23f
I’m 9 months postpartum, and I’ve recently started trying to get mental health help from a psychologist. She thinks I may have a mood disorder. She prescribed me a few medications that I decided not to take, but I am currently taking Lamictal (lamotrigine). I’ve been on it for 9 days.
During the first week, I mainly experienced itchiness and restlessness. Lately, the restlessness has been worse, especially when I’m trying to sleep. I’ve been waking up and feeling like I physically cannot go back to sleep.
On Sunday morning, my spiritual mother texted me saying that she had received a message that someone around me was evil and that I needed to pray over myself and my baby. I didn’t think much of it at first, although it did make me a little paranoid. I tried not to let it affect me.
That same Sunday night, I was in my room on my laptop, turned away from my son while he was in his pack ’n play watching TV. Our dog suddenly started barking toward the bedroom door, like he heard something near it. He eventually stopped, and about 10 minutes later, while I still wasn’t looking directly at my son, he suddenly started bursting into tears. It was abnormal because he had been completely fine just a few minutes earlier. He immediately started crawling toward me while crying, almost like he was scared and wanted to get to me. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but after everything else that happened later that night, I started thinking about it and wondering if it was connected somehow.
My baby usually wakes up around 3 AM crying for me, so I picked him up and brought him into bed with me. Once he fell asleep, my boyfriend took him and put him back in his crib. At that point, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I stayed on my phone for about two hours.
During that time, I came across a video of a woman talking about how, while she was co-sleeping with her baby, she felt like something was pulling her baby away from her. I started reading the comments, and people were saying it was a demon or fairies trying to take the baby and replace it with a changeling.
I ended up going down a rabbit hole reading about this. I became paranoid and started thinking, “What if my baby was replaced and I don’t even know it?”
Eventually, I became sleepy and put my phone down. As I was falling asleep, I remember praying in my head over myself and my baby, just in case. I don’t really pray anymore, but because of everything I had just been reading and thinking about, I felt like I needed to.
After I fell asleep, I had a very vivid dream. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and I was with my family in a large truck. There was also a Thai actress there named Charlotte Austin. In the dream, she was basically my friend.
We were sitting in the third row and talking. At one point, she tried to whisper something to me, but the music was too loud, so I told her to just text it to me instead. She started telling me the username for another Instagram account so I could follow her and she could message me what she wanted to say. However, I couldn’t type the username correctly. It felt like I kept messing it up or my phone wasn’t working.
Eventually, whoever was driving arrived at the place we were supposed to be. It felt like we were going to a family reunion. We got out of the truck, and I remember thinking, “Wow, the actual Charlotte Austin wants to be my friend.”
As we were getting out, I realized I had dropped something outside the truck. I went back to get it, put it inside, and then started walking with everyone toward the house where the reunion was supposed to be.
While we were walking, I could feel my physical body shaking or vibrating. I started opening my eyes, and I saw a dark figure standing over me.
I couldn’t move.
I immediately assumed it was sleep paralysis because I had experienced sleep paralysis about a week earlier. However, this time the black figure seemed to lunge toward me. I closed my eyes, opened them again, and it was still there. I closed my eyes one more time, and when I opened them, it was gone.
I could move again.
I woke my boyfriend up and told him what happened. I asked him to check on the baby and make sure he was still in his crib. He got up and checked, and my baby was there.
I asked him to bring the baby to me because I felt safer holding him at that moment.
My baby was awake and looking at me. I was still scanning the dark room because I felt extremely paranoid, and I could feel him staring at me.
When I looked at him, his eyes looked completely black to me — like I couldn’t see the whites of his eyes at all. This completely freaked me out.
But I still held him because, despite everything I was thinking and seeing, I felt like he was still my baby.
I’m writing this about an hour after it happened. My baby is currently awake and crawling around on the bed.
I’m really scared and confused by what happened, especially because I’m postpartum and recently started Lamictal.
Could this be the beginning of postpartum psychosis, even though I’m 9 months postpartum? Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Could this be sleep paralysis, medication-related, or something else? What should I do right now?