‘You are not alone’ in coping with postpartum depression, Ogden mother says
Avery Furlong plays with her sons, Andrew (in red) and Ben, in the back yard of their Ogden home on Monday, June 8, 2015. Avery will be leading this year's Climb Out of the Darkness, an annual walk support mothers with postpartum depression.
Avery Furlong plays with her son, Andrew, 2, in the back yard of their Ogden home on Monday, June 8, 2015. Avery will be leading this year's Climb Out of the Darkness, an annual walk support mothers with postpartum depression.
Avery Furlong holds her son, Andrew, 2, while reading a book with her younger son Ben at their Ogden home on Monday, June 8, 2015. Avery will be leading this year's Climb Out of the Darkness, an annual walk support mothers with postpartum depression.
OGDEN – As a new mother, Avery Furlong was afraid to tell anyone about the dark thoughts gathering in her mind.
Hearing her infant son cry make her shake with fear. She didn’t even want to look at little Andrew when she fed him. Furlong felt like she was failing as a mother, and started having thoughts of ending her life.
“I honestly thought my husband and son were better off without me,” recalls the Ogden parent, who, at one point, thought about just jumping out of her moving car.
Once Furlong realized she needed to talk to a doctor for help, she discovered her symptoms had a name: postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis.
Postpartum depression is a condition that affects one in seven mothers, and Furlong is not afraid to let others know she is that one in seven.
“If more people spoke up about it …. it wouldn’t be such a taboo subject,” the mother of two says during an interview at her home. “The more people that talk about it, the more likely the stigma is to go away.”
Raising awareness of postpartum depression and other maternal mental health issues is the focus of Climb Out of the Darkness, a June 20 walk organized by Furlong and Alicia Glascock of Ogden.
The nationwide event was held locally for the first time last year, but Furlong says she was unable to participate in the fundraiser for Postpartum Progress due to severe anxiety. This year, she wants to help spread the word that women experiencing postpartum depression need not bear it in silence.
“I hope that it brings hope to moms who are suffering, moms who have suffered and to future mothers,” Furlong, now a mother of two young sons, says.
Why so hard?
Becoming a mother is something Furlong, who grew up in Clearfield, had dreamed about her entire life. But her dream-come-true quickly turned into a nightmare after Andrew was born on Nov. 27, 2012.
“I should have been on Cloud Nine,” says Furlong, who had a smooth delivery and a healthy baby.
But instead, the new mom found herself crying frequently and feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Her baby wasn’t nursing well so she was trying to pump breast milk for him round the clock, which was physically and emotionally exhausting.
Yet all her friends with new babies seemed to be adjusting without a hitch.
“They seemed to be easing into motherhood so gracefully and I thought, ‘Why is this so hard for me?’ ” she says.
Even though Furlong says she knew something was wrong, she thought she could handle it. You know, take a walk, read some uplifting quotes, eat better foods — those sorts of things.
“I waited so long to get help because I thought I could fix it myself,” she says. “The harder I tried, the worse it got.”
And Furlong was also afraid of what might happen if she told anyone about her thoughts. Would they take her baby away? Would people think she was a “monster” like those mothers on the news who hurt their babies or died by suicide were made out to be?
“I felt I had been thrown into this dark pit in the corner of my mind that I didn’t even know existed,” she says.
Feeling alone
Tyler Furlong is the one who called to make an appointment for his wife with her obstetrician-gynecologist when Andrew was about five months old.
“I was trying to help her and there was nothing I could do,” says Tyler, an EMT who suspected Avery might be suffering from depression.
Her doctor was very supportive, Avery Furlong says, and prescribed anti-depressant medication. He also recommended she stop the round-the-clock pumping to allow herself to get some rest.
Little by little, the young mother began feeling better and started to enjoy interacting with her son. Within a couple of months, she says, “I was the happy mom that I wanted to be.”
A blogger, Avery Furlong says she found writing about her experiences was therapeutic but opening up about her postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis also yielded a big surprise.
All kinds of women — including her own mother — told her they had experienced PPD too, but never let anyone know.
“Postpartum depression isn’t talked about enough,” Avery Furlong says. “When it’s something that’s so common but not talked about and you find yourself in that situation, it’s so scary.”
That’s why an event like Climb Out of the Darkness is so important, she adds, so no other mothers will have go to go through PPD alone.
“If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have waited so long to get help,” she says.
Although one in seven women experience postpartum depression, only 15 percent seek professional help, according to statistics from Postpartum Progress, an international nonprofit organization that offers women support and information on postpartum depression, psychosis or post traumatic stress.
Not ‘picture-perfect'
Just about the time Avery Furlong started feeling more like herself, she found out she was pregnant again.
“I cried,” she says, and she thought, “I don’t think I can do this again.”
But this time, after Benjamin was born on April 1, 2014, Avery Furlong says she didn’t have any problems with postpartum depression.
Keely Edwards, who plans to walk in the Climb Out of the Darkness, says she was completely blindsided by postpartum depression following the birth of her first child, Grayson, on Sept. 16.
“I was just terrified of this little helpless baby, all the things he needed I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to provide,” says the North Ogden mother.
Although she never thought about hurting her son, Edwards says she did have suicidal thoughts, and quickly sought out a support group for women that she found in the Sandy area.
Because she had been treated for depression and anxiety before she had her baby, Edwards says she recognized the symptoms after Grayson was born and realized, “I’ve got to be a mother to this baby and I’ve got to fix it and get it under control right away.”
One reason the North Ogden mother thinks a lot of women don’t talk about postpartum depression is because it can be embarrassing.
“You’re supposed to have all these wonderful, blissful moments when the baby comes,” she says, yet not everyone has that “picture-perfect” experience.
United in a cause
Utah has large numbers of mothers and babies yet few resources or counselors to deal with postpartum depression, Edwards said.
The support group she discovered “showed me that we’re not alone,” she says. “There are a lot of women who go through this and nobody talks about it.”
Edwards says she has been hesitant to share her story of PPD with others because of negative reactions she has received when she did open up.
“People look at you like you’re a monster,” Edwards says. Or they will make comments like, “How could you think like that about your child?” or “How could you not want to be around your baby?”
Yet postpartum depression occurs to all types of women from all kinds of backgrounds, she says, adding, “It can happen to anybody.”
New mothers encounter a lot of societal pressure, Avery Furlong says, not only to take care of the baby but also to keep a perfectly clean house, fix amazing meals and get their body back in shape in record time.
“If we kind of brought that down and encouraged moms to rest and not overdo it then there wouldn’t be so much pressure,” the Ogden mother says. “I felt like the checklist was long and I couldn’t keep up with it.”
At June 20’s Climb Out of the Darkness, Avery Furlong says she knows she may walk with women she’s known all her life or with complete strangers.
But whoever her fellow walkers are, she says, “We understand each other’s pain.You don’t really understand depression until you’ve gone through it yourself.”
And, she adds, “I know we’re all going to be climbing for the same cause.”
Contact reporter Becky Cairns at 801-625-4276 or bcairns@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @bccairns or like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SEbeckycairns.