Rewind

...continued from last post "Back to the Future - Here I go again"

Let me start at the beginning. 

My son is almost 1 year old, and it has been the best and the worst and the most joyful and the hardest year of my life.  Everything I am, have done, want to do, attempted, not attempted, my entire being, all of my dreams, my guts and glory, came into question as I exited from years of various procedures, operations and treatments, braces after age 30 that resulted in a whole new smile,  plus the 10 months of pregnancy which ended via C-section and emerged as a person I knew I wanted to be, but could hardly recognize. Figuratively and literally. 

“Give it time,” people would say. “Ask for help,” the shows would advise, but ask for help from whom? Help with what, exactly? Going to the bathroom for me? Since there were days I was glued to the couch for over 4 hours and had to hold my bladder...Make me produce more milk so that nursing my little baby wasn't such a horribly difficult process with medications and vitamins and creams?

Trusting that I had come out on top of bad times, fought depression and the like before, I felt I could, would beat this too on my own, so I trudged on, doing my best or half of my best, or all the best I could for that day, just to make it to dinner, or see the other side of yet another restless night. All the while I was slowly and steadily worsening from the inside out, sleep deprived, alone a lot of the time with this new person I had created, desolate.

It has been a fight with myself for endless months, and every layer of the battle are so intertwined that I was beginning to think it might be possible that my life would just never become what I dreamed it would be. I wondered if it was just time to accept that that was the case, and that I had ruined all I ever wanted – my new little family, the loves of my life, my health…my ability to get things done, to write and to be happy. Maybe my glass had never been full and I have been a fool all along?

The irony is that my life already is my dreams. I am living my dreams. Sure there are goals yet to reach and parts that are missing, faded away or have been edited entirely, but all in all, so far my life has unfolded how I always hoped it would. I am exactly perfectly where I need to be, with my partner/prince and our miracle baby boy. I am alive. I am writing. I have a home and food and abilities and talents and people that care about me. I am so very blessed. 

(http://www.youtube.com/user/JKForfait)

That is the thing with postpartum depression. At least it was in my case. A lot of the darkness comes from nowhere and it doesn't make sense. Everything just hurst and requires too much energy. Whilst I fell completely-head-over-heels-madly-all-consuming in love with my son the instant he was conceived, and it has only grown stronger every minute since he was born, everything else in my world felt as though it were hanging by a thread. 

I wasn’t diagnosed until close to 7or 8 months in, and even then the label didn’t seem right. I love my son and love being a mom. We had tried for years and years so clearly he was very much wanted and I didn't miss my pre-mom life at all. I never imagined or wanted anything to ever come between us, and I have not once felt disconnected from him or that he wasn't/isn't  the brightest light I have ever seen (like many women do suffering from PPD do,)...so how could this be PPD? 

But it was. It still is. And facing it as such did start to bring together the strewn pieces of this new puzzle. I had already admitted to having the blues, but that was normal for me every year, seasonally affected by the shortened, colder, cooped up days of winter. 

It was different this year though.

Far gloomier, sadder and deeper. I still felt like I couldn’t clear the fog in my head,  my heart hurt and my shoulders carried the weight of it all. My postpartum was finally diagnosed after repeatedly scoring alarmingly high results on symptom quizzes with my Public Health Nurse. 

Like it or not, I could no longer deny that I was suffering from depression. Albeit giving my symptoms the name postpartum felt shameful and disappointing, and in some ways only added more to my guilt and angsts, it helped me understand why I had to try so hard to find my positivity within, why everything seemed ultra hard and overwhelming, why nothing made me laugh (except my son) the way it use to. Ultimately, thankfully, it has been a major stone in my foundation to recovery and taking back my life.

It gave my puzzle a name.  On more days than not, just getting a shower, or typing an email, planning dinners or going for a walk seemed nearly impossible. Justifying and defending myself to myself, or to my spouse only triggered more of the same dark emotions, endless crying, utter exhaustion, etc. 

Depression really does hurt, a bitter pill to swallow (no pun intended) and there is no shame in it. But left ignored or untreated can really destroy a person, shattering their world around them. 

...read more, next post...

PLG ~ JKF

Baby Steps - Update Aug.4, 2012

Click here for baby news...

PLG ~ JKF

Ah Ma Zing

It has taken me days to get back in here - apparently my Internet browser does not support Blogger any longer, so go figure, I finally have things to say and can't get logged in to post... 


While I figure this techie stuff out, (and do it somewhere outside of work ;)), check out this AMAZING video link that a friend passed along to me recently (thanks LA). I have been waiting to share it with you since, no matter where you are in your life, I believe this touches most of us on a very special level.  and really makes you appreciate the miracle of life.

Enjoy...have a great day.

PLG ~ JKF

Rainbows Update: Pot of Gold

I know, it's been a while... and I know I said this blog wasn't meant to be about babies...but it is about bumps along the way, and dreams coming true...(and for those of you you may have read/followed, my rainbows journey), this long overdue update is yet another testament that things happen for a reason, in their way, in their own time.

The countdown clock from that journey may have ticked away its last minute, but I am FINALLY expecting!

Since our failed IVF last summer (2010) and the many difficult years prior to that, of probing and prodding, tests and diagnoses, we had decided in was in our best interest to STOP. So we did. We stopped all of it: the visits to the clinic, the acupuncture, the herbal treatments, needles, checking in with doctors in general. We were out thousands of dollars, devastated and desolate. We had reached our breaking point and had had enough.  

This led us to the crossroads, I referred to in my last post, compelling my husband and I to truly step back and look at our lives: where we had come from; what we had been thru; how much had changed for the better, and for the worst; the challenges we had endured, specifically with starting a family; the tribulations we had put our bodies thru, our spirit thru, our relationships thru, our marriage thru…We sat there on the porch reflecting, on that momentous, sunny, warm July evening, and decided that it was time to make a big change, to take the other fork in the road. We had no idea just how big and important and life altering this change would be. We only knew it felt right.

Call it an A-Ha moment, if you will. 

Literally from the minute we got the keys to our new home, in our new town, ready to start our new life, we became just that, new. Renewed. As though, after 8 years of marriage and 5 years of trying to conceive, that we ourselves had inhaled for the first time, found that breath that had been lodged in our chests. We had our second chance for the life we always imagined to be ours. Nothing from the past mattered any longer, only the bright future ahead. For the first time, we were finally home, sweet, home, and there to stay.

As the sun set and we watched from our newly painted, box-filled garage, we toasted champagne and enjoyed the breathtaking Northumberland views. Our hearts were filled with joy and gratitude, certain we had found where we belonged, where we were meant to be.  That is not to say that we had been wasting time previously. Quite the contrary. Rather, as hard and daunting as it was, we had to go thru all of that, lose what we lost, walk away when it was time, let go and not look back, to get to where we are now.

And where we are now, is 5 months pregnant! Enjoying the rest of a blissful, beach-filled, sun-kissed summer, we conceived naturally, at no one’s greater surprise than our own!

Never allowing myself to be set up for disappointment as we had done for so long, I ignore the fact that my period was slight and unusual. But the time came when I could no longer deny the exhaustion, dizziness, nausea and acute sense of smell I had been feeling for weeks. Secretly taking a home test, the digital screen flashed “pregnant” and I almost fainted. My husband was in complete disbelief. We did 3 more home tests that weekend until we finally got the lab results several days later that it was true. Our baby had found its way to us. When the time was right.

It has taken until now to write about it since it’s only now just really becoming real, but has consumed me completely. I have found it hard to think about much else, particularly hard to write. You would think as a budding writer, all I would want to do was write, write, write about this miracle. Oddly, I felt protective and private...and really, really dog-tired exhausted, motivated only for rest whenever I could get it...until now. The magic and wonder of this new life still has us in awe, but the dream-like, fearful, nervous weeks are passing, as the bump in my belly begins to show. We’ve seen the flicker of a heartbeat and the movement of knees and elbows. The spine is formed and the brain has come together. There is a child in there. Growing. All on it’s own.

Miracles happen everyday. Dreams do come true. We may have stopped ”trying,” but I always believed in my heart we would be parents… someday…

JKF

(Sidenote: for more back stories, see Rainbows & Babysteps)

Forever, with peace, love and gratitude,