Depression Part 2

I'm watching Andy Stanley's series "In the Meantime" and some of his first words instantly transported me back to my first depression. He is describing some thoughts you might have when you are in a time of life you don't like and there is nothing you can do about it: "this isn't what my life is supposed to be like!" "I am living someone else's life" "I don't even know how I got here but I'm watching everyone else and they have what I should have had and there's no way for me to get there."

I don't remember all the ideas I had about becoming a mom for the first time, but I'm sure they included being very happy and comfortable with my child. After all, I had babysat a good portion of my life. I loved babies. I was never uptight or controlling or a worry wart. I was an aunt to 6 adorable little kiddos already so I had some confidence going into motherhood. But I can recall within 24 hours of having my sweet baby boy that I felt disconnected, scared, and very unhappy. Those feelings can all be dismissed when you factor in major surgery, lack of sleep, pain killers messing with you, huge fluctuation in hormones, and a brand new person depending on you that happens to cry a lot. Oh and the breastfeeding was not going well. Perhaps this is why depression can be so tricky. We are our own worst critic. We can think of all the reasons why we should be fine and should be recovering soon and it clouds our vision (and others') of what might really be going on.

Noah had colic and reflux. Those two things are extremely hard to diagnose in some babies (colic being impossible) and so I wasn't getting any answers. But he cried 10-12 hours a day in a way that made my stomach twist. It sounded like a cat being tortured. He would attempt to nurse for 30 seconds and then pull off screaming. When given a bottle, he would gulp the milk furiously and then pull away and scream his head off. He had moments of random calm which fooled everyone and issued the typical "oooohs" and "ahhhs" from every visitor and family member. I felt completely infuriated because there wasn't anyone who seemed as emotionally traumatized by this child as me. No one else saw or felt the same things as me. I wasn't sleeping.....ever. My heart raced most hours of the day. I couldn't sit still and I most certainly couldn't eat.

Brian was a peach. He was an elementary school teacher at the time and made all kinds of sacrifices to pick up the slack. God gave him a crazy kind of calm during this season and he aimed to listen and help at every turn. I'm sure he had no idea what happened to the wife he knew mere days and weeks prior to September 6. Brian had taken Noah with him to a meeting at church one afternoon so that I could try to sleep. That was always a double edged sword because while I longed to be away from Noah and longed to sleep, I was tortured and couldn't handle either. My ob had given me some heavy sleeping pills and they only worked for an hour or so. Then I would wake up and feel 10x more anxious because I knew I was supposed to be sleeping and it freaked me out that my body wouldn't. Well, anyway, while Brian was gone, I had an all out panic attack. I called my ob (on a weekend) and told her that nothing seemed to be working and I didn't know what to do. She said very plainly and emotionless-ly that I would need to go check myself into the hospital. There was nothing she could do. I hung up the phone and had all the thoughts I referenced in the first paragraph. "What the heck is happening!!??? This is not the way it is supposed to be!" I was completely trapped. Thankfully a friend and dr told me NOT to go to the hospital and basically talked me down over the phone. He recommended I go to a regular dr the next day. The chaos over the next few hours I won't go into but lets just say I was mentally and physically at the end of my rope.

5 weeks post partum, I saw a dr and she put me on an antidepressant. But she issued the worst news ever that it could take 6 weeks to do the job. The fact that each day was my worst version of hell made this impossible to wrap my brain around. So she gave me some anti anxiety meds to take if I had an "episode". My stomach would burn, my heart would race, and I physically felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. The dr also referred me to a psychiatrist...which was the worst experience I have ever had with a dr in my life. I was in my most fragile emotional state and this woman was no more than a brick wall. Again, I thought "how can I go on? this is the worst thing I could ever imagine in my life. i can't do this for one more day much less weeks!" My desire to never wake up was always before me. I never once thought about hurting myself (something the drs kept asking). But I would dread the moment night came on, knowing I wouldn't sleep, and knowing it only preceded another day.

"But he isn't crying?" this is what many family members would ask when I was sobbing to them. It didn't compute to them that I could be so unhappy, scared, distraught if my baby was sleeping peacefully in the next room. If only it were that simple. It was clear whatever I was experiencing was not rooted in my baby anymore. A friend and coworker listened day in and out (I was working full time after 6 weeks maternity leave) and told me to go see a psychologist and friend of his. This woman, Marilyn, was the turning point in my life.

Let me be clear about my communication with God up until this point. I would be on my knees in my bathroom after I woke up each morning, begging God to make this feeling go away. To get me out of this pit of despair. To change something, anything. I would tell Him I knew Him and I knew He didn't like to see me like this. He didn't like suffering. He was a Healer and to PLEASE heal me. But each day was just as miserable. I was numb to a lot of emotions and so I never felt a genuine lack of faith. I knew God was there, but I didn't know why He was letting this go on. I spent 100% of each day surviving mentally. And all my mind did was search for answers to why I felt this way, and why my baby cried. That's it. I am a logical person and by all of my research and basic common sense, I knew that Noah wouldn't cry forever. But I didn't feel that way. I remember talking to my mom on the phone one day and she said lovingly with a little laugh "April, he isn't going to be crying like this when he's 5!!" And I said, "Mom, I  know that. But it's very hard for me to believe right now." Depression made me question basic truths simply because I could not see out of my pit....not for a second. I would stare at a dad walking down the street with his 3 year old and wonder honestly, "huh, he made it. He made it through the baby stage. It's actually possible." It seems ludicrous now but these were very real thoughts and I needed any assurance I could get to survive even another hour in my prison.

If you are still reading, here comes the good news. This woman, doctor, friend and fierce Jesus follower, Marilyn, spoke truth to me and gave me hope that came in no other form. God chose to use her----I don't know why exactly, but from our very first session it was like she peeled a corner back over this black box I was sitting in. With each session, I could breathe, eat, and eventually sleep. She exposed all the lies I had been telling myself over months time and alerted me to how much Satan was enjoying it. She diagnosed me as clinically severally depressed and said my very fussy baby simply exacerbated the problem. The anti-depressant I was on took 6 weeks exactly to kick in. The powerhouse combo of Paxil and Marilyn set me on a new path about 3.5-4 months postpartum. It was a slow climb out of the pit, but each week got better. I felt joy like never before because I could actually get through a day and look forward to the next one.

Besides a severe change in hormones, I had also been handed a gigantic suitcase of unmet expectations. This was key in understanding as I sought to move forward in motherhood. I never expected a screaming baby, unanswered questions, depression, unhappiness, desperation. Who does? And for some people like me, being given things (even good things) you didn't expect is a huge challenge. I would like to say that months following this ordeal I was able to speak to the masses about postpartum depression and motherhood and give mamas hope and healing. But that would be like reliving my worst nightmare. I wanted the whole thing swiped from my memory bank. Now, God definitely used my experience to help out occasional friends that were suffering. I would have had NO idea how to help them or really even notice their struggle had I not been through this. But I knew that I may never know on this earth why God allowed the misery of a few months to happen.

Being almost 10 years removed I definitely reflect on it in a better state of mind now. I can even say I'm glad for the challenge. Afterall, it helped me recognize when I was starting to climb in the pit again a year or two ago. Even still, I'm very quick to ask young moms how they are doing because I don't want anyone to slip through the cracks. I want to make sure no one feels misunderstood or gasp --crazy. It was inconceivable to me that anyone could feel what I was feeling even though that's what I desperately wanted. While thinking about this blog post for weeks, I wanted to capture and describe every feeling I had during this depression. I wanted to be able to put it into words so that anyone out there, even if it was one sentence, could say "Ah! Yes! That's it!" But I simply can't fluidly make that happen. And clearly this post is of an epic length already. I hope I covered the most important points. It really isn't a "story" like you would normally evaluate for an assignment or something. It's a portion of my life, that I never wrote down. It has lots of details, messy and clean, interesting and dull, happy and sad. But all real. Please Lord, use it.

Depression Part 1

As news of Robin Williams hit the fan this week, conversations about depression started happening in places they rarely or never happened before. And that's good. That may actually be the only "good" thing about depression. To actually discuss it, share about it, listen and sympathize. My two sons who love the movie Hook and Jumanji knew exactly who Robin was but had to be taught what suicide was and we began the discussion of depression.

"Never ever tell your son about this. Never. Do not tell him what has happened to you and how he was involved." These were the words my therapist told me about 9.5 years ago. At the time it caught me off guard because as one who likes to share everything, I hadn't even thought of keeping it a secret. But as the years went on, I understood what she meant. I plan on telling my son about my depression probably when he is a father. But until then, as I did last night, I will say "it's complicated". Last night I told him I had been depressed before. I wanted him to know that this strange new concept to him, that led to a favorite actor's death, was not some bizarre disease that he wouldn't hear about again. I fear it will be something he hears of often. But in order to remove some of the scariness and misunderstanding, I wanted him to know that his mom, who is a believer in Jesus, dealt (and still deals) with this disorder.

Going back to what my therapist told me, she meant what she said because I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression and I was a step away from going to the hospital. I became a person I didn't know and felt things and didn't feel things that I would have never believed. She meant what she said because she never wanted a child to associate his self with mom going crazy. It wasn't his fault, but he wouldn't be able to understand that, so the solution was to not inform him. She gave me this advice when I had healed considerably and so I would have laughed if it hadn't been the look on her face. I could tell she was dead serious. And when I think about Robin Williams, and the events of this week, I can understand why something so difficult to comprehend, so difficult to put into words, and something impossible to understand outside of experiencing it yourself, shouldn't be shared with a child who will always be my son, and I will always be his mother.

I have suffered from two different seasons of depression. The first came on like a lightening bolt after giving birth to my first son. The second had no particular instigator but required treatment and a much longer healing period. I'm going to share these experiences on my blog so that a) I know it is written down, and b) it may be used for God's glory some how if even simply to shed light on such a dark subject. After seeing some pretty terrible advice and writing going around this week regarding depression, I'm going to go ahead and state that my experience isn't for anyone to critique, examine, or even question. While I'm extremely pleased to share with people as they struggle (and have done for 9 years!) so they know they aren't alone, and advise as deemed appropriate, I'm not interested in really relating this to anyone's experience that I don't know personally. Depression is such a complicated matter and there is so much illogical thought that it deserves open communication without judgement.

I pray that God will use my rehashing of my darkest days to further heal me...something I question all the time. It would be wrong of me to end this without saying that if you are reading this and think you are depressed, please REACH OUT if you haven't done so yet. Call a friend, counselor, therapist, teacher, elder, pastor, anyone. It will be the best decision you could make during a time when making any decisions at all seems like the hardest thing in the world. Just take that first step.

Soft porn anyone?

So never in my wildest thoughts (and I have some pretty wild ones) did I think I'd be writing a post about girls in bikinis. I grew up in a family of girls and bikinis were definitely worn by all of us. My mom was definitely against provocative dress but somehow I don't recall much discussion about bathing suits. Anyhoo, I'm hanging out at the YMCA with my kiddos, wearing my oh so fashionable one piece, not thinking at all about girls in bikinis. It's an indoor pool. It's the YMCA. It's a Saturday night. In walks 2 teenage girls and one of them has a bikini top on that positions her boobs in the most "out there" fashion. It fit her fine. It simply accented her body in a way I wasn't prepared for....at the YMCA. Maybe a Spring Break beach or something. I was caught off guard and noticed my 9 year old look up and stare a little bit. I was embarrassed, and a little annoyed. Then I started thinking.....is her mom aware that she wore this suit? Was her mom there when she picked it out? Maybe her mom encouraged her? I don't know, but as a mom of 2 boys and a girl I truly beg moms out there to think about who their girls are walking around in front of. What possible good comes from letting your daughter walk around in such a suggestive outfit? It begs to be objectified and fantasized over. It's soft porn and I know it caught my son's eye. That night there happen to be several dads that had taken their kids swimming and noticed more than a couple stare at this girl (and let's not get hung up on whose fault that is). I realize magazines and tv shows and friends all tell girls that a nice body should be flaunted and the less material the better. But continue to be the other voice! As moms, we aren't wanting our girls to wear ugly suits/clothes by any means, but we should definitely be teaching them about how we dress affects others, how it affects our image, and what it says about what we value. I never thought I'd be the kind of mom to feel so passionately about something like this but I know moms are a powerful force. We have the ability to change things. My mom didn't talk to me about my body and how it was made, what God intended it for and what message I was sending with it. She is an awesome Christian woman, but it simply wasn't a conversation we had (that I recall). I want to be sure to talk to my daughter when the time comes about all of this because I don't want her to be out there one day tempting some 9 yr old little kid much less anyone else. So in conclusion, this post is not in anyway trying to solicit negativity and criticism about where you see a lot of bikini-clad girls that make you mad. It's just an encouragement to all moms of girls to start the conversation with our daughters and be responsible about who we affect with our appearance.

Peace?

This list is never ending:
Maybe if I was a runner, I'd have more peace
Maybe if I drank green smoothies, I'd have more peace
Maybe if the kids' toys were organized, I'd have more peace
If I only bought organic, I'd have more peace
If I did yoga regularly, I'd have more peace
If my hubby and I took a trip, I'd have more peace
If I read this or that book, I'd have more peace
If we lived closer to family, I would have more peace
If my kids were easier, I'd have more peace
If we had some land, would we have more peace?
My only guarantee: "Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. THEN YOU WILL EXPERIENCE GOD'S PEACE, which exceeds anything you can understand." Phillipians 4:6-7