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I'm a 33 year old mother to an almost 5 year old son and almost 2 1/2 year old daughter. I've been married for close to 9 years to a very supportive and amazing man.
Growing up I had (denied) bouts of depression and battled eating disorders. I seemed to get over it all and was fine. Then I had my first child and got PPD. I got through that with the help of a great counselor and meds for a temporary amount of time.
I got pregnant a second time and developed a serious bout of depression in the middle of the pregnancy and then PPD quickly after her birth. However, I refused meds and was determined to recover from the depression with just a counselor. At some point I was changed from PPD to a sever depression diagnosis and when I crashed, I finally decided maybe I needed meds to help. This was a little over a year ago.
After months upon months of seeing my counselor as well as a psychiatric nurse practitioner for the meds, I had made minimal progress. However, I also started behaviors that were very unlike me and were very hurtful to my family and myself, impulsive, etc. Nothing extreme - but definitely not "me". At first my counselor and husband suggested a mid-life crisis but that didn't mean anything to me. Then my behaviors got worse and my counselor suggested bi-polar.
Long story short my psych NP agreed I could be so we changed the course of meds. I ended up changing counselors and was re-evaluated and actually was diagnosed bi-polar and ADHD (barely meeting the DSM-V standards for each). I tried so many meds and med combos I was ready to give up but miraculously when I thought I couldn't make it any longer, we found a combo that seems to be working. I've been on it for 2 or 3 months and doing much better.
I'm still suffering some minor consequences of my behavior from what we're calling my "manic" phase, but my marriage has been mostly repaired and my life feels on track again. I'm still processing this and trying to identify the manic because to me, it didn't look like what it did for so many other people, so it's been hard to admit this is really what I have, but I think they are right so I'm just trying to learn more.
This site looks great but completely overwhelming - what's the best way to start????
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