Category: Health and Wellness

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

I had my last cup of coffee exactly one week ago Saturday.

And I have some things to say about caffeine withdrawal.

Because here’s the thing. I’m going through it. And hard. And it is awful. And it seems like I went into this idea completely ignorant of exactly how awful it was really going to be.

On the whole, I’m sitting here thinking that deciding to give up coffee, on a whim, was maybe not one of my better ideas. But I’m in it now, and there’s no going back, and so I have nothing left to do but write about it.

And maybe laugh about it later.

But probably not.

It started with this book, which I read in a total of 3 days.

I might sit down and write a more full review of it later, but suffice it to say, it was an excellent read and I do highly recommend it.

As you know, I’ve been chronicling my journey toward natural hormone balance.

This author maps out a pretty good list of instructions to really get started, and includes a four-day-cleanse to kick things off.

Hooray!

Who doesn’t love a good skinny-white-girl detox?

Four days? Even I can do that, said me, still blissfully unaware of my caffeine dependent happiness.

A mere forty-eight hours later, I was Googling “caffeine withdrawal symptoms” and coming up very short on details concerning what in the fresh hell was happening to my brain and body.

(My brain was either imploding or physically consuming itself, and my body was perhaps suffering the secondary effects of that.)

I’m writing this post for posterity. But also for anyone who, like me, just needs some company for their misery.

Claire’s Caffeine Withdrawal Diary

Day 1: Sunday: 24 hours Without Caffeine

This is easy. No headache. No brain fog. Didn’t even crave a cup of coffee upon wake up. Made it through church on a damn bowl of fruit dressed in lemon juice and flax meal and wasn’t even abnormally hangry at 11:30, as I often am.

This is going to be easier than I thought!

Potentially related: Took a solid nap on the couch with kids running around from 1-3pm and I did not poop today.

Day 2: Monday: 4am

Awoke with a metaphorical pick-axe jammed into my left eyebrow. Blurry vision. Nausea. Hot and cold sweats. Chills. Everything in my body hurts and my hands are numb.

I stumble to the bathroom to pee and think, “I should take something for this.”

Excedrin, my go-to for this kind of headache has caffeine. Also, it has been so long since I’ve had this kind of headache that we don’t even have a single Excedrin in the house. I find a bottle of unopened Motrin and choke one down with water before returning to bed.

Guess what is the opposite of delicious before the sun comes up when all your body wants is a cup of coffee?

9am: After dropping off preschoolers, I return home and go back to bed fully clothed for 2 hours. John mentions, as I drift into my pain-induced coma, “Honey, maybe you are actually coming down with something.”

“Or maybe caffeine and crack are not-so-distant cousins and I was under the impression that I wasn’t as dependent as I apparently am. Go to hell, husband, I need to die.”

(Things I do not mean, but say anyway because it is impossible to stop myself.)

My headache alleviates from an 11 down to a manageable 6 in this time, which is enough for me to get on the Googler.

Noted: It is too late to taper off slowly, which I clearly should have done.

Noted: Headaches could last between 2 days and up to several weeks. This time span is entirely too broad, but upon seeing “irritability” further down the list, I believe I must be on the right track for diagnosis and my urge to throat punch Dr. WebMD subsides.

I take to the live-advice provider known as the Facebook Mommy Network and the consensus is to give it a full week.

Potentially related: There is a metallic taste in the back of my mouth on either side of my tongue, which feels swollen. I took another nap around 1pm and still fell asleep on the couch at 9pm. The headache fluctuated all day between a pain level of 6 and 11, and while that retched book encouraged me to eat leafy greens and more fruit, and drink lots of water, the only thing that sounded good was nothing.

I think I had some soup.

Also, I did not poop today.

Day 3: 72 hours Without Caffeine

Poop. Just before 11am.

So that’s a start.

Also, my appetite is moderately back, though because I’m doing this stupid cleanse, I don’t get to eat any of the things my body is telling me to eat, like coffee and donuts and coffee. Started the day with a smoothie because a big bowl of fruit, first thing in the morning, is difficult.

Also, I ate some form of protein every hour, on the hour, as well as three round meals as dictated by the book. I started putting fresh ginger in hot water and sipping on it throughout the day, which was weirdly satisfying on a few levels.

Headache was at a level 4 pretty much all day, though there were probably one or two moments where I wasn’t acutely aware of it.

Took a 20 minute hard power nap while the kids watched Thomas the Train. Was tired to the point of groggy all afternoon and evening. Irritability and patience levels were exactly as expected (DEFCON 2) and went to bed early again.

Potentially related: awoke at 6:30am ready to get out of bed. Of course, in that quiet half hour all I wanted was coffee, and nothing in me felt particularly good until around 9am, but I did not have the desire to keep sleeping.

Have felt mildly disconnected from reality all day and can distinctly describe a feeling of loss or emptiness. Unsatisfied. All day. It is also cold and rainy out, which doesn’t help.

I sure do miss my old friend Coffee right now, and I’m mildly in mourning.

Day 4: 96 hours Without Caffeine

Awake again before 7am, and feel rested. Still have a looming all-over pain level 3-4 headache. Have been adding turmeric to my smoothies every day for good measure. Nothing to note about that.

My bowels are finally self-regulating, a feat which I am still celebrating. It was disheartening to note that all these months of claiming magnesium as my newfound best intestinal friend, and I was completely ignorant of the help it was receiving from coffee.

I have to pause here and apologize about all this poop-talk, but here’s the thing: it is one of the best methods for measuring our overall health. As a mom I quickly learned that poop is a singular sign that anything is amiss with a baby who cannot speak, and the quicker I got over my Western fear of toilet bowl analysis, the sooner I started revolving meals around foods that seemed to be optimally healthy for my kids.

Admit it, young parents. You talk about poop far more now than you ever have in your entire lives.

If this is a regular measurement for the health of our kids, why don’t we use it on ourselves?

I went to the gym twice today. (This is strange by itself and unrelated to coffee.) I did a moderate weight routine in the morning, and later took a Pure Barre class that just happens to meet when my big girls are at piano down the road.

Felt fine through both, but the headache still has not gone away completely.

Drinking water is getting easier. Naps are not going anywhere.

Irritability is decreasing. I’m still sad and missing coffee and was advised to create a new routine that revolves around some really good tea. I’m having a hard time imagining such a thing even exists.

Four-day-cleanse technically ends today so I indulged in a ceremonial epsom salt bath, which was wonderful (as always) but did in fact bump my headache level up a notch.

Potentially related: I’m sleeping like a damn baby, and that is a feat in and of itself. Ever since having kids, I went from being able to fall asleep in my freshman dorm room at 10:30pm, still full of people and lights, and sleep through all the fun, to waking at the sound of a sneeze from an entire floor and two closed doors away.

Add to this sensitivity a husband whose resting body temperature hovers right around 200 degrees fahrenheit, sciatica, three kids who sometimes talk in their sleep, and one kid who continues to suffer from occasional “night terrors” and you can understand why I feel justified in sleeping until 10am every Saturday if I want.

And I do.

Day 7: Saturday

Though technically the cleanse is over, I’m not about to reintroduce coffee after suffering for 96 hours and not yet experiencing the supposed bliss at the end of the rainbow. And so I continue with this cleaner eating approach and no caffeine.

Days 5 and 6 blurred into each other and were much the same as day 4, with the exception that I did not take a nap and was able to stay awake until close to 11pm.

Today was by far the best day yet, though I can’t say I’m completely headache free.

I’m going to try to stick this out until I feel awesome or until I give up, whichever comes first.

Final Thoughts:

I did not realize how much caffeine affects me as I never considered myself a heavy coffee drinker. And it is true, I only drink up to 16oz a day, and not even that much every day.

Also, I cannot consume coffee after 1pm and expect to fall asleep at a reasonable time, so I’ve been pretty good to completely cut myself off before lunch.

But.

We do like our coffee strong.

And, I’ve been doing this for almost 2 decades.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not one for extreme habit changes as I find them to be mostly unsustainable. I’m not hoping that my life going forward is forever coffee-free.

But I could be sold for some better sleep. At this point, it is difficult to target if the improved sleep is related to the lack of caffeine or the lack of sugar in my diet, as I’ve cut out all refined carbs and all desserts this week.

I’m going to keep going. And you know I’m usually good about reporting back.

In the meantime, if you’ve stumbled here via random headache-induced Google search, feel free to leave me a comment. I promise to update when I can claim a day completely free of anything that even resembles a headache.

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

The Short Story

The older I get, the more I realize how common hormone-induced depression and anxiety are in women my age. It is something seemingly everyone is affected by, but very few are talking about. While prescription medications are at an all time high and largely working for many people, I found that they were not ideal for me. This is why I continue to be on a quest to treat my mental and emotional health with as many natural solutions as possible.

The Long Story

I have been medically treated for depression exactly three times in my life. Six months after my first daughter was born, I finally sought help for demonic psychosis what was ultimately diagnosed as postpartum depression. I was prescribed Celexa over the phone and took it until Eliott was a year old.

Three years later my second daughter was born. My doctor thought it best to preemptively strike against a recurrence of postpartum depression, and put me on a low dose of Zoloft. I’m guessing it was effective; I never experienced any depression symptoms.

My third child was a very large, very chill, and very sleepy baby boy. Though my husband claims I still had a mild amount of hormonal lows, I was not even close to thinking I was, again, at a point of needing medication, and remember that first year of my son’s life as relatively peaceful.

Then, I got pregnant with my final child, another girl. Long before we even knew her gender, I was becoming that raging version of myself who couldn’t get the house clean enough, couldn’t love any of my offspring even a little bit, and wanted to take out all of my (nonsensical) fear and aggression on the only other adult presence in my life, which was my innocent husband. This time, the diagnosis was “prenatal depression” and I was once again put on a very low dose of Zoloft.

Telling people I was treated for postpartum depression has become easy. In fact, I realize more and more just how common it is. But somehow, admitting I continue to suffer from extreme mood swings related to PMS is a lot harder.

I would guess that the ratio of women suffering like me, to those admitting it in public, is low. And it makes sense. I know I certainly don’t want to be the suburban, stay-at-home, minivan-driving, housekeeper-employing, mother-of-four-planned-children who admits to having full blown breakdowns (even now, a few times a year) for reasons that seem beyond my control. I am a healthy person. I eat well and take care of my body. I am confident and secure in my spiritual faith. My personal relationships, family support, and marriage are unusually good compared to many others.

It’s embarrassing to have the life I have, with all of its relative freedom from basic hardship, and yet have full days of mental and physical debilitation that render me mostly useless, angry, and ashamed.

Depression, Anxiety, and Hormones

What kind of symptoms am I talking about here? Mine have included in a range of severity, the following: anger, rage, uncontrollable desire to have my house or my space suddenly spotless, insecurity, panic attacks complete with what could be described as having a mild heart attack, lack of libido, hot sweats, sugar cravings, lack of appetite and extreme weight loss (also weird because I’m already quite thin), lack of desire to do fun things, inability to laugh at actual funny things, lack of desire to make other people laugh (which is kind of my MO), general negativity, migraines, inability to sleep, exhaustion, general lack of energy, hair-trigger temper, impatience (which is especially weird for me), forgetfulness, inability to focus or to feel like I can get my shit together on an average day, lots of yelling and cursing to get my point across, crying for seemingly valid but actually kind of embarrassing reasons, feelings like no one understands me, feeling like no one is listening to me, feeling like no one can possibly understand how I’m feeling.

While I know this isn’t true for all 40 million adults in the US who are currently being treated for some form of an anxiety disorder, I can say for myself that hormones are the driving cause of all these problems. In the last decade, my very worst symptoms of depression and/or anxiety were most prevalent while I was on birth control, pregnant, nursing, ovulating, or about to start my period. (That’s right, if you do the math, in the last 10 years I’ve had about 600 good days.)

Something had to give.

Treating Depression and Anxiety with Medication

I didn’t really understand the full scope of chemical/hormonal imbalance until I experienced it personally. I admit I was always one of those glass-is-half-full people who looked at depression as a sign of weakness, hidden skeletons, or laziness.

I couldn’t really have been more wrong.

Maybe this is why it is difficult to admit it now affects me.

I’m not one of those people who is against modern medicine as a general rule. I vaccinate my kids, I take Excedrin for headaches, and have been known to pop Benadryl as a sleep aid. Also, I have been in very close communication with my current doctor about the full spectrum of my mental and physical health.

But here’s the thing: I did not like being on antidepressants.

Don’t get me wrong, when things were at the absolute worst, the side-effects of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRi’s) were preferable to the lack of control I felt without them, and so I considered the drugs to be a necessary short-term solution. It was truly one of those times when the rewards outweighed the side-effects.

But the list of negative side-effects I experienced while taking an SSRI is long. I had no emotions. I remember watching a class full of high school freshman blatantly disrespect me and each other and experienced exactly zero desire to stop them. (In fact, I remember telling them this, and verbalizing how strange it was that I did not couldn’t even make myself care.) I was devoid of normal human emotional response, something that is typically heightened with pregnancy and childbirth. I would say that I missed having hearty belly laughs and tears when appropriate, but another side-effect of the drugs is that I was aware they were gone and I didn’t care. Some of you will appreciate that I had turned off Dexter after the baby/blood season 4 finale, but was later able to restart and finish out the entire series while I was on Zoloft.

Because nothing bothered me. At all.

I didn’t like the bland taste of food. I know many women who hate antidepressants because of weight gain. I was the opposite. I was never hungry, and when I logically knew it was time to eat, nothing sounded good. I put extra salt on everything and was forever apologizing that dinner tasted so bland. (John thought I was crazy.)

I didn’t like restless leg syndrome nor my sudden inability to fall asleep. This is actually the reason I discovered magnesium supplements and am thankful for that, but being exhausted and not being able to sleep might be the most torturous feeling in the universe.

Why I’m Talking About All This, Now

I cannot even count the number of times I’ve connected with both friends and strangers over these mutual feelings of helplessness and the desire to “feel better” without medication. Most of us are between the ages of 25 and 50. Most of us remember a time when we felt good. And all of us just want to feel good again.

I simply cannot fathom that living like this is a new normal that I’m just supposed to accept. Even if I could live like this, it isn’t fair to my husband and children. I hope other women (especially moms) won’t accept it either.

So this entire post comes across a little abruptly, despite the length, and I realize to some friends and family who regularly follow my blog, much of it might be cause for alarm.

Do not be alarmed.

The truth is, things are good.

I have made some habit changes that are noticeably making a difference in how I feel, day-to-day, and month-to-month. Some are no big deal. Others require a little effort. But all of them are well worth how much better I’m feeling. If you are interested to see what I do, you can read all about it here.

For the Mamas of Little Ones

Truth: It took my body a full two years after pregnancy (because I was nursing?) to start really feeling normal again, and getting there has been a slow but steady process.

Truth: Having small kids at home is exhausting, even with balanced hormones. Daily stress for the mother of young kids is no joke. This is true for stay-at-home moms. This is true for working moms. This is true for single moms. This is true for moms who married Superman.

Truth: I am with you. It is difficult to admit that something I outweigh by more than 100 pounds and outsmart by more than 23 years is getting the better of me. Regularly. Times four.

If you are stuck in toddler-land, or colic-land, or the land where sleep simply doesn’t exist for anyone, than hear me say this: I enjoy my children more and more as they get older. Ignoring for a moment the fact that all of my spawn are genetic clones of John and me, I believe these young-years are difficult, largely, because we’re doing things right. And I believe that what I’m doing now, is going to make the teenage years preferable to the toddler years, despite what the majority of the population wants to tell me.

I also believe I deserve to feel good and to be able to offer my family my best.

And so I’m working on it. Healthy habits for myself, healthy communication with my spouse and kids, and now, sharing a few of the things that are working for me with you.

Join the Discussion

Please comment below. Please share this post with those who might need it. Please keep up the dialogue with those who love you. Talking leads to action. If you know me in real life, contact me. I’m wide open.

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Things that Are Hilarious

So one of the reasons (the reason) May was the month from hell was the moment I discovered we had head lice.

It started a couple of weeks earlier, with Eliott and Carter both complaining of itchy heads.

Now. Okay. Duh. We’ve been in elementary school long enough to know that an itchy head always means “Check for lice.” And I have in the past. And I did this time. More than once. And because I had no idea what I was looking for, I didn’t see anything.

Instead, I took to the biggest mom group I belong to on Facebook and posted:

In my defense, several people agreed that Tresseme had been an itch-inducing product for them as well. And several after that recommended Dove and various other brands with tea tree oil in the ingredients. Clearly, this was a discussion of scalp itch caused by a particular product. When one mom sort of self-righteously added, “Check for lice [grimacing face emoji],” I couldn’t even type the appropriate words to convey my annoyance. Instead, I forum-slapped her with the eggplant emoji.

Hindsight.

In my defense, again, I was under some serious pedicure-induced relaxation, and thought I could start a new Internet revolution by which the supremely arbitrary and far under-utilized eggplant emoji would become, for me, a symbol to represent my inability to politely express a “Nobody asked you,” or maybe, “Nobody likes you,” or simply, “Can you even read?”

You know. The kinds of things I could also never say to my students, but sure wouldn’t have minded a real life actual eggplant to smack them over the head with whenever one of many inane comments escaped through their little pie holes.

The most inside of inside jokes, if you will, until some magical moment when I would Instagram-slap one on The Fat Jewish and he would make it go viral.

For good measure, I went ahead and eggplant emoji’ed a few more posts, some friends, some strangers. I fired off my own self-righteous text informing John of my genius plan. His response led me to Urban Dictionary.

Turns out, the eggplant emoji has already been taken.

Meanwhile, in itchy-head land, my oldest daughter finally pinpointed the problem when, in the middle of the living room, she stuck a lone finger up to her scalp, scratched a few times, and then put her fingernail up to my face and announced, “Mommy. Every time I scratch my head I find one of these little bugs.”

Somebody go ahead and kill me with an eggplant right now.

A few facts about head lice:

1. Lice are tiny. Lice are supremely tiny.
2. Lice are almost translucent in color.
3. Lice do not like the light, so when you shine a big bright light over the affected head, they are most likely crawling out of its glare.

Lice Removal Step 1: Frantically Phone an Experienced Friend

When it comes to lice, there is strength in numbers and absolute misery loves company.

I immediately sent a frantic text to a dear friend, in search of the phone number of a woman who had done a head lice presentation at a MOMS group I once attended. Instead of forwarding me contact info, she immediately called saying she just got rid of lice in her house and she would be over after dinner. In the meantime, she urged me to run to Ulta and buy this:

Can I just take yet another side tangent here to dwell for a moment on the kind of friendships that result in a lice combing party on your back porch on a Friday night after dinner?

Rare friendships, people.

Really rare friendships.

Amidst what might have otherwise been one of the more traumatizing events of my adult life, a voice of calm descended upon my house. This friend (we will call her Jessica) came armed with an extra nit-comb, disposable hair bands, a magnifying glass, and that no-nonsense attitude of experience that put me at ease. She then went through each kid’s head and pointed out what I had missed the first time. She also assured me that all of my reactions were completely normal and it would get better very soon.

It turns out, two out of four children had a mild to moderate infestation. One was virtually clear of all bugs and nits, but we shaved his head anyway. The fourth I cannot remember, but remained 100% clear after treatment that first night.

How To Identify Lice In Your Kid’s Hair

• Look for the little eggs (called nits) not the bugs themselves.
• Lice nits are the size of a pinhead and located directly on the hair usually a quarter of an inch away from the scalp.
• Lice nits are sort of translucent. On dark hair they appear white. On a white napkin they appear pinkish, brownish, burnt orange-ish, or see through.
• Lice nits are typically most abundant along the part, behind the ears, and along the back of the hairline.
• Lice nits are very sticky, so if you find one and try to pick it out, odds are you will not be successful with your fingers alone.

That is pretty much it, honestly. If you have nits, you have bugs. If eggplant lady would have said “Check for lice eggs,” I would have been fine. If you can see physical bugs (say, the size of a sesame seed like the one Eliott thrust upon me) you’ve probably let the lice live there a lot longer than you ever wanted to. Go ahead and wear that Mother Of The Year crown with pride. In fact, you can borrow mine.

Lice Removal Step Two:
Pour Yourself a Big Glass of [Insert Beverage of Choice Here]

You are about to do more laundry than you have in an entire year, but instead of cursing the work, you could, like me, drink-up and take this as a much-needed kick in the pants to get started on that semi-annual deep clean. I’m talking all bedding down to the mattress, all towels, all coats, jackets, backpacks, and anything else made from cloth that could have come in contact with your child’s head.

Also, prepare yourself for tears as all the Lovie’s get quarantined in sealed plastic bags for an unknown amount of time. (We were probably over-cautious but we left all the stuffed animals and anything that could not be washed sealed in the attic until we had gone an entire week of finding nothing on the affected heads.)

Then, I went through all the drawers in all the bathrooms and threw away all our brushes and hair ties. Not that you need any more visuals, but I actually found dead bugs in the white plastic containers that hold the girls’ brushes in their drawer. While I am unsure of how we contracted lice in the first place, I am positive one child spread it to her sister through the close contact (and sharing) of hair brushes. My kids also frequently use my hairbrush.

I boiled our wide toothed combs (for good measure) and hung on to them so we had something for tangles in the upcoming week of lice treatment. I continued to boil combs and plastic hair clips every other night or so until we were completely lice free. I did not continue to change the sheets every night, but I did change the pillow cases frequently.

Like I said, drink up. It is a lot of work.

Lice Removal Step Three: Avoiding Shaved Heads

Eliott and Isaiah were blessed with their mama’s thick locks, and Eliott’s hair is also rather long. Carter and Avery both have much thinner, finer, and lighter hair. I’m not sure at this point who was easiest. All of it was a big huge pain.

The Fairy Tales Lice Survival Kit happens to be an all natural treatment. Not that I was against using chemicals if need be, I simply got this because my friend said it worked. The key ingredients are essential oils, namely: tea tree oil (melaleuca), rosemary oil, citronella, cinnamon, and peppermint oil. I actually had tea tree, rosemary, and peppermint oils on hand anyway, so I proceeded to diffuse them, and also made a room and pillow spray out of them, which doubled as a hair treatment when my Fairy Tales ran out. The kit contains a mousse conditioning treatment, a daily leave-in conditioner spray, a fine-toothed nit-comb called “The Terminator,” and one plastic hair clip. Do yourself a favor and go buy 10 more plastic hair clips.

That first night on the porch we went through the following steps with each kid.

1. Dampen hair with water.
2. Divide hair into 4 or 6 sections.
3. Massage mousse thoroughly into each section and clip in a bun. This is the stuff that will break down the nit glue and allow you to comb out the eggs that are stuck to the hair shafts.
4. Wait 20 minutes.
5. Spray one section of hair with the conditioning spray. Use The Terminator to comb through the section slowly, wiping the comb on a paper towel after each pass. Here, it might be important to be warned that what comes out of the comb on that first night might make you add a Xanax to that bubbly you just poured. That said, this was by far the very worst of it and I promise that you too will develop the Zen of my friend “Jessica” once the entire process is over. I got there. Eventually.
6. Be sure to comb each section of hair in several different directions then re-clip the finished section to get it out of the way and move on to another section. Repeat steps 5 & 6 until you’ve combed through all the hair.
7. Rinse (but do not shampoo) hair.

After that first night of treatment you may or may not need to ever use the mousse again. John and I set aside 30 minutes each night to go through the girls’ hair with just the conditioning spray and The Terminator after their baths each night. We pledged to do this until we had gone a solid week without finding anything.

I will admit here that the epidemic lasted 2 full weeks for us. While Eliott’s thick hair took the longest to comb through, nit removal was much more effective than on Carter’s very thin hair. I eventually started cutting out individual hairs with baby fingernail scissors every time I found a nit. Because in the two weeks of combing, we would have nights of finding nothing followed by nights of finding just one or two nits, or just one small bug. It was discouraging, but it ceased to be gross.

[clickToTweet tweet=”When all other lice-removal methods seemed to be taking too long, I broke out my Chi hair straightener.” quote=”When all other lice-removal methods seemed to be taking too long, I broke out my Chi hair straightener. I figured it couldn’t hurt to burn the lice and the eggs. This was successful in more ways than one. “]

Because here’s the magical thing about getting lice. Now that we’ve had it, I realize that it just isn’t that big of a deal. Honestly, like a virus, I believe it is truly most contagious before you know you’ve got it. Once you begin treatment, it is under control. I never had a single bug or single egg in my very long hair. I know because my dreamy-lover-husband checked me every night. Avery never had a single bug or a single egg after the very first night. Honestly, the time factor infinitely outweighed the ick-factor.

For several years, I dreaded lice like I might dread leprosy if I was visiting the poorest streets of India. And for that matter, I think most of polite society mildly treats the threat of lice as though it is leprosy. Socially speaking, it is one of those things you don’t really want to talk about until it is over. But knowledge and experience, in this instance, made the experience worth it for me.

Like my friend Jessica, I do feel like I could help someone else now that I’ve done it. I also feel like the next time I hear about it, I don’t need to freak out and keep my kids home from school. And if you are wondering how the girls reacted, well, to them it was nothing. I did inform the school that we had been treating the girls over the weekend, and they were sent to the office first thing Monday morning to be checked by the nurse, who declared them to have “some of the cleanest scalps” she had ever seen.

What I didn’t know was that there had been more than one outbreak of lice in the school over the last two years and both my kids had been taken with their class to do group head checks in the gym on more than one occasion. These kids treat it like a fire drill. Because of this, Eliott was perfectly aware that she was the only kid in her 4th grade class who had not had lice yet, and she actually seemed a little relieved to finally be part of the club.

And it is an exclusive club indeed.

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

The first time I heard about “placenta encapsulation” was more than a decade ago, when all the gossip columns and TV shows announced that Alicia Silverstone ate her placenta for health reasons. Like most of the world, my ick-o-meter blew off the charts. Ate her placenta?! It was by far the grossest thing I had ever heard.

When January Jones and Kim Kardashian more recently joined that list I sort of chalked it up as little more than a Hollywood trend that some of the “crunchy” moms around me were doing, for some sort of super-mother validation or to simply be edgy. I’m sure even some doctors would say, don’t give me that hippy midwife hooey. Like many other Western, educated, epidural-loving, suburban women I know, I was adamantly against it.

So what made me change my mind?

My Story

I am currently the mother of four children. I have two girls, aged seven and five, one boy, who is twenty-two months, and I recently gave birth to my fourth child, another girl. I experienced severe postpartum depression after my first child was born, very likely the combined result of working-mother stress and hormone imbalance. I took antidepressants for the year following my first child’s birth, and then went on them again after my second child was born in an effort to combat what I assumed was inevitable.

When my son was born, though I probably had a normal amount of mood swings and what they call “baby blues,” I did not experience full blown anxiety or depression like I had before. I was no longer a working mother and I figured this meant I was cured, which is why I was surprised and almost angered when about twelve weeks into my final pregnancy, I knew something was chemically wrong. Instead of postpartum depression, I was diagnosed with prenatal depression and put on Zoloft. The plan was to continue taking this SSRI throughout my pregnancy and postpartum period in order to basically prevent postpartum depression, which was, in all likelihood, exactly where I was headed once again.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against antidepressants. Now that I have actually needed them, I can say that they definitely work. That said, I hated being on them. It is hard to say which is more preferable: feelings of rage, insecurity, and the occasional impulse to consume my young, or a constant state of emotional nothingness. No appetite. No sex drive. No sadness. No extreme joy. Just a general state of blah, all the time. And, in addition to the blah, headaches, restless leg syndrome, and the ever-present fear of becoming dependent upon a drug that controls my moods.

Weighing these pros and cons, one afternoon, I found myself googling “natural remedies for postpartum depression.” Over and over, placenta encapsulation came up. I started reading personal stories and reviews, and noted immediately that they were overwhelmingly positive.

Most stories sounded a lot like mine. Women who had had multiple pregnancies and experienced postpartum depression. Everyone said basically the same thing: I wish I had known about this sooner; I wish I had done this after all my deliveries.

I admit it. I was desperate. And my desperation for a solution beyond antidepressants eventually outweighed the ick-factor. So I found someone in my area, Paypal’ed her the deposit, and tried to figure out just exactly how I was going to bring up this conversation with my doctor.
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How It Works

After reading everything I could possibly read about it, then further discussing it with my doctor and my midwife, I decided not only to go ahead and try this, but planned to document the experience so I could share it with others if it worked.

It turns out, placenta encapsulation isn’t actually as rare as it would seem. I quickly found someone in my area whose business is busting at the seams. She is a certified placenta encapsulation specialist, which means she went through a standardized training course from the “oldest, largest, and most recognized placenta encapsulation organization in the world” (for what that’s worth). Her website is full of helpful information and personal experience stories.

For those, like me, wondering exactly how everything works, here’s a general breakdown of the order of events:

1. Make the decision and sign up while you are still pregnant. I talked to my doctor, contacted the specialist via email, signed some legal paperwork, and paid the fee (which can be as low as $150 or as high as $400 depending on your area).
2. Bring your placenta home from the hospital and refrigerate it as soon as possible. Yeah. Okay. I know how this sounds. Turns out, this wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be, and here’s why. First, more people ask for their placenta after giving birth than you’d imagine. (God only knows why.) But the fact is, it is normal enough that many hospitals have a protocol for it and some even have a special box for you to take the thing home in. (As it was, mine was double-biohazard-bagged and my husband carried it in a cooler to the beer fridge in our garage.) Second, by doing this, your placenta never leaves your immediate control, and you know that it is definitely the same placenta that came out of you that is being made into pills for you, and not someone else’s. I mean, on the scale of gross, someone else’s placenta is by far even grosser than mine.
3. Contact your specialist when you go into labor or shortly after delivery and arrange for her to come to your house within three days of being home from the hospital. The entire process* takes places inside your own kitchen over the course of two mornings or afternoons. This is a benefit. Unsurprisingly, there are no governmentally regulated facilities in the US that allow for the preparation of placenta pills, and again, when the process happens in your own home, you get to be there to make sure it is your placenta that is being made into magic pills.
4. Take the pills over the course of the next six weeks or so, until they are gone. According to Jereka, my placenta specialist, an average sized placenta makes about a hundred pills. Mine made a hundred and fifteen. A “dose” is two pills, and the prescription, if you will, is three doses a day for four days, two doses a day for four days, and then one dose a day until the pills are gone.

*Click here to read all about my placenta’s transformation into magic pills. Warning: pictures included.

Okay. So did it work? I say yes. In the last six weeks or so, I’ve tried to jot down a few notes about how I was feeling.

After Just One Week…

As per Jereka’s suggestion, I went cold-turkey and stopped taking Zoloft and my prescription iron pill as soon as I got home from the hospital, despite my doctor’s warning to stay on both for at least six weeks. I have been notoriously anemic in all my pregnancies and actually experienced severe hemorrhaging with the birth of my son, and a prenatal hemorrhage early in my fourth pregnancy. Because these pills are high in iron, I take my first dose with lunch instead of breakfast, to eliminate the combination of iron and calcium. I take my second dose with dinner and my final dose before bed.

Despite the lack of and irregular sleep that comes with newborns, I do not feel at all like a zombie. I have energy. I have mental clarity. All of my extra grandparent help left several days ago. Even so, I have not had any feelings of being stressed out or overwhelmed even though I am taking care of four kids during the day. Also, I have not cried yet. Not even once, which is weird for me anytime, but especially in the days and weeks after giving birth.

I am breastfeeding this baby and I have an abundance of milk, though, I cannot speak to any kind of change in my milk in the last seven days or any major difference from previous babies. And finally, even at the risk of TMI, I’m going to admit that I have had to poop within an hour of taking my first dose every single day this week. All postpartum mothers know such a feat is amazing.

After Four Weeks…

My husband commented about two weeks ago that I am like a different person this time than any other time I’ve delivered a baby. His exact words were, “I don’t know what it is, but I think those pills are working. You are happy. You are actually pleasant to be around. And I know you are different because you are laughing at my stupid jokes that you would normally not laugh about when your hormones are all messed up.”

I still feel great. Physically, my body has gone through the normal healing process that comes with a vaginal delivery. I have been sore and fatigued, but again, not overwhelmingly so. I seem to have an abundance of patience with my children, which, like the lack of crying, is weird for me. My husband has been super stressed out with work in the last few weeks, and even talking to him, I can’t empathize with his stress. I just keep telling him to chill out and not worry about things. It is like I’m on some weird happy-juice that doesn’t allow me to freak out about anything (and I love it!).

I have only cried once, and it was when I received a list of people who would be preparing dinner for my family every other day for six weeks. Tears of joy hardly seem like a bad thing.

Nothing else has changed in my postpartum routine from this baby to the others. I lost all my pregnancy weight in about two weeks (normal for me) and I’m ravenously hungry from breastfeeding. I’m basically eating anything I can get my hands on, which often includes coffee, donuts, cake, and beer. Baby is only waking up once per night, so though it is broken up, I’m still getting seven hours of sleep a day. I have an afternoon slump at about 2 o’clock every day, but again, I still feel productive and pleasant.

And my bowels are still completely regular. Bonus.

After Six Weeks…

My six-week postpartum check up went well, and I had nothing but good things to report to my ever curious doctor. It might be helpful to note that while I’ve been given the go-ahead for sex and exercise, I can’t say that I am terribly interested in either at this point. Hah. Jereka mentioned that many women speak of their libido returning to normal (or better) within a couple of weeks while on their pills. This has not been my experience.

My blood work revealed my progesterone levels to be completely normal for a lactating woman. That is to say, they are low. My hemoglobin level, however, was up. A normal hemoglobin value for adult women is between 11 and 16 g/dL. With all my pregnancies, mine hovered around 9. While still in the hospital after this birth, mine was as low as 8. Right now, it is at 12.6.

I’m a Believer

I never would have taken the time to sit down and write about this experience if I was not convinced that it was worth everything from the price to the potential social ramifications that come with admitting to consuming one of my own organs.

I am convinced.

And I’m not keeping this a secret.

I know I’m not speaking to the entire population when I talk about postpartum difficulty, but for the mamas who have experienced the kind of rock bottom desperation that I have experienced, I cannot encourage you enough to consider this alternate approach to feeling normal again. I am enjoying my newborn. I am enjoying the rest of my large family, and the adjustments we are all making together. I don’t even hate my husband and haven’t once screamed You did this to me! while covered in poop and holding a screaming baby.

If you have any questions or a personal experience to share, please leave a comment below.

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