Hard things Archives - Page 8 of 15 -

Lost, v2

June 6, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I sat on a tire swing at a playground the other day. As I rocked back and forth, I watched them – four other families we gather with every week so our kids can play soccer together. The parents sat on the grass at the end of the evening chatting while the kids let off their last bits of steam on the playground nearby. I just sat, the links of the chain wrestling the pieces of my spine for position. It was uncomfortable. My back, my pregnant belly, the tears stinging my eyes. It was all uncomfortable.

I’ve known these families for a long time, or the parents anyway. The children are new to me. And to Connor. “They’re not my best friends,” he said one day, hiding in a pine tree instead of joining in with the running and ball kicking.

I know, I thought. They’re not my best friends either.

They are friends, though – some of them formerly very good friends, others less well known but just the sort of people one would hope to get to know upon moving to a new city. But I looked at these formerly-very-good friends and thought, I don’t see myself in them anymore.

I don’t see myself in much of anything anymore. “You haven’t really been yourself since Connor was born,” my husband said to me one day as we talked to my (new) doctor about medication. No, I said. Is he right? I thought.

Haven’t I been?

I haven’t been.

Maybe others who have struggled will help me understand. Did I not recover? And what does that even mean? Does that not involve going back to who we were before? Is that how anything in life works when there was a before?

However it (in theory) works, I am not the same as before. At a fundamental level, I am a different person. At a DNA level, if that were possible, which it’s not, but for as changed as I feel it might as well be.

We went to my parents’ house a couple of weeks ago to sort through boxes in the basement. As we pulled out long-forgotten treasures and my siblings re-lived our school days I watched. I didn’t recognize the girl who lived through those times and those treasures with them, just as I didn’t recognize her in old friends at the park. I don’t know where she is anymore, and what’s worse, I don’t know what happened to her.

She’s just gone, apparently.

Last year I said farewell to the stranger in me, and I thought that would make things better. But what I didn’t notice at the time was that she seems to have taken the girl I used to be with her.

The girl I used to be is lost.

And there’s no milk carton for that.

Image credit: ~jjjohn~ on Flickr

Filed Under: Hard things, Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, antenatal depression, depression, meltdown

Passing On Pink

June 5, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Somewhere deep in our basement, in a box that’s still packed, is a small book. It’s pink, mostly, with an angelic baby face on the front. It’s about baby girls.

I bought this book when I was in my last year of high school. Some friends and I had gone to Vancouver to shop for grad dresses and I came across this book in a shop. I’m not sure what possessed my 17-year-old self to buy it, but I did, because I always assumed I’d have a girl and wanted to start soaking it in then and there.

I found that book again when we were packing to move last fall, and I paused for a moment when I saw it again. A short moment of regret ringed by a sliver of hope. At that point, Connor had been talking about his baby sister for months – before I was pregnant, before we had really started trying, and certainly before we had talked to him about the idea of a sibling. He brought it up unprompted and spoke of her as though she existed. “My baby sister.” He was so sure.

I was pretty sure too, because I always thought I’d have a girl. Not because I wanted a girl, but that’s just what I saw myself with. She felt like a real presence to me. I even wrote her a letter.

I was so sure.

When we found out Connor was a boy, I had a little cry. I couldn’t imagine myself with a boy, which is why we decided to find out at the ultrasound. I figured then that if we were having a boy I’d rather have time to adjust to the idea. Which was a good thing, and I did adjust. And then, of course, when he was born he was mine. He was so clearly the baby we were meant to have that I didn’t even think anything of it anymore.

And now here we are with number two.

I had sworn I wasn’t going to find out whether this one is a boy or a girl. I wanted a surprise. I wanted something to be “traditional” about the birth in case I end up with another c-section. I wanted something to be what I imagined this time and figured a delivery-room announcement of “It’s a… ” would do the trick.

But Connor was so sure “his baby” was a girl. He had my mom convinced. He had my sister convinced. He had me convinced.

And I worried that a delivery-room announcement of “It’s a boy!” would lead to a never-intended and always-regretted moment of disappointment.

So in the end I caved. We found out, in spite of the fiasco of not having the information provided to us as promised. (The universe didn’t take my husband’s determination into account when deciding to mess with us.)

So it won’t be a delivery-room announcement, and we won’t be keeping it a surprise. Instead, I will announce it here:

It’s a boy.

I know this child is just as much meant to be ours as Connor is. I know he will be a great big brother to his little brother. I know there are so, so many good things about this.

But just for a little bit, I’m going to grieve a baby girl I carry in my heart and thought would be in my life but who apparently doesn’t exist.

Filed Under: Hard things, Motherhood, Pregnancy · Tagged With: admissions, expectations, family, telling the truth

Defining Family

May 10, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Happy Thursday! This week is going by SO much faster than last week. Thank goodness!

I’m hanging out on Just.Be.Enough today with a post about my family, but not the one I’ve posted about here before. My family is actually a little bigger, and I think it’s the hard stuff that reminds us just how special those people are.

Come visit!

Comments here closed.

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: family, gratitude

No Joy

April 25, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I kept waiting for my first trimester to be over so I’d stop feeling sick and start experiencing the euphoric energy I’d felt the first time.

That energy never came; I only became more and more fatigued as the pregnancy progressed. I started to develop insomnia so bad that I’d only sleep two or three hours a night. The lack of sleep started to get to me; my moods fluctuated wildly, and I had to quit my part-time editing job due to complete apathy towards the work.

These are not my words, and yet this is my story. I just didn’t know it until I read it.

You may have gathered from yesterday’s post that things are slightly less than peachy here. I’ve been struggling for a while, but I thought it was just the natural progression of having moved away from family and friends and settling (or not) into whatever’s next. It was a new job and a longer commute and wondering where certain things are after our move. It was a pregnancy and a reduction in my med dose and a subsequent bump back up when that didn’t work. It was a small boy who’s almost four and all the challenges that come with that.

Except that’s not all it is.

The excerpt above is from a post called Robbed of the Joy of Pregnancy by Alexis Lesa on Postpartum Progress. Something lurking at the back of my brain took me to the antenatal depression tag on that site over the weekend, where I read one post and then another. And then I came to that one.

I know this is an issue for me. I just didn’t know it. It was an issue during my pregnancy with Connor too. I even did a Google search for antenatal depression, thought “huh” and then moved on. And was surprised when I got postpartum depression. (It’s okay – you can roll your eyes.)

The only thing in the above quote that I’m not experiencing is insomnia. I’m having the usual pregnancy-related trouble sleeping, but for the last few weeks I could happily have slept all the time. And, to be frank, some days I did. Wanting to stay in bed all the time is usually a huge light bulb for me, but I put a blanket over that light bulb and went back to sleep.

The thing is, though, that once I read that post the light burned bright again. I confessed to the problem to my #PPDChat group and a very dear (real life) friend of mine started looking up resources for me in this new city. She found a counsellor and a women’s mental health clinic and that was really all I needed to get me back on the right path.

Could I have searched those things out myself?

Yes.

No.

Yes, I’m on a first-name basis with Google. No, when the ground is coming up at me I don’t have the resources to find resources.

But I do have people who will do that for me, as long as I can muster up the courage to ask.

Image credit: GregRob on Flickr

Filed Under: Hard things, Pregnancy · Tagged With: admissions, antenatal depression, call for back-up, depression, meltdown, telling the truth

Puzzling Imperfection

April 10, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

In the dark of his room, after much wiggling and whirring, he gets quiet. Then there’s a small voice in the darkness next to me.

“Do you know what Ryan said?”

“What?” I ask.

He is quiet for a while.

Then, “He said I was a dumb puzzle maker.”

This is not what I expected him to say.

I’m overwhelmed by so many emotions – surprise, anger, but mostly sadness. Why does this have to start so early?

He lamented shortly after starting at this new preschool last month that he didn’t have any friends. We had a good talk about that and he has overcome it and I think he feels he has some friends there now. Evidently Ryan isn’t one of them.

He has described this puzzle to me – it’s a new one, featuring crocodiles and snakes and a striped tortoise. He quite likes it.

“Why did he say that to you?” I ask, as my brain jumps ahead to an appropriately motherly response to this confession.

“Because I didn’t know where all the pieces went.”

He’s three. And he’s actually quite good at puzzles. (And here’s where I attempt to repress my inappropriately motherly comment about how apparently he’s not good enough by Ryan’s standards.)

We talk about it. Yes, it hurt his feelings. No, he didn’t say anything in response. He was nervous. It made him sad.

It makes me sad too.

Image credit: Alfonsina Blyde on Flickr

I offer suggestions about how he can deal with this type of situation. Remind him he’s good at lots of things and he can remember that even when someone else says something mean. Offer over-his-head suggestions about why people say things like that to others.

It all sounds hollow. Insufficient. A stretch.

What I really want to say is, “It breaks my heart to know that someone said something to you that made you sad. I want to protect you from that so you never have to feel that way again.”

But I can’t, so I don’t.

“Can we keep talking about this?” he asks. His voice is small.

Of course we can, I tell him.

Even though I don’t know what else to say.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: mom's instinct, my wish for you