I've been extremely moody lately. My fuse is short, my tendency to yell is greater than my tendency to speak, and I want it to be someone or something's fault. I don't want it to be just because I am a crabby beast.
My youngest little dude turned 2 yesterday and it wasn't until he went to bed last night after our day of awesome family fun that I realized that my extreme bitchiness that has plagued me recently seems to be stemming from my reflecting back on when he was born.
DO NOT GET ME WRONG! I love everything about being that little boy's mommy. He brings about more happiness and laughter (and hilarious faces) than I ever could have hoped for. I think most parents have a tendency to reflect back to the actual day their child was born as each birthday approaches. And while Blake's birth will always rank up as one of the best days of my life, sadly, I still feel a little anxiety and a LOT of guilt when I think about the time leading up to and following his birth.
I had a really really hard time with everything that came along with having Blake and the parts of it that messed me up the most are currently thrusting me into a state of serious guilt and it is damn near suffocating.
There is a history of anxiety and depression in my family. Thankfully my mom was open early on in life with my sister and I and told us never to be afraid to talk to someone (even if it was not her) if it ever became too much. If you have ever struggled with anxiety or depression, I don't even have to explain the "it" that I am referring to because you are quite familiar. "It" is anything, "it" is everything and "it" is nothing at all...at any given moment. "It" is a feeling, a cloud, a paralyzing effect, a punch in the gut, and underlying fear, a constant worry or (again) nothing at all."It" comes and goes...and "it" doesn't have to ruin you for always.
After I had my first son, I had a very mild case of the baby blues. I was happy and then sad and then happy. I cried when my visitors would leave and when my husband was at work because I felt alone and then I would look down at my brand new baby who was sleeping in my arms and I would cry harder because I felt guilty for feeling alone when I wasn't actually alone at all. I was a normal amount of new mommy mess! At the core, I was fine and never felt like I had totally lost control for long! I was a hot mess, but I was fairly certain I was normal-ish.
Fast forward three years to the end of my second pregnancy and the beginning of a little thing called PUPPS - Pruritic Urticarial Papules and Plaques of Pregnancy. I'd recommend NOT Googling it for a number of reasons...
Images will pop up. They will not be pretty. Some articles titled with bogus names like "Itchy Skin" or "Itchy Abdomen During Pregnancy" will pop up making you think that PUPPS is just a little rash and you will be massively deceived if you base your opinion of it on that.
Anyway, I'm going to spare you my typing out the whole scientific definition of it because it doesn't even do it justice. Here is the gist of it...
Imagine the worst itching sensation you have ever had. Now multiply that by 100. Imagine that feeling from head to toe. Toss a rash in there. Imagine that rash from head to toe (thankfully your face and neck are spared...but that's about it). Imagine your organs itching. Imagine scars all over your body to this day from all of the times you scratched yourself until you bled. Imagine taking showers so hot that you literally burned your skin because burning yourself felt better than even thinking of itching ever felt. Now imagine it for months.
I sent my husband and my 3 year old on nightly trips for dinner or ice cream without me just so I could sit in the middle of my living room floor and sob hysterically without feeling judged or guilty for not being a happy mom and wife. I wasn't a happy human. And pretending I was was eating me alive faster than that rash.
I would do everything in my power not to cry all day so that my 3 year old was impacted by this mess as little as possible and I slept one or two hours a night for months on end. I sat awake by myself in the middle of the night and wished that it would all end and thanked God with everything that I had that I had enough mental strength to get through another day, and then I prayed all night for the strength to get through the next one.
I thank God to this very day for the few friends who heard what I was going through and reached out to me to let me know that they had experienced the same thing. Yes, misery loves company, but rapidly slipping sanity needs to know that someone truly gets it...and I needed reassurance. Knowing that this was truly traumatic for others helped immeasurably as I crawled towards my due date.
And then he was born. And I loved him as fully and completely as I loved Ben was he was born. I loved him instantly and I snuggled him endlessly and I couldn't believe that he was mine. But I still itched.
Oh my god, did I itch.
I was up to 80 mg of steroids a day, had the strongest possible dose of Benadryl flowing through my system at all times, used $700 tubes of prescription anti-itch cream (so thankful for insurance), and still took showers that burned my skin. I gained 15 pounds after I had Blake and waddled around even more than I did when I was pregnant with him and the exhaustion brought on by the combination of the plethora of anti-itch medications and having a new born left me in a fog.
I don't necessarily remember falling asleep mid-sentence
while sitting on the couch and holding our brand new baby in my arms, but I
vividly remember waking up in a fit of rage because my husband was gently
taking the baby out of my arms so I didn't drop him. In that moment I was LIVID
at him for acting like I couldn't take care of our sleeping child. I resented
his energy and the fact that he didn't fall asleep while talking in the middle
of the day. I was mad at him for having the energy to take the older one to the
park or for a walk or a bike ride. And it was at that moment that I realized
the difference between "baby blues" and postpartum depression.
I am fairly certain that the whole rash from hell, the itching organs, the bloody limbs, and the absolute focus that it took to just keep living really just opened up a can of worms that was always there. If it was not the rash, or the nearly debilitating hip pain that I had (which was NOTHING compared to that rash), it would have been something else. My anxiety was always just beneath the surface, and it just needed a reason to come on out and bring the depression along with it.
I started overcompensating for my mood by going 100 miles an hour all day every day. As organized and controlling as I had a tendency to be before, I became worse. As hard as I tried to make these boys of mine happy all day long before, I suddenly tried even harder. Everything I did was to prove to them that I was okay, even though I knew I wasn't because I didn't want to admit that I needed help.
I felt weak. I felt like I had broken. I felt like I had let everyone down. I felt for sure that nobody knew how much I loved them.
When I finally realized that it had become too much, that nothing felt fun, that I was walking around numb and bitchy all day long, I truly felt disappointed in myself. I didn't want sympathy, I didn't want people to think I was crazy, I didn't want people to think I was weak...I just wanted to be myself again.
I had spent months focusing all of my energy on not breaking. I had done everything in my power to be strong for myself, my son, my husband and our brand new baby. What I discounted was that the most pure strength I found was when I finally asked for help.
I know that there will be people who read this and turn their noses up, and that there are some who think that depression and anxiety are just terms used as a crutch or an excuse. I'm 100% okay with that.
I'm okay with that because if one person reading this can feel a little better about something anything that is consuming them, no matter how big or how small, then there was a point to this. If one person reading this decides to go talk to someone, or learns that more people than they might think have needed a little bit of help from time to time...
If one person feels less alone. If one person comes to terms with the fact that not being able to hold it all together for everyone all of the time does not make them weak, and realizes that it is not okay to just internalize it to the point of not being able to breathe...
Then this blog was worth it.
The terms "mental health" and "mental illness" can have such a negative effect on people. They tend to bring with them this stigma. People see anxiety and depression as a weakness. I have absolutely zero medical background and am in no way qualified to tell you anything about mental health, or mental illness, or where the line between stressed out and suffering from anxiety or depression is drawn, but I can speak to you as someone who has struggled.
It is still hard for me sometimes. Sometimes I start to feel like I am just a miserable person for my family to be around and that I am not good enough to make them happy on my own and THAT is why it is so important that I chose to get help with the anxiety and depression. Yes, I still have my days...they are just not as debilitating now as they were before.
The whole experience with having my second son was the most trying experience of my life and it was incredibly painful for every member of my family, but Blake didn't break me. My pregnancy with Blake brought out problems that were always there. "Mom guilt" is a tough thing to deal with, but "Mom guilt" because of how withdrawn you felt because of depression or anxiety is a whole other beast. Even on my best days, I still feel guilty about the part of me that was just not there during the end of my pregnancy and the first part of his life. I was happy, but part of me was just missing.
Blake didn't break me because I am not broken. I struggled and I needed help. We all struggle. Some of us just can't handle it the way others can. Some of us need a little help, or just to know that we are not alone and that doesn't make us weak just as it doesn't make the people who don't need it strong.
It is hard for me to include feelings of guilt and anxiety in my reminiscing about my little buddy being born, because he makes me so happy. But those struggles were and are very real and very much part of it all and that is something I can't change. What I can do is talk about it and hope that my words and my experience can show that not only is it okay to need a little help, it is so much better with that help.
Anxiety and depression and all mental health issues are scary to talk about. I know of many people (myself included) who are (or were) afraid to talk about their struggles because of the stigma that they fear will be attached to their words. I have enjoyed so many moments of my little boys' lives that I would have had a hard time enjoying for everything they were worth if I tried to tell myself just to push through "it." I've got everything I need in the family that I have, and I will be damned if anxiety or depression is going to be the thing that causes me to underestimate the importance of their smiles. Bad days happen. But not all days have to feel bad.
Life is too short to live a lessened quality of life simply out of fear of what others might think. If you think you need help getting your happy back...DO NOT BE AFRAID TO ASK.
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