After the birth of my second child I was diagnosed with a rare thyroid condition called postpartum thyroiditis. I will start at the beginning because my story starts out the same as most women who are going through postpartum depression, yet it turned out to be so different.

My baby was born in June and everything was perfect- my delivery and beginning postpartum period was nothing short of total happiness. But, that all started to change around the end of August. I started noticing some of my postpartum symptoms such as sweating were not going away, but were instead becoming much, much worse. I also noticed that my resting heart rate was very high and I was having awful mood swings. I didn’t think too much of it because we had a lot going on- new baby, we were buying a new house, our businesses were doing really well and growing so I just assumed I was a bit stressed.

By mid to late September things became drastically worse, my resting heart rate was always above 120, I started feeling very anxious and panicked, I would go days without sleeping,  I was always sweating profusely, had trouble concentrating, memory loss, major weight loss (50 pounds in 3 months) and I had almost nonstop tremors. I came to the conclusion that I had postpartum depression and I immediately made an appointment with my midwife. It was at that visit to my midwife that I told her my symptoms and that it felt like I was losing my mind. I was laying on the exam table shaking uncontrollably and crying. I felt like I was going to die and I was so scared.

They sent me to the emergency room and they said it was most likely postpartum depression/anxiety disorder. I followed up with my family doctor the next day to determine my next steps, luckily my doctor decided to do blood work that day and a few days later I received the results. I had extreme hyperthyroidism. Cue the anxiety attack- it seemed like my life was already so out of control and hearing this just scared me even more.

I was so lucky that I was able to find an amazing endocrinologist who fit me into his schedule that same day. He took one look at my labs and said that each of my symptoms was a direct result of this hyperthyroidism and not postpartum depression/anxiety. Those two illnesses produce a lot of the same mental symptoms, so if you are suffering the way I was please get your blood checked! I was somewhat relieved to hear that I was not losing my mind and that my thyroid was causing this issue.

We discussed that I most likely either had graves disease or postpartum thyroiditis, we wouldn’t know for sure until I had more blood work to check for the trends in my thyroid levels as well as check for the graves antibody. I’m forever grateful that my doctor spent so much time with me that day reassuring me and helping me find safe medication (during breastfeeding) to protect my heart. Stopping breastfeeding was just not an option for me, but luckily one of the medication options was a beta blocker called propranolol which is okay to take while nursing. It is not a treatment (there are none for postpartum thyroiditis), but a medication used to protect the heart while someone is in the hyperthyroid phase. So the next step was to just wait it out, I ended up testing negative for the graves antibody so we were sticking with postpartum thyroiditis as the diagnosis.

Postpartum thyroiditis involves two phases- hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism and can last up to 18 months. Women may experience both or just one of the phases. My hyperthyroid phase lasted from August- November and it was nothing short of a nightmare. Even with the beta blockers I still had most of my symptoms. Besides the physical symptoms it was the mental symptoms that were the hardest- I became really isolated from both my family and friends, although I feel like when I did go out I was able to hide it somewhat well, but as soon as we would come home I just completely crashed physically and mentally. Those few months were the absolute toughest months of my life. Looking back now I am so sad about all that I feel I lost in that time- precious time with my children and the excitement of owning a thriving business and of buying our dream home as I was too sick to even feel any emotion or sense of happiness.

Once the hypothyroid phase hit it was initially a welcome relief from the physical and mental torture of being hyperthyroid. That soon changed when I became so exhausted that a whole new level of depression hit. I was so tired I could barely take my kids out for playdates, work on my business….live. I became so depressed when I would see my friends going certain places or even working out. I was jealous that their bodies weren’t holding them back from these normal activities. I honestly hit such a low I thought I might never recover. The hypothyroid phase can last up to one year so I tried my best to stay positive and start the countdown to recovery. The hypothyroid phase lasted about 8 months for me, lab value wise. I didn't feel like myself again until nearly a year after my thyroid levels recovered from Postpartum Thyroiditis. There was a lot more I could have done to heal quicker, or to have avoided this autoimmune conidtion in the first place and that's once of the main drivers behind Brittany Kristin Wellness- sharing this knowledge with you to help you recover from your thyroid coniditon.