momof3princes

2009-05-17   11:58am

First off, my name is Melanie, and I’m hoping that the life experiences that I share here will help others in similar circumstances. I am a young mother, I am 21 now and I have 3 children, all boys, ages 4, 3, and 10 months old. If you do the math then you can tell I had my first son when I was 17, and I have been all mother ever since. After I had my second son, I was diagnosed with mild depression. It’s likely I’ve had it most of my life according to my doctors, but that it was exacerbated by the pregnancies. It effects my life in every aspect but I try not to let it control it. With my depression it can sometimes be hard to be the best mother I can be. It was, and sometimes still is, a struggle to just take my kids outside to play. I know it may seem simple to most people, but it takes so much motivation for such small things. I didn’t like going outside, at least not when I was inside. It was a little different once I would go outside and it didn’t seem so bad. But, I had a hard time doing anything that was going to take a good amount of energy to accomplish. I took Zoloft, and still do, and it took the edge off, then I did my best to understand everything I could about depression and how it specifically effected me and my life. Now I also have been engaged to my fiance’ for the last 2 years, he is also the father of my youngest son. (My older 2 were fathered my verbally abusive ex-boyfriend of 6 years, but more on that another time). When we first got into a relationship he was self medicating with alcohol and drugs, but he stopped that to be with me. After a few  months he started acting weird, he seemed more angry all the time, his memory was going, and he would do things he didn’t remember later on. This almost cost us our relationship when he agreed to get help, and was diagnosed with Bipolar depressive disorder. He got on meds for that and things got great again. He had some strange moments of his disorder that would occur infrequently that I learned to identify over time. I found it easier to deal with knowing that when he is mean like that, and I know its part of his disorder, then I know it’s not really him talking. That’s what Bipolar is, its almost like a split personality, but not. Usually without meds, a bipolar person will either be in one of 2 extreme moods, manic or depressed. Manic makes them hyper, extremely euphoric or happy, and they feel like they can do anything.The depressed stage is just like a regular depression diagnosis but to the extreme. The depressed side as I’ve learned, can also come out in some people as anger, usually this is when the arguments happen and the person seemes unlike themselves as reffered to earlier. I’ve noticed the mood swings are often brought on by stress,and they can fluctuate between these 2 extremes in months, weeks, even just in days or hours. In my boyfriends case , he also has a suppression factor where while he is in a “mood” as I call them, he can say or do things, that once he calms down to normal, he doesn’t remember. It was really hard to deal with at first because he wouldn’t understand why I’d be upset because he didn’t remember doing anything, it took months before his therapist and I finally proved it to him. His therapist told us that he probably had the disorder for a long time, but the drinking and drugs he was doing when he was younger was a way of self medicating and kept it under control, when he stopped those things to be with me there was nothing controlling it and it took over, if that makes sense. But now that he’s on his meds he is exactly the man I loved before about 95% of the time.It’s really a learning process on how to deal with the other 5% when it occurs without having it cause a big problem. More recently my therapist didn’t understand why the Zoloft wasn’t completely helping. I also started to have problems concentrating, my once prominent multitasking skills were dwindling and I could barely talk on the phone without having to isolate myself  because I was distracted by other things going on around me. Eventually we came to a new diagnoses of Bipolar Spectrum Disorder (also known as bipolar 2)It’s often misdiagnosed  depression because the mood swings aren’t as obvious. It is called Bipolar 2, because it is very similar to Bipolar, except the moods swings don’t go as far to the extremes as regular bipolar, and more often range in the depression stages. The concentration problem is part of it, it also explains why the Zoloft wasn’t working right, as well as why I’d have random spurts of energy that i usually used to go on giant cleaning sprees in my house. On top of all this my fiance’ works full-time, and I work part-time nights and stay home with my kids all during the day because we cant afford daycare. So I myself am balancing working, 3 kids, my own bipolar spectrum/depression disorder, and managing my fiance’s bipolar disorder, and maintaining the loving relationship of everybody in our house. It wasn’t easy at first, It’s been over a year and a half since my fiance’ was diagnosed and we’ve had many ups and downs. We’ve spent a lot of time on communication and understanding to make it through. Now we are happier than ever. Life is full of obstacles, but it’s all about learning, understanding, lots of patience, and finding a way to make it work for you. Getting dignosed with either depression or Bipolar doesnt have to be a jail sentence. 

 Now that is the basic background of me, and my experiences. What I plan to do here is share how we did it. If you’re living with someone who has bipolar, or you are a mom who suffers from depression,  I’ve been there, I am still there, but I don’t look at it as “suffering” from depression or a disorder, it’s part of me and my life, and I’m opening my life to everyone so that maybe someone who may be in a simlar situation can see that there is a way. Feel free to leave comments and questions. TTFN

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