PSA: The Pill Makes Me Crazy

Like the BNL song listing all the ways to say crazy. My two particular favorites are batshit crazy, and crazier than a shithouse rat (my dad taught me that one).

The past few weeks have been incredibly difficult for me. I have not been feeling like myself, and the epiphany that occurred was not a pleasant one.

See, after LittleBird was born, I went on the minipill. And I flipped out. Like, for real, flipped out. Besides making me an emotional wreck, I was starving all of the time. I wasn't on it very long, but things were on a downhill slide. There is a video somewhere in the house of me flipping my shit and yelling at Hubbie and LittleBird. I did not know he was filming at the time. It was horrible. I have never seen the footage, but I can only imagine. One of my tasks is to find that dvd and get rid of that particular segment. I never want my daughter to see that because that woman is not her mom.

I remember crying in my OB's office that I didn't feel "right". They told me to just keep taking the pills for another month or so and things would even out. I went home and threw the pack in the trash. An interesting side note to this part of the story being that my cousin, who happens to be a geriatrician, told me that progesterone is an appetite stimulant. It is often used in nursing home to help stimulant the appetite of patients there. No wonder I was so hungry all of the time.

My OB's office never talked to me about the Pill causing depression or emotional issues.

Fastforward to this year. I stopped nursing LittleMan at the end of August. I went back on the Pill to help with my endo. It was slower this time. It crept up on me. I started crying more. Feeling more irritable and more unreasonable. It was to the point I would cry over something every day. I thought I must be going through some kind of hormone flux now that I was no longer lactating.

I hit the crisis point while staying at my parents house. One morning, I took my pill, and I do not know where it came from. The pill was in my hand. I swallowed it. And it was just there. This is exactly how you started to feel when you took the minipill.

I can't believe I did not see it before. I felt so stupid. How did I not recognize what was happening to me?

I called my cousin to talk to her. I called my surgeon to talk to his office. I told them I was stopping what I was taking. We had to find a different formulation because I was going down a bad, bad, path.

This was a pill I had been on for years before having my kids. Obviously, my body chemistry has changed. I am on a different type of pill now. It has been two weeks, and I think I am feeling better. I am not crying all the time, anyway.

I am scared, though. With each type of pill it took about two or three cycles for me to start feeling badly. I am hoping this one is the solution, but I feel like I am on constant guard. If I start getting irritated with the kids, is it something about which I should be irritated or am I blowing it out of proportion?

Either way. That's what I have been dealing with lately. I found interesting discussion forums on www.aphroditewomenshealth.com It turns out a lot of women have similar issues with the Pill. Why isn't this discussed more openly at the OB's office? Especially after having had a baby?

So, there's my PSA. If you made it this far, god bless.