. Um, and like you have no way to wrap your brain around it and there's no time to like stop and think about it. Cause it's just crisis, crisis, crisis. Um,

So I had done a post on Facebook for our eight year wedding anniversary of a picture of Russell and Tyrell. I still remember it's like the cutest picture of being like, I'm just, you know, how happy I was and how grateful I was and all these, and all of that is true. And then that night we'd gone to sleep and Russell's in his bassinet next to my bed, next to my side of the bed. And Tyrell's sleeping and I am sobbing because I am like this massive burden that

Like he now has two babies to take care of. I can do nothing for myself. He has to protect Russell from me. I am not just useless, but like I'm a heavy weight. And I'm sure as a nurse, you can relate to like how difficult it is or the ship of being a burden. Like you want to jump in it and you want to drown with it, right? Like, because we don't, we're not burdens. We take care of people.

And we aren't the person that needs taking care of. Right. Which, you know, probably says a lot about what we went through to become nurses. Right. But just that, like, I knew I was never going to get better somehow. I knew that. And I couldn't stand the brain that I was in. And I couldn't keep doing this to my husband. And I'm just crying and crying and crying. And out of nowhere...

It's like three o'clock, three o'clock in the morning or something out of nowhere. Uh, this was my first hallucination. So this is the start of my hallucination. I was crying, not hallucinating. And then all of a sudden Satan, the devil is in the corner of my bedroom, just there just appears. And it wasn't even startling to me. And like, I, I am a believer. I have strong faith in Jesus. Um,

Um, I've talked to Jesus a whole lot, but I've never talked to the devil before. Uh, like you would think that that would be like, Oh my goodness. Like, what are you doing here? Right. And I was just like, Oh, Hey, like, Hey, what's up? Like, no big deal. And so my first hallucination was auditory and visual. The way he spoke was very, uh, like prophetic biblically sounding. Um,

And he told me that he acknowledged how much I loved my husband and my son. And he said that in order to protect them, I had to sacrifice myself to him. But if I didn't do that, that God had already given him permission to torture Tyrell and Russell for the rest of their lives. Oh my God. And like they would live for a long time. It's not like they would succumb to his torturing.

He referenced Job in the Bible. I don't know. I know that you grew up with a lot of foundational... Religion, Christianity. Yes. It almost sounds like Baptist, but I can't remember exactly. So I don't know if you're familiar with the story of Job. But he referenced Job. And in the Bible, Satan wanted to test Job's faith in God.

And basically say like, he's not that cool. You know, like his faith ain't that great. And God's like, go for it. Throw your worst at him. It is. Like he won't break. So Satan was saying, like Job, God has given me permission to put them through everything. And they will die. Like they will suffer the rest of their lives. But if I sacrifice myself to him, they will live prosperously forever.

for the rest of eternity. Oh wow. That's a lot of weight. It was like a no-brainer. I was like, amazing! I remember, to this day, and this is really horrible, to this day, I have never felt the amount of peace that I felt when he told me that. Oh wow. And I know it's not real peace, right? Right, but you still felt it. Because I was in so much distress, and he gave me the solution, and I was like, amazing. I didn't hesitate for a second.

And he had all these like insane parameters for how I had to sacrifice myself. And the word was, I'm continuing to use the word sacrifice because that's the word that he used. But it's killed myself is what, you know, that's what it was. But he said sacrifice. And that's important to how postpartum psychosis is. It had to be on a mountaintop at sunrise. Right.

it had to be a peaceful experience. He referenced something else in the Bible of like when somebody is martyred for Christ, but they're so, they're so strong in their faith that they know that they're dying for what they believe in. And so I had to die to him in that same way, knowing that I was dying for the betterment of my faith or whatever. Um, however you would put that in translation for him. Yeah. Um,

So it had to be a peaceful experience, like something that I was looking forward to. And it had to be, I couldn't be found. Like it couldn't be somewhere where someone would find me. And if someone did find me, it had to look like it was not suicide whatsoever. Oh, wow. That's a lot of rules. And part of the peaceful thing was that it couldn't be traumatic.

Like if someone found me, it couldn't be a traumatic finding. Right. Because it couldn't look like suicide. Had to look like a natural passing or whatever. And I've never thought about suicide before that. I don't know if I've already said this or not. And I'm sorry if I have. Prior to this, I didn't struggle with my mental health at all. At all. And I can say that with like a lot of authenticity or very genuinely. Not like, I'm not trying to like gloat in that or anything. But like.

I did not suffer with my mental health. I had no diagnoses. I had no, I'd never self-medicated. I had never, I mean, nursing is self-medicating, but nothing like that. And then, so I never thought about suicide. And for him to like have all this check mark of things that I needed to do as someone who's never thought about that. I'm not joking you when I say like, I didn't actually have to think about it in the

plan was in my mind. Wow. And I knew exactly how to fulfill all of those things. Oh, wow. And at this point, like killing myself was very difficult because there was people around. I was never alone. And for the first time, the next, the next day, my husband was going to go fishing with my father-in-law and that's an all day endeavor. And so I was going to be home with Russell for the first time by myself. And so I was going to

call my mother-in-law and say like, hey, I'm not feeling well. Can you come get Russell? She would have said yes, you know, obviously. And then I would have, I was going to drive up to a mountain where we had been once before camping. And I was going to hike up to this mountain and wait overnight because it was like a three and a half hour drive only because it's like logging roads and like

really takes a long time to get up there because you have to drive like 15 miles an hour. And then it's a pretty decent hike to the top of this mountain. And I was going to start a campfire, something that I love. Like I love camping. I love being out in the wilderness. I love being out in the middle of nowhere. In the mountains in the middle of nowhere is my place to be. And so that is peaceful in and of itself for me. Start a campfire, love that. And then I was going to wait for sunrise. I was going to smoke.

which I love cigars and drink my favorite whiskey. And at this point, my psychiatrist had me on a high dose of benzos. And that is a bad combination, but resulted in the type of death that Satan told me I needed. And so I would have just passed away. And it's because of how rural it was.

Likely a mountain lion or wolves or something would have gotten to me before anything else. But just for that to have been like, I just came up with that. Like I didn't even try to think about it. Like he's talking to me, Satan's talking to me and I'm like, oh, here's what I'll do. And it was so empowering to be like, here's what I can do to protect my family. I love these boys so much.

And finally there's an answer for like something that I can do for them because my husband has done nothing but take care of me in the worst of this. And I love them so much and I would do anything for them, but this is like a real way to guarantee that I can protect them forever. And I absolutely, and I wasn't scared at all. I couldn't wait. I was like anxiously awaiting the next day because I was so excited for it. And like,

I can't even describe the amount of peace it brought to me. And so one of his parameters was that I had to write a suicide note. And I don't remember what it said, but I remember that he told me what to write because it couldn't involve him at all. Like I couldn't reference him in it or Satan told me to do this so that you'd be safe or whatever. It had to be like a normal jailblow suicide note, if you will. And...

So I got up and went into my husband's office and I was writing what Satan was telling me to write in the suicide note. And, um, it was like, don't look for me at our favorite campsite. Like, don't look for me at all, whatever, a bunch of stuff. And then mind you, like I had been sobbing in bed before this happened. And like, my husband's a heavy sleeper. Doesn't wake up for that at all. I'm, I literally like sign my name on the, on the note, um,

And it wasn't probably your average note because it was like all these like things that I loved about him and all these things that I wanted him to tell Russell about me because I no longer was like that. Like Rachel's gone. I'm not Rachel anymore. I'm not her and I'm never going to be here. I've been overtaken by whatever this is and she's gone. And Russell doesn't, no one deserves this version of me, but definitely not this beautiful baby. And definitely not this husband that I just love so dearly.

And so I signed my name. There had been no noise in the house. I wasn't making any noise. I was no longer crying. I hadn't been crying for a while. Russell didn't make any noise. He wasn't crying. It was completely quiet. And all of a sudden, Tyrell's in the door of his office. And he sees me, and he just knows what's happening. Like, he knows that I was writing a suicide note. Oh, wow. And he just starts crying and, like, comes and grabs me. And I'm pissed.

I'm so mad because you've, you're ruining my plan. Oh wow. Like you're getting in my way. What am I supposed to do now? And like, cause I don't know how long I have to complete this task before it's too late or before like the offer is gone or whatever it is. And so I'm mad, like really mad. And he's like hugging me and crying. And obviously being mad is not the typical response when you're found in that type of

and Satan's telling me, start crying. Like, telling me how to act is if somebody, you know, like, you can imagine how you would act if your husband found you writing your suicide note, right? So I'm sad, and I'm scared, and all this, that, and the other, and I'm so sorry, and blah, blah, blah. And this is in the very early morning hours, and I don't think Tyrell ever read the note. He still has it, I know, but I don't think he read it. I'm pretty sure he didn't.

And it's hidden away somewhere. I don't have any desire to read it or anything like that. But the next morning, as soon as he can, he contacts my psychiatrist and my therapist, Angela, who both are like, well, she needs to go inpatient. Impatient mental health care in Spokane is notoriously horrible. And I knew that through friends who worked there. And because I was in and out of lucidity...

I knew that it was bad care. And also, it was so weird because I was lucid, but I also believed this, that I also knew I still had to accomplish this task to sacrifice myself to Satan. So it was really weird. Yeah. Of like this like split of being in reality, but still believing the psychotic reality.

And I think that that happens a lot in psychosis. I don't know. But anyway, I refused to go inpatient. And I basically say to Tyrell, you put me inpatient, I'll for sure get myself. Knowing what to say to make him not do it. And I was convincing enough. I had enough information to give him that he was like, yeah, okay.

You do have a lot of sources that say like inpatient care is not going to be good. And another, a friend of the family who is a therapist back home in Indiana that does, works with children who have gone through medical trauma. She was kind of like part of our lives at that moment to try to like help navigate things. And she told him that like, if someone goes inpatient when they're not ready or it's not the right place to

it, the result is not good. And so then basically my therapist was like, well, sounds like a personal problem. Like if you're not going to listen, you know, like she didn't care. Thankfully, my psychiatrist cared and she was committed to keeping me safe wherever I was. So it was, how do we keep me safe at home?

okay, Tyrell's going to get all these lock boxes. Because at this point, I'm on a butt ton of meds. I'm on an insane amount of meds. And every single one of them could end my life. Lock everything up. Anything that could possibly kill me, lock it up. And I remember, like, obviously guns and things like that are, like, the big...

uh items and i just was like you idiot like that's not what i'm gonna use to kill myself i'm not saying that yeah yeah but you're thinking yeah i'm like i i'm not like i can't hang myself like that's not that doesn't fulfill this task right um that doesn't follow the rules and now i'm like on to plan b because enough of plan a was given away um

that I couldn't use that plan anymore. Satan told me like I had to do, find another plan. And I could not for the life of me come up with a plan B. I was fixated. That was all I was thinking about day and night. And now I'm on suicide watch, right? So like, I thought I wasn't alone before. I'm really not alone now. My older brother,

quit his job and moved in with us to help keep us safe. My mother-in-law is there constantly. My mom came back out. I'm not alone at all. And throughout this process, people kept asking me, how do you feel about Russell? And I got so mad at that question because I'm like, I love him. But that's the question. If you answer that question the correct way, which is

I don't love him. Or yes, I do think about hurting him sometimes. That's what's going to get you help. Not, oh my gosh, I love him so much, but I want to kill myself. Yeah. They're not, that's not what's going to get you help. You make any indication that you're not attached to your baby or you're having thoughts of anything towards your baby. You're going to, that's,

that's the highlight um that's the ticket what am I trying to say you know what I mean yeah I do know what you mean that's what's going to get you the actual professional help that you've yes needed this whole time but have not been granted because you weren't following the typical yes what the perceived and so and it would make me so mad because I did love him so much and for people to

Like it just further enforced in my mind that there was nothing wrong with me because I loved him so much. If there was something wrong with me, I would want to hurt him. Yeah. But I don't want to hurt him. So there's nothing wrong with me. So what got you to that point where you were, what, what happened that made you have to tell somebody? So when I realized I needed help, it was probably a month after this, my first hallucination happened.

And I started my nightmares, I thought became, we thought we were calling them night terrors. We thought I was sleepwalking. They were actually hallucinations. So you can have hallucinations that occur during sleep and then, or mimic sleep.

When you're in that hallucination like one of the indicating factors is that you're not able to differentiate between your sleep-wake cycle That's a big thing for psychosis. And so I would start out with what I thought was a nightmare and then I'd be sleepwalking for this nightmare So there's three big episodes of that three big hallucination episodes where that happened I was on so many meds and I was not sleeping and

I was on Ambien 15 milligrams. I was on Seroquil. I was on a ton of Gabapentin. I was on Zyprexa. A lot of stuff. Prozac 80 milligrams. I have a ton of eight milligrams of clonazepam a day. I was dosed out and I was not sleeping. That's a huge red flag. Yeah. Because-

I don't know a lot about the chemical changes that happen, like leading to psychosis, but if medications that are supposed to work a certain way, like sleep, like hardcore psychotic, anti-psychotic medications or whatever, and they're not having that effect on your brain, something's seriously wrong. And that's one thing that was another thing that was missed is that I'm on all these sleeping meds, things to help me sleep and they're sedating me.

and making it so that I can't walk and stuff like that or can't walk well, but they are not stopping my thoughts. Like my brain is still racing and also they're not making me sleep. And I remember there's a message, thankfully my nurse practitioner had taken immaculate documentation. And there's a message that I had left just prior to like being admitted saying like, I haven't slept, I think I've slept like an hour in the last three days.

Because I was terrified to sleep because I was having these nightmares that then are now turning into... I was sleepwalking, I thought. So the first hallucination I had in that respect was that I'd gone grocery shopping with Russell. And I left him outside when I was bringing in the groceries. And it's been a couple hours. I've fallen asleep. And he's been outside this whole time. And he's...

Like, I have no idea of car seat or anything like that. But all I know is that I've left him outside. And, like, I'm not grocery shopping, right? Like, I'm not showering myself. Like, I'm not doing this kind of stuff. So it's, like, totally out there on a lot of levels. Yeah. And so I, in this hallucination, get up knowing for a fact that he's outside by himself in the middle of the night freezing cold. And...

I got up and couldn't even hardly get to the door. When I stood up, I smashed myself into the wall or something because I was so drugged. I couldn't walk very well. And by that time, Tyrell comes to and is realizing what's going on. This is the first time this is happening. So I crawl as fast as I can, get to the front door, but I can't unlock it.

Like, I was too out of it to unlock it. And Tyrell comes, and I'm screaming, Russell's outside, Russell's outside, we have to get him. And he's like... Obviously, he's like, no, he's not. He's in his bassinet. He's safe. He's fine. And I'm like, no, he is outside. And I'm, like, physically pushing him off of me. Like, how could you... Like, you POS, you don't love our baby? Like, what is wrong with you? He's outside. Like, why won't... Like, why are we in here? Why are we arguing about this right now? And so...

Now we know how to deal with those types of situations, which is don't leave the person having a hallucination. But he didn't know. It's not like he did anything wrong. And the only thing that would bring me back was if you could prove to me that he was safe. So Tyrell went and busted it to go get Russell to come show me he's safe. He's right here. And in that time, I get the door unlocked. I'm in a t-shirt and underwear crawling because I can't walk.

screaming for Russell outside in our front yard. Oh wow. And like screaming Tyrell has to pick me up and carry me inside. And I'm like fighting him as hard as I can. And hallucinations. I remember really well. Cause your brain categorizes those. Like those are real memories for me. Wow. Like I, that's a core memory to me now, unfortunately. Um, so that was like one night and then a couple of nights later, this also correlates to some stuff that Angela was doing. Um,

Because she had Tyrell start doing timeline therapy at home. Oh my God. At night for my nightmares. Because up to that point, I was having like the same recurring scary nightmares from pregnancy. So if I had that, if I had whatever nightmare, he, she, her and I made a timeline for it. She emailed it to him. He still has it. And he, I was supposed to wake him up. Oftentimes he would already be awake because it was so hysterical. And then he would do what she did.

And so then now I'm having hallucinations at nighttime. It was, it was a direct correlation. It was like a day after she started doing that. Um, a couple of days go by. The next hallucination I have is that Russell's up in the night and I'm like a normal mom. I'm consoling him at night. No one else is around. I'm that.

That typical mom who is up in the middle of the night with her newborn baby who can't sleep and I'm rocking him and bouncing him and I'm frustrated because I can't get him to sleep. And I'm making a cup of tea. It was a cup of sleepy time tea, the vanilla flavor. And I have him in my left arm and go to take a drink in my right arm. And the boiling hot water spills all over his lower half.

And scolds him. Oh, wow. And I've taken care of burned babies before. And so I immediately call 911. Except this is all happening in real life. It's not just in my mind. Oh, my gosh. These are all things that I'm actually doing. So I call 911 frantic saying, please help, please help. My baby is burned. My baby is burned. I need help, please. And it's like this, whatever. And then I...

I'm trying to like get tepid water on him and I'm getting him undressed and all this stuff. Well, I hadn't given 911 our address or anything like that. So it took them a little while to like find us. And in that time I had come out of the hallucination, which I thought was a night terror. And I was so proud because I was able to like reorientate myself to the moment. And I was like, okay, I'm getting better. And then all of a sudden,

there's like spotlights in our windows. Cause I had no idea. I called 911. Oh my gosh. I had no clue. So I'm just laying in bed, chill, super proud of myself thinking that I'm getting better now. Cause I was able to like wake up from this horrible nightmare and be like, no, everything's fine. So there's spotlights in the window. He is obviously going, Gus is going bananas because we all think that somebody is breaking into the house. And, and, um,

I didn't think someone was breaking into the house. I thought that someone finally caught on that I wasn't a safe mom and they reported me and now they're here to take Russell. So I go immediately and I grab Russell and I run and hide with him in the closet. And all of a sudden, you know, like your closet fluorescent light comes on and there's like six big EMS, whatever guys in my closet door. So walking, a big walk-in closet.

And they're wanting my baby. And I'm like, screaming at them. Like, you can't take my baby. You can't touch my baby. You can't take my baby. I didn't hurt him. He's safe. I haven't hurt my baby. And thankfully, Tyrell, that situation could have gone much differently. But Tyrell was able to communicate enough with them to say like,

She's having a lot of mental health struggles postpartum. She's seeing a psychiatrist, all this. But she's been sleepwalking. And so they convinced me that they don't need to take him from me, but I have to unswaddle him so that they can see that he's safe and not harmed. Because somebody somewhere, they can't figure out. They were very, I wish I knew who they were so that I could say thank you for that. Because if they had taken me in,

The outcome would have been completely different. Yeah. So they told me, they're like, someone in this area called and said that there was a baby hurt. Obviously, like, Russell looks so happy and whatever. But we just need to, we're just going house to house to find out and make sure every baby in the area is safe. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. And so I unswaddle him.

And I made them like turn the lights off because I was like the bright lights are going to wake him up and stuff. And it was like just massive like change. Like I'm screaming and hysterical. And then it's like, oh, yeah, I believe that. It's the dumbest thing ever. Like who would believe that? And so that happens. And it's funny looking back in my phone log. Every variation of 911 you could possibly think of, I dialed before I got to 911. Oh, my God. 191.

119. I don't even know, but like there was like 18 different call logs before I actually got to 911. Um, so at that point then, so like everyone's being updated, my therapist, my psychiatrist, everyone's being updated. My meds are upped. Um, and Terrell's like now every it's like, okay, how do we Fort Knox it even more than we've already Fort Knox state? All everybody's now that they know what, like I'm kind of capable of in my sleepwalking, uh, cell phones, uh,

uh keys everything like that is getting put in the safe and I don't know the combo for the safe and I remember being like I will not give you my phone because I can't sleep at night because I'm too scared to sleep and I go on YouTube and I'm watching this like I remember I was watching Yes Theory I don't know if you've ever watched them no it's uh they've got a YouTube channel obviously and um they they

Anyway, it doesn't matter. I hope they hear this. Yes, theory. You were with me in psychosis. Um...

they do stuff like going to like the world's most remote village and like connecting humanity basically um and it's like long 45 minute videos and stuff and it was just very comforting or i'd be watching documentaries or something like that and i was like i can't be alone like i have to have that yeah i can't be left alone with just myself yeah and so tyra was like okay

here's this old tablet that we haven't used in forever. It has nothing on it. Um, the only thing he downloaded or the only thing I had on it was, or the only thing that was connected was, uh, YouTube and it was YouTube premium. So that like I had a select things, amount of things to watch. Um, so, okay. Awesome. Like she can't do anything through that. Right. Well,

That night, my hallucination was that we were camping at our favorite camp spot. Tyrell and I have always camped at this exact same spot, way out in the mountains. Like, you don't see anybody. It's amazing. And we couldn't wait to take Russell there. And it's right on a creek. It's called Independence Creek. And when we were pregnant, we would, like, talk to Russell about, like, going camping with him and how much fun it would be. So in this hallucination, we're camping, and...

Russell loved the water, loved bath time, loved splashing in the water. And someone actually in real life had just gifted me one of those like sit them up activity seat things because he wasn't quite able to, he was able to support himself well enough to do that, but not sit up independently. And the Creek, because it's so far up in the mountains, it's not, it's not very deep. And there's like often pretty big dry spots in it.

And so Tyrell, it was like, it was exactly how it would have been in real life. It was supper time. I was cooking on the campfire, making supper and Ty was off fly fishing further down where the river is bigger. And I was playing with Russell in his little sit-em-up seat and his toes were just barely in the water splashing and he's giggling and squealing and

uh, just, it's just like in that, in that moment of that hallucination, I was like, this is everything I've ever wanted. And I was just like, so overwhelmed with happiness. And the, the Creek is very close to like our campsite and you can like see it from, I had to go stir dinner and it's like 10 feet away. And Russell's like on a dry Island. And even if

He hadn't gotten... Even if he could have gotten out of where he was, there wasn't any deep water anywhere near where he was. He's not crawling this, that, and the other. And so I can go walk 10 feet and start dinner. I turn around, and his seat was tipped over, and he was gone. And so I run out into the creek, and I'm looking, and I'm looking, and I can't find him anywhere. And so I start running down the creek. And...

There's this bend in the creek and there's like a lot of down brush. There's like a down tree and all the stuff that is collected with it. And Russell is there face down up under the brush. And I run to him as fast as I can and I pull him out from under the brush. And he is limp and cold. And the way hallucinations are insane because...

Like my body, like just talk, I can feel his dead body in my hands right now. Like as if it happened for real. I know it didn't happen for real, but that doesn't change the way your body holds that. I can remember every scratch and every bruise on him. And I had to like bushwhack really far through these like really thick thorns, weeds, whatever, to get to like a cleared area off of the creek. And I get him down and I immediately start resuscitation.

And I, in my hallucination, am trying to resuscitate him for like 30 minutes before Tyrell gets back. And Tyrell gets back and I'm just like, he's like, what happened? I'm so sorry. Like, it's all my fault. I drowned. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And then it like cuts from that. And it was like, obviously he had died. But then it's like the next, the very next thing in my hallucination was planning his memorial.

And, like, that's how it worked in my brain, the hallucination. And I was going to, like, post it on Facebook. You know, Russell passed away, blah, blah, blah. Well, I got access to Facebook in my hallucination. Which, like, if you were to hand me your phone and be like, hey, log into Facebook, I'd be like, yeah, right, I can't remember anything. In my hallucination, I got access, I, like, downloaded Facebook, signed in, remembered my password, and I was like,

And posted this status that said something like, please keep our family in your prayers. Like, Russell passed away. Russell drowned. And it was all my fault. I should have... Like, it didn't sound right. Yeah. I should have taught him how to swim. I don't know why I never taught him. It's all my fault that he drowned. And this is, like, I think, like, maybe 4 o'clock in the morning. 4.30 or so in the morning. And...

I have a lot of friends on Facebook from Indiana, which is two hours ahead of us. And so people are like awake and seeing it. And then, um, again, I wake up from this hallucination and I'm able to reorientate myself. And I did go check on Russell, like, and saw that he was safe. And I was like, everything's fine. And I ended up sleeping, like laying down on the ground next to his bassinet and sleeping next to him and just being like, wow, I'm so glad that wasn't real. Cause it was horrifying. And, um,

Then all of a sudden, like someone's knocking on the front door and it's like super early. It's like five o'clock in the morning and it's my mother-in-law and people have been trying to call us, but our phones were all in the safe. So we didn't hear anything. And they had seen the Facebook. I don't know how it came about, but they, I think maybe one of our family friends saw it and called my father-in-law or something. And then no one could get ahold of us. And so my mother-in-law like comes racing over and she's pounding on the front door and she's like, where's my,

Where's R2 and Russell? That's my family nickname. Where's R2 and Russell? And she's like very upset sounding.

And I wake up from all of this and I'm like, he's fine. He's like, I'm sleeping next to him. I'm like, he's fine. Everything's fine. Like I'm thinking that she's there to say that like my father-in-law died or something like that. And I keep asking like, what's wrong? What's wrong? And she's like holding my face and like making sure that I'm okay. And then like, she has to hold Russell to make sure he's okay. And she's just like tearful and like very scared. And I can't figure out why.

And I'm like, what has happened? And she won't say. And then, like, her and my husband and my mom, who my mom was living with us, are all, like, whispering. And, like, it's, like, very weird. And I'm like, who... Like, what has happened? And nobody could tell me. And then...

Finally, it comes out what had happened. I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, I had that nightmare. The Facebook post was real? I really posted it. Oh, wow. Tons of people had commented. Oh, wow. I think I was in shock about it, but I was still so happy that I had been able to reorientate myself and come out of the hallucination or what I thought was sleepwalking. It took me a couple of hours to realize that if I was ever on compressions-

in my career, I always used, like, I bit my bottom lip as like a metronome. And that was something like I did in real life as a nurse. And I remember even in the hallucination, like I did that. Oh, wow. Like as I'm resuscitating Russell in my hallucination, I'm like, you know, and it took me a long time, a couple hours from all the adrenaline. I almost bit through my bottom lip during that hallucination. Oh, wow. Because I was biting my lip so hard, apparently. Yeah.

And that's the moment I realized how, like, real that was. And, like, I think that they had found, like, the pillow or they think they found the pillow that looked like it was in a really weird place and, like, didn't belong where it was at. Yeah. This is probably what she was, like, smashing on. It was Russell. And I realized, like, even though, like, I every all of these instances are me trying to save Russell. Had I done that to him? Had I done compressions like that on him? I would have killed him. Oh, wow.

And in that moment, I was like, take me anywhere. Oh, wow. I cannot be around my baby. Like now, like I am an absolute risk to his life and I will not live with that. Find me help or I will kill myself. Not like Satan sacrifice, but like I will give my life to save him from me. Yeah. I will not live on this earth being a danger to him. And it was kind of challenging to find where the best place was for me to go. And I ended up

We ended up driving to Seattle, which is like a six hour drive from where we are. And I went inpatient at Swedish Ballard. And it was really difficult because you go in through the ER. My psychiatrist wasn't able to get me a bed. So I had to go in through the ER and literally just walked up and said, you know, they're like, what are you here for? I'm like, I want to kill myself. And...

So like everyone's like playing nice and everything. And Tyrell's been by my side like this whole time. And I'm like, okay, like here's this wheelchair, blah, blah, blah. And then they like take me away and they won't let him come. And like, I understand that now. Like I understand why that's necessary. Right.

But, like, for me, like, with my medical trauma and all of that, like, to just be wheeled away. And it's, like, their psych room is, like, a legit psych room. And it's in the far back corner of the ER. And it's got a giant garage door as one of the walls. It's concrete everywhere else. I have to, like, get undressed in front of these people. And I'm just hysterical, screaming for my husband. And they won't let him back. Finally, like, a psychiatrist, like, lets him back. And we stayed in that room.

We stayed in that room overnight and thankfully they had a discharge and had one open bed for me. Wow. Upstairs on the psych unit. And, um, yeah, that is how I got diagnosed and on the right set of meds. And, um, it was still like still so much happened after that because we really like, we left there really not knowing much. They, when I was there,

As they were, like, learning my story or learning about, like, what led up to it, which I'm sure, like, me trying to tell them what was going on was very confusing. They said that, like, that therapist that I had been seeing was largely contributed to my psychosis. Wow. And I don't believe that anymore because I can't. Because I can't carry that hatred in my heart. I've forgiven her because...

Anger is... It's how you move forward. Well, and it's like she took so much from me when I was not capable of protecting myself. And if I don't forgive her and I carry that with me still, then I'm choosing to let her continue to steal from me. And I won't let her do that. Yeah. And...

Um, so I don't, I don't believe that she was responsible for my psychosis. Um, I definitely don't think she helped it. Uh, but they kept saying that I had postpartum psychosis. This is the wild thing about postpartum psychosis. Um, they kept saying that I had postpartum psychosis and they would even like call and update Tyrell. He wasn't allowed to visit. Like they don't allow any visitors. And it was a very good psych unit. Still horrifying. Still so terrifying. Yeah. And, um,

postpartum psychosis blah blah blah I didn't actually know this until like months and almost maybe a year later I was struggling so badly after being after like being treated for psychosis and no longer being in psychosis my PTSD was horrible my brain was just awful it was a haunted house and um

That's when I started self-harming, not as a way to harm myself, but the best way that I could describe it is that the chaos in my brain would get to a level of a circuit board just flying off, like sparks flying everywhere. And the way my method of self-harm was burning myself. And it wasn't pain at all.

It immediately shut my brain down and was so calming. And the only thing I can relate that to is having an orgasm. That's what it felt like in my brain. And so it was like this level of massive anxiety and overwhelm and overstimulation and all of these things. And then I'd do that and it would be gone. Wow. And it would totally resolve. And that was a treatment mechanism for me for...

A very, very, very long time. And it was really effective. And it was really easy to justify because it made me a better mom. Because even in the... So I'm now two years out of being in active psychosis. And in the first year especially, I wasn't functional at all. Incidentally, our house ended up flooding, which resulted in us moving in with my in-laws. The best thing that could have ever happened because I didn't realize...

How much help I needed. I didn't realize how bad things were in my brain. Yeah. Because like I just had this... I just thought like if I can just get back to who I was before. Everything will be better. Like I know I can't manage being a NICU nurse. Like I knew that and I hated that. Because like that was my identity before. I hate to say it. But it was. If you'd asked me who I was the very first thing I would have said was a nurse. Yeah. And...

I'm so glad that that's not where my identity lies anymore. And, but I thought I was nothing like I had nothing. I can't take care of my son. I've spent my entire career taking care of other people's babies and I can't even be a mom to my own baby. And I've missed like his first year of life. Like I genuinely don't have memories of him from his first year of life.

If I see a picture or something, I'll know the story behind it. Yeah. But I can maybe piece together some memories. If I see a picture and the memory is my own, I'll know it. It's a different type of feeling. But it's around Christmas, between Thanksgiving and Christmastime is when that starts. And it's not consistent with the pictures, even the ones on my own phone. And I don't have a video of him as a newborn. Yeah.

And like all those cute like baby grunting videos that mamas have. Yeah. Or like the baby, like I don't have any of that. And so that was all gone. And I was so mad. And the grief of that was overwhelming. And I didn't think there was any way to resolve that. And so then I struggled with suicidal ideation because like life just sucked. Yeah. I think you went from postpartum psychosis to clinical depression. Massive.

massive depression. And I didn't think I was depressed. I thought I had anxiety because of that aspect where the self-harm helped. I was like, I want to kill myself because I'm so anxious. And it's like, no, I had major depressive disorder and I was massively anxious. The primary diagnosis was PTSD. And I, uh, so I, I just thought like, if I can just get back to who I was, things will get better. And so I

I didn't want some like nursing job that felt like I was just like just there to be a pair of scrubs because like of what I'd come from. But I knew because I still wanted that life as a nurse. I still loved that and I missed that so much. But I knew like there's no way my brain can function. Like I can't leave the house. Russell's crying puts me into like an anxiety attack.

I have these panic attacks that come out of nowhere because I have like these random triggers that my brain is remembering that I don't know. And so like, I know I can't do that, but like what's something that maybe still feels like it aligns with my passions of nursing, but is obviously like, like way lower on the risk scale of like, if something goes wrong, I'm not going to, someone's baby's not going to die. Yeah. And I found a,

surgery center that was looking for a surgery nurse who had peds experience because ent surgery does adults pediatrics all of it um and so it was a per diem job and i was like oh that's perfect so i started doing that and um at one point it like i was self-harming to get through a shift oh wow and like i would totally be gone like i'm gonna be honest like it's it's not that uh

It doesn't require a whole lot of the ICU brain that I love to use. And so unless it was requiring a lot of focus from me, I was gone. Yeah. I had no idea what was going on. The, like the simplest things I could not remember literally like which fluids or is someone's getting warmed fluid. Someone's not, or like silly stuff like that. But like a kid came, a kid was post-op and, uh,

I caught a really, really, really rare arrhythmia. Well, I'm sure you know a lot about arrhythmias. Brugada syndrome. Oh, and you caught it. I was like, is that a saddleback? And I'd never seen a Brugada. I'd taken care of Brugadas before.

Because usually you don't know that someone has Brugada's unless another person in the family has died as a sacrifice. And then I think if they're under a certain age and someone dies of sudden death, they automatically test for Brugada's syndrome. And so I caught that on the crappy 3.ekg. And nobody believed me. And I was like, no, this kid's crashed. He wasn't coming out of anesthesia well and stuff.

Anyway, it was like this whole big thing and I like lost my marbles in the process of it and like had a massively self-harm to get through that shift. And then I'd been concealing it from my husband and then he found out and of course then promptly attended my next therapy session with me, which at that point I was with the therapist who I have now. After being discharged from the hospital, they told me, you don't ever see this person again.

Angela, you need to find someone who's like properly trauma informed and does EMDR. Yeah. And I was very, very, very grateful to find the therapist that I have now who actually specializes in, it's all, it's all under the umbrella of birth trauma. No matter any kind of trauma that occurs during pregnancy, after pregnancy, whatever is like categorized under birth trauma. So she specializes in birth trauma and P and PMS.

and PTSD and medical trauma as well. She's actually probably an expert. She's not Angela. Exactly. She doesn't, her website doesn't talk about how amazing she is. And that's how you know she's amazing because she doesn't have to tell you how amazing she is. Thank you for sharing your story. What is something that you, that you want other people to know about postpartum psychosis that maybe not be out there, that maybe is not out there?

I want everybody, I want postpartum psychosis to be like a household term. The same way postpartum depression now is. And I want people to not be afraid to help moms. Because if something feels scary or suspicious or concerning at all, I will tell you right now, as a survivor, as much as it would have sucked for CPS to be involved at that time, nothing would have been worse than losing my baby. Like actually losing my baby. And I am...

extraordinarily lucky because of the support system that I had. Otherwise, like I can't even, the stories that I've heard, like there's a postpartum psychosis survivor support group and there's, it's like, oh my gosh, like you guys haven't survived anything. Like this is horrifying. But being on the other side of it, if you're, if something feels wrong, the safety of my baby far outweighs whatever outcomes come from,

the trouble of getting CPS involved when maybe they shouldn't be involved. I'd much rather you err on the side of caution for that than anything. Yeah. So get CPS involved if you're scared because a mama in psychosis is actually really, really hard to help. And the most important thing to that mom, I promise you is her baby's safety. Yeah. Even if it sucks for like a long time afterwards. Um, what made me like, what made me like,

start to speak about my experience and realize like how aggressively uneducated our healthcare system is, our obstetricians are. Like there's, there's, I don't like to throw out a bunch of numbers with, with this, but here's one that's like really fascinating is only out of like a huge survey, only 80% of OB providers said,

said that they knew about postpartum psychosis. Of that 80%, and this is a recent study done, of that 80%, less than 20% of them were ever educating at all about postpartum psychosis. Oh, wow. For two reasons. One, a lack of time, which is a lack of education because if you don't think there's time for it, you obviously don't know the importance of it.

Number two, a lack of their own confidence to educate on it. So it boils down to lack of awareness of psychosis. I'm glad you're here to tell your story because I think you're going to help so many people, not just women, men too, because I think spouses need to be knowing about this as well to see signs for their loved one and to take it serious and to realize that it could escalate to something you never wanted to. Yes.

I could talk to you about this for days, but we are officially out of time. I'm so glad that I got to meet you in person and hear your story. Do you want people to find you on social media or an email to reach out or no? Yeah, that would be awesome. So I actually tried to follow in your footsteps of like starting social media for educational purposes. So I have like my handles made, but I haven't started making content yet. That feels like a massive thing.

It's scary, but you can do it. I've done two TikToks. Okay. Okay. You're well on your way. I don't know about that. I've got like 900 views on one of them. See? You're well on your way. Tell everyone where they can find you. And I'll also have your social medias in the description along with some links to further information and education about postpartum and postpartum psychosis. Perfect. So my Instagram and TikTok, which there's not much there, is...

The underscore inpatient underscore nurse. Love that. And then my email address is pagingnursepeters at gmail.com. And I love hearing back from people. I love, I want, like my goal is to do as much of this as possible. Yeah. And my primary goal is to educate nurses first because I think that's how to make the biggest impact. But ultimately I want to be educating patients

the masses. And so as many people as I can share with, that's what I want. So if anybody has any, um, events or anything like that, where you think that my story would be fitting or like nursing events, things like that. Like I want to share my story. I want to help other women and I want to protect them and their babies. So I love that so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for giving me this space. You're welcome. I can't wait for this episode to drop. And until next time, guys, bye.