Archives for March 2011

Fledgling Friday – April 1 edition

March 31, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Happy April Fool’s Day!

I’ve promised my husband I won’t try to get him – though I have to admit that I don’t totally trust him not to pull a fast one on me. 😉 If you got someone – or someone got you – I hope you’ll come and tell me about it.

Fledgling Friday Rules

And now for the next edition of Fledgling Friday. Here are the rules (there aren’t many):

You must be a new blogger. I’m going to define that as less than a year, because some who have been blogging for much longer have snuck in recently and I’d like to give the much newer ones a shot.
Link up a favourite post. It doesn’t have to be new, but relatively recent would be great. We’d like to get to know who are you and what you’re about.
Please also try to visit at least some of the other bloggers who have linked up. I try to make it around to everyone, and I really enjoy connecting with other newbies.

If you’re not a new blogger, please visit them as well! Remember when you were new and a comment made your day? Yeah, that.

That’s it! Newbies, link up below!

Filed Under: Fledgling Fridays · Tagged With: community, spreading the love

The Power of #PPDChat

March 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Most Monday evenings, I play my disengaged mother card, turn on Dora, and surf Twitter while we eat dinner. It’s not that I’m so addicted I can’t set it aside for an hour. It’s that Monday night is when #ppdchat happens.

I discovered this community fairly early on in my mama-tweeting days (which is to say January of this year) and it’s incredible. I’m never surprised at the support strangers are willing to provide each other, but there is something about this community that is extra special.

One thing in particular that makes it so is the way the hash tag pops up outside the chat. Sometimes it’s used to draw the PPD community’s attention to a recent blog post. Sometimes it’s used to share a moment in the life of a PPD mom. And sometimes it’s a rallying cry.

That happened the other day when I saw a post from a mom of three, whose newest is about three weeks old. She’s having a rough time and her blog post was clearly a brain dump of desperation and a cry for help at the same time. I commented and then tweeted it using the #ppdchat hash tag and encouraged others to have her back. And they did.

Within minutes, several other people had commented. It was retweeted a number of times too. It made my heart swell to see moms who know what it’s like jumping in to provide a little virtual support. I could just imagine her reaction to getting a bunch of new comments on a post that was a couple of days old. At the end of the night I looked at the blog again and she had commented. She, clearly, was overwhelmed by the support. Sometimes all it takes to survive another day is knowing you’re not the only one who feels that way.

Mission accomplished. (And then today, the very lovely Leighann from Multitasking Mumma took up the call and posted another, quite heartbreaking, post from this same blogger. The love is spreading.)

I love the strength in that hash tag, but the real power comes from the chat itself. Led by Lauren from My Postpartum Voice, it happens twice on Mondays. Sometimes I feel like I need it. Sometimes I feel like it’s just a nice little prop of support. And sometimes I start tweeting away and end up crying.

This past Monday, we got into a discussion about being perfect and both how hard that is and how hard it is to let it go. I struggle with that every day. Not in attempting to be perfect, because lord knows I’m good at avoiding all sorts of things I should do, but beating myself up because I’m not. I really need to embrace the idea of “good enough”. (What is good enough, anyway?)

There were three of us that really got into this line of thinking and we all admitted to it being an issue. Then one very beautiful mama tweeted this:

“I’ve been where you are, to the point of thinking that if I can’t be perfect I should die.”

Oh, honey. I’ve been there. Am there still, sometimes. More often than I care to admit, actually. I know that place – every street, every alley, every park bench. I moved in a couple of years ago and when I realized all my mail was being forwarded I tried to get out. But I can’t. I’m still a year-round resident and I can’t seem to figure out how to get home.

Now, lest anyone freak out, I’m not actually suicidal. But I’m going to be frank: sometimes, still, I don’t know what the point of this whole life thing is.

But at the end of every #ppdchat, Lauren tweets this:

“Don’t forget that help is only a tweet away these days – you are not alone in this. #ppdchat”

Which is, sometimes, the most helpful tweet of all. Because being where I am, in What’s the Point World, can be a scary place to be. I have talked to very, very few people about this. Two, maybe. And while I think they understand, it’s not the same as knowing I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I’ve heard other PPD survivors say that “X” (which is usually something beyond their normal support system) saved their lives. I’ve never been that close to the edge, but if I were I know that X = #ppdchat for me. I might not need it to save my life, but it’s definitely saving my sanity.

[I cheated a little bit and wrote about my favourite hash tag. That’s allowed, right?!]

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, community, going public, telling the truth, we're not alone

Signs of Spring

March 29, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Spring is flirting with us – dancing into our lives for a few days and then retreating behind grey clouds and rainy skies. But it’s coming. The vibrance that heralds spring has appeared.

And I’ve got proof.

Hallelujah

Feeding seals in the sunshine

Filed Under: Photos · Tagged With: favourite activities, living life, weekends

The Battle at Bedtime

March 28, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

He’s so small.

He’s refusing to sleep in his own bed because he wants his mama. This is how it goes these days – and I can’t really blame him because he’s so small – so I agree to tuck him into mine.

He snuggles under the covers, head on pillow. Round cheeks, fuzzy hair, soft lashes. I see how small he is and how quickly this stage will go by. I can absolutely understand why he would want me to lie with him while he goes to sleep. That makes sense to me – as a person and a mother. His mother. And yet I’m lying there with my teeth clenched so tight my jaw is starting to hurt.

There are some nights when I just don’t have it in me. He resists the routine at every stage, squawking and stomping and running away. Laughing because he thinks he’s funny and he knows I think he’s not. He slams doors and throws things and I feel my ability to cope drain away.

When he’s finally in bed, he takes a while to be still. He’s like a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower trying to find just the right spot. He rolls over, pulls the covers up, pushes them away. He snuggles into me, then flops right out of the bed and announces, with conviction, that he’s not interested in going to sleep.

I start with ultimatums, but before long I’m begging.

Please lie down. Please, please go to sleep.

I’m begging a two-year-old to sleep, despite months and months and years of evidence that this is in no way effective. That it serves no purpose except to highlight my inadequacy and remove all hope that this will become a peaceful process.

When he finally settles and asks for a cuddle, my first response is an emphatic, “No!” I need to get out of here. I need to…do something else. I can’t. I just can’t.

And I immediately feel awful. Awful. What kind of mother says no to a cuddle at bedtime? Besides, I know I’m going to give in.

Some nights this cuddle time is my absolute greatest joy. Some nights I would give everything to freeze time and lie there with him. My son. My baby. He has his spot – his back curled right into my chest, his head tucked under my chin. During those times I can feel his breathing – his chest rising and falling, his breath on my arm – and everything about it is peace.

Those good nights outnumber the bad. But, oh, the bad. When it’s not going well and I don’t have it in me I simply cannot summon that peace. We’ve had bedtime battles with this child since he was an infant. A very small, very screamy infant. One night when he was two or three months old it took us five hours – FIVE HOURS – to get him to calm down and go to sleep. When he was finally asleep I called my parents and told them to bring whiskey. “For you or for him?” my mother asked. Both. Definitely both.

We clearly needed to do something different, but two years later we haven’t really figured out what that is. Some nights he’s fine, but most of the time bedtime is not easy. And on those nights I start to think he’s actually going to kill me.

We have the same routine every night and he knows what to expect. He says he’s tired and wants to go to sleep. Stories are usually fine, but lately I use the toothpaste test to know if the rest of the routine is going to go well: if I end up with toothpaste on me – wiped on me, spat at me, thrown at me – that’s not a good sign.

I’m sure my frustration and anxiety about this process transfer to him and get him all hopped up when he’s supposed to be calming down, but I don’t know how to change that. I’m willing to give up the battle – he can sleep in my bed, though that doesn’t necessarily make it easier to get him to go to sleep. It just avoids the screaming. It means I’ll sleep better than if he were in his own bed, but it doesn’t mean I’ll sleep well. But after over two years of this battle, my husband and I know when we’re not going to win and we concede defeat.

The bedtime battle always eventually ends – for one night, at least – but I feel like there are so many other parts to this war.

[Side note: Just when I was trying to decide if it was productive to post this my iTunes mix jumped to Pink. I told you…she’s following me.]

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, bedtime

Less Than Perfect

March 26, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

I think Pink is following me.

She keeps popping up everywhere, which isn’t normal for me because I’m actually not a fan. Normally if one of her songs comes on the radio I change the station. (I think it started after the “U +Ur Hand” fiasco, because (1) I’m not overly prudish but I do think that song demonstrates a certain lack of class, but also (2) Hello? Grammar? Must we spell song titles this way?)

But last week I was driving home from a particularly emotional session with my therapist. I was all caught up in my own head so I didn’t notice there was a Pink song on the radio, but the lyrics in the chorus caught my attention:

Pretty, pretty please, don’t you ever, ever feel,
Like you’re less than, less than perfect.
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel,
Like you’re nothing, you are perfect to me.

And suddenly I was bawling. Driving down the road, bawling. (And in the midst of that big cry I thought of Tonya’s post, which I love even more now.)

At the time I didn’t even pay attention to the rest of the words in the song, which are actually quite, well, perfect:

You’re so mean, when you talk, about yourself you were wrong.
Change the voices, in your head, make them like you instead.

(Let’s just ignore the next line, shall we? “So complicated, look happy, you’ll make it!” I tried that approach for 18 months and look where it got me.)

Photo credit: Bruce Berrien

So, recognizing this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous, I will say this: for some reason, I finally processed something that day. I’m not perfect, I’m not ever going to be perfect, and that’s okay. Sort of. All right, fine, I’m still working on it, but I get it. I’ve got to start cutting myself some slack.

I heard the song a couple more times shortly after, and I’ve been thinking about the idea of “perfect” a lot. I’m a self-defeating perfectionist in all aspects of my life, not just in the mom realm. I’m not a fast enough runner. My absolutely horrific sense of direction is proof I’m not very smart. I’m failing as an adult because I’m chained to recipes instead of being able to whip up a meal from pantry ingredients the way my husband can. I’m not as good as I’d like to be at my job. And don’t even get me started on body image. Oy, vey.

So…I’m not perfect.

In carrying on with my week, I started hearing – and liking – another, much more upbeat, Pink song: Raise Your Glass. Don’t get me wrong, I could never get away with saying things like “gangsta” and I don’t think I know what “too school for cool” even means. I just kind of dig it. Plus, hearing those two songs in that order feels like a transition to me – moving from feeling truly awful and beating myself up every day to trying to do better at appreciating who I am and what I’ve got.

And then she appeared again. A bit later last week I was watching Glee and one of the numbers just happened to be… a Pink song. Raise Your Glass, actually. Perfect.

(Confession: I thought it was especially awesome because I have a full-on schoolgirl crush on Blaine. Yes, I know the actor is 24. I didn’t say I was proud of this. Just…tell me you don’t think that guy is dreamy?! )

Ahem. Anyway…

The thing that happened next is where it gets weird. A colleague sent me an email last weekend after I had been thinking about all of this and, with some very kind words of support, suggested I listen to a song. A song that she thought might be a good one for me to listen to as I work on pulling myself out of this recurring bout of PPD. It was a song by Pink: Raise Your Glass.

You don’t have to tell me eight times. There’s a message here.

I’ve heard it.

—–

A comment: If you’d like to listen to the first song, you can do that here – or from the linked song title above – by clicking “listen now”.

A warning: the video below is to the explicit version of the song – so don’t watch it with your kiddies around. And also, it’s really quite graphic. The first time I watched it I was horrified. And then I made myself watch it again and I can actually see the beauty in it.