In the shower that morning, I dropped to my knees, crying, overcome with emotion. Despite being agnostic, I was feeling uncharacteristically compelled to attend that service, like I had to go. I had gotten up early that day to attend the funeral Mass of a coworker's mother before heading into work. Then, one Friday morning four months after my daughter's birth, my world fell apart. Every few minutes I'd spin around in the driver's seat, checking and rechecking that I never forgot her. In the mornings I'd compulsively worry that I'd accidentally leave the baby in the car.

My increasing stress levels started to show in other ways, too. I scribbled notes and to-do lists and left them everywhere. (I usually need 12 or 13 hours, if I can grab it.) The truth was that it was becoming harder and harder for me to organize my thoughts. Oddly, in the days leading up to my breakdown, my husband noticed that I seemed more energetic, despite the fact that I was getting very little sleep. Evenings were spent getting dinner on the table and bathing the children in preparation for the next day. My morning routine included feeding and dressing the children (with my husband's help), and then dropping them off at my mother-in-law's on my way to work. When I got back, immediately I was under a lot of stress: I had a difficult relationship with my boss and a commute of almost two hours each way between our home in King George, Virginia, and my office in Rockville, Maryland. Within weeks of giving birth, I started to feel differently than I had the first time around. Eight weeks didn't feel like enough time at home, but I'm the breadwinner, and our financial situation was such that I couldn't take additional time away.

There were various triggers at play, but the biggest, I think, was going back to work eight weeks after my daughter was born.

Two years later, my husband and I welcomed our daughter, Lily, and were again overjoyed.īut within weeks of her birth, I started to feel differently than I had the first time around. Everything seemed perfectly fine after that. But the blues only lasted a couple of months and went away. Other times, I got strangely emotional, breaking into tears when close friends or family came to visit. They were mild once, for example, I became overly upset after accidentally spilling apple juice on my laptop. So if you'd told me then that four months after giving birth to my second child, I'd be running naked down a freeway shoulder in rush-hour traffic, I'd have said you were out of your mind.Īfter the birth of my first child, Darius, in 2006, I went through the baby blues. At 32, I had what many women strive for: great health, a loving husband, two beautiful children, and a satisfying career as a government contractor in marketing and communications.

Psychotic break stories