Jackie’s Fight Against Postpartum Depression

Hello, my name is Tiffany and my hope is that this fundraiser serves two purposes. One, I want to bring awareness of how devastating Postpartum Depression (PPD) can be. Two, to help my daughter and her family climb out of the medical debt that has accumulated from this condition.

My daughter Jackie and her husband tried to do everything right. Go to school, get degrees, buy a house, get married and then start a family. They welcomed a baby boy into the world in June. Everything was great after the their baby was born. Jackie had the typical baby blues, but she was still happy to have her son Owen. About a month after having her baby things began to change, dramatically for Jackie.

I received a phone call a few days before I was going to return back to work. Jackie pleaded with me not to go back to work, that she couldn’t take care of her baby anymore, he was not safe with her and she said she did not want to live anymore. She believed that everyone, including her baby, would be better off with out her. She cried in terror, she had very dark thoughts, and she could not stand to wake up everyday to live with what she was going through.

The severity of her depression has been the kind you only hear in the news or see in a movie, and these scenarios usually end up in tragedy for the mother and the baby. Our family could not allow this to end in tragedy. We could not lose Jackie, Owen, or both. Her husband continued to work 10-12 hours a day so he could provide for his family and I became the main caretaker of my daughter and grandson.

We had made multiple doctors appointments with primary doctors, her OBGYN, and two trips to the emergency room. Jackie then had appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists, had inpatient stays to manage the emergence of suicidal ideation, and outpatient care to learn skills to cope with depression in a general sense. The major issue was that none of these treatments she sought in Ohio helped her to cope with the core symptoms of PPD. We spent time researching facilities that specifically dealt with this diagnosis to finally find inpatient care, in North Carolina, that had beds for women struggling with PPD.

Unfortunately, the mental health condition that resulted from the hormonal crash that happens to women after giving birth or after breast feeding, are not fully covered by insurance. This is frustrating because if a person has a health problem from a hormonal imbalance due to thyroid malfunction, insurance would cover the treatment. Not this, not mental health…and this needs to change along with the problem of not having proper care more easily accessible for mothers suffering from PPD after birth.

If you can, please donate to help Jackie and her family get out of the medical debt this has put them in so they can begin to heal financially. If you are not able donate, thank you for taking the time to read about her story. Please share this so that we can bring awareness to PPD, to make it less stigmatized so that women are not afraid to talk about this debilitating condition, so that hospitals in all states can provide care, and so that women can get the help they need for themselves and their baby.