Year-End Review

One year ago today, Mikayla entered our world.  I went back and read the letter I wrote to her, sitting on a couch in a timeshare in Branson with my parents.  We had the ability to bond during that time, just Mikayla and me, my parents acting as the facilitators for a tremendous gift.

I've had to realize I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but, Mikayla's first year has been my favorite "first year" of all our kids!

With Mia I was way too ridiculous about what a mom should do.  Maggie was way too colicky and we had just moved to a new place and I was too lonely to spend a lot of time in enjoyment!  But Mikayla? She's been a bright ray of sunshine.  She laughs, she interacts, she has a sense of humor.  We get a lot out of her for an infant!

(In a weird sort of way it makes me want to have about 16 more kids because with her I feel like I've finally "come into my own" as a mother!)

This morning, as usual, we went from normal life to chaos in 6.3 seconds.  In between destroying a pan of oatmeal, managing the fashion crisis that is Mia, and Samba the Great Dane breaking through the back door, I lost track of thinking about the past year.

But now that things are calmer (the ebb and flow of our household activity) I can stop and reflect.  I realized the time has come to share something significant in my life this year.

What all but about 10 people DON'T know is this precious little body of sunshine that is Mikayla was also the instigator for some challenging experiences for me, personally.

Here's what I wrote in September, when Mikayla was 5 months old:

"Today, in the whole day, I had two times of maybe a minute each where I thought, "oh, here I am!  I forgot what this looked like!"

They were moments free of feeling overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted, angry, frustrated, hopeless, insane.   Moments where my head wasn't spinning in circles and my over-riding conscious thought wasn't, "Normal... What is real here? React to what is real, not what you feel…"

Yesterday I went to my OB/Gyn and found out that I have a very easily diagnosed case of post partum depression.  He reassured me that I'm not going crazy, I'm not weak, this is real and that no matter how much I try to control it I can't.

"It would be of tremendous benefit to you and your family if you were to take medication for 3-6 months to help your neurotransmittors stabilize," he recommended.

I think that's what he said. What I actually processed was: 

"Blah, blah, blah, FAILURE, blah, blah, FREAK, blah, blah, blah, ADDICT-TO-BE, blah, blah EMBARRASSMENT," along with a slow internal thought of: "so... It really WAS strange that I almost drank cooking wine to make the whizzing noise in my head go away and that other day when I found myself unconsciously thumping my chest as hard as I could while driving to WalMart it wasn't just a nervous tic... Huh..."

So, I agreed to take a drug. I'm scared to death of it and incredibly ashamed, but this morning I took the pill.

And this evening... For two moments... I felt a release of the pressure.  I was getting milk for Mia and Maggie talked to me and I didn't have a heart palpitation from trying to concentrate on more than one thing and their little girl voices didn't rub me raw and make my brain twitch.

I didn't know it had been that bad until I had a moment that suddenly felt ok.

My family has noticed I'm strange. I asked. Mia and Maggie said that I've just been tired a lot.

Isaiah, in his gentle way, said, "You've been ... Short... Lately. I think this will be a good thing," when I told him about the diagnosis. When I said I was ashamed and sorry he said, "Why? This is good.  You don't need to be prideful about getting help for something you can't control!"

God has blessed me with my husband.

If I can take my melodramatic perceptions and lay them out, I feel like I've been standing next to the Grand Canyon. I'm right on the edge, where every once in awhile my foot slips and sends rocks hurtling down. I'm scared of that canyon because I know if I go down there I'll just be... Gone.

As much as it terrifies me, there's also a little part of me that wants to fling myself over and GO. 

Just fall, fall, fall and never, ever resurface. 

That part of me has a constant voice in my head chanting: "Sucks as a mom, sucks as a wife, sucks as a professional, sucks as a daughter, sucks as a sister, will never live up, will never get it right, never, never, never, useless, useless, useless." 

I think that may be the voice I wanted to drown in cooking wine and pound out of my body. But I'm not sure. It's not real clear to me - nothing feels clear to me right now.

But I suspect maybe everyone is standing next to the Grand Canyon in their insides. But maybe most people are farther from the edge and have a safety fence that makes it so they don't even realize that there's a gaping hole available for them to drop into. 

I don't know. Maybe.

My feelings and knowledge of reality are almost always separate right now. The medicine should help with that. I pull out of my body constantly and think, "You know, Isaiah is doing a lot with the kids... Why are you so convinced emotionally that you're a single parent shouldering the load for your entire family?" "Why are you having heart palpitations because the toast needs to be buttered? Waiting a minute will not ruin the toast!" 

Instead of a good angel and bad devil on my shoulders I have the Id, Ego, Superego, whatever, running commentary on what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing and thinking right now in order to function appropriately for my life.

That voice fights constantly for attention with the other one inside. When other people talk to me it's sometimes hard to listen or even hear what they're saying.

I haven't been able to control it. I haven't been able to remember what anyone tells me. I haven't been able to enjoy my children or my family. I haven't been able to let go of an irrational fear that we're not going to have food to feed our family, or that I'm actually insane.

So that's the long and short of it. The thick and skinny.

I'm terrified. I'm ashamed. I'm humiliated and I am internally convinced I'm a failure.

I'm hoping there's hope, though. Because for two moments today the noise inside of me stopped.

And that's enough to give me hope for tomorrow.

Just reading this again makes me cringe inside.  It's absolutely terrifying to even put this piece of writing out into the real world.

So, why would I bring you in when I've been quiet about it for so many months?

Well, for a couple of reasons:

1.  It's Mikayla's birthday.  Her birth sent my hormones into the crazy tango and yet, she was the only thing that I would smile about during the dark months.  Even knowing how the hormones affected me, I would have her again.  She's been that incredibly awesome.

2.  I still find the concept of post-partum depression shameful.  And yet, I experienced it, I was treated for it, it is real.  Maybe if I speak up someone else won't feel as ashamed as I did because they know it's not the end.

3.  I took the medication and it was worth it.  Against my own personal belief that you shouldn't take medication unless absolutely necessary, I followed my doctor's recommendation and took it.  Those two moments I wrote about above turned into a life this past fall where I rediscovered how to laugh!  I was so scared I would lose that when I stopped taking the medication… And I didn't!  Now that I'm drug-free (yay!) I can say with assurance I haven't forgotten how to laugh, I enjoy my children more, I'm a healthy participant in my marriage, and I'm excited about living each day!  That's all good stuff.

So, forgive me for for over-sharing in this update if it makes you uncomfortable and you feel it's inappropriate.  Forgive me for not hinting at this sooner if you feel I've been holding out on you since, after all, if you're subject to my horrible stories about bodily fluids, you ought to be privy to the details of my mental state!  


To be completely selfish, just telling this much makes me feel extremely vulnerable – so please don't be mean even if you're mad at me! :)

But most of all, if you know someone who has experienced this, let them know it's going to be ok.  It doesn't last forever, the treatment is useful and effective, and well, it will end.  It's hard to see out of the tunnel when you're in the middle of it all.

Love to you!