I'm 27 years old and married with two daughters: one is almost four years old and the other is just an infant. I'm French but I've been living in the U.S. for three years. I've been working here as a schoolteacher until a year ago when I had to take a sudden sick leave.

My life took a pretty weird turn: for the first time ever, I had big health troubles. I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease: a rare auto-immune disease that primarily affects women between 20-30 years old. I was living with some symptoms of the disease for six months without knowing that I had it. I thought the symptoms were only consequences of my life style during the last school year. I had spent so much time working for my students and preparing ambitious projects with them that I totally forgot to take care of myself. My only leisure was spending time with my family. I've learned now that you need to have other activities in your live to feel balanced and happy.

After my thyroid troubles began, I started to feel some mood highs and lows. At the beginning, I thought it was nothing to be worried about. I thought I just had to wait for my thyroid medication to start working. My endocrinologist was telling me, "Don’t worry if you feel depressed, it'll go away! You'll feel better soon!"

The treatment worked well and quickly but I still was suffering from the same mood troubles. My husband and I realized that the changes in my mood were sudden (they happened in less than two hours) and amazingly regular (I would switch from highs to lows every ten days). I was crying very often, I was overspending, I had moments of depression when I couldn’t get up, and I could be suddenly very aggressive with my husband for no reason.

My husband wrote a letter to my doctor about my changing moods: he attached a calendar of my "highs and lows". We were pretty sure there was something wrong other than Graves’. At the following appointment, the endocrinologist gave me the diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

I was four months pregnant at the time, and my new diagnosis was really hard to swallow. It did, however, allow us to understand better why I had become a different person over the past year. Before, I had been nice and sweet, but when manic, I was tough and verbally aggressive with my husband. Before, I had been a happy, enthusiastic, optimistic person, but when feeling depressed, I was very sad, pessimistic and lying down all the time.

We've tried to find information on web sites, and we had to try several psychiatrists before we found a good one. He suggested some medications but none of them were totally safe for my baby. I decided not to take any of them while pregnant, and to try to deal with the consequences of the disease with the help of a psychologist. My husband and I tried our best, and when we felt like we couldn't manage that anymore I went to the psychiatric hospital. I've been there twice, and although it was hard, the professionals there helped me a lot and it was good to meet other people with psychiatric disorders. We did our best to have a healthy baby and it worked. I'm not breastfeeding her so that I can now, finally, start my medication: a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. I'm full of hope for the coming years, since this disease is treatable. I have good doctors who are working together to make me feel better. I trust them. I also have an understanding husband who has tried his best to help me during this pregnancy and will continue to do so. It is really important for me to have him, and well as friends and family I can count on.