It felt like I was suffocating, the panic inside me was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe how debilitating it was, it dominated my thoughts. ‘Breathe in, breathe out, think about Mexico, think about the sea,’ I thought anxiously.
There was a cacophony of sounds coming from the waiting room, I held my mothers hand as if my life depended on it. She was my rock, the only person who could relieve my pain. She looked at me concerned and tucked my hair behind my ears, “It’s okay, the Doctor will give you something and then you will sleep. You must stop worrying, you need to calm down.”
I looked into her hazel eyes and feigned a smile hoping this feeling would pass. Dash, my four month old son, played by my ankles. Thank god he was completely unaware of his mothers inability to cope.
“Natalie,” the Doctor called me from the waiting room. We picked up our things and made our way into his office.
“How can I help you today?” He asked in a jovial voice. His face was round and pale, I guessed he was in his late forties but his Asian skin barely showed a wrinkle.
I didn’t know where to begin, in my paranoid state I doubted he would understand anyway. He clearly had never been a mother, clearly never known the fatigue of doing every night shift for months.
“She’s not doing very well,” my mother said almost reading my mind. Good ole’ mom, she knew all of this was beyond me, I didn’t even have it in me to explain.
“The baby wakes every two to three hours and has done so for four months. Natalie has stopped sleeping as she’s anticipating his next wake up. She hasn’t slept for more than two hours a night for the past two weeks and she’s highly anxious. I think she needs some sleeping pills or a mild form of sedative to help her relax,” she said in her ‘I’m a Doctor, retired Anesthetist actually, but I’ll pretend I’m just a nobody’ voice.
I was so relieved she was there with me.
“Right, so your not coping? Thought about sleep school?” He asked and looked me directly in the eye as if to say, ‘your the patient, I want to hear it from your lips not your mothers.’
“Yes,” I said and the tears started rolling down my cheeks. He looked at me worriedly and then looked at my mother as if to ask, ‘what did I say?’
“I’m sorry,” I said, and like a volcano erupting, I started to bawl uncontrollably in his office.
“I’m not usually like this,” I said through my tears, struggling to draw breath, “but I’m at the end of my tether. I’m not sleeping, I’m a complete mess. I think I have post natal depression but I’m so tired, I can’t tell if it’s really that or just exhaustion. I do every night shift and there’s no one to help me and in two days I have to go to Texas to show my in-laws the baby for a month. It feels like I’m drowning and I can’t stop the anxiety.”
“Okay, okay, ” he said softly, nodding to my mother as if she were right after all.
“I’m going to prescribe a light drug called Oxazepam. It shouldn’t affect your breast milk at all. Just make sure you don’t get addicted, only take half a pill. Okay?”
“Thank you.” I said gratefully.
Images of my Auntie Susan flashed before my eyes. Was this how she became addicted to prescription drugs? I suddenly felt a wave of sympathy for the poor woman. Perhaps that’s what children do, they drive their mothers to the brink of no return and the only way to deal with it is to either drink or take prescription drugs.
As I walked out of the Medical Center I smiled at mom, a real smile. She took Dash from my arms and said joyously, “You are going to sleep tonight.”
“You betcha!” I said, returning her enthusiasm and I did. I had to swallow a bunch of pills first but I slept better than a baby.
