Of Pregnancy and Panic

Let's go WAY back.

I was born and resided in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Closer to the Amish than the city. Life was certainly fair to me -- but hindsight is 20/20, right?

Then BAM -- fall of 2008. Everything you think a little girl dreams of -- shattered. 'We're sorry, Ashley. After this procedure it may be difficult to hold children.' And at first, I was just glad that those malicious cells they were searching for weren't cancer.

Then it set in; over time. I can't have babies. I can't do the most important, race sustaining task women have in society; the one thing that their bodies and only theirs can do; the one thing everyone tells you look forward to and prepare for your entire, early life. I can't have babies.

Okay, let's go back to 2003. Something just wasn't right. My brain did and said incredibly scary things. My brain told me tales of grandeur about every situation I had ever been in. My brain also hated my body and everything that came in it.

Finally, a diagnosis -- severe general anxiety disorder with mild depression and suicidal thoughts. Wow. Who even know a girl at 15 years old had the capability to think such terrible things?

That's where my anxiety and depression medicine express started. Zoloft first. It got very, very dark and, I believe, that's where I'll leave it.

Wellbutrin, Prozac, generic of something I really can't remember. Finally, it was game over and I just jumped the Prozac Nation boat. I was done. My brain was done and my insurance was canceled because I was 18 and a dependent on my dad's employer's insurance.

The next couple years are only fleeting moments between blackouts, really. I was in an extremely toxic and abusive relationship in the beginning which ended miserably. From years of verbal abuse with prominent tones of condescension, my brain just flipped it's homeostasis switch and did whatever it had to do to survive -- intoxicate.

I could probably type a longer narrative of things I have done or experienced that would exceed this entire excerpt; even if they were written in 3 words or less, so I digress -- we will just say that experiences were the only thing I was having. There was virtually zero self growth and an infinitely expanding pit of dark and sickening self-pity. There was nothing to look forward to and I was incapable of contributing to the survival of the human race via procreation. I can't have babies.

Okay, so if you made it this far, I would assume that you're wondering two things (completely based on what I'd imagine I would do at this line of this particular article):

1. So, where's the pregnancy?
2. What exactly did your brain say to you?

Fast WAY forward. March 2016. My brain did the flippy thing again. Except this time, I just wanted to be better. Out of nowhere, I just wanted more -- more money, more responsibility and lastly, but most importantly, I craved structure.

Okay, BOOM. That was the day my entire life changed. And I mean really effing changed. My cousin, who is precisely my age but had gotten her life together ages before my 2016 epiphany, presented a job opportunity for the company she was working for. I applied. I got the job. I kicked ass.

Within 2 years, I had gone from an entry level call center representative, to trainer, to team lead, to floor supervisor. It was my calling. I had finally found my calling. I had various call center positions before this but I never had this sultry desire to just... succeed.

Now, during my career with this company, I met a man on Tinder. *Gasp* Tinder -- I can hear exactly how this scandalous word is slipping down your tongue and then over your lips. I assure you I did not join Tinder to find the man that I am still with today. This. was. not. my. Tintention.

Anyway, it just was what it was. Love. In the purest and rarest form. I had the motivation to succeed but I left any notion that I would end up happily in love for the rest of my life in a drink, a pill, a line, a tab EONS AGO. Everything really just ... fell right into place. But... I can't have babies?!

That night was July 4th, 2017. We had fun. We took care of each other. We moved out. We moved again. We were living the life. We both were making decent money. We were still young enough to have zero shame drunkenly making out in the back of an Uber on Friday or Saturday nights, exclusively (work in the morning. Adulting, yanno?). Everything just felt new. It felt like I had finally stumbled onto a path of redemption.

WTF?! x 179. That was how the Sunday before the Superbowl of 2018 started. Hungover, early as hell, drinking lukewarm Gatorade and praying for just mild relief from the destruction I had inflicted on my digestive system the night before --- holding a positive pregnancy test in my hand.

Someone had very clearly broken in, peed on this stick with their pregnant pee, heat sealed this test back up and placed into this box that had traveled with me the last 3 times I had moved -- with the pregnancy test tucked deep within it. OH! Okay, yeah, it's just expired because I know that this is impossible. I had done very little to protect against pregnancy during any relationship ... or 'experience' I had ever had. There is no F%^$ing way this is real.

"JOKE'S ON ME, I GUESS" -- those were my exact words when I was tested at my PCP's office. Suddenly, I was high. I was mighty. I was fierce. I was in love and I was a woman with a purpose.

This is where the joke actually happens. I was 6 weeks pregnant when I took the test. If you haven't experienced pregnancy, 6 weeks is early compared to most, or so I was told. A month past; everything still seemed okay. Morning sickness was the bane of my existence, at that point. So, I was just what you'd expect a pregnant woman with severe morning sickness and a full time job to be like. Slowly dying (because like, that's really what it felt like).

4 Months in and I was plummeting. I was angry ALL the time. I was sad ALL the time. I hated everything ALL the time. I just wanted it to be over. I was sick of being sick, sick of getting bigger and bigger, sick of feeling so isolated and alone. Mid-early pregnancy, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. GREAT. Now, I can't even enjoy being pregnant and overeating. I just can't say it in too many more ways -- I was over being pregnant and I was going to some very dark recesses of thought for solutions. I started on Lexapro. Lexapro changed my life. Just not at this time.

Pregnancy, inside my head, was the dimmest and dingiest hospital corridor of a B rated horror film. Everyday I was getting sicker and weaker and the light at the end was fading just as quickly. My brain did the flippy thing again -- it had felt enough and accepted defeat. Flip flip.

After the excessively long, mental breakdown that was my pregnancy, the day had finally arrived. Induction day. Fin ... and yet another joke.

They checked me in. Got vitals. Explained what to expect. And not one thing they told me to expect happened.

During the first night, my blood pressure skyrocketed after they gave me the Pitocin. Pre-eclampsia had set in and I was being rushed by 4 nurses. Each one of them had a different bedpan full of this and that. First shot went in and my entire body started burning. Then, a second shot at a perfectly timed interval for maximum effectiveness. What was it that they were using? Magnesium. Remember that.

So, there I was. Naked, uncontrollably vomiting into a bedpan and pleading with them to just make it stop. Then, it did. Everything stopped and I had a fleeting moment of peace.

Day two. I was being coerced into trying to deliver naturally. But.. I'm dying? "It's safer for mother and baby if baby is delivered vaginally." Okay, but I am literally dying because the baby is still in there. "We'll check back in a couple hours."

Hours turned into another day. Every so often, poking and prodding to tell me that I still wasn't dilating -- at all. So, let's talk about magnesium. It's an earth metal that scientists have broken down and reformed into Magnesium Sulfate. It is supposed to prevent pre-eclamptic seizures. Well, it essentially weighs down your entire body. I was, for all intents and purposes, medically paralyzed. Oh, and since the risk of a seizure is incredibly elevated in a situation like this, no eating or drinking -- anything.

Day 3. I had all but come to terms with the fact that I was probably not making it out of this sterilized prison. My boyfriend's mental state had also taken quite a bit of wear and tensions were starting to reach red alert levels.

The nurses were the only thing keeping me from actually losing all my will to live. They were kind and supportive. They were attentive and encouraging. But they knew that my state wasn't going to improve. I will never forget the nurse who was with me on this day. She point blank told me that the magnesium counteracts the Pitocin so, basically, they gave me two different medications that canceled each other out. I was never going to dilate on magnesium because it completely dilutes your ability to use your muscles -- even if they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, innately.

That was it. That was what I needed to hear to finally get as fierce as I could possibly get to make the doctors understand that I was not going to lay in that bed like that for another 3 days. I was willing to take whatever risks they wanted me to believe were there if I had a C-Section. GIVE ME BABY OR GIVE ME DEATH!

I had been begging for a C-Section for 2 days. At this point in my birthing journey I was paralyzed by a drug, devoid of any food or drink for 72 hours, losing my vision from the magnesium every minute and my entire state of being was in the scariest, most traumatic crisis it had ever encountered.

Family came and went throughout my stay and I have zero recollection of them. I had to threaten calling security on my boyfriend to get him to go home and shower and get himself together because I just couldn't handle seeing him in such pain and despair. Whatever life we had before this was gone. There was no past, no future, there was only THIS. And I have never had an experience that encapsulated time itself and bent all the known laws of infinite time and forced me into primal survival mode.

The time had come. I had given the doctor ONE MORE RUN of 4 hours. I was done. I was tapping out. I fought the good fight. I surrendered. It was time for epidural number 2. This time, the REAL one. Oh, yeah, so I learned that there are two types of epidurals. One is a bit off your spinal cord which is your run of the mill epidural -- and you usually have a button you can press in periods of intense labor pains. I had one and it didn't work. When that happens and there is time to perform another one, they do a spinal injection, i.e a spinal tap. This is a one time injection directly into your spinal fluid.

Epidural number 2 did the trick. I am naturally boisterous and wildly exaggerated given that my brain has probably gone through 179 ways that I, or someone I love, could die at any given second in time. But listen to me when I tell you that the stretcher ride from labor and delivery to the OR was, in every respect, just as terrifyingly long as you see in the goriest horror movie (horror movies make me happy, so). The lights were rapidly blending together on the ceiling, my arms and legs were strapped down because now I was intentionally paralyzed and unable to control them.

"Please don't let me die. Please, please do not let me die. Please save the baby." I was pleading with the nurse, while putting all the effort I had left into keeping my head from bobbing side to side.

"Oh, no, no! No one is dying! I promise! You're going to be just fine!" She replied, underneath a yellow mask. I was so worn down. My body was no longer my own and I was no longer in a state that I could have fought for it anyway.

I was at the complete mercy of human beings I didn't know. Human beings that have seen this so many times that, I feel, they lost a bit of their ability to feel sympathy for me. I was just another emergency C-Section on the labor and delivery floor of a very prominent hospital.

But I was dying. I was hallucinating by the time I reached the OR. Not the crazy, saw a dead relative kind of hallucinating but the kind that causes flashes of what can only be described as Kodak memory pictures -- and Kodak future memories (I know that doesn't make sense but that's what it felt like). Who was going to take care of this baby when I die? Who is going to tell him he is the greatest little boy every time he accomplishes a milestone? How will they tell him about me? Who is going to take care of my boyfriend and make sure they both eat 3 meals a day and pay the electric bill? How did I even end up here?! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? WHERE. IS. MY. MOM?

The lights in the OR were the only thing I could even make out clearly. They set up the screen made up of a large, blue medical pad -- similar to the one that was used to absorb the amniotic fluid when they manually popped my water the day prior. I could only see my chest.

And I was going to be sick again. I literally could only muster a minute whimper to let my boyfriend know that I needed a vessel to throw up into. Then I felt the pressure of the doctor cutting through the 7 or 8 layers of my abdomen. They pressed and they pulled and with every move they made, I threw up. Again, again and again.

Then there he was. The most beautiful blue and purple blob I had ever laid failing eyes on. Breathing, healthy; 10 fingers and 10 of the cutest little toes.

"SHE'S HEMORRHAGING. SHE'S HEMORRHAGING..." and that was it. I knew it. I was dead. I had to be dead now.

Then everything got quiet except for the little moans and whines from my son. My greatest achievement in life was born and I was certainly dead.

They asked my boyfriend to leave the room and he persisted that he was not leaving this room unless they were wheeling me down the hallway with him. They assured him I would be safe and sound with him in a matter of minutes and they escorted him out. They knew I was a goner.

Then all of a sudden, I am being propped up by the lactation crew and being forced to start breast feeding my baby. I couldn't move any part of my body at will. I couldn't see a damn thing -- just blocks of color and distorted sounds from them telling me to do this, hold him like this, move your breast like this. I just couldn't do it and my boyfriend had finally had enough of seeing them wring my body from left to right over and over again.

They stopped. They put the baby in his temporary bassinet. And I sent him to the nursery for the night .. and slowly faded into the best sleep I had in 3 days.

The following morning, I woke up. Well, I thought I woke up. I hadn't fully woken up on account of my magnesium drip now pumping far too much magnesium into my veins, post Pre-Eclampsia. See, once the placenta is removed, pre-eclampsia clears up almost immediately. Since I had birthed the baby and had my placenta removed, my body was no longer fighting against itself. But I was alive. I was alive.

Day 4 -- post excessive magnesium. My family came to see me. My sisters, who have never held back from sly jabs and insults, were describing how they felt when they had seen me the day prior. They, too, thought I was a goner.

HOMEWARD BOUND! I hated the apartment we lived in but I was the happiest I had ever been to be inside it. Then the real horror started.

Postpartum Depression. No one tells you that postpartum depression can actually start while you're pregnant -- cue the mental collapse from several months prior. No one tells you that postpartum isn't always the feeling of wanting to harm yourself or the baby.

No one tells you how fucking torn your brain will be when you realize you've spent 4 weeks ignoring your baby and feeling like he would be better off with another mom who instantly falls in love with him. A mom whose 'motherly instincts' were already kickin'. Mine were broken and I was a failure.

It took one night of getting far too close to taking suicidal action. It was time. Time to consider heavier brain meds. I increased my Lexapro. I started meditating. I started forgiving myself for all I had said and done during the 10 months I was pregnant. I went back to work 12 weeks later. I went in just as strong as I had left.

Then COVID-19 lead to a devastating furlough. I was miserable again.

The strangest thing happened during my furlough, however. I found peace. After leaving the hospital, I was traumatized and my brain did the flippy thing again. I brushed it under a rug. I told my boyfriend not to talk about it anymore. I swallowed that jagged pill down and tried to forget about it. I bundled up my trauma and just kept going because, "Everyone has kids, Ashley."

I heard that phrase more times than was fair. I told myself that I had to get over it. I had to just go on with my life like that horror didn't happen to me; as if what I experienced was somehow normal because millions of women have birthed babies.

The truth is, what happened to me shouldn't have happened. Truth is, when I checked into the hospital and signed my life over, I actually signed my life over. There was no concern for my quality of life in that hospital. Clearly, I am not a medical professional but I am a human being and the experience that should have been something to look back on and effortlessly smile at was decimated. I will never have those fond memories of anxiously waiting for baby in the delivery room. I don't even remember most of that experience (magnesium -- again).

Suffering the way I did post birth should have never happened, either. This. though, was no fault of medical professionals but from the lack of women willing to admit they struggled to just simply look at their baby. The idea that feeling like I did was so abnormal and blasphemous has created this completely fabricated theory of life after birth. Here are some statistics from postpartumdepression.org:

• Approximately 70%-80% of women will experience, at minimum, the 'baby blues'. Many of these women will experience the more severe condition of postpartum depression or a related condition.
• The reported rate of clinical postpartum depression among new mothers is between 10% and 20%.
• Women with a history of depression, anxiety disorders or serious mood disorders are 30% to 35% more likely to develop postpartum depression.
• It is believed that 50% of women who develop postpartum depression began experiencing symptoms during pregnancy. This proves the case for early symptom-recognition, awareness and access to treatment.

I didn't know. I was not warned that what I was experiencing during pregnancy was actually a precursor for just how scary a new mother's brain can be. We need to do better for mothers all over the world. We need to create a solid line of communication for expecting mothers with experts and trained specialists so they are less likely to go where I did -- or further.

Please stop making women feel like their declining mental state during pregnancy is 'just the baby blues'. We need to stop diminishing the importance of mental health, especially when it is so fragile.

But here I am. 2 years later and absolutely in love with my son. We spend every day making memories that I will be able to cherish for the rest of my life. I made it through and I encourage any woman reading this and feeling like this is you, to pick up the phone or go to Google and find the help you need.

You are not alone.