Back Home With My Son After Hospitalization (First Time)

Postpartum: 6 weeks

It's great to be back home. It feels so amazing to hold and kiss my son. He's grown a lot since the last time that I saw him in-person. I've missed a third of this life :( I know that I needed help, but it was absolute torture to be without my son in such a crucial time in his life. I feel like a complete failure as a mother. I'm no longer allowed to breastfeed due to the dangerous substances in my body from my medication.

I now take lithium, Depakote, Haldol, and Benztropine. And everything seemed okay in the first couple of days of being home, but then everything turned to crap. I don't know how to control myself. I literally can't sit still for more than maybe 20 seconds when I'm awake. I sleep all the time during the day and I have the strangest, repetitive dreams, where the repeat interval is about one minute. At night, I struggle to sleep because I just have so much nervous energy. All I do is pace around my bedroom and for some reason I visualize myself as Keanu Reeves now. So at least my imaginary hair is gorgeous.

Everyone is looking at me like I'm so weird. I just don't know how to act normally anymore. Why is this happening?! I don't know if this is just another manic episode rearing its head or if this is a reaction to the medication. For some reason, my prescriber forgot to fill the Benztropine for me. I called them twice to fix it, but to no avail. They told me to just use Benadryl as a replacement, but it isn't working! I can't go on like this. It feels like I'm drowning.

I had a called with my new psychiatric nurse practitioner, Nurse HC. She is a very lovely lady and she said that she will give me the Benztropine in 2 weeks. I don't know if I can wait that long. I'm in so much suffering. The torture is coming in ways like lack of night sleep, not being able to take care of my son AT ALL, and not being able to stay still (even to sit down to eat).

Below I will give a short description of some of the medication that I took and how it affected me. There were definitely overlapping side effects, so I duplicated some of those effects, not nothing exactly which medication caused the issue.

Lithium is the gold standard of mania and major depressive disorder treatment. For some reason, it just works. I am about to come down off of the mania and not go into a depressive episode. However the side effects can be a doozy. I experienced frequent urination, dry mouth, tiredness, acne, constipation, brittle fingernails, tremors, and blurred vision. Always report your side effects to your prescriber or medical health professional. Beware of possible food and drug interactions!

Depakote is a mood stabilizer that treats manic episodes, seizure disorders, and more. Side effects that I experienced were bloating, problems with memory, hand trembling, twitching, tiredness, abnormal dreams, blurred vision, constipation, dry mouth, increased need to urinate, puffing of the cheeks, and loss of appetite.

Haldol is an anti-psychotic, which helped me to come out of my psychosis. I experienced trembling hands, stiff face, dry skin, and tiredness.

Despite all of the side effects that I encountered, I stuck to the regimen. Always follow the instruction of your medical professional! Hopefully I will feel better when I have the Benztropine.