Postpartum and Unexpected Support

With everything surrounding the Lindsey Clancy mistrial, I feel like I need to speak up about something I’ve carried quietly for a very long time: postpartum depression and intrusive thoughts after having a baby.

I had intrusive thoughts. A lot of them.

I remember standing there with my crying child beside me, fighting thoughts that had suddenly entered my mind. I didn’t want those thoughts, but they terrified me. They kept coming, and I never told anyone—not even my husband.

It felt horrible. It felt embarrassing. And all these years later, there is still a part of me that feels shame talking about it.

My postpartum anxiety showed up in other ways, too. I would repeatedly go into my children’s rooms to make sure they were still breathing. I had terrible dreams that they wouldn’t wake up.

One night, in the middle of winter, I ran around our house opening all the windows because I was convinced my children were going to suffocate because the house was too stuffy. My husband came in asking what I was doing. As I cried and tried to explain, he took our child from my arms and calmly reminded me that it was too cold to have all the windows open.

In 2002, I made my poor mom come over every single night to help me bathe the kids. I would sit in the bathroom while she bathed them.

A few months later, she finally asked me what was going on.

I told her I had seen the news about Andrea Yates drowning her children, and I had become terrified that somehow I could hurt mine.

My mom lovingly asked me, “Do you want to hurt them?”

No. Absolutely not.

But that was what made the intrusive thoughts so frightening. I loved my children more than anything in the world, yet my own mind was showing me things that terrified me. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and I was too ashamed and afraid to tell anyone.

Looking back, I wish I had understood more about postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and intrusive thoughts. I wish I had known that experiencing a frightening thought is not the same thing as wanting to act on it. Most of all, I wish I had asked for help instead of carrying everything by myself.

How My Experience Helped Shape Square 1 Home Solutions

Years later, I can see how those experiences became part of the reason I started Square 1 Home Solutions.

I have a special place in my heart for overwhelmed moms and families going through major life transitions—having a baby, moving into a new home, downsizing, caring for aging parents, preparing a home for sale, or simply going through a season when keeping up with the house feels impossible.

Sometimes support doesn’t have to be a grand gesture.

Sometimes it looks like someone helping you tackle the laundry.

Sometimes it’s clearing and organizing a kitchen that has become overwhelming.

Sometimes it’s cleaning your home, organizing the nursery, decluttering a room, packing for a move, or unpacking after one.

And sometimes it’s simply having another person beside you saying, “What can I take off your plate today?”

That is what I want Square 1 Home Solutions to be for the families we serve.

We may provide home cleaning, decluttering, organizing, packing and unpacking services, but what we’re really providing is practical support during seasons of change.

A clean and organized home cannot fix postpartum depression, anxiety, grief, stress, or everything else a family may be facing. But having another set of hands can make one small part of life feel more manageable.

I know what it feels like to desperately need those hands.

And I know how hard it can be to ask for them.

You don’t have to have everything together before you ask for help. Sometimes you just need somewhere to start. Start at Square 1.