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Michelle L
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VIDEO - HERSTORY: Michelle Shares The Mental Health Symptoms She Had After Childbirth

Michelle describes the mental health symptoms she developed after the birth of her daughter.

Michelle:
Well I dealt with the postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder where I had repeated obsessive thoughts going through my mind, almost like little pictures going through my mind. And the things I couldn’t do, couldn’t, was so horrible was we had a balcony and I didn’t even have to be outside on it. I could be near it, and I would just see myself, see my baby flying over the balcony.

I mean, when people hear and say, “Oh yeah, I think sometimes I am afraid and I am going to drop my baby over the side of the stairs or whatever,” but for me, it was repetitive. It was over and over and over and over. And that’s one of the things that kept me from going outside was because I would go near that door, or even close to it, and I would see my baby going over that balcony over and over and over again.

And I would just be horrified and just frightened, so frightened and fearful. Or, you know, we lived in northern California, so when I did go out with my family and with my husband, I’d have sort of the pictures going through my mind again of us being on bridges and the bridges collapsing, over and over and over again.

We used to fly home every six weeks. We were there, my husband was there on business, and I would be on the plane and I would see us taking off and I would see the plane blowing up over and over and over again. So I was, if you can imagine, all of those things going through my mind that I was so on edge that I just had to back off from everybody and everything.

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