The first time it happened, I was awake. A terrible vision flashed into my mind, and I just squeezed my eyes really tight and thought, Whew, I have got to get some more sleep. The vision scared me badly, and I thought about it several times that day, but I did everything I could to talk it down in my own head. Then, it kept happening. The only common factor was that I was looking at Harper… doing absolutely nothing. It wasn’t like these visions were sparked by hours of fussing and crying. In fact, Harper was a fantastic baby who cried only when she was hungry or needed changing. I was in love with her. Obsessed. Yet, I could see myself doing violent things to her, and it made me feel like a monster.
Everyone warns new moms about the hormonal issues following childbirth, and I had certainly heard of postpartum depression, but I had no clue how either of those things actually manifested in people. When I thought of postpartum depression, I just envisioned moms who were too down in the dumps to care for their baby or themselves properly. I had never heard the term postpartum psychosis, which is what my symptoms were pointing to. Soon, all of my joy was gone. I was afraid of myself. The things I dreamed about were things that I couldn’t do to my worst enemy, so how on earth could I so vividly envision doing these things to the person I loved the most? By week five, I was not only short on sleep, I was afraid to go to sleep.
Before long, I couldn’t hide that something serious was going on. One night, I was sitting up in the bed feeding Harper. She and I both dozed off, and I had a nightmare, one where I was brandishing a knife. I jumped and gasped for air, and it scared Harper so badly that all her little limbs went rigid and she began to scream. Josh woke up to me sweating and hyperventilating, holding our crying child with this horrified look on my face. Asking what happened, I just vigorously shook my head and said that I just dozed off and thought that I was dropping her.
How do you tell your husband that you have regular thoughts about hitting, cutting, or throwing things at your baby? I never desired to harm her, but I thought about it dozens of times every day. Even if I did share this dark secret, how was he supposed to react? My imagination ran wild. He might think I just need some help hormonally… or he might think I’m a serial killer in the making. I kept it all to myself. I justified holding it all in because, in some strange way, I thought I was protecting Josh from this dark, horrific world inside my head. He needed to just stay in love with Harper and to keep believing that I wasn’t getting enough sleep.
When I was an athlete in college, I remember listening to a presentation of a study done by the Sleep Foundation comparing the reaction times of a sleep-deprived person and a person under the influence of alcohol. This presentation’s purpose was to make all the athletes take their rest more seriously, but what stuck with me was the study that showed how being awake for twenty-four straight hours could cause driving reaction times similar to someone with a 0.10 blood alcohol level.2 After six weeks of no sleep, breastfeeding like crazy, and intentionally skipping meals because I would rather close my eyes, I did not feel sober. I was in zombie mode, and I was overwhelmed with hormonal issues that I didn’t understand. I was hitting the wall. I was having these evil thoughts more frequently, and I couldn’t get away from them as easily because my brain was working in slow motion. I lay next to Josh in bed one night and just started sobbing. He asked and asked what was wrong, and I just could not stomach verbalizing the torment I had been experiencing for more than a month. I think all I was really able to say was, “I am not okay. I am having an unbelievably hard time controlling my thoughts right now, and I don’t know what to do.”
Not that I could ever truly understand anything my husband had survived thus far, but these postpartum issues made me empathize with Josh’s nightmares. I was also shocked to realize that I needed to take my own advice. I did everything I could to avoid these thoughts, even audibly telling them to leave me alone, but I was weak just like Josh was when he had screamed “Incoming” in my face less than a year and a half ago. I demanded that Josh talk to someone, no matter how scary it was. Yet, here I sat in full understanding of being afraid of what is in your own mind. Josh, full of grace from his own journey, suggested that we pray, something I had only done to thank God for a healthy baby. This fear controlled my prayer life. Even in talking to God, I couldn’t bring it up. As I clung tightly to Josh’s hand, he prayed that he would know how to support me through this time and that I would have restful sleep instead of nightmares. Then, he gave me the key that would help me rise above this fog and call me back to reality. He prayed, “God, please help Paige remember that I trust her. Harper is never in danger when she is with Paige, and I pray that belief over Paige for herself.” It
