PPD – Mama Needs Coffee

About Me, deliverance, feast days, keto, mental health, mindfulness, motherhood, PPD

Consolations and Desolations of 2018

December 21, 2018

The other night we did something pretty remarkable with a group of friends at a Christmas party. Wedged in right between the overconsumption of some terrible red wine and a white elephant gift exchange, one of the guys invited us to share “desolations and consolations” from the previous year.

Between laughter and sober tears, couples went around the room and told their stories. I was struck by the humility and honesty the activity required, and also by the willingness to be vulnerable. It would have been easy to keep it light and surface level and I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for doing it, but no one did. Every person who shared did so from the depths, and it was pretty moving. Some couples shared stories that were already familiar. Others reached for stories that hadn’t seen much daylight, surprising the group with the weight of the load they’d been carrying.

It reminded me of something that is too easy to forget; that everybody has a story. And few of us know the details of each other’s stories. And any time you are entrusted with those details, good or bad, it is an honor.

I was proud of the men in the room for being willing to open up. There’s a range of different masculine personalities in our circle of friends, from frat boys to intellectual giants and everything in between, and it is so refreshing to see their willingness to be humble and real.

I was proud of the women in the room for being transparent and pulling off the masks most of us wear in real life, whether in the carline at school or on social media. Real women can reveal weaknesses as readily as they can reveal strength.

Something about the Christmas season – and yes, we are in Advent still – invites a kind of reflection that is so necessary and so cathartic for the human soul. I think that’s part of what can make this season hard for people who are grieving – reflection and recollection go hand in mitten with the yuletide.

I’m 36 years old today, and far from despising my doorstep-of-Christmas birthday as I did when I was younger, I absolutely love having my personal calendar turn a new page right around the time that the Church’s calendar and the calendar year do the same.

It’s like a trifecta of reflection on the past year, if I lean into it. And so I will, sharing just a few – not 36, don’t worry – of my own consolations and desolations from 2018.

-1-

My dad’s cancer diagnosis. From the moment I got the call from my mom, I had peace. I was concerned but not hysterical, and I had a deep consoling conviction that he was going to be fine. This was a complete consolation in what could have been an utterly desolating time. I am naturally anxious and prone to health anxiety, especially about my parents, being a dutifully neurotic firstborn. Also, I was 3 days postpartum when they told me the news. I was in the most fragile of mental states given my past history with PPD, but I felt enveloped in tranquility. I asked for prayers and I prayed a lot myself, and I truly don’t remember a time over this past year when I was terribly worried. Even while sitting for hours with my mom in the waiting room during his surgery, I felt sure he was going to make a full recovery.

And he has. He is approaching 6 months cancer free, and had a clean report on his last scan. He also miraculously escaped without nerve damage from the procedure, an unexpected and wonderful gift.

His presence at my sister’s wedding a few weeks ago, the fifth child he has given away in marriage now, underscored for all of us how tremendous this year has been, and how differently it could have gone.

I won’t take my parents’ and inlaws’ robust good health for granted. I pray for many more good years, grateful, in a way, for the conviction of that terrible diagnosis. The big takeaway for me was this: the only thing I can actually control is how I react to the circumstances and events that God permits in my life.

Easy for me to say when he’s healthy now, right? But this realization and the profound gift of an increasing capacity for emotional self mastery has been an unbelievable gift to me, a girl who has always defaulted to chronic anxiety and occasional panic attacks. It’s like this: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

-2-

On a related note, another huge consolation this year has been the gift of a good counselor, an effective counseling technique, a good antidepressant, targeted hormone supplementation, and some profoundly efficacious healing prayers. I wish I could point to any one of those things and say definitively: this was the thing. The thing that changed everything! But I can’t. I’m a poor candidate for a double blind study because I am notorious for Trying All The Things until I find something that works. Chalk it up to being very results oriented. I’ve never felt better in my adult life. I have very little anxiety and a fuse that is about a mile longer (though Luke my verb still manages to extract a decent amount of maternal, um, energy).

-3-

Along with that longer fuse, I have realized, truly by the grace of God, this truth: you get to decide whose voice you’re going to listen to. For months after Zelie was born, I was working doggedly and without any evidence of results to lose the baby weight. I swam for miles and miles each week, counted calories, tracked my meals, got sugdar out of my diet, etc, etc, etc. And nothing happened. I mean, I’m sure it was good for my heart to do all that swimming, but no weight was lost.

My frustration would always, always peak while getting ready for Mass on Sunday mornings. I would whip myself into a frenzy of self hatred, glowering at my reflection in the bathroom mirror with piles of rejected items of clothing around my feet. The kids were dressed and ready, Dave was dressed and ready, and I would be resorting to tearfully stuffing myself into my stretchiest pair of jeans and caking makeup on my face to disguise my puffy eyes.

I have a vivid memory of almost growling to myself in the mirror during one of these pre Mass abuse sessions: “I hate you.” And it dawned on me like a clap of thunder: that is not my voice.

Using my impressive powers of deduction, I figured out that it wasn’t God’s voice, either.

I prayed, in that moment, for God to show me how He sees me. And He immediately pointed me to the Cross. He didn’t pat my head and tell me how pretty I was. He didn’t give me visual amnesia and cause me to suddenly see a supermodel looking back at me in the mirror. But He did correct my vision. “Love,” He seemed to be saying, “looks like this. This is love. This is what love does to a body.”

Once I put two and two together, that God sees the self immolation of motherhood with the same eyes of love that look upon His Beloved Son on the Cross, I correctly deduced that Satan hates me, personally. He hates God, and he hates whatever images God. He has a vested interest in making sure I hear that hatred coming through, loud and clear. And he’s not stupid. Women want to be beautiful. Women are drawn to beauty. Beauty speaks our soul language. And in my woundedness and sadness, he had gotten really good at leaning in close and whispering all the things I thought were true about myself: that I was fat, worthless, ugly, hopeless, ruined, repulsive, past my prime, never going to recover, never going to be an athlete again, etc.

The clever part is this: I’ve always struggled with self image, I have no memory of ever not struggling, and so I was pretty sure that the voice whispering all those terrible things, that constant refrain in my mental soundtrack, was mine.

I cannot possibly overstate how transformative this realization has been. Are the negative thoughts all gone? Nope. But knowing that they aren’t mine? Stunning, extraordinary freedom.

I can deflect those little slings and arrows as enemy fire now, no longer locked in a prison of self harm. The bad tapes I’ve been playing over and over again in my mind for decades are broken now, their tracks becoming more distorted and scratched with every effort on my part to resist and rewire and redirect them.

Neuroplasticity is real. What a gift! God loves me personally, and His and my enemy, the devil, hates me personally. What a revelation! The desolation of the first 8 months of this year was in my inability to accept my 5th-time postpartum body. The consolation has been not in the miracle of a little weight loss, but in this new ability to correctly identify different voices.

I feel like I’ve happened upon the secret of happiness. Discovered the fountain of contentment, the wellspring of peace. It makes me stupid happy, this new superpower. And it’s such a relief. I could cry right now thinking about the way I used to talk to myself, and I could cry in gratitude for no longer being enslaved to that way of thinking.

2018, you’ve been a year of real surprises. I never expected to look back on 35 and definitively put my finger on it as the year that God rescued me from myself.

But He did. And He has.

And He wants to rescue each one of us, personally. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Here’s to another trip around the sun.

P.s.

I’ve been praying these prayers daily for a couple weeks now, and I’m noticing that when I am faithful to the practice, it is much easier to remain in this place of peace. The negative thoughts are laughably easy to identify as enemy missives, and there is an overall lightness to life. I can’t recommend the practice – or the app – enthusiastically enough.

current events, mental health, PPD, Suffering

You know someone struggling with mental health (and you probably ate dinner with them last night)

June 8, 2018

Have you ever been so depressed or overwhelmed with anxiety that you had the thought “I wish I could just stop existing?” The classic suicide questionnaire used in doctor’s offices to assess mental health includes some version of the concept of “the means and a plan,” but for many people it isn’t the thought of self harm that brings relief, but simply the thought of stopping the pain.

For many people this pain is unfathomable and deeply unfamiliar.

And for many others, it is not.

According to the CDC, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death for adults in the US. For teenagers, it is the second.

One in five Americans will suffer from a mental health issue in a given year. Data collected from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) indicate that of those 20% of the population suffering, 4% will experience severe and life-interrupting symptoms.

All those numbers are interesting – or maybe they aren’t, I’ve never been much of a numbers gal myself – but what they can obscure is the reality that if you live in a 5-person household with a couple parents and a few kids, you are statistically likely to be sharing a kitchen with someone struggling with depression, anxiety, OCD, panic attacks, schizophrenia, or some other ailment affecting the brain and the areas under its control (read: everything. When your brain isn’t working right, nothing is working right.)

I hate mental illness. I hate anxiety and I hate depression and I super hate postpartum depression. These diseases rob you of your ability to relate to your family. Of your ability to perform at work. Of your capacity for joy and wonder and compassion. And in the case of PPD, of precious moments of joy and wonder at the very beginning of one of the most important relationships of your life. The cost is staggering.

(For many people the cost is compounded by the difficulty in obtaining good treatment. Mental healthcare is expensive. For many people, prohibitively so. It is difficult to find a good provider. It is difficult to get scheduled with a good provider, with many counseling and psychiatric practices maintaining waitlists that stretch out over weeks or even months. But that is beyond the scope of this post.)

I have been fortunate to be surrounded by compassionate, intelligent, and deeply empathic friends and family who have walked alongside me during some of my darkest days of struggle with depression. It is because of this deep well of support that I feel a grave responsibility to my fellow sufferers to speak loudly, boldly, and publically on the matter.

If you or someone you love is battling mental illness right now, I want you to hear this: you are not crazy, things are not hopeless, and you are not alone.

There have been two high profile suicides in the US this week. In the devastation left in their wake, let us pause for a moment to pray for the repose of the souls of the departed and for the comfort of their families, and also take stock of who there might be in our own immediate circle of friends and loved ones in need of our attention and compassion and action. Not everyone who commits suicide has a mental illness, but many people who commit suicide do.

When I read the news about Kate Spade earlier this week I immediately thought of a friend who has been struggling. They share nothing in common other than their gender and their motherhood, but she sprang to mind as I scanned the sad headlines. Mental illness often requires more than compassion and communication and even prayer. But it very often receives not even these minimum attentions. (I do not seek here to minimize the profound power of prayer and God’s ability to heal. But He frequently heals through medicine – few people would treat cancer with prayer and encouragement alone, but frequently those suffering from depression or anxiety are assured that these alone are sufficient.)

We all know someone who is struggling with mental illness. But we might not know that they are struggling with mental illness.

I try to make it a point to ask my new mom friends, acquaintances, and even total strangers at Target how they are doing emotionally when I see them with a new baby in hand. Very often they’re doing great! And a few of them are not. And more than a couple have burst into tears and started pouring out their story to a stranger holding a box of Up and Up diapers, so relieved are they to have been asked the question.

It can feel scary to invite someone to share their burdens with you. But there is nothing scarier than walking through life just floating on the surface, never really knowing what other people are dealing with.

The devil loves mental illness as I’m sure he loves all things that cause people pain. But he seems to have a particular affinity for a disease process that is steeped in secrecy and shame and private suffering.

Shame and secrecy are Satan’s calling cards.

But bringing things out into the light and speaking truth over them? That’s when healing happens. Keeping them bottled up and private and buried beneath vows of “I will never” and “nobody can find out” are much more in line with the plans of the prince of this world.

Jesus wants our pain out front and center so He can work with it. So He can lessen the burden on our shoulders, shifting some of the weight to His own. So He can lead us to the right doctors, the right medicines, the right kinds of therapy and lifestyle changes so that healing can happen.

And healing – the total, miraculous, this-obstacle-has-been-removed kind of healing?

That doesn’t always happen. It just isn’t in the cards for everybody. God has a plan larger and longer than our mortal minds can fathom, and so yes, 14 year-olds die of cancer and babies are stillborn and husbands leave behind grieving families. But God does not will for us to suffer alone, separated from Him and from our brothers and sisters by shame and secrecy and lies. That kind of suffering, my friends,is actually a great working definition of Hell.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental illness, or otherwise feeling despondent, do not be afraid to speak up. To speak life. To speak compassion and kindness and healing and hope over the circumstances and to persist with courage until you find someone who will hear you.

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard from over the years I’ve been writing publically about mental health who felt unheard or uncertain or ashamed after mustering up the courage to broach the subject with someone only to hear crickets or platitudes in response.

Keep trying.

Keep speaking up and reaching out and believing that you are worthy of feeling whole and healthy.

Don’t let an uneducated comment or an inattentive doctor prevent you from seeking the help that you need. And if someone has the courage to share their secret pain with you? Don’t leave them hanging. As awkward or ill-equipped as you might feel, push through the social norms that leave so many of us us cripplingly lonely in this society of ours and help that friend or neighbor or brother who just bared their soul to you find the number of a good therapist. A doctor you’ve heard good things about from someone. Your pastor who is generally a wealth of resources on mental illness from spending hours and hours in the confessional and who has every major counseling practice within a 40-mile radius on speed dial.

You are not alone. Your beloved friend, estranged cousin, barely-familier coworker or your darling daughter are not alone. Be somebody’s Simon. Put your shoulder under that cross and help them get where they need to go when they’re just about ready to quit.

The world needs what you have to offer. But you must offer it!

St. Dymphna, St. John Paul II, St. Teresa of Kolkata, pray for us.

mental health, motherhood, PPD, pregnancy, self care, Suffering

Motherhood + mental illness

September 13, 2017

This is a tough subject to write on, but it’s probably in my top 5 most-emailed about questions/comments, so I know it’s one people are hungry to read about.

There is a frustrating level of stigma and shame which still surrounds mental illness: the way we talk about it on a cultural level, the image of ourselves we present to the world, the words we choose to use when discussing things like medication and therapy, and a whole host of other factors.

Last month a story surfaced about Pope Francis having seen a psychoanalyst for six months during his early priesthood, and the chatter online was pretty evenly split between “good for him for being so open and modeling good mental health” and “was it okay for him to have admitted that?” (with a dash of “aha, I knew he was nuts!” thrown in just because it wouldn’t be the internet without trolls.)

I’ve been really open online about my own struggle with depression and anxiety – especially the postpartum variety – because I think one of the most important things we can do for people with mental illness is invite them into polite society, so to speak, and jettison the antiquated notion that mental illness is somehow shameful, scandalous, and necessarily furtive.

Having now been on and off (but mostly on) antidepressants for more than half my life, I can honestly say I don’t care whether someone thinks less of me for needing them, or whether they believe that depression and anxiety are even real conditions.

You might have great success using an essential oil before bed to calm your anxious nerves, and that’s fantastic! I also like a drop of lavender on my wrist and pillowcase at night, but it doesn’t stop me from popping an SSRI before bed, and nope, I don’t believe that I could easily handle things “naturally” if I just took the time to read up on it. (Because I’ve tried all the things and dabbled in all the naturopathy. Not opposed! But also not sufficient, at least in my case.)

The truth is, mental illness, much like physical illness, is both unique to the individual and also excruciatingly uniform. How depression feels in my brain might be worlds apart from how it feels in someone else’s, but the outward effects are drearily similar: dark thoughts, exhaustion, flashes of inappropriate anger and bouts of crippling sadness and despair.

I frequently hear from women with questions about NFP, and about safely combining pregnancy + drugs. The answer to many of the NFP questions is heartbreakingly obvious: “Is avoiding pregnancy because of mental illness a grave reason?”

YES. Yes. I want to shout from the rooftops “YES! And I am so, so sorry if there is nobody in your life who understands that or is willing to validate that for you.”

Nobody blinks an eye if a woman staring down chemo decides to step off the baby train for 18-24 months. But a mom struggling with a crippling mood disorder gets a raised eyebrow for wondering, in the depths of her suffering and with symptoms raging out of control, if maybe she’s actually “done” having children.

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s okay to be suffering and searching for answers and not totally sure when – or if – you’re going to come up for air.

Now, this is the part of this essay that gets (more) intensely personal, so bear with me. (My virtual living room, my prerogative.)

I am currently 6 months pregnant with baby number 5. I have had crippling postpartum depression and/or anxiety with all but one of my children, and have been on antidepressants for either all or part of each of those pregnancies, including the current internal resident.

I have fielded many, many questions over the years about the safety and wisdom of using medication while pregnant and breastfeeding, and will preface this with the same answer I give to everyone who has ever asked: it is an intensely personal decision, and one that only you can make for yourself, your baby, and your family.

(And before someone @’s me with the “aha, your body your choice!” zinger of a gotcha, let’s be clear that making a decision to treat un underlying medical condition is worlds apart from killing your baby for any reason. For further nuance pls google “intention and moral objective.”)

Now, if your husband, parents, spiritual director, etc, think you should be treating your mental illness with medication and/or professional counseling, take that advice seriously as you make a decision. And when you decide, consider that the common good of your family is the criteria–if you don’t like being on anti-depressants or hate the thought of being vulnerable with a stranger, but your kids need a mom who is able to make dinner, the just thing to do might be to suck it up for their sake.

Mental illness is at once intensely personal and painfully corporate. And for whatever reason, it can often present a bigger target for speculation and strong opinions than most physical illnesses do. This is helpful to keep in mind when someone is confiding in you about their condition, because it can be more tempting with mental illness to offer advice and recommendations perhaps not rooted in good science and best medical practices, but in internet-derived research and personal anecdotes.

For example “I cut out gluten and now I don’t need Prozac anymore so you probably don’t either” or “Using essential oils completely cleared up my anxiety and you really should try something natural before you put toxic drugs into your body!”

True though those two statements may be for the person making them, that does not grant them a blanket status of efficacy when applied to other people’s conditions.

One person might well be able to get their blood sugar under control through diet alone, and another may need an insulin pump for life.

Every body – and brain – is different, and I personally thank God that we have multiple choice options when it comes to mental health. My life would have been very, very different 100 years ago, and not a day goes by that I am not grateful for the privilege of living in a first world country with access to life-changing medication.

A large part of that gratitude stems from the fact that because these medications do exist, and because I have found different options that my body responds well to, I am able to continue to be open to life.

I would not have been able to continue having children without SSRIs. I say that without a hint of hyperbole or a smidgeon of exaggeration. The ability of my brain to apply this class of drug to my particular chemical makeup and smooth out the rough edges is nothing short of miraculous, and life on these meds versus life off of them is very, very different.

I’ve found at the tender age of 34 the perfect combination of diet, medication, therapy, prayer, and supplements that makes things pretty darn good. For now.

It’s a tricky thing when hormones are involved (and, increasingly, as science is demonstrating, inflammation) because they’re designed to fluctuate. So what works one month (or maybe even one part of the month) might not work as well 2 weeks later.

Pregnancy is generally a time of smoothed-outness for me, emotionally speaking. I can get by with a low dose of an SSRI (Zoloft is my doctor’s preferred pregnancy prescription and is working well for me this time) a low dose of LDN (low dose naltrexone, addresses inflammation and my autoimmune thyroid disease), a desiccated thyroid medication, progesterone supplementation, and a strictly (and I do mean strictly) gluten free diet.

I’ve also found – not that this is a biggie during pregnancy, but other times, womp womp – that I can no longer tolerate most kinds of alcohol. Single tear. Beer’s off the table for obvious reasons, but sadly, in my advancing middle age, so is wine of every color and variety. Cider is similarly catastrophic.

Over the years I’ve engaged in a fair amount of cognitive behavioral therapy, healing prayer and deliverance, naturopathic supplementation, regular exercise, and chiropractic care. All of these things have helped tremendously. But for me, at least while I’m in my childbearing years, they haven’t been sufficient.

And that’s okay.

I’m okay with being “not okay,” and with needing a little extra help to get through these demanding investment years of building a family.

Of course I worry about possible adverse side effects from the medicine, just like I worry about the 5 weeks I was too nauseous to choke down my prenatal vitamins, the hormones and chemicals in my tap water, the other drivers on the road with me, the bacteria in the swimming pool, and any potential unknown genetic time bombs lurking within my DNA.

But ultimately, this baby’s health and his or her safety – as is also the case for my other children – is beyond my control. When I send them off to school each morning, it’s a trust exercise in best decisions made weighed against possible adverse outcomes.

I could breastfeed each little angel for 2 full years, avoid every vaccine or vaccinate to a full schedule, feed them an exclusively organic diet, avoid all inflammatory food groups, restrict all devices emitting harmful electromagnetic pulses, and still end up with a 4-year-old with a brain tumor one day.

But the essence of parenting is making the best possible decisions possible for all parties involved, using the information at hand, a well-formed conscience, and a dash of common sense.

And the essence of motherhood is making a sincere gift of self without annihilating one’s self in the process. A shattered, broken down mother is not nearly so beneficial to her children as a sane, whole one. And to the extent that we can take care of ourselves in order to give the most to our families, we should.

I am a better mom when I’m on medication. And I feel no shame over that. What I do feel shame for are the months and months I’ve stubbornly tried to go it alone, gritting my teeth and yelling (so much yelling), refusing to do the thing that could help because it wasn’t natural, it wasn’t ideal, and it wasn’t what I wanted.

But sometimes it’s not about what I want. Most of the time, turns out, according to this motherhood gig.

I hope if you’re reading this and are struggling with mental illness yourself, you find a little respite here. I hope you’ll find that after reading this you feel more able to bring your fears to someone and ask for help shouldering the burden.

Because you are not alone in your illness, and you needn’t suffer alone. And a psychological cross needn’t also be a death sentence for one’s fertility.

Other women are out there making similarly brave and difficult choices: they’re called mothers. And I want to invite them into the conversation to share their stories.

(I invite you over to the blog’s Facebook page to join the discussion and share your own experience there.)

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, infertility, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, Parenting, PPD, Sex

NFP in real life: hard, but worth it {an interview with the Denver Catholic}

July 24, 2017

Jenny Uebbing, who writes at Mama Needs Coffee, recently asked her readership, “What do you want/need from the Church in order to live NFP?” and the resulting comments were numerous … and eye-opening.

Many people are seriously struggling with living it out.

The difficulties are as varied as the people themselves: Crosses in all shapes and sizes, including infertility on one end of the spectrum and super-abundant fertility on the other, making it hard to space children apart. Long periods of abstinence, medical problems, feeling isolated from instructors, finding trained doctors or other like-minded people are just some of the other common hardships.

“People are so hungry for support from the Church, who they’re trying to be faithful to,” Uebbing said. “And a lot of people are feeling that the Church doesn’t see them in this particular struggle, or have anything to offer past marriage prep short of an emergency intervention when they’re on the brink of divorce. There’s no middle ground.”

….

(Read the rest over at the Denver Catholic)

Catholic Spirituality, deliverance, guest post, mental health, PPD, Suffering

Two Hearts for Healing counseling (and a special giveaway)

March 3, 2017

Today I’m honored to have my beautiful friend Karen share a little bit about the incredible work she is doing in the world of counseling and mental health. Karen and I have been dear friends since our FUS days, where we lived in a literal (former) crackhouse and, fun fact, her older brother, Fr. Bryan, witnessed our marriage. (Technically theologically incorrect to say he “married” us, so. #theologynerd.)

I pray that Karen’s words will be a gift to you all, and that you are able to take advantage of the generous giveaway she has offered to 20 of my awesome readers.

Hello to Jenny’s amazing readers! My name is Karen, and I am so honored to have the opportunity to share with you all some of what God has been putting on my heart. I am a licensed professional counselor by trade, but to put it more simply, I am someone who just has a burning desire to see people healed and living the abundant life Jesus promised to give us (John 10:10). But before I jump into that, I wanted to just give you a little background about how I know Jenny. 🙂

Jenny and I have known each other now for about 10 years. We first met when I was lucky enough to be her housemate while I was getting my MA in counseling at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Immediately, we connected and understood each other because we both had similar less-than-pious undergrad experiences and were longing for that deeper encounter with God that Franciscan seemed to provide. Together we began a journey of faith and healing where our hearts and lives were completely transformed by the grace of God, and a life-long friendship was formed. We continue that journey together today, and that is honestly what brings me to write to you here.

God has given me a burning desire to bring healing in the lives of His children. For about as long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a counselor, but to completely honest, once I finished my Masters degree and began the actual work of counseling, I became very discouraged.

Despite all my desire, efforts and training, I was not seeing much real or lasting transformation or healing happening in the lives of my clients. And what I came to realize after working for a few years in a community-based practice, was that not many of my colleagues were seeing much dramatic transformation – or even really even expecting it to happen – either.

The predominant expectation was just that symptoms could be “managed” well with counseling and medication. The problem was, I didn’t sign up to be a counselor in order to lead my clients to a life of “symptom management”. Of course, I see the great value in learning coping skills and how to manage the emotional crises that are intrinsically part of the human experience, but deep in my heart, I knew that God had more to offer his children. Since modern psychology has pretty much divorced itself from God, it’s not surprising that healing wasn’t happening when the Author of all healing had been removed from the equation.

I decided to take a break from full-time counseling after having my first child in 2009. While I did take on a few part-time counseling jobs, none of the work really resonated in my soul because it still seemed to be more-or-less “symptom management,” but then in 2013, everything changed…

It was during this time that God allowed me to experience first-hand, for the first time, what so many of my clients had struggled with. Shortly after giving birth to my third child, I had my first major battle with depression. It was a very strange experience for me of being “on the other side,” but it is exactly what led me to the work I am doing today.

Through my own experience, God led me to uncover the root causes of what I was feeling, and by the grace of God I received profound healing and transformation. As I was facing my own struggle with self-worth, failure, rejection and abandonment, I was filled with this certain knowledge that God had the answer to these struggles, and that He truly wanted to heal me. Through prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I was introduced to a “new world” of counseling, led by the Holy Spirit, where the head meets the heart and deep healing truly happens. I found a lasting freedom, rooted in Christ, and now I am on a mission now to share it with others.

I want to take a moment to elaborate here on one of the main things that sets this kind of Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-led counseling apart from the secular counseling experience. One of my biggest obstacles as a counselor in the past was that my clients typically had a huge disconnect between their heads and their hearts. Modern psychology talks on and on about the connections between one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors. You hear endless talk about how you need to change your thoughts in order to change your, feelings and then change your behaviors, and that is absolutely true. The reason many people are depressed and anxious is because they have anxious and depressed thoughts and beliefs, and IF you are able to help them change those anxious and depressed thoughts, they will feel better and make better decisions about their behavior.

But (and this is a big but), how does one “talk themselves into” believing the truth?

My clients would always confess that they knew intellectually that all the negative things they were believing about themselves were probably not true, but they didn’t know how to change those beliefs in their hearts.

No amount of positive self-talk about how wonderful and beautiful and special and worthy they were seemed able to penetrate their hearts and “take root” so that they could walk in true, lasting freedom.

This, my friends, is what I believe is the absolute work of the Holy Spirit. I (and any other counselor for that matter) can talk until I am blue-in-the face about the truth of someone’s identity, but only the Divine Counselor can actually make that truth take root in the heart, and it usually happens when God leads that person to the root wound where that lie about their identity first took hold.

This is the difference between what man can do and what God can do… Only God can read the heart and speak to its depths in a way that brings real and lasting change. And this is what God is allowing me to lead others to through my practice. He has SO MUCH MORE for us than we can even imagine (Eph 3:20).

I want to say quickly here too that I am not at all disregarding the reality that there is a physiological component at work when it comes to mental health struggles. Science has proven that the neurotransmitters in our brains – like serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine – all play a major roll in mood and emotions. I have witnessed the profound ways that medication has helped my clients, so I the last thing I want is for this to come off as a dismissal of the crucial advances of science in this area in the past 50 years. I definitely advocate for the use of medication when it is needed and helpful.

My main point, however, is to make the case for the Author of all healing, the Divine Counselor, who truly knows the causes for our heartache, and who I believe truly wants to bring healing and freedom to EVERY mental health struggle we face. I have a very hard time believing that our loving Father determined that any person would struggle with something like depression or anxiety for a lifetime. I believe these struggles are permitted in our lives to help point the way to the wound that needs be healed, in the same way that the pain in our leg points to the broken bone that needs be reset.

Without the pain focused in a certain place, we wouldn’t know where or how something needed to be healed.

I believe with all my heart that God wants ALL of His children to walk in freedom. Every one of us.

So many people are walking around in prisons of fear, sadness, and shame; and when they look around at someone else who doesn’t seem to have those struggles (hello, curse of social media!), they believe a LIE that God just doesn’t have a plan for their happiness.

It’s as if people believe that God has a good and joy-filled life for some people, and a difficult and miserable existence for others. But this is not the truth. He wants to grant the gift of his joy and peace to all of his children (John 14:27; 15:11), but the effects of sin in our world have stolen this gift from so many people today.

But the GOOD NEWS is that Jesus died on the cross to grant us the restoration and freedom that we so deeply long for! In the next life, yes, but also in this life.

He longs to grant us this healing so that we can become WHOLE – the person He had in mind for us to be when He first created us – before sin took hold and wreaked havoc in our lives.

It is the pursuit of this WHOLENESS that is the key to the truly HOLY life that we are each called to lead.

So, my prayer for you is that if you find yourself struggling in a certain area of your life, whether or not that carries a clinical diagnosis (maybe you struggle with anger or self-worth or any number of other issues), I pray that instead of beating yourself up about your struggles, you instead turn to God and ask him to shed light on those areas in need of healing in your heart so that you can continue to persevere in JOY and PEACE on the path of sanctity.

Peace I leave with you, My own peace I give to you; a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid. John 14:27

Karen has generously offered a free 30 minute introductory virtual counseling session (via Skype, FaceTime, or by phone) to the first 20 readers who contact her at [email protected] and mention this post.

Connect with Karen on Facebook and visit her online at www.twoheartscounselingandhealing.com.

motherhood, Parenting, PPD, pregnancy, self care

The motherly art of rest

August 4, 2016

Dear mothers of the world, lend me your ears: Motherhood, including-but-not-limited-to childbirth and recovery: we might be doing it wrong.

Actually, I’m almost positive we are. And my suspicions were confirmed a hundredfold a little less than a year ago after the birth of Luke, when I actually took my mom’s – and the rest of the developed/ing world’s – advice, and, wait for it, rested. Like I had just done something really hard.

I pretended that giving birth was a big deal, and then I acted like someone who’d just been through a big deal and took to my bed for a solid 10 days.

I mean, I got up and took showers and tried to load the dishwasher once or six times before talking myself down (and crawling back under the covers while silently chanting DO NOT CARE.)

Sounds revolutionary, no?

But it was. And remembering back to the long, hot summer where I was anxiously nesting and rearranging and logging 2 or 3 mile walks every afternoon trying to coax the little guy out, but was instead actually dooming myself to 3 weeks of nightly prodromal labor sessions to the tune of 3 or 4 hours, I cringe. Because my poor body was tired.

Imagine that. 4 babies in 5 years and I was tired.

And as it turned out, no amount of physical exertion was going to help me recover from being physically and emotionally and mentally overtaxed.

So not only did I not convince baby to come early, but I was actually so exhausted that once labor did start for good it was not a smooth ride. Contractions were disorganized and there were long stretches of inactivity that drove me and my nurses crazy because after you’ve been in the hospital for a day, all parties involved hope to have someone to show for it.

Finally, thanks to a mix of peanut ball positioning/Pitocin/prayers, Luke did come, and he was a happy little man with high Apgar scores and a winning newborn smile. But when I think back on last summer and how tired I was, how hard I pushed myself, and how exhausted my state of mind when I went into labor, I feel a little sorry for that poor mom.

Next time (presuming there may one day be a next time) I want to do things differently. I don’t want to fight my body. I don’t want to fling myself angrily at the last month of pregnancy like a raging mid-level manager with a sloppy staff and a year-end quota to meet. I don’t want to try to punish and cajole and trick and coax.

There is something to be said for resting, especially in a high-powered job like motherhood. There is a paradoxical and almost magical quality to the idea that you can advance your performance by dialing it down a notch. That taking a time out to regroup and to simply power down can actually make you more effective in your work.

I am still learning this lesson. I learn it anew every day when we reach 1pm, the little kids sleeping or resting and a pile of dishes lurking in the sink, toys scattered around the family room, food scraps under the table and melted popsicles littering the deck. The clutter competes for my attention, and I know that if I put my head down and get to work, I can bang it all out in 30 minutes or so.

But lately? I’m choosing more often not to. Even though I’m teetering on no-longer-technically-postpartum here at 11 months out, I’m easing myself back into a period of intentional rest. So I look at the filthy kitchen, I grit my teeth, and I surrender the mess, for the moment at least, heading to the couch with a rosary and my Kindle.

I need rest in order to be a good mom. I need rest in order to be a decent human being, period.

So much of the anger, the frustration, the short-temperedness and the exhaustion that have marked my greatest struggles in motherhood can be traced back to a basic lack of self care. And for me, sometimes I neglect self care to the tune of getting one more load of laundry done, or scrubbing the kitchen floor. Sad but true.

Sure, the baby does not sleep. The 4 year old wakes up at 3 am and stands 4 inches from my unconscious head, rasping for for ice water. There are last-minute deadlines to hit, there are documents the mortgage company needs, there are events I RSVP’d to that I forgot all about until my calendar dings a 30 minute alert.

But I can protect my rest.

And I must. Because nobody else – not my well-meaning husband who is gone all day, not my long-distance best friends, not my sisters – is going to protect it for me. They can’t. It’s my job. And it is critical that I perform it, because I am a wretched human being and a really disappointing mom when I don’t.

When I’m yelling at the kids about something that isn’t serious enough to merit a raised voice, when I’m weeping over something that normally wouldn’t raise my blood pressure, when I’m driving somewhere 5 minutes late, panic rising in my chest like a mounting thunder storm, 90% of the time it is because I am insufficiently rested.

And if the rest isn’t available in a solid, uninterrupted 8 hour chunk overnight, then I have to make it elsewhere.

I owe it to myself, to my family, and to the God who created me in His image, to work and to rest in proportion.

If God Himself needed an entire day off in the course of Creation, how can I expect to get by without quality down time?

Rest is built into our vocations, intrinsic to the work we are called to, and necessary to the daily rhythm of a successful and fruitful life.

How could I have gone so many years without realizing this?

Because we live in a culture that worships busyness. Because I’m “just” a stay at home mom with something to prove to herself and to the rest of the world, having internalized the message of “not enough” from a career-focused culture. Because I don’t use my rest well, and end up frittering away hours of time on the internet or folding laundry or Accomplishing Something Important, realizing in a belated panic that it’s closing in on midnight and the baby will be up in 6 hours and it’s going to be another coffee-fueled Tuesday.

That’s not good enough.

It’s not good enough for a mama who is easing back into life with her newest little one and trying to figure out life with 3 or 4 or 6 kids at home, and it’s not good enough for a mother with a brood of 4 little not-newborn kittens who have lots of energy and need lots of attention.

A wise woman once pointed out that coffee and wine will only get you so far. (And despite the hastily concocted and now permanently-stuck title of this blog, I do not wish to live in a manner that is only sustained by balancing caffeine and alcohol in an endless 12 hour cycle.) Coffee and wine are great, but not as life-sustaining medicine. As celebratory indulgences. Italian style, not suburban-american-housewife-style.

Things are starting to ramble here, but the point I’m coming back around to is that there have been so many moments in my short journey down motherhood lane that have been excruciating in direct proportion to how little I’ve been resting. Yelling at my kids? I’m exhausted. Can’t lose weight? It’s because I’m using sugar and easy carbs to mimic energy to keep up with my life. Stressed as hell and no time for prayer? It’s because I watched 2 episodes of something on Netflix and went to bed at 11:40 because I deserved some “me time.” Which I will now pay for the in the form of longest afternoon of your entire life plus a side of flopping preschool banshee.

Rest is important. Take it from a recovered shingles sufferer with a perfectionist streak and a persistent need to Please and Impress All the People.

I’m still learning to rest. And to be okay with rest, and all it’s apparent lack of productivity. I have to remind myself that after all, some of the most important work God has done in me isn’t evident to the outside observer.

But I do hope the peace will become more evident as I learn to be a mom who rests, and who believes herself to be worthy of rest.

Aaaaaaaand I think I’ll just bookmark this to read back to myself about a week from now when we close on the house and commence a month-long period of squalor and chaos. (Future Jenny, it will not kill you to sleep in a yet-unpacked house. But it may come close if you burn all the midnight oil in order to get things to 110% by day 3.)

About Me, PPD

30 Days to Calm

October 19, 2015

Jenna is one of my favorites. Her blog is always a joy to read, but it’s her vulnerability and creativity that I find most captivating.

A couple years ago during my one of my struggles with PPD, she and I connected in a more meaningful way when she shared about her own experiences with anxiety and motherhood and medication. It was so comforting to have a peer-to-peer encounter with someone else who was “like me:” newly married, fresh at mothering, and clawing at the surface of normal life under the crushing weight of mental illness.

I don’t really even like to use the term “mental illness” to describe depression and anxiety because there’s a definite physicality to them, for one, and because there is a sort of “less than” stigma attached to suffering an illness that is mental in origin. If you could only calm down. If you could only snap out of it. If you could only, you know, heal yourself.

If only.

Thankfully I’ve been spared the specter of PPD following my most recent pregnancy. I thank God for that. And I also thank Him for the resources and lifelines available for the future, and for other sufferers of these sometimes silent diseases.

One such resource is Jenna’s new book/journal combo, 30 Days to Calm. It’s an encouraging and practical and, perhaps most importantly, tangible resource designed specifically to combat recurrent anxiety issues. And it’s tremendously useful in meeting that deep need to do something when you feel the first pinpricks of a panic attack set in.

Because I’m feeling so good right now, I wasn’t sure how engaging I’d find the book. But tonight while loading the dishwasher, I mentally committed to doing nothing else beyond that task, to enter fully into that moment. I thought about how grateful I was for the convenience of a dishwasher, for the family whose dishes I was washing, for the clean, warm kitchen I worked in. I touched each glass and marveled at the wealth that allowed me to use clean water to rinse dozens of kitchen items twice a day, if need be.

And I knew that I had, indeed, found the book useful as I employed the “be right there” technique, with great success, to that load of plates and forks.

Whether you’re looking for a resource to share with a struggling friend or searching for tools to better manage your own anxiety, 30 Days to Calm is a great option, and it’s available on Jenna’s (adorable!) Etsy shop.

About Me, birth story, breastfeeding, PPD, pregnancy

Why we chiro

September 11, 2015

All four kids are asleep and it’s still 30 minutes till my 8:45 bedtime so…why not blog about it?
I wanted to take a minute to shout out to a very special doctor in my life, and throw a little praise his way for how much his services have impacted our health this past year.

Last September when we were just starting to really worry about Genevieve and her chart-eschewing growth rates and gross motor apathy, a friend recommended that we see everyone’s favorite chiropractor (at least in Denver), Dr. Mario Chavez at Vita Nova Spinal Care, a NUCCA practitioner. I was tempted to file it away with all the other advice we’d been given as “to investigate at a later date,” but something nudged me to make an appointment.

Dave and I have been under regular chiropractic care for years, I as a former high-volume athlete and car accident aficionado and him as a guy who just inherited bad joints, but our former chiropractor was of the “whack ’em and crack ’em” school. I always felt great while he was working on me, but I was also always a little bit afraid he was going to break my neck. Also, my back usually started hurting again about 20 minutes into the drive home, so…not the best use of copay.

Our experience with Vita Nova has been utterly different from any other chiropractic care we’ve ever received. Which is part of what makes me want to write about it.

I’ve definitely had conversations with medical doctors and physical therapists and watched their eyes glaze over or roll ever so slightly at the mention of the c-word, so I know there’s some debate over the legitimacy or efficacy of the discipline, but we’ve seen such encouraging results in our entire family that I wanted to document them here in the event it might be helpful to someone else. And I’m a really big fan of both/and: we use both western medicine and alternative care, because if it works, it works! (And sometimes it takes both antibiotics and essential oils to kick an ear infection, you know?)

The two most dramatic stories in our family’s chiro experience are probably mine and Evie’s, so I’ll go with those.

Evie started seeing Dr. Chavez every week or two last September, and within the first two months we started to see tangible results. She’d been in physical therapy concurrent with chiropractic care, but most of her PT sessions involved lots of stiffened, panicked screaming and resistance to any sort of movement she wasn’t familiar with. This included hands and knees, kneeling, tummy time, rolling from front to back and back to front, and last but not least, standing/bearing weight on her legs.

After her first few chiropractic adjustments we started to see her visibly relax. Her little legs had been drawn up tightly most of the time, but gradually she started to relax them. Her hip joints, so tight that we’d had X-rays done (per the recommendation of the orthopedics team at Children’s Hospital) to rule out hip dysplasia, started to rotate more freely and she achieved almost a full range of motion. And then, best of all, about 5 months into her treatment, she finally started to crawl and to bear weight on her legs.

She was 17 months before she dropped her butt-scoot entirely, and 18 months before she walked, but she did it.

And now she runs.

And she’s very, very hard to catch.

I’m not saying she never would have gotten here otherwise, but it sure helped things along.

Once I started seeing Evie make progress under chiropractic care I was confidant that I wanted to sign up for the whole family plan, so we crunched the numbers and decided to make the investment by paying up front for a year of care at a substantial discount. I promptly got pregnant a month or so into our plan, and I believe that chiropractic was one of the best things I could have done for my 32-year old multiparous body.

Throughout Luke’s pregnancy I gained ridiculous amounts of weight (as always) and managed to keep a fairly impressive level of activity up (per usual), but I did not experience the usual back problems that generally come with trimesters 2 and 3.

I slept better, I kept up my workouts until the very day I went into labor, and I didn’t experience the excruciating low-back pain that had accompanied all my previous pregnancies.

Most impressive, though, has been the postpartum period. I was absolutely exhausted from a demanding and unpredictable labor and a somewhat traumatic delivery, and to top it off I was experiencing some of the worst-case-scneario side effects from the (two!) epidural(s) that you read about on Baby Center at 4 am and shudder while swearing silently.

When I would lie down or rise too quickly from sitting, an electric zap would run the length of my spinal cord, beginning at the area of the epidural catheter insertion and zinging its way up to the base of my skull. It felt like someone was shocking the inside of my spine with a cattle prod, and the reverb was traveling up to my brain.

I googled it (of course I did) and as I read other women’s stories, I concluded that I was, of course, doomed to suffer these aftereffects well into my 50’s because I was stupid enough to put narcotics into my spinal fluid (again), and that my number had finally been called. I’m not dramatic. At all.

About a week and a half after Luke was born I had my first adjustment (and he had his second, much-needed after his shoulder dystocia tussle en route to the outside world) and guess what? I felt one final mighty zing during the appointment and then…nothing.

I have had zero pain or side effects from those stupid misplaced meds since.

Also worth mentioning, though I can’t prove the connection with hard data:

I’ve never had as much milk or had as much success breastfeeding. And Luke is the first baby to “get it” so soon after birth. Within 8 days or so we were chugging along like old pros.
He sleeps beautifully with minimal fussing or gas.
He is super alert and has the head control of a grown man.
His Apgars were off the hook despite having a distressing birth with some minor oxygen deprivation
I don’t have postpartum depression (this one’s a stretch because yes I’m also doing progesterone shots and yes, both sets of grandparents are semi local now and yes, I have wonderful sisters and friends around me to help carry the load. But I’m sure that there’s a tiny correlation all the same.)

In short? My body is healing properly because it’s properly aligned and able to do its thing. And I feel good. Tired, yes. Overwhelmed? Frequently. But hopeful, too, because I can observe the healing and the progress that’s being made.

If you’re local to Colorado I highly recommend you make an appointment with Dr. Chavez and see about getting your own “justment,” as Joey calls them, because life is short, and a healthy body can do a lot of good in this world.

breastfeeding, Family Life, Marriage, motherhood, Parenting, PPD, pregnancy

Bringing home bebe: Surviving week 1

August 21, 2015

I promise I’ve been percolating a birth story for you fine people, but mostly I’ve been breastfeeding. Which does not lend itself to much higher-level cognition or, actually, typing.

Let me preface this by saying that little Luke is a very, very “good” baby, as far as such a statement can be applied to a tiny unique human being. What I mean by good is that he nurses enthusiastically, sleeps a decent amount, and is almost supernaturally calm during his wakeful times. In sum: he’s the same baby he was in utero. Calm, placid movements, no insane periods of tumbling and kicking, and aside from the ferocious Dorito cravings (and subsequent heartburn) no major pregnancy pains. I mean, none that were his fault, per se.

When he was born he had a bit of a distressing final exit, but once arrived he blinked and calmly looked around the delivery room, checking out dad’s face and then settling on mine. The still slightly jumpy nurses watched him warily, wanting – but holding back, for which I am eternally grateful – to cut that cord and get him under the observation lights, but it became clear after about a minute that this baby was in no way distressed. He was just very, very chill. His 9/9 Apgar score underlined that for everyone, so we were mostly left alone for our first hour. And it was heaven.

I did make the rookie mistake of letting all the amassed visitors who had somehow seen the bat signal (I literally had told nobody but my sister and Dave’s mom that we were in labor) come tumbling into the delivery room with well wishes and tears less than 30 minutes after his arrival, so that delayed nursing for us until about the 1 hour mark. Once he got going though, he went to town, and I, tottering on the precipice of 40 hours without sleep, let him do pretty much whatever he wanted. Rookie mistake number 2.

By the next morning things were headed down to the dirty south in the nursing department because of my sleep-deprived inattention to form, and really, until yesterday, there was a lot of pain. A lot. The nurses were vigilant about checking Luke’s blood sugar every 90 minutes for the first 12 hours post delivery, because “big guys take a dip,” and sure enough, his did. So every 90 minutes he got a heel stick, I got punched in the stomach. And I basically nursed him in a zombie-like state of “oops did I drop him, nope, he’s magically back in the bassinet. Whew.”

Needless to say we checked out at the 24 hour mark on the dot. Much sleep. Such restful.

Once we got home I was able to deploy my arsenal of top 5 must haves for newborn survival mode, and thus we come to the long and rambling point of this post. Thanks for hanging on.

1. The rock n play. This thing is everything. We only started using it when a friend lent it to us for newborn Evie, and not coincidentally, it turns out, she was our very first baby with a sleep setting. We have the super simple model that does nothing but hold baby snugly at a 45 degree incline and it is amazing. 3-4 hour stretches of sleep amazing. And no spitting up. I can reach down from bed and rock him and I can drag it around the house and keep him from the roving paws of his adoring fans. 5 stars.

2. This pump. It’s technically my sister’s and maybe it’s become a literal sisterhood-of-the-traveling-pump situation as 3 of us have now employed it at one time or another, but we all have our own connective gear and whatever. I have a lesser-quality single side Medela of my own, but nothing beats the Pump n’ Style for efficiency and power. Which are, of course, what you look for in a diesel truck. Or a breast pump. We had to take a 8-hour pumping “vacation” this week while I healed and it was a life saver. As the baby gets older I’ll generally try to pump 1x a day to have some emergency milk in the freezer for when it’s 5 am and I’ve been up 5 times and daddy is relatively rested and ready with the bottle.

3. These swaddle blankets. I bought knock offs this time at TJMaxx and they’re just as awesome in terms of size and feel, but I can tell they’re not as sturdy and we’ll see how they hold up in the wash. Either way, you need a big, thin muslin swaddle blanket or three to wrap baby burritos, function as a floor changing table, and even a nursing cover. And a head scarf for those adventuresome forays to Trader Joe’s. Just kidding. Maybe.

4. These pacifiers. When Joey was a baby I remember crouching in his room in horror at 2 am sometime during week three, sobbing from sleep deprivation and the fear that if we retrieved the hospital-issued soothie from the trunk of the car, nipple confusion would set in immediately and he would never go to college. Well, we caved and he started sleeping a little more with the extra sucking satisfaction and we went on to nurse for 13 months. No word on college admissions yet, but he does know his colors.

5. All the domestic help you can get/afford + Progesterone injections. Super normal things to add to a baby registry, right? Well if you’ve ever danced with post partum depression (PPD) you know that it’s not an event you want to attend a second time. Ever. So far I’ve had it horrifically bad twice, and moderately bad once, and I’m crossing all my still-swollen fingers and toes that this 4th times the charm in terms of avoiding the big bad P. As soon as I get near delivery day, my wonderful doctor writes me a prescription for the progesterone to be filled as needed. This time that need surfaced on day 2, so Dave was able to hunt down a pharmacy that carried the goods and we were off on our every-other-day injection adventure. So far it’s helped to stabilize my moods and stave off the super crazy, (though, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice, if you struggle with depression or anxiety, do not take Percocet. Don’t ask me how I know. Gulp.) and in my doctor’s words: “it either helps or it doesn’t, but it can’t hurt. And if it’s going to help you, it will help you right away.”

True.

I’ve also been shamelessly accepting any and all offers of help, babysitting, meal deliveries, etc. The big kids are a little sensitive about all the upheaval and the start of the new school year, but we’ve farmed them out for afternoons at the park or play dates a couple times this week, and we’ve had some helpers at the house too, in the form of my college-aged sisters, Dave’s wonderful little sis, and my trusty mother’s helper who is currently steam mopping the disgusting kitchen floor. I wasn’t sure it was worth it to have her come today since Dave’s still home, but it turns out it was. And he was able to be spelled for a morning of work and silent coffee consumption.

Oh, and if you can and if he can, if there’s any way at all that it can be done, have your husband home for the first week.

Dave doesn’t have paternity leave, but he had accrued PTO and a rough idea of when baby was coming, so he planned his work projects accordingly. For which I am eternally grateful.

7 full days of breastfeeding boot camp and netflix in bed and trying your very hardest to not care that the floors look like that and the laundry is piling up, because thank God daddy is home to wrangle big kids and cook mac n cheese and give you the incomparable gift of a week-long baby moon.

I’ve been reading this and repeating Blythe’s mantra of DO NOT CARE over and over again, because taking it easy does not come that way to be, and it’s almost a force of nature to resist the siren call of the vacuum. But I’m recovering a lot faster for all the resting, I can tell. And I’m making way more milk (tmi? Whatever, we’re in full mommy blog mode today) than I usually am at 7 days out, and I’m gonna chalk that up to all the resting and water-drinking I’ve been doing.

The normally stoic bebe is crying out for his 11vensies, so I must away. But thank you for all the prayers and well wishes on the Facebook page. And Luke says hi.

motherhood, PPD, pregnancy

9 months on, 9 months off

September 17, 2014

I realized yesterday as I was bent upside down coaxing volume into my limp postpartum locks that on the morning of Evie’s 9 month birthday, exactly 9 months to the day of her arrival ex utero, I felt like myself. And I was so grateful.

My eldest son punctuated my moment of epiphany by wandering into my bathroom, looking at my washed and styled hair, cocking his head to one side and announcing: “You don’t look like my Mommy. Why did you do that to your hairs?”

It’s called a curling iron, son. And your future wife can thank me for setting that bar niiiiiice and low.

When Joey was a baby I obsessed over the concept of “nine months on, nine months off” and was fanatical about trying to coax the nearly 60 lbs I’d gained off my petite frame. I couldn’t fathom a future where I walked around borderline obese, and I lamented the boxes and boxes of White Cheddar Cheezits I’d thoughtlessly tossed back while cooking my plump firstborn turkey. Jillian Michaels and I did hard time together most afternoons, and I tried my pre baby pants on once a week, crying in defeat when they wouldn’t ascend any further than my hips.

When I finally arrived at the magical number (not even on the scale, but in the pants) I promptly got pregnant a second time and resigned myself to more of the same, only with 100% more gym dedication. I still gained 50 lbs, but I worked out 6 days a week and I was definitely a “fitter” second time preggo. And you know what? The weight came off a little easier, too. But both times I spent a good amount of my post partum “recovery” period doing anything but recovering. Mostly I vacillated between binging on tortilla chips and sticking to a strictly-regimented Weight Watcher’s plan which imperiled my milk supply and left me feeling guilty and anxious. (Disclaimer: WW is probably a good fit for lots of people! But for me, with my history of eating disorder, it was a match made in body shaming hell.)

This time has been different. This time I’ve been more aware that yes, it’s frustrating to be bigger and softer and slower than “normal,” whatever exactly normal means anymore, but that it is, in fact, temporary. I’ve spent more time enjoying the baby and less time bemoaning the body. Do I still bitch about my love handles to my sister and cry on the phone to my best friend about my pants size? I mean, absolutely, but it’s not the all-consuming focus that it once was.

I wanted to share with you guys some things that I think have helped this time around be my most pleasant postpartum period, mental illness aside.

First, I bought a new wardrobe. Not like a new, new wardrobe, but I went to a couple cheap stores and picked up a 2-sizes-too-big but fits just right right now pair of dark wash, high rise jeans and a plethora of flowy, forgiving tops. I also kept my Blanqi locked firmly in the torso position for the entire 4th trimester, and I was happy. And so were my sprung out hips.

There’s nothing more depressing (too me, anyway) in the sartorial realm than shimmying into a big-ass pair of blown out maternity jeans while your 3 week old voms on the bed beside you. Nothing quite like it. Do yourself a favor and retire those belly banded beauties as soon as you check out of hotel hospital. (Unless you had a c-section, because I’ve heard they’re easy on the scars. But otherwise I really can’t fathom a reason to put yourself through that.) Old Navy and Walmart are pretty much everywhere, and you can score yourself a $15 pair of skinnies to get you through the dark times.

Second, set measurable, realistic fitness goals, not weight loss goals. My FitBit and the step-counter app I downloaded were invaluable tools that helped me hit my 10,000 step per day target starting back in the spring, and they helped me reacquaint my tired mommy body with physical activity not involving pushing or lifting. On the (many) days I didn’t get any further than yoga pants, I at least had some hard evidence for the work I’d put it.

On the matter of physical fitness, it helped me tremendously to retrain my brain to see activity as directly correlated to overall wellness and success in mothering, not only as a means by which I might attain blue jean nirvana. Once I stopped seeing “working out” as some vaguely punitive means by which I might become hot one day and started realizing the real, tangible benefits of physical activity on my energy levels and domestic acumen, something clicked for me and I wanted to work out. Not just to have “worked out,” but I craved the actual process instead of obsessing over the desirable end. Game changer, big time.

Finally, I embraced the stupid expression. At least internally. Sitting in Mass with a gassy newborn and catching sight of a skinny friend a few rows up, bouncing her 3-week-old on a slender hip? 9 months on, 9 months off.

Seeing on social media that your college roommate just ran her best ever half marathon time while her 3 month old watched from the sidelines? 9 months on, 9 months off.

Standing in the dressing room at H&M with a 7-month-old sausage strapped to your chest, trying to translate European sizes into US and feeling a stroke coming on when you realize your current size? 9 months on, 9 months off.

Tugging in vain at the zipper on your favorite cocktail dress while your 14-month old tugs at your suddenly shorter hemline, impeding your preparations for a long-awaited date night?

9 months on, 9 months off was just a number, after all.

You were never actually going to *get* your pre baby body back, anyway. Because that body was transformed and transfigured by new life. And no amount of low carbing or tread milling or denim shimmying can erase those effects.

But know this mama: there is a day in your future where you will see your altered and perhaps slightly haggard reflection in your bathroom mirror and you will feel like you again, promise. It might take a few months longer than you expect, and it might happen on a totally different timeline than you envisioned, but she’s in there. You’re in there. I promise.

And happiest 3/4’s birthday to my petite principessa. You’re certainly not the size your mama envisioned that you would be today, Genevieve, but you are utterly lovely to behold, and you’re super easy on your mama’s back.

Silver linings, right?

Older Posts