I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 17. You know, coming out of high school, I was going into my senior year, and it wasn’t as intense. When I got to college, it kind of flip switched for me. So I had to come out of college kind of because of that.
When I had Brooklynn, it was fine, like, I had kind of gotten myself under control. But Tatum, I think, was kind of the flip switch for me because he was was really colicky, and he was a challenging baby.
Growing up, my dad was bipolar, and he had some PTSD and anxiety and things of that nature, but mostly he was untreated bipolar. So I grew up around that sort of unpredictable circumstance. It’s walking on eggshells a lot. He was an alcoholic as well, so there’s a lot of unpredictability, there’s a lot of instability and a lack of a secure environment.
I remember as a kid, it was very uncomfortable for me because my dad was this out of the box character- he would have these raging moods, but then he could flip and go back and forth between these very loving moods. And then in an instant, it would go to anger and rage. There was a lot of paranoia. It was an interesting childhood, for sure. So I kind of already had some experience with that.
When I started noticing symptoms of myself in that teenager ‘coming into myself’ kind of thing in high school, I started noticing depression kicking in, especially after my parents split. There’s a couple of just little tiny signs and instances when I realized that there’s some similarities between my dad’s behavior and what’s starting in my behavior.
I didn’t really know what a manic episode was or felt like at that point, but there was a time I was with my mom. We were in some sort of restaurant, I think it was Chik-fil-a or something like that, and I just got this crazy burst of energy. I remember almost just wanting to explode. I just felt a lot more energetic than I was used to, and I only had a couple instances like that as far as having too much energy, but most of it for me was more of a depressive type thing.
I had a lot of suicidal thoughts in high school, and this is not something I could really go to my mom about, because my mom was very emotionally cut off because she was used to dealing with my dad. I didn’t want to bring that into the picture. There was a lot more depression than mania, so my mom started noticing those things little by little.
We went when I was 17, to a psychiatrist or psychologist, I can’t remember which one, and he ended up diagnosing me with I believe it’s Bipolar I. Basically, that’s where everything started.
When I got to college, I was on medication. I think it’s about finding the right kind of medication, and it takes a long time to get to that even level of feeling comfortable. It never truly goes away, the mental part of it. You’re still going to have episodes, you’re still going to have those days where you’re not feeling it mentally, but it takes a while to get to that even point. And for me, I’ll be totally honest, I’m still trying to find it. And it’s been over ten years.
{What is the process of diagnosis and treatment?}
You go and see a doctor, and you can go and see a therapist and kind of discuss your feelings, but a psychiatrist is more a medication man. So you go there, you kind of explain what’s been going on in your day to day life. And from what you’re saying, they can kind of round out what might be going on with you and what medication might be necessary to treat you. They’ll start you out at a pretty low dosage. It could be an antidepressant, it could be an antipsychotic, anything antianxiety.
They see you back in about a month or two, and then they say, “hey, is this working? Hey, do you feel any different?” If you don’t feel any different, they may change the medication or change the dosage or increase it little by little. For me, it’s hard because in college and I had just started doing the medication thing, [and] some of them take about four to six weeks to even start working.
So for me, I was kind of back and forth in college with medication because I wasn’t feeling it. I would say “this isn’t working. I don’t need it, I don’t need to take it.” I would stop and then start back on, which isn’t necessarily something you want to do, because you’re not really getting the true nature of the medication and getting the actual effect of it. I’m an impatient person by nature.
That was kind of my mindset, and pretty much the flipping point for me in college is I had my first pretty serious relationship. When that didn’t go the way that I wanted it to go, I just kind of spiraled, especially since I was off and on with my medication. I had to come out of college essentially because of that.
It’s really tough, especially if you don’t have the right support system around you, or people who don’t really understand what’s going on with you, and you’re new to it, so you don’t have the right verbiage to explain and help them truly understand. It’s definitely lonely having a mental illness. I was figuring this out truly all by myself. Me and my mom were kind of on the rocks.
I had gone to live with my dad at that point for about a year and a half, and he’s untreated at this point. So I’m back in that environment where I’m triggered by him, he’s triggered by me, and I’m trying to figure out my mental illness still. And I wasn’t an angel.
The reason I went to go stay with him was because it was that youthful thing of- I wanted to go party and I wanted to just live my life. I think being back with him probably wasn’t the best for me at that time. I don’t want to say it this way, but it’s almost like two drug addicts being in the same kind of environment, you’re both feeding off of each other, and you’re enabling each other in a way. So it was kind of a camaraderie, but it was not the kind that was beneficial to either of us, I think. And it was weird because it was kind of in estranged relationship anyway.
I had been dealing with my mental stuff on my own since I realized it was a thing. I didn’t have a support system. My mom was basically like work, work. She wasn’t really an emotional person and God love her- she was kind of a robot emotionally. She didn’t have the time or the energy to deal with it, and she didn’t really understand it.
From the age of 13-14, I was dealing with those depressive thoughts that I didn’t understand. It’s scary. Not having anybody to talk to about it, especially- it’s more damaging. I think (excuse my language) it’s a shitty basis for dealing with my mental health because from the get go, I didn’t have any help with it, so I was kind of just winging it. It’s dangerous.
I had two suicide attempts in high school that my mom never even knew about. So she didn’t find out until I was about 25. She came for a therapy thing and [I] just kind of came out with it, and she was just in shock. I was very good at that point at just kind of keeping it to myself, but silently suffering, almost 24/7.
Fast forward. I’m in that environment, and it’s kind of a turbulent, chaotic relationship with my dad at that point, but we’re trying to make it work. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out with my dad, but while I was there, I got pregnant with my daughter, and I was really happy. But I told my mom, “I have to come back.”
Honestly, when I have my down days, I think about that time I was pregnant with my daughter and that first couple of months after she was born, because I didn’t have any episodes, no symptoms, no nothing. And so I was like, “I’m cured!”
It was odd, because Brooklynn, even while I was pregnant with her, had such a calming effect on me, and it was very stabilizing. My life had been so crazy in my head, [and] not in my head. I was out in the world. I had no idea what I was doing. I think for the first time in my life, I actually felt like I might know what I’m doing. And when she was born… I’m going to cry. She was just the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.
It was almost like I could navigate this now. I was a single mom at that point. Even just being pregnant with her, it was just me and her. So it was like, we could do this together. I finally I had somebody that I could deal with it with. She was my rock before she was even born. She gave [me] a reason. She saved my life. I honestly believe if I had not gotten pregnant with her, I would not have survived.
She was like that beacon in my life that just started to help me piece back together, mentally and otherwise, what I needed to do, because now I had to do it for her. God, when I saw her for the first time, it sounds cheesy, but it’s like the angelic rays coming off your kid when the doctor lifts them up and they’re, like, screaming.
It was like I had a teammate and somebody to fight with me and somebody for me to fight for. It was just this beautiful experience. Even now, when I have those thoughts, at times when I may not want to be here, I don’t think I can go on, I go into my kids rooms and I just sit there because I don’t think I would be here if they weren’t here, which is kind of a crazy, intense thing to say.
I’ve read a lot of stories of people who say “I wouldn’t be alive if my kids weren’t alive.” And I wholeheartedly believe that in myself because they’re like the cement in our feet, kind of holding us in the ground. When she was born, it was a relief in some ways. Maybe I can do it.
I met Travis when she was six months old. She was itty bitty and we kind of dove into it. And I had gotten pregnant with Tatum when she was [about] nine months old. I was kind of like, surprise!
It was definitely a different kind of atmosphere with Tatum because when I was pregnant with Brooklyn, I didn’t have to worry. There was no man around for me to have to deal with his emotions and what he needs as a father and what he might be going through and expecting a baby. When I got pregnant with Tatum, there was a lot to deal with on Travis’s end, because this is his first baby and it’s my second baby, so I have some experience.
I’m navigating that through with him. It was rocky, I’m not going to lie. We were fresh. And I’m just going to cut it straight. I did not like being pregnant with Tatum at all. I didn’t like it at all. And I feel kind of guilty for saying that, but there was a lot of stress happening. I didn’t even tell my mom I was pregnant until two weeks before he was born. So I didn’t have my mom’s support. I had zero support. Me and him were on the rocks most of the time, so there was a lot of stress happening.
I think when we’re stressed out intensely when we’re pregnant, the babies can feel that, so then they start internalizing that stress within themselves. It was almost constantly, though. The balance of a new relationship, then you add a pregnancy on top of that, then you’re still getting to know each other, you’re fighting constantly. And then he moved in with me, and so we’re on our own, still getting to know each other. It was a lot. I think we had no idea what we were doing.
Even though I had navigated before and I had Brooklynn also with me, I had to try to keep her in mind because of that constant stress. [The baby] would just freak out in my stomach. It was just constant kicking. I think he was just more of an energetic child from the womb to begin with. But that stress… I was very violently sick with him.
In the beginning with Brooklynn, I wasn’t really sick at all. She was a very calm, tame pregnancy. With Tatum it was very turbulent. They were worried he might be a little bit smaller. So there was a lot of things going on.
I remember a time, me and Travis, we were in this horrible argument and I think to put it bluntly, out of my mind for a second, and I’m screaming and I’m screaming and it just comes out of me: I just want to die. I just want to die. And I’m screaming it at him and he just pauses because he’s still not realizing. I love his family, I love everything about them, but they have a kind of stigma towards mental illness.
So for him, he thought it was me being dramatic, but I’m not being dramatic. I’m screaming for help and he’s not hearing me. I just came out with it and I said it. Tatum starts kicking in my stomach and it’s almost like he could feel me. He could feel that pain. I’m trying not to cry. It was that connecting feeling that I had with Brooklynn that was like he started kicking like, “mom, I got you. I don’t like that you’re upset. I don’t like when you say that.”
I was trying to be strong, but there was probably five or six instances like that. It was very stressful, not just for me and Travis, but for Tatum as well. I think a lot of moms can relate to it if they have the same kind of issues or they were stressed out a lot in their pregnancy and their child comes out and he’s really colicky or he’s a little bit more challenging. I think we kind of say, “hey, maybe if I was a little bit more calm during the pregnancy or if I dealt with things differently, maybe it would have been different.”
It’s a daunting feeling because you don’t trust your own mind at certain times. So it’s so hard to explain if I can’t even control myself and help to control my own mind, what am I going to do with the kid? I have another child still here too. What am I doing? Am I a worthy mother? Am I going to be a good mother?
It’s layering new pain on top of old pain- [that’s] essentially what I was doing to myself without dealing with the old pain and kind of going through it and trying to help resolve it. It was these constant layers.
I induced at 39 weeks I was like, “I’m ready. Let him come out.” He was kicking the hell out of me, and I was ready. It was very painful. He comes out, and he’s just this beautiful little thing, spitting image of Travis. Just same face. I’m like, “really?”
It was different. And later on, I had actually found out that I had had postpartum with him. So it’s funny because I had these two very differing pregnancies and births and babies, because with Brooklynn, it was sunshine and flowers and rainbows, and everything was perfect. And with Tatum, there wasn’t that same connection from the minute I saw him.
I love him. He’s my son. There was this undying love for him, but it wasn’t that immediate bond, and I didn’t understand it. And he was not an easy child. He never slept, so I didn’t sleep. I love Travis. I’m not putting down on him or anything like that. I didn’t get very much help in the nighttime, sleep wise, so I was running on nothing.
Didn’t know how to help Tatum the way I felt like he should be helped. I was doing everything, you know, as a mom, and it’s a very defeating feeling. There’s these times where you just want to scream at them. You can’t. And there’s times you go in the other room, you have to do it, and you’ve got your one year old standing right there, and it’s just like, “what am I supposed to do?” I’m by myself.
I remember there was a night Travis was sleeping. Tatum’s up, and he’s screaming his face off, and Brooklynn wakes up, and I’ve got both kids by myself, just in my arms, and I’m like, sobbing. And I’m thinking to myself, “I don’t know if I can do this. I’m in way over my head. I have no help. I have nobody to talk to. I’m depressed. I don’t want to be here.”
It’s not just a type of depression where you think, ‘oh, she’s just sad’.
It’s every day, thinking of ways that maybe I could not be here anymore. But at the same time, it’s like your kids are kind of pulling this string that’s tugging on you, like, “hey, we’re here. You can’t go anywhere.”
But you got this other string pulling from behind you. Maybe you could just go. It might be better for them. It’s hard because you don’t want to leave your kids, but you don’t want to be there. That’s what I was dealing with on a daily basis right after Tatum was born. I also wasn’t having this connection with my son.
It was more of like this anger, because I couldn’t figure out what he needed. He wasn’t eating. He was getting smaller. He went into the hospital at four months old. And when he was about five months old, from what I told the pediatrician and my psychologist, I had postpartum psychosis.
I had this kind of rage built up towards him. He was never hurt. I was never abusive or anything like that to him, but it was just such a strong disconnect. And because of the bipolar and because I was breastfeeding, I wasn’t on medication. So I’m dealing with all these different factors, and it’s kind of like a tornado of negativity and just overwhelming pain.
Postpartum depression is there’s a disconnect from the baby. You don’t have the bond with the baby. You may not want to hold the baby. Some women, they don’t feel love for the baby. There’s kind of a switch that happens in their head.
Postpartum psychosis is wanting to harm yourself or harm the baby. It’s more of like a fit. It’s a burst. Yeah. It’s almost like seeing red. When you’re angry, you see red. It’s so strong. And there was a couple of times, and I’m not proud of it. I screamed. I screamed so loud. And you’re doing it, and you’re so not yourself at that point.
Whether it be from lack of sleep or from the postpartum… the postpartum can be fueled by the lack of sleep. That’s one of the main triggers. And it’s also one of the main triggers of bipolar episodes, which now, I was kind of adding fuel to the fire.
I was just so much more angry with Tatum than I was with Brooklynn. With Brooklynn, I felt so much calmer and more at ease. And with Tatum, I was just so angry. I was angry at the world. I was angry that I didn’t have help. I was angry that I had nobody to talk to.
I feel like the worst mom in the world for saying that. I think we blame ourselves for so many things that we shouldn’t. I still do. I still do every day.
I have not come to terms with a lot of what happened with Tatum as a newborn. Motherhood’s a lonely place. You want someone on the same level as you to be that with you, to understand those hardships and be able to say, “hey,” (excuse my language) “I know you think you’re fucking up right now, but it’s okay, you’re doing good.”
When we don’t have that, especially partners that aren’t so supportive, or even if we do have supportive partners, especially and if you’re the default parent, that’s a whole different ballgame. I don’t know how many other women are going through this or have gone through this, but when you’re asking your partner for help or you’re trying to explain what you’re going through, and it’s kind of dismissed, or it’s kind of put off as something different, and you’re almost like begging them to understand, and then they don’t.
I think that’s part of the loneliness in my circumstances. It’s looking at your kids and realizing, you guys are the only thing I have in the whole world, and you guys don’t understand me at all. But you can’t put that burden on them and start talking to them about it, because that’s too much.
After Tatum was born, I think part of my guilt is that Brooklynn was a witness to a lot of that. She was there for a lot of that. She saw me go from this beautiful, tender hearted, calm parent that never yelled at her, never did a thing to her, was very tempered with her. And I just went into this completely different persona. So she’s confused. She’s almost-I don’t want to say scared of me, but I would have been scared of me.
I think part of my anger was I felt like he would fight me on everything. Like, he wouldn’t feed right. He wouldn’t sleep right. He wouldn’t sit still or play or interact or engage. There was nothing. No matter what I did, it was not working. He would just scream at me.
Even [for] a normal person, without any sort of mental illness, that’s hard. You snap after a while, and then you’re adding bipolar onto it. And anxiety.
You have this anxiety as a mom already. What if he ends up in the hospital? What if he could fall out of the rocker? Or what if he suffocates any of those anxieties? And then you have this screaming kid at you that never stops screaming, never. And it’s just this blood curdling scream, and he doesn’t sleep. Then you have your partner screaming at you, and it’s a whole thing.
You have constant build up. And for bipolar, there’s what we call triggers, and those triggers stay the same. So when you even get a hint of that trigger, an episode could begin. For me, and even now, I’m still working on it, Tatum is my trigger a lot of the time. It’s some of his mannerisms, I would say the way his attachment to me is by screaming or you know, being on top of me constantly with the touching hanging on me. God, I wish my kid would just get off me sometimes.
I think that’s a common denominator as a mom is that push and pull of like, “I just want this kid to get the hell off me. And, God, I want to give him the biggest hug ever.”
In any instance, I think it’s so easy for me personally to feel this overwhelming, painful guilt of like it’s always circling back around to, am I the right mom for them? Am I a good enough mom for them? Would they be better off somewhere else? It’s really tough, especially when there’s nobody behind you saying kind of reassuring you like, you are a good mom. They belong with you. You’re doing good, everybody has bad days, that kind of thing.
{What’s something that you did that no one else could have done?}
Oh, man. I think for me, it’s just stay alive.
This is kind of the sugar coated version of my mental illness life. I could write a whole book. There’s a lot of grit and strength.
If you pull yourself out of an addiction or if you’re dealing with a mental illness on a daily basis, you are good enough to be here. You’re strong enough to be here, and you deserve to be here. And you busted your ass to get this far.
I think if anybody could have gotten a glimpse on what I’ve dealt with mentally, really been a fly on the wall in all of those instances and seen what I had to deal with- intrusive thoughts, self deprecating thoughts, suicidal thoughts, a lot of hate towards myself. These are things that I still deal with every day. And I take medicine, and it’s rough for me.
The one thing I did right was not giving up, because there’s so many times I was sitting alone at nighttime praying to God to just let me go and that my kids will be okay. It’s so hard to explain when you’re the only one rooting for yourself, then that gets taken away.
You start to think you might be better off. But if you feel that way, go in your sit down and look at your kids and just if you have to sleep in their room, go to sleep in their room. So you don’t do anything. Just go look at them. Because it’ll save your life, most likely. It saved mine on lots of occasions.
This mom wanted to add the following after the interview:
“Each pregnancy, as different as it was, showed me how mental illness can change how you see your children despite your love for them.”
“For any moms that are dealing with the challenges of motherhood in addition to combatting mental illness in any form, what you’re feeling in those moments of rage and sadness and guilt don’t make you a bad person or a bad mother. I want to reiterate to them that what they’re struggling with is not a weakness, but instead shows strength beyond comprehension.”
All content and information on this blog is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your doctor for advice on your particular medical situation.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or ideation, please call 988 or visit: 988lifeline.org.
The National Institute of Mental Health has information about Bipolar I and II.
To read more about the difference between Psychology and Psychiatry, see this article from Psychology.org.
For more information on Postpartum Psychosis, the Cleveland Clinic has information. To learn more about Postpartum Depression, the Mayo Clinic has information.
For a list of 10 common triggers for Bipolar I, Everyday Health has a list with details.