Maybe It's Depression?

Sometimes when I feel vaguely under the weather, I don't really connect all the random "not-quite-right" feelings into one, "Oh, I'm sick!" revelation right away. "Why am I so tired?" I wonder. "I feel thirstier than usual. What's with that?" "I'm kind of cold." And then someone mentions a virus going around, or another member of my family comes down with something, and it'll click. "I must have a cold!" And then the next day or a few days down the line, the stuffy nose, sneezing, cough, and other hallmarks of the cold will begin, as if by realizing I might have contracted a virus, giving it a name, brings it to life.

But it's only once I've decided, "Yep, I'm sick" and allow the symptoms to crash over me, to rest and up my fluids and behave accordingly, that I can then continue on to recover from that minor illness.

A similar experience happened this week, but it's not a cold I realized I have.

It's depression.

And it took about two months for me to link all my various, vaguely unpleasant symptoms, put them all into a box, and label that box "Depression," but once I did, it made total sense.

I've been seeing a therapist for several months now. I wasn't sure what I needed when I first made the phone call and set up the first appointment, but I knew I needed "something." Someone to talk to, someone to help me make sense of what was going through my mind. I wanted to be a better parent. I wanted to understand myself better. And she has helped me with a lot of those questions.

Then why, I wondered, after starting to feel so much better about life and myself and my parenting, why is it so hard for me lately to just be that person?

Why am I so tired? I mean, sure, the baby doesn't sleep extremely well, but it isn't worse than it's ever been, and it's gotten marginally better, and yet I feel so tired all the time.

Why am I eating all the time? I can't get enough sugar. All I want is pasta and bread and snacks and treats, six times a day.

Why can't I just focus on one task and get my work done? I'll sit down to do 20 minutes of work, and three hours later I'm still working on it. Sure, Facebook is engrossing, and Candy Crush is fun, and, yes, the kids keep distracting me and pulling me away. But even with all of that, why does it take all day to do one simple task?

Why am I so irritable? Every little thing any of my kids does just sets me off on an epic rant. I'm cursing more (I try to hold back the worst of it when I'm around my kids, but I've been letting quite a few more of those words slip through than usual). I yell at the drop of a hat. I don't like it.

Why do simple tasks seem so monumental? I have to do laundry. Ugh. Getting it out of the dryer is so annoying. I'll do it tomorrow. Cooking dinner? Forget it. I'll just make pasta. I have to put a check in an envelope and walk all the way to the end of the driveway to mail it? I'll take it out later.

Why is it suddenly so hard for me to run, when I've been running for six months now? I felt so sluggish, slow, like I had no stamina. I turned to hiking up the hill behind my house and staring out at the ocean instead of doing my interval training and working up to a 5K like I had planned.

Why do I feel so detached? Nothing is interesting enough to bother with. Yeah, I have an idea for a story or novel, but it's too much trouble to actually sit down and write anything. I'd like to read that book, but it's so long and big and heavy. I guess we could go to the park, but it sure seems like a lot of effort to get everyone into the car and all. Go to the beach? Nah.

The thing is, I'm functional. I do eventually get work done. I get the dishes washed and the laundry folded and put away. I go out and run/walk three times a week. I make lunch and dinner for the kids and do the shopping. I pick them up from school and get them to Hebrew school on time. I pay the bills and have been keeping up with the budget. I even took on a little extra work and am getting that done, too, albeit more slowly than I'd like.

That's where depression is so sneaky. It takes up residence in the back of your head and plays with your mind, manipulating your emotions and your memory so you don't connect the dots. There's no stuffy nose or vomiting or localized pain to signal exactly what's going on. There's no telltale rash or high fever to broadcast to you and everyone around you that you're sick.

But you are sick.

Depression is an illness. It's a physical problem just like appendicitis or diabetes. And just like those more obvious diseases, in most cases it is treatable. For some people, psychotherapy alone is enough to help them out of the fog of depression and on the way to normal function. For others, medication helps the brain manage hormones appropriately and regain the chemical balance that lets them recover.

I had my suspicions about two weeks ago, that maybe all of this discomfort was related. When my therapist suggested getting a psychiatric evaluation and discuss medications with a psychiatrist, suddenly I was able to throw all those symptoms into a box and put on that label. And even just doing that has helped me feel better. Just putting a name to it, understanding that this isn't the real me. This is an illness. This is the disease talking. I can manage a disease. I can understand it. And I can control myself better knowing that there isn't something horribly wrong with me as a person, but maybe I need a little help finding myself under this pile of symptoms.

It's so, so important to be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of depression. Depression can be mild, but it can still rule your life in a way you're not aware of. When depression is severe, immediate help is vital, but a mild depression can drag on for months without any obvious manifestations except maybe a little irritability, a little sluggishness, a little, "Huh, I'm feeling kind of...not quite me," and you don't have to let yourself feel that way.

It's only once you identify the symptoms, attach the label, and put it all together that you can begin to find your way out. You may not even realize how poorly you were feeling until you start to feel better.

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Please note that many common antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications are compatible with breastfeeding. Talk with your prescribing physician about options that will work for your situation.

Speech Therapy

My three-year-old, SB, didn't start really speaking until he was about 17 months old, old enough for a little concern from most people. However, NJ, the oldest, also didn't start really talking until that age, and he went from a few signs and pointing to complex sentences in the space of about six months, maybe less; I figured SB would follow a similar pattern, so I didn't worry. At his 18-month well checkup, the doctor asked if he spoke at least 10 words. I had counted seven the day before, which is quite low for a bright 18-month-old, but I explained about NJ having been the same way and that I wasn't worried. I didn't get him evaluated by an audiologist or speech pathologist. I didn't take my doctor's referral to Regional Center. By 19 months, these were his words:



1) Moo ("What does a cow say?")
2) Moooor (More)
3) Moooooo (Moon)
4) Baa ("What does a sheep say?")
5) Mo-mo (Remote)
6) Bapa (iPod)
7) Mama
8) Derrrr (Truck, switch (as in, switch sides when nursing), train, among other things)


(Yes, one of his early words was iPod. He still loves that thing, too.)

In fact, I was right. Just a couple months after this appointment, SB suddenly started really talking, putting together two- and three-word phrases. By the time he was two years old, he was building complex sentences. There was one problem, though. His words were terribly unclear. NJ almost from the start spoke remarkably clearly. Complete strangers could have a conversation with him before he was three. There were very few words he said in a funny "learning to talk" way. (We remember a fond few, such as "battached" for "attached," but really, he spoke incredibly well.) SB not so much. I assumed it was just him still trying to figure out how to make the sounds, and surely by the time he was two or 2-1/2, he'd be speaking more clearly.

Alas, not. Some words gradually improved, or he'd suddenly begin saying something more clearly than he used to, but, for the most part, if you didn't live with him, you couldn't understand him, and even if you did live with him, you had to work pretty hard to understand him. I and NJ are the best at deciphering his speech, and other people will randomly catch words and sentences that I don't, but the faster he goes, the less clearly he speaks. I didn't know how to fix that, or if I should worry, or when I should worry, or what I should do.

At his three-year checkup, with a kid who spoke in totally unintelligible paragraphs, I expressed my concerns to his pediatrician, who referred us to an audiologist and speech pathologist. His hearing tested fine, so we went to the speech pathologist where she confirmed that his grammar, vocabulary, and syntax were quite advanced, but his enunciation problem was "severe." The good news was, it appeared he could make the various sounds, he just didn't always use them properly. Most consonants were "m", "n", or "d", and even some of his vowels were distorted. "Big" and "bridge" sounded like "buuuuh," for example. The speech therapist said we'd see her once or twice a month and she'd send us home with exercises to try to form new speech habits.

We have quite the task ahead of us. The goal is to create new habits and break the old ones. We need to get him to say the ending consonants: "ha-T," not "ha';" "Po-P" not "Po'." And so on. Then we have to fix initial "s" and initial "f" (he uses "d" for both). Then we have to work on other strident sounds, and reduce the lisp, and fix some other initial "s", and so on.

Fortunately, SB is very bright and realizes that it's hard for people to understand him. He will repeat himself over and over again in the hopes that this time you'll get it, but he doesn't know how to fix it himself. But he's getting there. A few things, he's already fixed on his own, and others he corrects when he remembers to. I can see that eventually, he'll be speaking more clearly. I just feel so bad for him, because he has so much to say and so many questions to ask and so much bubbling in his head that he wants to get out there, and he trips over his own tongue trying to express all the wonders of the world that an almost 3-1/2-year-old has discovered. And after a long descriptive paragraph, our response, more often than not, is, "I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you said."

I think it's hard to be willing to seek help when you think your child might have a problem. No one wants to think their child isn't "normal." But realizing that we could help SB to be better understood, which would improve all of our quality of life, made getting him evaluated and starting treatment totally worthwhile. I think there's a lot less stigma to various kinds of therapy than there used to be, and, in the end, when you see the change in your child when he's getting the help he needs, you know you've done the right thing.