During my pregnancy in 2008, I suffered with hyperemisis and extreme migraine attacks that cause me to be hospitalized on several occasions (about 12 times). Starting at about month 3 of the pregnancy I began to forget. I compensated by just writing everything down that pertained to work. Since having the baby in Aug. 2008 I feel lost. My memory has gotten so bad I often cant remember what I'm talking about, I have forgotten people, places, faces, things have to be repeated to me often, I’ve locked myself out of the house which I have never done in my 31 years of life, I've even almost walked out the door without shoes.
My doctors told me and are still telling me I’m postpartum. They said the change in life stress of being a new mom and so on. The aforementioned symptoms are coupled with the fact that I had hair loss a couple of months after my son was born, then the texture of my hair changed all together when it grew back. I can’t tolerate the cold or the heat (I'm either shivering or sweating profusely) there’s hardly ever an in between. I'm always extremely exhausted, I am suffering with insomnia, and I was gaining weight even though I wasn’t eating but exercising (I gained 10 pounds post pregnancy).
Its two years and three months since I've given birth and these issues still exist. I saw two different endocrinologists. One told me I was fat that's why I was sweating so much so I hired a trainer and lost twenty pounds. It was so hard I felt like he was trying to kill me cause my weight wouldn’t budge for the first 4 months and sometime I was too tired to really exercise I just physically couldn’t. Currently, if I don’t exercise my weight starts climbing back up immediately. I am still sweating with the slightest bit of moving like walking from the front door to the car and I even sweat while I’m sleeping. But, in my office I am freezing I usually have on a sweater and still need a space heater just to feel somewhat warm. The second endo also checked my thyroid and said it was normal and I must still be postpartum.
What bothers me the most is my memory. I feel like I'm slow where as I used to be very sharp. In the beginning (during and shortly after the pregnancy)I saw a neurologist. She said cause I was sleep deprived, my memory wouldn’t come back until I slept. I moved the baby out of the room cause he was a poor sleeper (but he sleeps through the night now), but it’s been more than a year and I still have problems falling asleep and staying asleep. But I sleep more than I did in the first year of his life. I try to sleep 7 or eight hours at night in a dark room with a sleep mask no TV and it is a struggle to get up every morning. And, my memory does not seem to be improving. I literally can forget what I am doing while I am doing it or talking about it. This is a daily thing. If I don’t write it down I will more than likely forget it completely with no memory that it even occurred. I started seeing a new doctor and she said I was anxious and suffering from postpartum depression. I AM NOT DEPRESSED! I may be anxious (and frustrated) but that's because I sweat tremendously all the time and can’t remember the things I need to when I need to.
Is this really a postpartum issue? And, if so how long does this postpartum thing last? I'm at the point that I don't want to have any more kids because pregnancy was so awful and if the recovery from it is this long......I don't know. It has to be something else? Any ideas? Thanks in advance for listening to my ramblings.
Brooke