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My baby girl will be one tomorrow.  How in the world did that happen?

I’m on my way to bed, and I can’t help but think back a year ago.  When I slipped into bed that night, I didn’t expect that I’d go into labor.  I snuggled into beside Husband and tried to drift off to sleep.  Only I couldn’t.

I realized that I was having some contractions and that they were starting to hurt.  At about midnight, I realized the contractions were coming fairly close together.  I got up to take a shower, and to assess the situation.  I decided I was in labor, and I woke Husband up.

I have my doula, Becky, to thank for how well the rest of the night went.  She came over right away and was an extremely calming presence.  I labored on the birth ball.  I labored on the couch.  We watched Murphy Brown Season 1 on DVD (giving birth to T.V. shows is a thing for me, ok?)  The contractions were getting closer together, but were never regular in duration.  I remember Becky urging me to relax my face muscles.  She said if I did that the rest of me would relax and that would help the baby come.  It worked.

Carolyn was sleeping in her room, and Dad was trying to sleep as well.  Eventually he came out and joined the party, mostly because he couldn’t sleep through the sounds of me in pain.

As the contractions got stronger, Becky felt pretty confident that we could stay put at home for a little longer (I am so grateful for this, as I seriously doubt that I would have remained as calm and able to cope as I did without her reassurance and confidence in the idea of staying at home for as long as we did).  I snoozed for a couple of minutes at a time to Murphy Brown.  At around 5 a.m. I woke up to decide whether or not to head to the hospital.  The back gate to base is very close to our house, and to spare myself time in the car, I really wanted to go in while it was open.  I knew that I could go in through that gate if I wanted to, but wasn’t sure I wanted to leave just yet.  The thought of seeing sunrise and giving Carolyn a hug goodbye sounded appealing so I stayed put and ate some Frosted Flakes.

Little Miss woke up a little after 7, and as the contractions got stronger I found it difficult to keep my reactions to them low key enough to not scare her.  With only an hour left until the back gate closed, we decided to head to the hospital.  I hugged and kissed Little Miss and left her with Papa.  We arrived in the birthing room a little after 8 a.m.  Someone put Murphy Brown back on the t.v, and I got down to business.

Time seemed to stretch on forever, even though not much of it really passed.  And I hurt.  I hurt very, very badly.  When I checked in, despite the entire night of increasingly intense, but never regular contractions, I was only at 3 cm.  But I hurt.  I really hurt.  Did I mention that I hurt?  I was starting to get panicky.  I grabbed at Becky and I grabbed at Husband and I begged them to help me stay calm.

My doctor came in and checked me and I was at 9 cm.  She decided it was time to break my water to see if we could move things along.  Knowing how bad labor hurt last time with my water already broken, and knowing how bad I was already hurting, I really, really didn’t want to do that.  My doula asked the doctor to explain the procedure and it’s benefits to me, and she launched into a gentle explanation of how this would help my body to pick up the pace.  I told the doctor to please not talk to me.  I didn’t want education.  I wanted my baby, and I wanted to stop hurting so badly!!!!  She broke my water, and immediately after said I was complete and it was time to push.

I was exhausted, and pushing was harder work than I remembered, but I got through it, and soon my baby girl was in my arms.  She was so beautiful, and so foreign.  I didn’t feel connected to my body.  I couldn’t even figure out how to move my arms.  And I was trembling violently.   I kept waiting for the feeling of euphoria and accomplishment that I remembered from my first experience to kick in, but it never did.  The important thing though was that my baby was there.  She arrived at 10:35 a.m. only 2.5 hours after we arrived at the hospital.  And I again progressed completely within a VERY short time span.  She weighed in at 8 lbs. 10 oz, and she was absolutely beautiful.

I cuddled her all the rest of the day and all night long.  I tried to stay awake long enough that evening to watch LOST with the rest of America, but the adrenaline wore off and I crashed about five minutes into it.  (I really sound like a TV junkie when I write my birth stories, don’t I?  ;))

The next day, Papa brought Big Sister in and it was apparent immediately that she was in love.  When we brought her home, Little Miss was devastated to learn that Baby Sister could not sleep in her bed with her.  She was just certain that that would be the only logical place for her to spend her nights.

I am so grateful for my baby girl.  I love her so much.  This year has been full of incredible blessing, and yet so very hard.  Husband has been gone so much with his deployment and detachments.  Depression reared it’s ugly head.  But I had my baby girl.  From the beginning, I would hold her and cuddle her and find comfort simply from her being in my arms.  Especially in those first few days, often the only place I wanted to be was hunkered down with her reveling in her sweetness.

It’s been an incredible thing to see the birth of sisterhood in our family.  I see my oldest baby girl growing up so quickly, and learning through the complications and joys of having this other little person to share life with.

And my baby girl is just amazing.  She does the very cutest things ever.  Like saying, “Shhh,” with a tiny finger up to her lips, and walking with adamance and vigor in a quick, sturdy, bow-legged cowboy walk.  She crumples to the ground in silent protest when she doesn’t get her way, and her nose crinkles in the cutest way when she giggles.  Her first smiles came as a result of my kissing her under her chin and that remains one of her very favorite things ever.

Mommy struggled through this first year, but I never, not once for a second, doubted the love that I had for my baby girl.  Even in a place where I was outside of myself and unable to enter into it she has kept me grounded in and aware of joy.  She and her big sister gave me a reason to fight to get myself back.

Happy Birthday little one.  Mommy loves you.

By The Numbers…

Edited to add:  Apparently I tucked the idea of ‘doing math’ away after reading Marine Wife’s post on her blog, Dragonfly.  I can’t believe that when I wrote it, I completely forgot and then I used the same title!  My apologies for inadvertantly borrowing your idea without crediting you!

 

Feeling pretty down today and really missing Husband on a beautiful spring day that is too glorious not to share with him.  So, masochist that I am, I decided to do a little math. 

This June 29 we will have been married five years.

Husband will have been gone a total of 24 months at around that time (actually that includes his last detachment in July, so two weeks shy of 24 months as of the actual date of our anniversary).

Two out of our five years together, we’ve spent apart.

August and Shore Duty can’t come quickly enough.

 

A quick P.S.  To add to my craziness…  A part of me feels guilty that we’ve had him home for three years (total).  I know we are extremely lucky in some respects to have had him home as much as we did.  That’s almost even more frustrating….  To have had him gone that much and to feel that I constantly have to buck up because he could have been gone more. 

Calling All Bakers

I need to bake. 

I don’t know what to bake.

Got any recipes for me?

BLOG PARTY PORT CALL!!!

This post is in honor of one of my favorite snarky bloggy buddies.  In her last post, she bemoaned the frustration of hearing that your service member, especially your sailor, has pulled into a really cool port (think Hawaii, or Greece, or Spain….) and they call you drunk on life and/or other elixirs to tell you of the incredible things they are doing while on your end of the phone you clean up puke, or cat doo, or take your kid to urgent care for the 24th time.  Now she relates the jealousy that bubbles up much better than I could here, but suffice it to say that while we don’t begrudge our sailors/service members their fun, as you know…  they spend time in war zones and hang out on noisy dirty boats with floors so disgusting that Husband literally disinfects the floor, and the soles of his shoes near his rack each night before getting into bed…  But still, when we’re home 24/7 with rugrats, rarely getting a break for even a cup of coffee sans kids or deployment gremlins, it’s easy to wish for your own portcall. 

And so….  here it is.  Our very own Port Call.  Let’s get together ladies.  Tell me what you’re doing on our port call on your blog.  Where are you?  How are you pampering yourself?  What bloggy buddies have you drug along? 

And, as military spouses aren’t the only ones who need a port call now and again, anyone is invited to participate. 

If you want to, leave me a comment and/or link back to this post so we can all find out how your port call is going. 

Hey–a fantasy weekend of rest and recuperation is better than nothing, right? 

 

 

 

 

MOTHERS Act

Want to do something to help women struggling with PPD?  It’s really, really easy, and really, really, really important.

Follow this link, fill out your information and send a message to those who represent us in the government that the MOTHERS Act will HELP mothers.  There are those who believe that passing this legislation will result in pregnant women and new mothers having drugs pushed at them.  The language says NOTHING OF THE SORT. 

The MOTHERS Act is about education, advocacy, and ultimately better and much needed care for women who, like me, experience Postpartum Depression.  If you’ve read here and thought, “I wonder what I could do to help Val right now,” click the link and fill in the information.  If you’ve ever had a friend, mother, sister, aunt, cousin, or third cousin twice removed who has experienced PPD and wondered how you could help them, click the link and fill in the information.  By doing so you will essentially be helping scores upon scores of women like me, and like them to survive the challenges of Postpartum Depression. 

Goferit. 

Here’s that link one more time:  Support the MOTHERS Act!

What Does Postpartum Depression Look Like?

After speaking with another woman who has been through PPD yesterday, I got to thinking about what people think that postpartum depression looks like.  It’s talked about…  Sure–but generally in extremes.  We hear crackpot quotes by Tom Cruise.  We think of Andrea Yates or at least of women who absolutely can’t function.  I hurt for the women living through the extremes of PPD and I know that is the experience of some, but my experience was different.

When I thought about PPD before my diagnosis I thought of a woman who couldn’t get dressed, who stayed in bed every day, who couldn’t function, and cried at the drop of a hat.  When I took the screening tests at Well-baby checks, I didn’t necessarily test in a range that was alarming (which is probably partly because I’m good at taking tests). 

And so I assumed that I couldn’t have postpartum depression.  I blamed the way I was feeling on other things:  My husband’s impending deployment, the two-year anniversary of Mom’s death, the grief that splashed up at me as a result of having a baby in my arms that Mom would never see and reliving the memories of Little Miss’s first four months superimposed on Mom’s last four months.  Then I blamed it on the deployment, and the difficulty of parenting an infant and a toddler by myself for 3 months. 

And then those things faded into the background.  Husband came home.  I got into the ‘easier’ part of the calendar that was less filled with trigger points for missing Mom…  And I still felt “off.” 

But I could function.  I got up and got dressed every day.  I hardly cried.  I ordered my eating habits for probably the first time ever so I neither lost weight or gained weight because of the depression.  I managed to keep up with my commitments.  I even spearheaded a few new efforts in our church, and began leading a ministry for Moms.  If I could do all of that, surely I wasn’t depressed, right?

So was it real?  I asked myself that a lot. 

It was.  It is.

For me, PPD looked (looks) like this:

• Feeling off.  Just off.
• Feeling disconnected–from my life, from my kids, from my husband
• Feeling like I’m in a ‘fog.’
• Lacking joy.  Lacking joy in being a Mom, in little things that I normally love, in life in general.
• Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. 
• Just feeling down
• Having my ‘default’ attitude be negative and pessimistic rather than fairly optimistic
• Wanting to run away.  To sleep, to hide, to curl up in a ball.
• Shrinking when my children cried.
• Inability to focus
• “Escaping” often.  To the computer, to phone calls, to books, to anything to get me out of my ‘real life’ and my feelings.
• Snapping at my children very, very easily
• Feeling overwhelmed all the time
• Feeling like no matter what I just couldn’t get it all together.

Interestingly enough, I felt different immediately.  I can remember feeling very distressed in the Labor and Delivery room after Baboo was born because she felt like a stranger.  I didn’t know what to do with her.  I was so shaky I was afraid to hold her.  I couldn’t figure out how to move my own body.  I didn’t feel right.  After Little Miss’s birth this tremendous euphoric feeling of empowerment took over me.  After Baboo’s birth I just felt fuzziness and confusion and exhaustion. 

I wouldn’t say that I had trouble bonding with my youngest…  But for certain, those first couple of months especially, the only time I felt anywhere near happy or content was when I was holding her.  I can remember just wanting to burrow into a spot on the couch with her snuggled in my arms to breathe her in and do nothing else.  Everything else seemed like too much. I just wanted to hide away and snuggle her and pretend that nothing else existed.

There is still such a stigma attached to PPD.  And so much guilt involved.  Plus there seems to be a very fuzzy understanding of the spectrum of ways that it can present itself.  Not everyone is Andrea Yates.  Not everyone ceases to shower and cries all the time.  But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem.  That doesn’t mean that a woman shouldn’t seek help. 

So, just in case someone out there is looking for someone’s story to relate to, as I was…  I wanted to share what it looked like for me.  It took reading two or three accounts of different people whose experiences sounded like mine for me to realize that I needed help too. 

Should you be that person, help is out there.  A good resource to start with is Postpartum Support International.  You can overcome this.  Motherhood doesn’t have to be like this.  You can break through the fog and reclaim your joy.  I believe that, and I’m reaching for it.

And as a postscript, as I was thinking over this post I happened to go read the latest post at Finally Getting Somewhere.  She relates her experience with depression and postpartum depression as well (And it’s not surprising to me that we both happened to do this today…  We seem to be in some sort of weird parallel universe at times ;)). 

And as a second postscript:  I know that I have some special ladies reading who are expecting kiddos any moment, or who have just had a new little bundle.  I hope that reading posts about  PPD doesn’t scare you.  That is not my intent.  Be aware, but please don’t worry. 

Steak-n-Shake Anyone?

My college kinfolk (you know who you are) will know what I mean immediately when I say this:

I need a Steak-n-Shake run.  It’s 11:30 at night, which…  would have been an EARLY run for us…

I could really go for some cheesy fries and a hot fudge brownie sundae and some convulsive giggling.

I would love a Vanilla Coke and a nice deep conversation.  The kind where I know I’ve been heard, and where I feel safe and valued.  I’d like to work on fixing the problems of the government, the world, the church, and myself all in one conversation.  I’d love the banter of inside jokes. 

And of course, we’d sign a sugar packet.  Of course we would.

So…  Anybody wanna jump in my truck and go? 

Springtime

I was in the mood to go daffodil hunting today.  We found some!

The On and Off Switch of Military Marriage

The more separations, long or short, that Husband and I endure, the rustier my on and off switch gets.

Now, lest you think I’m speaking in kinky euphemisms here, let me explain (yes, I just used kinky in a blog post.  I can’t wait to see the list of incoming search terms now!).

I’ve spoken before about the numbness that comes into effect when you are dealing with a deployment or a detachment or a military separation of any sort.  A part of me shuts off.  I miss Husband.  I unavoidably miss him.  But most of my being is involved in consciously choosing not to miss him, because that’s the only way I can survive and stay up and functional and able to take care of my babies.  I feel numb.  Some days I will even feel highly disturbed because I am not sad enough in the missing of Husband. 

My independence also necessarily flourishes when he’s gone.  How could it not when I am entrenched in situations like the one I was in last night:  Holding tight to Little Miss’s hand, reassuring her, as she howls and screams and cries while her poor little forehead is being stitched up, while simultaneously juggling Baboo?  Even just figuring out how to get us all out the door and into our respective car seats last night while keeping the bleeding under control was an effort in independence. 

It’s not just situational independence that separation brings.  It’s also emotional independence.  Like it or not, what happens in my days, inside and outside of my heart and soul and mind are primarily mine to deal with.  I can share with friends, but friends have their own lives to sift through.  I can send an email to husband…  But I always have to wonder if my sending an email about how crappy I may be feeling is going to distract him and cause him to make a mistake on the Flight-deck that could cause him to be injured or worse.  And practically, writing an email once or twice a day just doesn’t allow me to get into the nitty gritty of my emotions and thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears.  Something special happens in the real time, real life exchanges of husband and wife that emails and letters and even phone calls just can’t capture. 

So I deal with things on my own.  I have to.  I have no other choice.  He does the same thing on his end.  So we are two numb people, married and in love as we always have been, but not feeling that fully because we have to protect ourselves and go on with our lives and dealing with our own high-stress situations completely separately.

And then, Husband comes home.  And suddenly, we are expected to switch ourselves back on again.  I have to be switched on and ready to share household duties, to remember how to function with him as a couple, to remember how to share my physical, mental, and emotional burdens.  I have to let the Novocaine wear off and feel again.  Suddenly he is there and we hope to have that instant depth of marital interaction just all of a sudden.

Now, I’m dealing with depression.  And part of the reason I’m dealing with depression is, ironically, because I’m so freaking functional when the ‘fit hits the shan.’  I get by fine.  I handle things fine.  I ‘deal with it’ fine.  But I’m finding that because I’ve so long been in a situation of having no place for my emotions to go, of believing that there isn’t room for them, that I’ve simply just released them inward.  As a result I find that I’m essentially emotionally imploding.  I’m still getting by, but the cost of that getting by is higher and higher.

The more separations we handle, the more effective the Novocaine to the heart seems to get, and the harder it is to just ’switch things  back on’ when husband is home.

I’ve seen and have been seeing strong marriages (not my own) end at the end of long military related separations.  As I’ve grappled with the whys of this I’ve come to believe that this is partially because of things like PTSD…  Partly because one person in the marriage has literally been eating and sleeping and breathing only to stay alive in a war environment, while the other held down the homefront, and the changes those things bring about in the human psyche are difficult to reconcile into the marriage relationship.  But I think it also has to do with this flipping of the ‘on and off’ switch.  We turn ourselves relationally off for so long at a stretch, when we are together again we have to learn how to function in the ‘on’ position.  And sometimes the switch sticks, and we continue to just ‘deal,’ because that has been our default position for so long.

It’s a scary and fragile thing to deal with.  It is a scary thing to realize in myself.  Husband and I are, hopefully, coming to the end of our season of extended separations.  I am looking forward to having him home and to be given the opportunity to work on our marriage outside of survival mode.  The first five years of our  marriage have been exclusively survival mode years for many different reasons.  I’m not sure we’ll know how to function outside of it. 

I am recognizing that I am going to have to learn how to switch myself fully back ‘on.’  I am going to have to learn to feel again and I’m going to have to learn how to let Husband fully into my feelings.  I pray that we will grow into an even deeper level of intimacy.  Of course, that both frightens and excites me.

Even with this epiphany, I find that with each new separation the ‘away’ feels more normal.  The  numbness feels more acute.  We hardly skip a beat when he leaves.  We hardly skip a beat when he returns.  We are still so very connected.  We still love one another so very much.  But we have to work through our rusty on/off switches.  And that is often complicated by 12+ hour days and shifts that vary widely.  Sadly, in a lot of ways, sometimes our ‘off’ switches just stay engaged.  When the turnaround between away times is so short (two or three weeks or even less), there really is no way to fully renegotiate our marriage each and every time. 

We only have a few more away times left.  But those few still add up to a significant amount of time spent apart.  I pray that God would help us to stay awakened to one another.  I pray that he would help us learn to more fully enter in to one another’s respective emotional landscapes.  I pray that he would keep our relationship in the palm of His hand until we are together in a more stable way.

I pray too that those of you who have read this post (and bless you for reading this long thing!) would lift the families of our military members up in prayer.  I wish that you would lift them and us up not just in a general ‘God bless the troops and their families’ kind of way, but that you would pray specifically for the challenges this lifestyle poses for the family unit.  While we don’t want sympathy for the path that we’ve chosen…  While we’re proud to have served in our own small ways….  Being in a military marriage really is a whole different animal.  Prayer and support for husbands and wives going through these constant adjustments is so important. 

I don’t really know how to close this post.  I’m sure everyone is ready for my verbal ‘off’ switch to engage.  So without further ado, I’ll throw that switch. 

~Fin~

Disheartening

I find it entirely depressing that in less than a month Husband leaves again.  It’s even more depressing when you consider that he isn’t even home yet.  In fact, we’re only half-way through this fun little bit of separation full of trips to urgent care and sickies and stitches (six in Little Miss’s head to be exact). 

Blah to you, Navy.  Blah to you.

Of course, what I really mean is, I proudly support the mission.  Hooya.