More Than Beautiful

My journey postpartum

Sarah’s Thoughts…

Meet Megan. I know Megan from high school, and have kept in touch with her via facebook and blogging. She is one amazing woman, I tell you what! Her story is one a lot of us new mommies can relate to. I am inspired by the way she is confident enough with herself that she feels she has nothing to hide, and I hope someday I can be like that! Megan, like so many new mommies, struggled with postpartum depression. Here is her story in her own words…

I’ve been really surprised how many women have emailed me and wanted to hear my experience postpartum with my little man. I would first like to preface this post with the following:

-This is in no way to get sympathy from anyone. I do hope however that it will give someone else some hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dark it looks at the time. I hope to let someone, anyone know that you aren’t alone! Thousands of people and women go through the same thing.

Ok… you asked for it so here we go Please note the emergency exits if it becomes too uncomfortable or to much information, as I am going to be brutally honest. So buckle up….

A few months after I had the little man, someone approached me and asked how the baby and I were doing. Nice enough, right? Well the conversation carried on and this person asked, “Sooo you aren’t like, depressed or suicidal yet or anything?” I could have died! One, because how could someone ask such a question in such an awful way. Number two, yes! YES! I was depressed, no I was not suicidal; I was lucky enough that my depression didn’t get that bad. But I was completely embarrassed and taken back by the question and meekly answered, “No, I’m fine.” Now if I would have been asked that, I would have answered confidentially, “Yes, I struggle with postpartum depression, but I’m working on it.” Or something like that….
Why is it that postpartum depression is such a bad thing? Such a taboo thing?

Fact:
Most new mothers experience the “baby blues” after delivery. About one out of every 10 of these women will develop a more severe and longer-lasting depression after delivery. One in 1,000 women develops a more serious condition called postpartum psychosis.*

Fact:
During any one-year period, up to 50 million Americans — more than 22 percent — suffer from a clearly diagnosable mental disorder involving a degree of incapacity that interferes with relationships, employment, attendance at school, or activities of daily life.**

Fact:
Some 8 million to 14 million Americans suffer from depression each year. As many as one in five Americans will suffer at least one episode of major depression during their lifetimes.**

Hello, I’m Megan and I have postpartum depression(PDD) with severe anxiety. But I am also the mommy to the sweetest and cutest little boy ever! I am the wife to my ruggedly handsome best friend. I love to laugh, read, cook, bake, and probably watch to much reality TV. My PDD does not in anyway make me and is so, so much better. But it is still a battle to get out of bed some morning’s.

If so many people suffer with depression then why is it so bad for women to struggle with it after having a baby. Or for anyone to struggle with it period! I’ve talked to so many women who have struggled with similar things like I have. Maybe we, the people who struggle…are the “normal” ones and everyone else is “crazy.” hahaha. Im so funny…

Picture of Megan pregnant

I found out I was pregnant the day before Mother’s Day; it was so unreal, and frightening, and exciting all at the same time. Especially since the pregnancy was no where planned. I had the normal beginning pregnancy symptoms. I was cramping pretty bad, which I later found out is called, “implantation cramping,” it’s when the fertilized egg makes its new little home on your uterus to grow for the next 9 months. I was super tired, my boobs killed, and I was waking up in the middle of the night once or twice to pee. Then about a week or two after we found out I was pregnant, I had the typical morning sickness with vomiting. The “morning sickness,” eventually turned into ALL DAY sickness! Who named it “morning” sickness anyway?! I believe it was totally a man. Many women I talk to say their morning sickness wasn’t just in the morning. silly, silly men, what do you know about pregnancy?… *clears throat* carrying on… I was so, so, sooo sick for the first 4 and a half months of pregnancy. My husband and I had just moved to Texas, so we had no family around and not really any friends. He would work all day so I would be home alone, all day with my BFF Mr. Porcelain. I rarely got dressed, and never did my hair or make up…I was seriously so sick. I went to counseling to help mostly with my anxiety because my depression is so much better but my counselor said, “when your body or health plummets like that your mental, and emotional health tends to go with it.” Moral of the story, if you are that sick, get help! There is medicine so you won’t throw up all the time and you can be a functioning human being! I was so paranoid what it would do to my baby, but if I knew then what I do now I would have gotten some helpful medicine sooner than later. By the time the medicine goes through your body, the baby gets trace amounts if any. And if mommy is happy and comfortable, baby is going to develop better. Sooo..moving on. The “all day” sickness finally went away, hallelujah, we moved again and were around family and friends and things were going smoothly. I had another little, “I want to die, I’m so sick,” moment at about 6 or 7 months because the little man decided to park his cute little bottom on the tube that connects my kidney to my bladder. That caused a kidney infection and kidney stones. So again, my health went down the tube and my emotional/mental health slowly went with it. Then I was at the long stretch, the last trimester..duh duh duuuuuhh… ok any woman who has been pregnant before knows what I’m talking about here. The third trimester, particularly the last month…*sigh* there are no words to express how hard that last month is. You don’t sleep, I had crazy bad heartburn(seriously, I went through a bottle of tums like they were tic tacs), you pee every 15 min even if you don’t mean too(confession: I once sneezed and peed on my mom’s couch, don’t judge me!), and I swelled up like an over grown water balloon to the point where shoes didn’t fit. Then finally the day came! Oh that glorious day that pregnancy would be over! It was 2 am and 3 days after Christmas and I was throwing up (weird, I threw up at the beginning I might as well throw up at the end) and had a killer headache. The doctor suggested I went into the hospital to be checked out. Blood, urine and other tests later, the news of, “you have pregnancy induced-hypertension (PIH),” came. “How would you feel about an ER c-section?” At this point the headache was worse, I had to have a towel over my eyes at all times and I thought I would die. I didn’t care what had to happen, as long as being pregnant was not one of the options. Especially since PIH is basically that little baby telling your body, “Hey mommy! I’m in here and done cooking! Get me out so we can meet!” Finally at 8:41 am, December 28, 2008. The little man was here, MY little man!

Picture of Megan’s beautiful baby boy

4 days later we all went home. Our little family of 3. I was still recovering from the C-section and getting use to being a new mommy. I knew I loved my little man so much, but for some reason I felt very apathetic to him. He woke up ever 2 or 3 hours to nurse, so I still was getting no sleep! I hadn’t had a full night’s rest for 9 months because of a ticking time bomb, called the bladder, and the other fun stuff pregnancy brings(vomiting, kidney stones, etc)! I had no idea how hard it would be to recover from my c-section and learn how to be a mom. Everyone tries to tell you what it will be like to be a mom. I thought I had a pretty good idea what it would be like, but NOPE! I had not a clue. I was totally in love with my brand new little baby, but somedays I didn’t care how much he cried, I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. I thought there would be this instant “bond.” I thought that the nurse would bring him over to me for the first time and our eyes would meet and I don’t know, that would be it I guess, instant “bond.” I don’t really know how to explain it… but that’s not how it was. We had to get to know each other. It took time and patience. With what I now know was PPD it was even more of a struggle. When the little man was 5 weeks, he got sick…and sicker…and sickest. He had a high fever and was in Primary Children’s hospital for 2 days with the flu. THE FLU! My mind FREAKED out! This was my thought process: “How did he get the flu?!” “I never let anyone touch him without sanitizing.” “No one from outside the family, or anyone with a cold was aloud in the house.” “We all had flu shots, how did this happen?” “I must be a terrible mother already.” “I can’t protect him.” “I’m not doing a good enough job.” “I won’t let this happen again.” Obviously, now I see most of these thoughts are completely irrational. But then it sent me into an even bigger tail spin of depression and anxiety. Mostly anxiety about germs at the time. I became obsessive about hand washing. First it was just rewashing my hands twice before leaving the bathroom. Then that led to, not being able to leave the bathroom till I felt my hands were sufficiently clean (5-6 times.) That led to fears of chicken juice and raw hamburger residue while cooking. Then sanitizing my entire kitchen over and over. I was a mad woman washing my hands and sanitizing everything! My anxiety moved to craving having control, over everything. I would be in the car with my husband and would be screaming things at him like, “BRAKES!” “SLOW DOWN!” “car, caR, cAR, CAAARRRR!!!” I was so paranoid he didn’t see the other cars and what was going on. Most days, if he would drive, I had to tilt my chair back so I couldn’t see the road. I was becoming more and more depressed, giving into OCD, and feeling more anxious. I felt alone, useless, and the worst mother and person on the planet. No one talks about postpartum depression (PPD), unless it’s a woman who has struggled with it as well. No one talks about depression or ANY mental/emotional disorder for that matter. Because heaven forbid, anyone who is struggling with something like that is, “just really tired and overwhelmed,” or even “crazy.”

Picture of Megan and her husband on their wedding day

I am so lucky to have a very supportive husband, who was super patient with me and my rituals and rules about everything. How to do this with the our new little man, and where we could or couldn’t go, and my need to sanitize everything. I am also very lucky to have extended family that is also very supportive and knew what I was going through. I finally opened up to my cousin, who I knew had similar struggles. I honestly talked to her about everything. Confessed about my multiple hand washings. I then talked to my mom and husband. I then went to the doctor and was prescribed Zoloft. I also had an appointment with a counselor the next week. The Zoloft was not an instant fix; it took a few weeks for it to kick in. It took the edge off the anxiety so I could function. So I could ride in the car without thinking we were going to die, so I could cut the hand washing down to 20 times a day instead of 50. I could eventually talk my way through the thoughts that were irrational and calm myself down. The counseling has been a huge blessing as well. It’s so nice just to hear myself talk! To a person that would answer me back with an unbiased opinion. I went to counseling for months and only stopped because we moved and I felt I could control my irrational, anxious thoughts. I have also weaned off the Zoloft. I still struggle with germs and sometimes the car. But I am TONS better. It was such a long hard road. My little man is now 16 months old and I can now say that I can function and feel like a person. Even a good mom at times I am by no way “healed,” or “cured,” I struggle everyday. I use a shopping cart cover, I still wipe down everything at least three times a week, I usually always have hand sanitizer on me, but I can function. I still struggle to get out of bed someday morning’s when I hear the little man waking up for the day. But I get out of bed! By myself! And I get through the day being a mom and enjoying ever moment and milestone with my little man.

If you are struggling or think you might be. Talk to someone. ANYONE! I know it feel like no one understands and you are embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. But you aren’t alone. Millions of women know how you feel. I promise it will get better. My life is so much better now; I have learned so much and grown so much. As a person, a wife, a friend and a mom. I am even grateful for my PDD and anxiety so I can now relate and help strengthen other women.

Megan’s Family

I am still learning. I have never been a mommy before. I have no clue what I’m doing, and some days are so, so hard. I am still struggling with trying to remember who I am. I am reinventing myself. My life has changed significantly in the past year. It all has been great, wonderful changes. And I have changed with it. But I’m struggling with the world telling me how I should or shouldn’t be or parent or look or like, etc. So hopefully we can help each other tell the world to stick it!

*Here are some tips that can help prevent or help you cope with postpartum depression:
• Ask for help — let others know how they can help you.
• Be realistic about your expectations for yourself and your baby.
• Exercise; take a walk and get out of the house for a break.
• Expect some good days and some bad days.
• Follow a sensible diet; avoid alcohol and caffeine.
• Foster your relationship with your partner — make time for each other.
• Keep in touch with your family and friends — do not isolate yourself.
• Limit visitors when you first go home.
• Screen your phone calls.
• Sleep or rest when your baby sleeps!
*A new mom should seek professional help when:
• symptoms persist beyond two weeks
• she is unable to function normally
• she can’t cope with everyday situations
• she has thoughts of harming herself or her baby
• She is feeling extremely anxious, scared, and panicked most of the day.
I got an email from a friend and a fellow mommy on the topic that I think said it great,
“I also suffer from anxiety. It was BAD when I first had my first son, I was a complete mess. It was SOOOO overwhelming. But life has gone on and I’ve learned to cope and grow! Why is it that the most important people in the world, and I mean MOMs, can feel the most unimportant?? I mean, we ARE doing the most important work in raising the next generation! Shouldn’t we feel powerful? and important? and beautiful? and amazing?… like ALL of the time? I found it interesting how “yourself” gets lost in motherhood.. where does “you” go? Are we really gone, or are we just forever changed?
I know I’ve been forever changed. I think differently about EVERYTHING. I feel differently… I have PURPOSE. A BIG PURPOSE. However, that purpose cannot be fulfilled without the ME in the purpose. And ME needs ME TIME It’s just figuring out that you NEED and DESERVE that ME TIME and then it’s figuring out how to get motivated enough to DO something about it.”
Isn’t she right? And totally amazing! She always has such a positive outlook on life, and I appreciate her words of wisdom. She said it way better than I ever could.

So go out today and get dressed up! Even if your day consists of doing laundry, scrubbing toilets and sinks, a date with Dora or Thomas the Tank Engine, and making dinner. Know that you are powerful! In your own life, your friends, your children, the world…honestly! Women do amazing things. We are amazingly fabulous and look fabulous doing it! You are important and beautiful!

If you would like to share your experience with depression, postpartum, ocd, anxiety, or just chat, etc email me. If it’s ok, I might quote some of you and your experience and what you’ve learned. Won’t it be great to help each other and build each other up!

Have a fabulous day! Remember bust out those earrings, cute shoes, some great lipstick and the jeans that make your bum look fab!

*here is the website that I got my facts. It’s a great resource if you are curious about postpartum depression.
http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/postpartum-depression

**another great site if you’d like to know more about mental health:
http://www.umm.edu/mentalhealth/facts.htm

Here is another link to Megan’s blog…and I really recommend EVERYONE reading this post on how the world has distorted the true meaning of beauty. When I read this post, I suddenly felt more beautiful.

http://believeinpinkblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/mirror-mirror-on-wall.html

A Mother to a Multitude, a Wife to One Soldier, A Wife to One Godly Man

Sarah’s Thoughts….

Meet Jen.

I met Jen through blogging, actually. When I read her story, it took my breath away. I just want to thank her for being willing to let me share her story. Her’s is the first I want to share…and for a reason.

When Jen wrote this story, she had 9 children and was pregnant with her 10th.

And here it is in Jen’s own words…

This is my life….the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I was born in a mid-size border town to “goodly parents” and had a normal childhood where I roasted pecans on campfires in alfalfa fields with my sisters and drove a ’61 VW bug as a teenager. That was in ’87, so it wasn’t that cool. When I was 18, I met and married a United States soldier and became a mother at 19. I was shocked, completely shocked, at how much time it took to care for a baby. It literally took every. waking. minute. of my life, and things were never to be the same. That being said, I loved being a mom, so I had another baby 2.5 years later, then, as we moved from place to place as per Uncle Sam’s request, I had four more babies over the next 9 years totaling six altogether.

My first love and I had more good times than bad during our marriage, but tragedy struck in November of 2004. If you don’t want to be momentarily depressed at this space in time, you may want to skip this part and move on to the line of asterisks below…… Okay, you’re still with me, so let’s continue. Due to a series of heart-wrenching events, my husband and best friend of 16 years left the house in the middle of one cold autumn night, while I slept in our bed, and committed suicide. When I, personally, read of tragedies that have struck others in the blogging community, I have a morbid curiosity to know how the tragedy occurred. I try to go back to their archives to the date of the occurrence to try to find more information, and it’s very time consuming and I usually don’t find out anything. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who does that. So….I’m going to tell you… right here… how it happened, to save you the trouble of looking through my archives.

He did it for a particular reason, leaving 18 pages of love-filled writings trying to explain it to us. I can’t tell you why, for that’s his story, not mine. He gassed himself with carbon monoxide in the cab of his red pick-up. I’m the one who found him, and he looked like he was sleeping peacefully. But it wasn’t peaceful for me. After I lifted and jerked his 180-pound body out of the truck with one hand, recovered from kneeling on the pavement with him on my lap and screaming “no” and “help” and his name, I administered CPR for 15 minutes, until the EMTs arrived, but it was far too late. I then had the task of telling my six children, ages 2 through 15, and his dad, and his mom. That was probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life… telling his mom.

Of course, we received professional counseling, me on a weekly basis, and the kids via what is called “coached counseling”, where I would speak to my therapist about any issues with the kids and he would coach me on how to resolve them and help the kids work through it. I don’t know how well that worked. The kids never talk about it, although I try to gently bring it up, without forcing it, but they remain largely quiet. I don’t really know how they’ve dealt with the whole thing, and that scares me. I still have forgiveness issues. I’m Christian, and I know I’m supposed to forgive 7 x 70, but I don’t think I have been able to completely forgive this one thing. I regularly have nightmares about it and I don’t know when all that’ll end.

My sessions with my therapist ended when I began to fall in love with him, told him that I needed therapy for the fact that I had fallen in love with him, then began to feel awkward and was tired of forking out my entire savings for the sessions anyway. Don’t get me wrong, it was probably one of the best ways I have EVER spent my money, but like all good things, it was time for it to come to an end. I learned so much about how to resolve and deal with the issues I was facing, and it turned out that I had a few other problems, completely unrelated to my husband’s suicide, that needed to be worked on…. like the fact that I am/was a control freak. Hopefully I’m better now.

****************************************

After losing my husband, I thought I would be alone for decades to come. What man in his right mind would want to be with a woman with 6 kids and the kind of baggage I was dealing with. Even if there was someone out there with that level of insanity, I wouldn’t even look until one year after the death of my husband. I would find a nice singles group and make friends and maybe meet someone I could spend time with.

God had other plans. Two and a half weeks after losing my husband, I was asked to speak to the adult members of my church in our region, scheduled for one month away, about how my faith sustains me. I agreed to do it, but knew I couldn’t give an effective talk unless I spoke of what I had just been through.

In the audience that Saturday evening was a man named John. The next day at Sunday services he came up to me where I was seated with my mom and six kids, knelt down on one knee in front of me and told me how my talk had inspired him, and how he thought that he was having problems, but now knew that there were others with much bigger ones. I politely thanked him, saying that all I had hoped to do by giving my talk was to inspire someone, then turned back to my children, assuming he was a married man and that further talk would be inappropriate. At this point, he continued to speak with my mother, and when he left, she said, “Jen, he’s from _______ (the Mexican town where her mother grew up and where she spent her summers) and he’s single!

“Yes, Mother, and he’s old!” I replied. To me, he appeared as though he was in his early 60′s and I was only 34. “Besides, I’ve only been a widow for 7 weeks. It’s much too early.”

As the weeks wore on, and I learned how to cope as a widow, knowing that this was much more than the year-long deployment I had faced when my first husband was stationed in Korea, I began to plan my future. I would most likely be single for years to come, and if that were the case, I was going to make the best of it. We 7 were going to travel all summer and I would do puzzles. I don’t know why, because I wasn’t a big puzzle person, but at this time, I decided that I would do puzzles. I planned our vacations and I bought my first puzzle, a butterfly mosaic, and stayed up late into each night working on it, listening to Chopin or Dave Matthews or Handel’s Messiah or David Gray.

During this time, I quietly observed John. I noticed that one week in church he would sit by a lady close to his age, but the next week they would sit on opposite ends of the chapel. This confused me, but I didn’t give it much thought. Five months after my husband had died, my mother began to mention John again and how he was a faithful choir member and that he even teared up while singing some of the numbers. In subsequent talks she would say that he wears loafers, so that makes him trendy and asked if I’d seen his teeth, because they were amazing. I rolled my eyes, but agreed that I would start attending choir practice to scope him out. Before I got too serious, however, I had to find out his age, and upon further investigation, I discovered that he was only 49. He had been going through a difficult time, and I think that had made him look older initially.

To make a very long story short, I was impressed enough by him at choir practice to muster up the courage to ask him out. I didn’t do so without first seeking the Lord’s guidance, however, and I received as strong an impression as I’ve ever felt that, indeed, I was to initiate a relationship with this John.

Picture of Jen with John.

Longer story shorter, I asked him out and we were married 8 weeks later. The kids liked him, and one even asked if he could be our dad when we had only dated for six days, so I knew I was in a win/win situation. I had only finished one puzzle.

After several months of being married, having traveled down to his home town in Mexico several times, we began to feel the pull to move there. We talked to the kids, fasted and prayed, and received confirmation that that was what we were to do. We started the construction of our home soon thereafter,  then several months later I gave birth to our first child together, my first and only flax-haired little boy.

Picture of the inside of the home John and Jen later built in Mexico.

We moved to Mexico a year later, expecting another baby by this time, and moved into the tiny mother-in-law’s quarters of our unfinished home, a space that was designed for two. We were eight, as our oldest had already left for college.

Picture of Jen in her 8th month of pregnancy with her 10th baby..BEAUTIFUL.

During this time I was suffering through early pregnancy, as I am right now, as I write this, but I felt exceptionally fatigued. I chalked it up to the move, my age, the altitude, anything to try to find a reason why I was feeling this bad. Then it came… one of the happiest days of my life. During each of my previous seven pregnancies I had begged and pleaded and prayed for this, but was always left slightly disappointed. Fourteen and a half weeks into my pregnancy, at my first prenatal visit, I learned I was carrying twins!

Jen’s adorable twins

The twins are now 18-months old, and while the first year was grueling and exhausting, it was wonderful and amazing and I wouldn’t trade it for anything! Twin A is the strong, silent type, loves books and watching his brother try things to see what the result will be before he jumps in. Twin B is our rough and tumble boy, who usually can be distinguished from his brother by his ready smile and various bruises on his face from daily experimentation with physics and gravity. Our other children are…

-the 20-year-old girl, who lives on her own, and rock-climbs, and calls me almost everyday on her way home from working with special needs adults;

-the 17-year-old boy, who plays football and puts up with a lot of hormonal issues from me;

-the 14-year-old girl, who sings and writes music and sews and cooks and is my equal when it comes to homemaking skills;

-the 12-year-old boy, who does weird things like earn and save $130 to purchase a light saber online;

-the 9-year-old boy, who, 4.5 years ago, asked if John would be his father;

-the 7-year-old girl, who loves all things pink and girly and holds the babies almost as much as I do;

-and the 3-year-old boy, who has an amazing mind, probably a genius, and will hopefully use his powers for good one day. Not that he doesn’t now… he’s hysterical, but he wreaks havoc where ever he turns. He’s still super-cute.

So that’s me and my family, in a nutshell. Perhaps more than you wanted to know, but if you’re still reading, I guess it wasn’t boring enough for you to move on to the next blog. Thanks for listening.

To visit Jen’s awesome blog, click here.