by Paige Wetzel
The first time it happened, I was awake. A terrible vision flashed into my mind, and I just squeezed my eyes really tight and thought, Whew, I have got to get some more sleep. The vision scared me badly, and I thought about it several times that day, but I did everything I could to talk it down in my own head. Then, it kept happening. The only common factor was that I was looking at Harper… doing absolutely nothing. It wasn’t like these visions were sparked by hours of fussing and crying. In fact, Harper was a fantastic baby who cried only when she was hungry or needed changing. I was in love with her. Obsessed. Yet, I could see myself doing violent things to her, and it made me feel like a monster.
Everyone warns new moms about the hormonal issues following childbirth, and I had certainly heard of postpartum depression, but I had no clue how either of those things actually manifested in people. When I thought of postpartum depression, I just envisioned moms who were too down in the dumps to care for their baby or themselves properly. I had never heard the term postpartum psychosis, which is what my symptoms were pointing to. Soon, all of my joy was gone. I was afraid of myself. The things I dreamed about were things that I couldn’t do to my worst enemy, so how on earth could I so vividly envision doing these things to the person I loved the most? By week five, I was not only short on sleep, I was afraid to go to sleep.
Before long, I couldn’t hide that something serious was going on. One night, I was sitting up in the bed feeding Harper. She and I both dozed off, and I had a nightmare, one where I was brandishing a knife. I jumped and gasped for air, and it scared Harper so badly that all her little limbs went rigid and she began to scream. Josh woke up to me sweating and hyperventilating, holding our crying child with this horrified look on my face. Asking what happened, I just vigorously shook my head and said that I just dozed off and thought that I was dropping her.
How do you tell your husband that you have regular thoughts about hitting, cutting, or throwing things at your baby? I never desired to harm her, but I thought about it dozens of times every day. Even if I did share this dark secret, how was he supposed to react? My imagination ran wild. He might think I just need some help hormonally… or he might think I’m a serial killer in the making. I kept it all to myself. I justified holding it all in because, in some strange way, I thought I was protecting Josh from this dark, horrific world inside my head. He needed to just stay in love with Harper and to keep believing that I wasn’t getting enough sleep.
When I was an athlete in college, I remember listening to a presentation of a study done by the Sleep Foundation comparing the reaction times of a sleep-deprived person and a person under the influence of alcohol. This presentation’s purpose was to make all the athletes take their rest more seriously, but what stuck with me was the study that showed how being awake for twenty-four straight hours could cause driving reaction times similar to someone with a 0.10 blood alcohol level.2 After six weeks of no sleep, breastfeeding like crazy, and intentionally skipping meals because I would rather close my eyes, I did not feel sober. I was in zombie mode, and I was overwhelmed with hormonal issues that I didn’t understand. I was hitting the wall. I was having these evil thoughts more frequently, and I couldn’t get away from them as easily because my brain was working in slow motion. I lay next to Josh in bed one night and just started sobbing. He asked and asked what was wrong, and I just could not stomach verbalizing the torment I had been experiencing for more than a month. I think all I was really able to say was, “I am not okay. I am having an unbelievably hard time controlling my thoughts right now, and I don’t know what to do.”
Not that I could ever truly understand anything my husband had survived thus far, but these postpartum issues made me empathize with Josh’s nightmares. I was also shocked to realize that I needed to take my own advice. I did everything I could to avoid these thoughts, even audibly telling them to leave me alone, but I was weak just like Josh was when he had screamed “Incoming” in my face less than a year and a half ago. I demanded that Josh talk to someone, no matter how scary it was. Yet, here I sat in full understanding of being afraid of what is in your own mind. Josh, full of grace from his own journey, suggested that we pray, something I had only done to thank God for a healthy baby. This fear controlled my prayer life. Even in talking to God, I couldn’t bring it up. As I clung tightly to Josh’s hand, he prayed that he would know how to support me through this time and that I would have restful sleep instead of nightmares. Then, he gave me the key that would help me rise above this fog and call me back to reality. He prayed, “God, please help Paige remember that I trust her. Harper is never in danger when she is with Paige, and I pray that belief over Paige for herself.” It was the first relief I had felt in weeks. My spouse, best friend, and father to my only child spoke the truth into a lie that had me believing my child wasn’t safe around me. I wasn’t sure if I believed that about myself yet, but Josh did, and I would hang on to that until I believed it for myself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STEPPING INTO THE FUTURE
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
—Hebrews 11:1
PAIGE
I don’t know when exactly I had this revelation, but at some point in my life, I came to trust that God knows the outcome of every decision we make. For many years, I believed God knowing the outcome meant that He predestined us to make certain decisions, which made it hard for me to buy into free will. But, as I grew in my faith, I learned that it actually means God knows what we need before we know that we need it. I used to wonder why God wouldn’t just give me what I needed if He knew I needed it. I once had it explained to me this way: In the Bible, every great task or gift God gave someone was first preceded by prayer. Prayer is us catching up to God’s plan, not the other way around. It completes His design. We are designed to depend on Him because He longs for a relationship with us. If God always gave us what we needed before we needed it, we may never choose Him. He allows us the space, time, and sometimes the stupidity to try life our way.
By the time I took my postpartum depression to God, He already knew what the well-rested, hormonally balanced, depression-free Paige looked like. He set forth a plan to get me out of the woods before I realized I was lost. So, I prayed. I prayed He would just take the thoughts and feelings of psychosis away from me. And guess what? He didn’t right away. Because God is not a genie in a bottle. If He had made anything clear in my life it was that if Josh’s journey wasn’t easy, it was very possible mine wasn’t going to be either. I asked over and over, Why can’t it just be easy? Why can’t I just catch a break? While Jesus conquered death, He didn’t make it go away. That’s what I felt called to do over this postpartum depression: conquer it. I heard a great sermon one time where the pastor said that every time God gives us a gift, Satan could very well be making a plan to use it to steer us away from God.
Harper was undoubtedly the greatest gift I had ever received, but little by little, the fulfillment of being her parent was being taken from me. I felt like evil was reigning over my gift in three major ways: (1) I felt like I couldn’t concentrate on God because my mind was so clouded with these thoughts of hurting my child. I believed my horrific thoughts disqualified me as a follower of Christ because I didn’t believe a true follower could think such thoughts. (2) I felt too intimidated to communicate with people because I was certain that it wasn’t postpartum depression but something much worse. (3) I thought I would never, ever be worthy enough to be someone’s mother, especially Harper’s. Even though I was too afraid to do research of my own, I prayed and hoped that a balance in my hormones plus more sleep would liberate me from this prison.
If all of that came true, I still had one major problem: My mind can’t unsee something. The depression let something into the gates of my mind without my permission. If it came in unannounced and uninvited, how was I going to get it out? I borrowed strength from God and responded to those three emotions. First, I read God’s Word. I didn’t j
ust read it; I got online and searched “verses about God’s promises,” “how to lean on God when you’re afraid,” and “when God tests those He loves.” I wrote down verses. I reread verses about Sarah and Abraham and King David. I declared God’s promises over my demons, because quite frankly, I was afraid of them and knew they were bigger than me. Second, I sought counseling. I wish I had enough courage to seek professional counseling, get an official diagnosis, or at least reach out to another mom, but I was engulfed in shame. I was so worried about being found out that I could not bring myself to do research on it for fear of Josh seeing it. If I had done that, I would have found out that millions of women had gone through it and that there were books and self-help websites out there. I did, however, start blogging about what the Bible was showing me, maybe for no other reason other than to witness to myself. I would post little five-minute entries on the Prayers for Josh Wetzel page, and tons of people responded saying it helped them. Little did they know how much help I needed, but it encouraged me to know that I was doing something positive amid all the negative. Third, I recognized that the devil really clouded my view of what I was doing. Looking back, I can see I had a lot on my plate and believed I was failing at all of it. I think the reality is that even though I could not control my thoughts, I never lost control over my actions. Harper was never in any danger. Not once. I didn’t have the capability to act on the things I thought about. But Satan kept me in belief that I was a danger to her. Like a lion being deceived by the confines of a cardboard box, I was convinced that I could not defeat this. I was a slave to my own thinking.
As I covered this issue in my new prayer routine, I came across Luke 10:18, in which Jesus reminded Satan that he saw him fall like lightning from heaven. Like lightning! There was no holy battle or heavenly war; he hit the ground faster than I could blink my eyes! I thought that if God can defeat sin that quickly, He will surely take this from me one day. I decided Jesus Christ did not die on the cross to be minimized by lies. In fact, He might actually be using me to defeat this lie. As I declared the truth over my internal bondage, God might actually strengthen me.
I still had low points, but I had rehearsed so much prayer that I just repeated it without thinking. Just like Jesus wandering in the desert, I made it a habit to tell Satan to get away from me (see Matthew 4). As time passed and my hormones settled, the involuntary psychosis began to fade away. I realized that just as God walked me through the settlement of my thoughts, guilt, and hormones after having a child, He could have very easily allowed me to cross paths with a professional who could have recommended medication. In my state of fear and desperation, I would have done anything. I didn’t have a pediatrician or an assigned OB-GYN, so seeking professional help would have required some level of understanding of what was going on with me. I didn’t, which is why I prayed so desperately. I didn’t know it was normal; I thought it was something that would eventually get my child taken away.
On the other side of this season, I was just as thankful for the sanctification process as I was for the healing. God showed up for me because I never told anyone what I was going through. In my ignorance of my own condition, I was sustained by totally leaning on the power of God, because I had none. For the first time, I needed God to demonstrate the same control over my situation that He had shown me a hundred times with Josh. I felt honored to be the one He left the ninety-nine for (see Matthew 18:13), but it took me years to realize that I chose isolation out of fear, judgment, and shame. How different would my experience have been if I had not allowed fear to swallow me up in this season? How much better would I have felt knowing I had a community? How differently would I have looked at myself if just one person had said, “This is actually very normal”? How many other moms live in shame like I did?
JOSH
By the fall of 2013, we were really struggling with living in Building 62 with a baby. I constantly thought about how families with two, three, or four kids did it. These families were putting multiple kids in a single bed and creating sleep spaces in closets at Building 62. The kids who never moved to Walter Reed stayed with relatives to continue going to school. Time after time I heard a mom on the front patio of Building 62 try to hold back tears as she listened to another story of her kids getting in trouble, making bad grades, or crying themselves to sleep at night, wanting their parents. Some wives went back and forth, one week here, one week there. Other parents made the kids go back and forth. Some finished out their school years at the end of May and then moved the family up to the hospital for the summer with the intention of starting the next school year in Maryland. Some wives never saw their kids because they couldn’t let their husbands out of their sights. I was constantly wondering how long we would have to try to raise a baby on a hospital campus. There was nowhere for kids to play or even really gather. It seemed like the elementary school–age kids were constantly in trouble—they were just so bored, and even though their parents tried, they had no routine of their own. The kids who were used to soccer games and Girl Scouts now just followed their parents around to various doctor’s appointments and played on iPads until they were told to relocate to another waiting room for yet another doctor’s appointment. I was worried that the more Harper and Paige lived on my hospital schedule, the harder civilian life would be.
Many guys at Walter Reed refer to their injury year as their “class,” so we are in the class of 2012. Since we all got blown up around the same time, we were all trying to get out around at the same time. As we watched our friends grind through the retirement process, our class began pursuing every opportunity to speed up our own advancement. We all felt the need to spend our leave time looking for homes, land, jobs, and school systems, only to return to Walter Reed with no idea when we would actually be able to move. Paige and I had found a small place to live on the outskirts of Auburn. We paid a deposit for the place but could only ask for grace when they needed to know a move-in date. Nothing could push the process along, and not even our friends who had been gifted homes were allowed to leave the hospital yet. I couldn’t imagine being given a handicap-accessible home and not being allowed to live in it. Not only were we facing a slow system, but most of us were less than thirty years old, trying to retire from a job. Injury justified the retirement because time of service was not enough. Our retirement wouldn’t look like that of the career Army guys, who spend the last couple of months of service going to a job and filling out paperwork between tasks. We would bounce back and forth between Army paperwork, physical therapy assessments, doctor sign-offs, and conduct counseling.
As we tried to chip away at the hurdles to retirement, we often fell victim to the high employee turnover at Walter Reed. Many cadre at Walter Reed were on the path to retiring themselves, which often left us needing a signature from a position that had not been filled yet. The guy who signed off on one thing a week ago was no longer there, so we had to go find a new guy, but no one knew when the new guy would actually start. When we asked if someone else could sign off, they said no. When we asked if we could get other signatures while we waited for a new cadre, they weren’t sure. So, we banded together and became as annoying as possible. We sat in front of office doors at 7:30 a.m., waiting for a nurse case manager or higher brass to come into the office so our paperwork could be the first thing on their desk. We alerted each other when commanders came back from leave, and within an hour a line would form outside the officer’s door. Even when they would encourage us to come back later, we all responded with a “Geez, you know, we would love to, except we’ve been waiting on this to get signed for almost two weeks now, and we all have physical therapy later. You wouldn’t want us all to miss that, would you?” The squeaky wheel gets the grease. We stayed on top of our leadership until Christmastime, then I began my final phase of retirement, discussing VA benefits and finances.
After Christmas, the Wetzel finally received a leave date: January 27, 2014. Just four months shy of two years since my injury.
PAIGE
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I realized the finality of my situation. I had just spent my first months as a parent and almost two years of my marriage living in a hospital. I had been the caregiver of two helpless human beings who gained age-appropriate independence through their own hard work and determination. It was sobering just to say out loud, “We’re leaving.”
Every resident at Walter Reed, no matter why they were there, had a persistent feeling of being out of place. Their mere existence there meant something at some point in their military careers had gone terribly wrong. The base and the hospital were the roof over our heads and the food in our mouths, yet it was never designed to be more than an amputee hospital and rehab center. Whether we brought no kids or eight kids, we still got assigned the same little barracks room with a half kitchen, love seat, and office building carpeting. By no other choice, we had to delegate out every responsibility we had before the injury. The friends we asked to watch over our houses were now helping us sell them. The friends who checked on our pets had to adopt our pets or find other homes for them. The veterans cried, had nightmares, starved, detoxed, became wheelchair bound, got sick, and went to surgery, while caregivers neglected themselves, handled personal affairs, paid the bills, managed the schedule, fought for the best care, and cried themselves to sleep for months and months and months. Both sides felt out of place and prayed to be out of this place, hoping with all our hearts that this would be a short phase in life—a short but important chapter in the “history of us that won’t last forever.”
