Jen Rubadeau Tkachuk knew she was in trouble when she returned home from the hospital after giving birth to her second child and she wanted to cry and punch her husband, Aaron, in his face and all he had asked was something like where should he put her bag.
"And I thought, oh, that's not good," she recalled.
Rubadeau Tkachuk had experienced natural child birth with her first child Claire, now five.
"And everything was sunshine and lollipops," she said.
Her son Owen was three days old when they were released from hospital about 16 months ago.
Owen's birth was by Caesarean section.
Knowing something wasn't right, Rubadeau Tkachuk reached out for help immediately.
Every time she was passed from one health care worker to another as each one said they were not able to provide the postpartum care she required.
She stopped counting at eight assessments and she's sure there were more but in her distress, she lost count. She was finally sent to a counselor and a psychiatrist three months later.
"And let me tell you, it was dark," Rubadeau Tkachuk said.
She was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. She tried two different medications but the first one didn't even put a dent in her symptoms and the other saw her violently ill like she had food poisoning for a month before she gave up and turned to alternative healing.
She now uses breathwork to help alleviate her symptoms.
"It put the silver lining back in my cloud,' she said.
Rubadeau Tkachuk is an outgoing, people-loving extroverted event planner. She refers to her postpartum depression and anxiety as the blackest days of her life where she felt absolutely broken and completely alone.
"It was like my most loved person in the whole world had just died," she added.
"I was in complete and utter suffering. Sobbing, sobbing, curled on the floor crying."
She was inconsolable as her counselor found out when she told Rubadeau Tkachuk one day that it was okay to let it out and cry and 90 minutes later she was still crying.
"I think she thought it would end," Rubadeau Tkachuk said, who was finally escorted out the back way so the counsellor could attend her next appointment. "But it was so dark."
As Rubadeau Tkachuk reached out to more than just her core group of family and friends, it was suggested to her to try group therapy so she didn't feel so alone.
The next time she went to counselling, she asked for a list of support groups for postpartum and the response shocked her.
"There isn't any, it doesn't exist, we lost funding," Rubadeau Tkachuk said she was told those services were cut from the Northern Health budget and no alternatives were offered.
Slowly, Rubadeau Tkachuk's anxiety increased.
"Because I can't lie, so what do I say when people asked me how I was," she asked. "I was just so emotional about just being asked that and everybody asks that. It's just part of society. So ask me 'how are you?'"
And this was her answer.
"Well, I feel like my best friend just died and I can't stop crying, the highlight of my day is having a bath. I can't care for both of my children, let alone myself - that's how I'm doing. How are you?" Rubadeau Tkachuk said with a small shake of her head. "So I just wouldn't go out so I wouldn't have to answer those questions."
About four months after Owen's birth, Rubadeau Tkachuk decided to accept an invitation to a girlfriend's birthday party where a total of four other people would attend. She had a full blown anxiety attack that was so severe she felt the effects for days.
"I ended up hyperventilating on my deck, the whole world shaking down around me," she said. "I was actually hung over from that anxiety attack for three days. It was terrible and terrifying that being in a room with four people could have that kind of impact on someone who is naturally an extrovert, loves people, and my idea of a good time was going into a room full of strangers because they are all potential new friends."
Rubadeau Tkachuk stopped going anywhere and if she did venture out, it would be during off hours hoping to avoid running into anyone she knew.
"I was like that 'hang in there' kitty poster and I just tried to hang on to the little bit of sanity I felt like I had left," Rubadeau Tkachuk said. "It was pretty awful. It started with postpartum depression with a little bit of anxiety and then it ended with depression and a whole lot of anxiety."
During what she calls "that dark time," she didn't really post much to social media.
"Everybody's posting that perfect picture of their perfect babies and their perfect smiles and I couldn't post fake," Rubadeau Tkachuk said. "So it made it really hard. I finally did post something at the six or eight month mark and I said 'yeah, it's been rough and there's been more dark days than good days' but I felt like I just had to say it, had to break that silence."
The response was people showing support and saying they had gone through what she was going through.
"The second you open up, the world opens up," Rubadeau Tkachuk said, talking about the support she got the more she opened up.
According to the World Health Authority, 11 to 20 per cent of women who give birth each year have postpartum depression symptoms, including anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, PTSD, panic disorder, mania or psychosis.
Looking for solutions as she's over the worst of it now, Rubadeau Tkachuk said she knows for some people traditional Western medicine works, for others alternative methods of healing should be explored but she knows for sure that group therapy would've helped her and it wasn't there.
"So I was very passionate about trying to make that a thing," she said. "I kept saying to myself this is not okay that this doesn't exist so I vowed to myself that I would do what I had to do."
Postpartum Passages is a newly formed peer support circle helping women during their postpartum transition. When Rubadeau Tkachuk found out about the group and reached out, she knew that her waist length hair she was growing out to be cut for cancer patients' wigs would now also be used to draw attention to the plight of those struggling, like she has, with postpartum depression.
"There isn't a voice for postpartum depression like there is for cancer," Rubadeau Tkachuk said. So she started a gofundme page to raise funds for Postpartum Passages in order to make sure the group would be sustainable for those in need. The group offers facilitated support by trained counsellors so mothers can come together to share the unexpected challenges after baby is born.
Rubadeau Tkachuk put a public post on her Facebook page talking about her own struggles and that she would like to raise awareness and funds for the sustainability of Postpartum Passages.
Rubadeau Tkachuk recently read a year-old journal entry she had written during her darkest struggles with postpartum depression and anxiety.
"It said if I can be the voice that helps even one person feel less alone and less broken then that's my job and my responsibility and that I couldn't be quiet about it," she said. "I couldn't let the stigma continue or let people suffer in silence. So I feel like it's part of my journey and if I can help other people to feel less alone in their journey then that's what I have to do."
For more information about the new support group, go online to postpartumpassages.com and to donate to sustain the support visit gofundme.com/postpartum-passages.
