Feeling Lost Postpartum

[Meinz89]

Having an incredibly hard time three weeks postpartum, and while I wish I could blame everything on the massive hormonal shift, the truth is this depressed feeling isn't just the baby blues or postpartum depression. It's grief. I'm grieving.

For the last 10 months that I've lived with tinnitus, I held onto hope, a tiny sliver of belief that maybe it was purely pregnancy-related and would resolve once I delivered. I even let myself imagine that postpartum it would get quieter, more stable, and more manageable.

My baby spent a week in the NICU and, during that time, I barely thought about my tinnitus because I was completely consumed with worry for him. Now that he's home, healthy, safe, and perfect, you'd think I'd feel nothing but gratitude. But now that the crisis is over, the tinnitus is front and center again. It feels worse, louder, more "in my head," and now in both ears instead of just my left like it had been for most of this journey.

And being alone with it has made everything harder. My husband is back at work, I don't have any family here, and there is so much quiet time during the day. Too much space for my mind to go to the darkest places.

I feel like I'm grieving my old self. I'm scared I'll be one of the ones who can't habituate, especially because I'm struggling so much to accept that this is my reality right now. My family and friends are tired of hearing about it, I can tell. They mean well, but they don't know what to say anymore, and honestly I don't blame them.

This condition is so lonely. Even with my baby in my arms, this beautiful little person I dreamed of for years, I've never felt more empty.

 

[Vincent R]

If there is no going back, what could a path forward look like? You can't fix your tinnitus. What can you do?

These are the kind of questions I ask myself to keep going. Usually, there are lots of things I can come up with that are related not to the past but to the future.