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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

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

More Than Strong

April 24, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Confession: This post is not coming together. And it feels like the opposite of what I’m supposed to write. But I need to say it.

A couple of weeks ago, Ashley Judd blasted media in a piece on The Daily Beast. In this smart (very smart) article, she took people to task for speculating on her puffy appearance and, in doing so, reducing women to their most superficial attributes.

If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s fascinating.

I pointed this piece out to our Just.Be.Enough team because it fits perfectly with the theme of that blog. We talked about it and decided it was a great prompt for a link-up: Who are you beyond your labels? We’re helping to Change the Conversation.

I’ve had labels applied to me. We all have. Some of them are kind, others spiteful. Some are ignorant, and some hit a little too close to home.

It would be easy to say, I am more than a PPD survivor. I am more than “just” a mom. I am more than any of those obvious labels. But it’s not the obvious labels I want to shed today.

For the past two years, in particular, I’ve been described using a lot of very kind words. Strong. Smart. A good mom.

I’m just so capable.

Except sometimes I don’t feel that way.

And this is where I got stuck writing this.

It seems silly to say, “I don’t want to be labelled as strong.” But sometimes I don’t. There are times when I admit to struggling and I ask for help, and to say, you’ll be okay – you’re strong overlooks the fact that in that moment I’m not.

I think this is the flip side of talking about mental health. Yes, it’s okay to talk about it. No, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. But it also needs to be okay to say I’m not okay and have that be recognized as part of this process. It leads to important questions, like What do you need to be okay? and to the support inherent in saying, I don’t expect you to just get better.

“Good” labels can be stifling. Someone can be strong and… Strong and struggling. Strong and tired. Strong and just plain in need of support.

If we’re going to get rid of labels, we need to accept the whole person. We need to be able to say, I accept that about you and give you the space to either work through that or let that be part of who you are.

No matter what the label, we need to accept people for who they are—even just in that moment—not what we want them to be.

***

I’d like to say a huge thank you to my beautiful friend Angela from Tread Softly for helping me think through this and for making it okay to post about something that kind of feels like a whine.

About the Change the Conversation link-up:

It is time to look past the obvious for ourselves and our families. We’re inviting posts from voices everywhere to share your labels and who you are beyond that. The focus is whatever you need it to be– from our lives as moms, dads, parents, spouses, to professionals, survivors, athletes and more. We invite you to join us, to celebrate our strengths, to celebrate our diversity, to celebrate our voices and change the conversation.

We hope you will read, comment, link up, and explore the stories of others who have linked.

Please join us!

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, Be enough me, labels, perspective

Pride in the Name of Doing It All Again

March 18, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

A few days ago I read a post by my friend Jenn. She wrote about how being a mom with depression can sometimes suck and when I saw the title of her post I thought, You bet it does. And it does, there’s no doubt about it. But Jenn’s post was actually about more than that.

…this post is not about parenting with depression it is about parenting after getting help for it. You see, there are still days that I can feel the effects of my depression on my parenting.

Oh lady, I so know what you mean.

As I sit here, nauseated and with a burgeoning belly, I think back to my last pregnancy. I remember thinking how amazing it was going to be to have a child and what a wonderful mother I would be. I thought about soft blankets and small toes and a warm baby asleep on my chest. I thought about how romantic it would be to get up with a tiny baby in the stillness of the night.

I thought, in other words, about all the things most about-to-be-mothers think about. What I did not think about, however, was how it might not be like that and how I would not be able to control how I responded to all that hard.

I did not think about how I actually don’t always get to choose the kind of mother I want to be.

Like Jenn said, I feel as though my experience with PPD has forever altered the type of mom I am.

I thought I would spend time dreaming up activities to do with my kids instead of being scared to plan something only to have it go sideways and not be able to cope with that.

I thought I’d be attentive to their nutritional needs, always ensuring they got a wide variety of things to eat, not making Kraft Dinner with ketchup on the side because it’s the only thing I have the energy to make.

I thought I’d be good at playing and didn’t expect to be left with a post-PPD desire for me time that kicks and flails and insists on being acknowledged to the detriment of “good mother” priorities.

However… that’s all just for context and not really what this post is about. I’ve been doing okay (better, anyway) in some areas so today I figured I’d link up with Charity for her Mother’s Pride Blog Carnival and acknowledge some of the things I think are going well. Or better than before, anyway.

I’ve been doing bath time without feeling like it’s a major energy suck and something I have to work up to doing.

I’ve been doing better at redirecting behaviour like yelling or throwing things without feeling like I’m going to snap.

I’m a little better at playing. Sometimes.

I’m pretty good at doing countdowns so we can eat lunch/leave an activity/get to bed without any meltdowns.

I’m better at asking for help.

And while I’m on the subject of pride, I’m very proud of my son for adapting well to his new school and for his insatiable curiosity and inspiring confidence when it comes to Lego, and very proud of my husband for picking up the slack while I focus on not puking everywhere.

So that’s what I’m proud of, even though I’m not the mom I thought I was going to be. But is any of us? Are you?