- Hi everyone, so I guess first off, I have someone new to introduce you to. World, or YouTube,
please meet Theodore Ira. He's a little preoccupied right now, otherwise he'd say hello
a little bit better. But I just wanna share a
few things in this video. I've had a lot of people commenting and sending me messages, asking me about, particularly about
medications and pregnancy. So I wanna share a bit more
about what that was like for me, navigating, balancing taking medications for my mental illness with pregnancy. I also wanna talk a bit about the labor and delivery experience and what we had to think
about going into it in terms of accounting
for my mental health, my mental illness, and what that experience was like. As well as what the first, I
guess it's been five days or so have been since the arrival
of this little bundle. All right, so medications
through pregnancy was a bit tricky. I shared before that I initially, when I found out that I was pregnant, wanted to get off as much
medication as possible. And so I met with my
psychiatrist right away, as soon as I found out that I was pregnant to go over the medications
that I was on with him. And he was really great. He was very supportive and just said, "Lauren, I think it's important "that you stay on your medication, "or on a decent enough
dose of your medication, "just in terms of "you being stable and
promoting your well-being "in terms of promoting your
baby's well-being as well." But he said, "Ultimately
like I'll follow your lead. "And so if you want to reduce
medications, we can try that. "I just wanna follow you regularly." And so we did that. We went off of some medications
that were a little bit more potentially harmful to the baby, and I stayed on two main medications, but reduced the dosage. And that didn't really go
too well, unfortunately. I started getting quite
a few psychotic symptoms and my mood plummeted as well. So very quickly I think myself
and my partner Rob realized this isn't gonna work. So I went back to my psychiatrist and explain what was happening. And I ended up going back higher on one of the main
medications, a higher dose than I had started out on, just to make sure that things were stable and to make sure that I was staying well throughout the pregnancy. So I get a lot of people asking
how did you balance that? Or did you go off meds completely? And the answer is for me, no, it was not a safe option to go off the medications because my mental health
just couldn't take not being on medication. And so in order to the safest environment for the baby and for myself, I had to work on keeping myself safe by staying on medication, but we we still got rid of the meds that we didn't really need and reduced it to the minimum
that I needed to take. Now, one thing that did happen about somewhere around eight,
eight and a half months into my pregnancy, this is when you start to have
a lot more amniotic fluid. And so my medications actually started to be diluted quite a bit. And I didn't know that this
was what was happening. So I just all of a sudden started feeling really awful again and my
symptoms started coming back. So I went to my doctor and he
told me what was happening. that my body was essentially
diluting the meds. So I had to go up in dosage again at that point on one of them. And so that was hard
to wrap my head around. Keep going up on medication
when I'm trying to not expose my baby to as
much medication as possible, but it was really necessary again. And my body was diluting it. So he wasn't getting as much as he would have been if
I was on that dose before. So that's what happened near
the end of my pregnancy. So might be something
to keep an eye out for if you are on psychiatric
medications and pregnant. So in terms of the actual delivery and going into labor and whatnot, I was quite concerned about psychosis being triggered during labor because it's a very
stressful, intense experience. And I didn't really understand
how intense and stressful until I actually went through it, but it was something that
was on my mind going into it. And so I made sure I spoke
extensively with my OB about my concerns around
the mental health component of the stress of labor. And so it had come up that
a C-section was an option. If things got bad, if
things got to a point where I was psychotic
and it became dangerous to continue with a vaginal birth, then the C-section was an option, an emergency C-section was an option. This this something that I
was, made me a little sad because I did not want to
be in a compromised state for the birth of my baby, but it was a good idea to
talk about going into it so that everyone was prepared and knew signs to look
out for and whatnot. In terms of what my
actual experience was like going through labor and delivery. Hi. I was coping well. My contractions were pretty intense. They were every two minutes basically from the get-go. And I coped okay for awhile but when they started
to get really painful and really intense, I did start
to hallucinate a little bit, but it was okay because
I was able to identify that their hallucinations
and to manage it. And I told Rob that I was
starting to have hallucinations, but that it was manageable
and we got through it. Yeah. Apart from that, it was pretty, pretty smooth sailing,
as far as delivery can be. I was worried about right after, postpartum depression for
one or postpartum psychosis. But neither of those really happened. We really prioritized me
resting and recovering. Rob has been an absolute saint and has done so much to take
care of this little one Teddy. And yeah, that has done wonders for letting my body and my mind recover from the intensity and
the experience of labor. So in terms of what the
last five days or so, or I guess four days since
coming home have been like, we've spent a lot of time here in bed. If any of you are parents out there, I'm sure you can understand the level of exhaustion that we're feeling. It's been hard because that's just a part of new Parenthood. That's just a part of having
a newborn at home is just completely giving up your schedule to whatever they need
whenever they need it. And it can be really exhausting. I am pooped. This lack of sleep was something that I was very concerned about because sleep is very,
very important to me in terms of maintaining mental wellness, just like it is for a lot of people, but particularly with people who struggle with mental illnesses like Schizoaffective
disorder or schizophrenia, sleep is a very, very crucial
component of staying well. And especially during this
period of recovery from delivery, I was worried about, (laughing) excuse him, sorry. (laughing) I was worried about what that lack of sleep
component would mean, but I have been managing okay. Just like I said, like
Rob has been incredible in terms of taking you on probably more than his share
of taking care of Teddy and taking care of the house and whatnot. So I'm very grateful for that, but just finding balance overall so that we're all able to be
okay, and get through this. We do have two other kids
who we have half the time so we haven't had them back home yet, that comes this weekend. So that will be another
challenge to work through and figure out how to balance everything and how to have everyone
get by, staying well. So stay tuned for that. But it's just been a
lot of just flexibility and just trying to soak
him up as much as possible. I still can't believe that this little one was
inside of me for a while. And just I'm so in
love, we are so in love, the kids are so in love and it's just been really wonderful, exhausting, but really, really wonderful. All right, so that wraps up my experience with navigating medication with pregnancy and things that we considered
with labor and delivery, and what the last few days have been like. Something that I do really
want to mention though is that I have definitely experienced the intense fluctuations,
the hormonal fluctuations in my body in the last few days. And I've had periods where I've just wanted
to withdraw and recede. I'm really, really
lucky that I haven't had much depressive symptoms come about. But if that is something
that you're experiencing, I just want to let you know
that that is completely normal. If you have just given birth, or if you give birth in the future and have difficulties
with your mood and with, yeah if you're struggling
with depression postpartum, that is completely normal. And I would really
encourage you to reach out. That is something that
I'm very grateful for that I went into this experience with a really strong medical support team. My psychiatrist has been
following me really closely. My therapist has been following me closely and I was already on medication for my psychosis and for
depression and whatnot. So I had everything in
place going into this, but if you don't reach out for
help, there, it's treatable. There are people who can
help you get through it and it is totally normal. So I feel very lucky that it
hasn't been too extreme for me. But if it is for you, you are not alone and it
will, it will be okay. So thank you so much for following along on this journey with us. Can you say, thank you, Teddy? Thank you. (laughing) We'll be posting more about our journey with Parenthood and whatnot, but also some of our regular content too. We are going to take some time
to just soak this wee one in, so if our posting is a little
bit slower than normal, we apologize, but hopefully
you'll stick with us and we can't wait to see
you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.
