Eight months postpartum and finally figured out why I felt like a zombie
I had my second kid in August and by the new year I was barely functioning.
Three coffees a day. Brain fog so thick I’d walk into rooms and forget why. Hair falling out in clumps in the shower. My OB cleared me at six weeks and that was basically the last real conversation I had about how I was actually feeling. At my annual my family doctor said I was a little anemic and told me to take a multivitamin. I don’t really blame her. I don’t think I explained it well when she asked how I was doing. I reflexively said, tired, you know two kids, because that’s what you say. I didn’t know how to explain that I felt fundamentally broken. Sleep was definitely running me down too so it was easy to blame everything on that.
A few weeks later I read about postpartum depletion and how some postpartum symptoms can overlap with low ferritin, low vitamin D, B12 issues and thyroid problems. One thing that stuck with me was that the normal ranges on lab results aren’t always the same as the levels where people actually start feeling awful or where doctors decide to treat. It made me wonder if I was sitting in that gap where the labs weren’t screaming emergency but my body absolutely was. I ordered a comprehensive panel goodlabs because I didn’t have the energy to figure out exactly what to ask my doctor for. My ferritin came back at 9, Vitamin D was 18 and TSH was trending up too.
I brought the printout to my next appointment and this time my doctor ran thyroid antibodies, which hadn’t been checked before. That’s when we found out I have early Hashimoto’s. I’ve been treating the deficiencies and the thyroid issue, and finally starting to feel like myself again.
So I guess I’m posting this because if you’re months postpartum and still feel wrecked, please don’t automatically assume it’s just motherhood or just sleep deprivation. Sometimes it is sleep. Sometimes it’s the brutal reality of tiny kids but sometimes there could be underlying issues. The standard postpartum check doesn’t always catch this stuff and in my case I had to push a little harder to get the full picture.