In Photos—Newborn vs. 1 Year

Once again, my beautiful wonderful insanely talented generous and sweet sister took some pictures of my family. We thought it'd be fun to recreate the photo that forms the banner for this blog; the "zen" photo that looks so peaceful and happy and calm and, I mean, zen. 

We had some fun. The differences between then and now?

A year ago, we took probably an hour or more to set up and take the photos. My daughter was just a few days old and sleeping so much that I'd have to wake her (and keep her awake) for breastfeeding. I remember, when guests were over, running away to my bedroom to nurse her because I had to nudge her and play with her cheeks and move around so much to keep her awake to properly feed. And that's awkward when you're sitting next to your father-in-law, udder cover or not.

This year? It was not so zen. Hurry up, take the pictures before she crawls (or cruises, or takes a step) away. Hurry up and snap it before she...oh. Yeah, that's my mouth.

And my nose.

We did get some beautiful shots, though.

The main difference between this year and last? When we took those first photos, I thought I knew how this was going to go. I knew how I'd be as a mom and I was going to be great. I knew my baby would be wonderful and I would keep loving her more than I ever thought possible and all the answers to all the parenting questions in the world would come to me naturally. I wouldn't get PPD because I'm healthy and everything has gone so well and my life is wonderful. 

Surprise.

Some of those things are true. Some of them are not. But mostly, I'm happier knowing that I don't know shit. I don't know how I'm going to be when my daughter goes through the million phases that make up a young life. 

Another difference? My hair is a lot shorter and I'm no longer wearing a nose ring. Both consequences of my daughter's curiosity and need to grab everything she can reach. You do what you have to do.

I am not always zen. It's great to aspire to that, and maybe I am relatively zen, but the most peace I get these days is from knowing that I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing a good job. I get the most zen from knowing that my daughter is happy. Now she's waking up. Excuse me while I grab the coffee I left in the microwave an hour ago.

How to Feel Grateful for Everything You Have

Yep, I'm talking about material things here.

Maybe you're like me and you feel grateful pretty regularly for the things that really matter: your loving husband, your healthy children, your ability to laugh through the shit and baby food flung around your used-to-be-clean house.

And maybe you're also like me (and the rest of America, I think) in that it's never enough. I'm talking material shit here, people. There's always something more: the next piece of jewelry that's just classic and essential and why haven't you spent at least $1,000 on your solitaire earrings yet? The next wardrobe piece that you'll want to drop $350 on because you'll wear it, like, forever, with anything, but you won't because let's all agree you can find a knockoff deal somewhere. The next stainless steel appliance. The next tablet or iPhone or smart watch or whatever the hell they're inserting chips and internet connections into now.


I've found (sadly, this is revelation-quality shit to me right now) that I'm so much more appreciative of the things (people I'm being shallow today so get over it) I have when they're clean. I can knock off the voice that wants more when I appreciate everything around me.

The one stainless steel appliance in my kitchen looks awesome when it's not covered in tiny fingerprints and milk drippings. At least I think it's milk.

The 1998 Corian countertop still looks pretty bangin when it's glistening-white (when the lights are dim I can pretend it's quartz).

The proportionately large bedroom (large compared to the rest of our home) feels like a luxury retreat without the piles of laundry and diapers and wipes and books and hangers lying around.

The office/guest bedroom feels cozy and cerebral when the focus can be on the stuffed bookcase instead of on the piles of papers and holiday gift bags and envelopes I cleaned out.

Secret: I clean like a pro when I've had a glass of wine. Whatever.

It's all the same underneath; no major renovations up here on the main level. It's just clean. Appreciated.  Taken care of. It took me days of sneaky-quiet cleaning while my daughter naps to get to this point. It's not easy when you're responsible for a little person (or two or three) sharing your home, but it's worth it. I promise it's worth it.

Being OK with PPD (even just a little)

I feel like I'm going to be OK.

I walked out of my office after doing a just a little work and said to my husband, "We have a nice little life."

I looped my arms around his waist and held on as he continued on making microwave nachos.

I feel like this is me. Me is not all postpartum depression sadness making me go to sleep as soon as the baby's down. Me is working hard at everything I do, and today I did. Maybe I didn't do it all perfectly, but I did it. And my girl is happy and sleeping and wonderful.

As I was cleaning the kitchen, I thought to myself, "So what's changed? Why am I feeling better?"

Nothing's changed. Because nothing had to. PPD is not about being sad because something in your life isn't right.

It's a chemical imbalance brought on (or made worse) by creating life and giving birth.

OK, so maybe one thing has changed: I sought out—and accepted—help. I'm not sure if I'm going to go back to my counselor. But I'm better. By a lot, most days. And maybe some of it's time, too. My baby's almost 8 months, and they say generally PPD doesn't go past the first year postpartum.

And I'm back in my home office, doing work. Not thinking ahead, not worrying about how I might have failed as a mother today (because I'm sure I could find something I failed at) but being here, now. Typing. Listening to Mumford & Sons, noticing the warm grain in the hardwood floor, the resistant clicks of the keyboard, the tang of the cheap zinfandel in the wine glass my cousin got us as a wedding gift, the all-too-good scent of Swiffer pads on my hands from cleaning.

I hope you're OK, too.

P.S. I made a button. I'm a super beginner at playing with Adobe Illustrator and wanted to make a reminder—whether to you it means "I have PPD and I'm OK with it," "I'm going to get through PPD," or "I love someone with PPD and it's not the end of the world," I hope it makes you smile even just a little.

4 Insane Things a Mom's Body Does

New, wonderful symptom of postpartum depression: Hands tingling.

It got me thinking about all the insane things my body's done since becoming a mom. Everything it does without needing your mental permission; without you needing to say, "OK, body, have at it."

After it's done building life out of sperm and egg, then pizza, pickles and ice cream, prenatal vitamins and lots of water (that goes out as quickly as it goes in) into a baby ready to take on the world, it gives life. Which is its own (several) blog posts. Then...then? No one talks about what happens then. Here's a couple nutty things.

1. It makes your hands tingle. 
This was further confirmation to me that postpartum depression (and mental illness, in general) is not simply psychological. It all has a physical basis. My body is doing some crazy shit right now, and apparently sending the proper amount of blood and sensation to my hands is pretty damn low on the list of priorities (see #2).

2. It feeds life.
Last night, I pumped after my daughter went to bed. Of course, because of this, she un-characteristically woke up as I was trying to go to sleep at 10:30. I had no milk. But she latched on and persisted. A minute or two of that, and I felt the let-down. And I heard her gulping. Ask for milk, milk you receive.

3. It tells you what it needs.
When I was first home from the hospital, all I wanted was chocolate. Dark chocolate. And as it turns out, chocolate can help your milk supply.* I wish I could say I'd known that, but really I was just listening to my cravings.
After the sweets bingeing was (mostly) over, I craved meat. This from a woman who would order "just fries" or cheese sticks from restaurants as a kid to avoid having to eat burgers. From a woman who was vegetarian for years. My grocery cart was now regularly filled with whatever meat was on sale. This time, my doctor told me I was likely craving meat because of how seriously depleted your body's iron stores are after birth. WHATTUP.
Sometimes it's hard to listen to your body, sometimes it's not. Listen.

4. It gets you by on very, very little sleep.
Last week, standing by the stupid decision to move our living-room furniture into our just-finished basement rec room ourselves, my husband and I removed the latch from our exterior entry door to fit it all through. At 1 AM, I went upstairs to put the latch back on the door. No dice. Seems the anti-jimmy hooziwhatsit bullshit trigger switch had flipped, never to work again.
I drove to Wal-Mart instead of leaving a gaping hole in our door for the night. I slept less than three hours and expected to call in sick to work the next day, thinking I'd be useless. Nope. I felt the same the next morning as any day as a mom (which is not to be compared to any day pre-motherhood). I drank my coffee and went about things just as I would had I gotten my now-normal 5 or 6 hours of sleep.
Thanks, body, thanks. Thanks for making sleep the ultimate luxury and no longer a necessity or even an expectation. I really, really appreciate that, buddy. Chief. Pal. Friend.

And through all this, we wonder how new moms aren't always exactly feeling their best? Now if I could just get rid of this hand-tingling shit.

*I tried to find a source verifying this, but really, all I've got is my sister-in-law saying this is true. Good enough reason for me to keep eating chocolate. At least my love of chocolate is consistent with pre-motherhood me.

What would you add to this list?

My Day as a Stay-at-Home Mom

I thought I was going to roll my eyes a ton.

I thought I would feel catty and jealous.


None of that.

Wednesday, I took .75 of a vacation day after working from home for a couple of hours. I went back, for the first time in three months, to the mom/baby connection group at the hospital. There's usually discussion, a speaker, that's about it. Moms talking to moms, some breastfeeding, some bottle-feeding, babies napping, babies crying, moms laughing, moms crying. It's beautiful.

The discussion leader asked everyone if they had anything to say about depression. The room got quiet. I weighed in my mind whether I wanted to speak up or not. I raised my hand (regressing to grade school) and said, "I've gone to therapy."

And then I just kept talking. I said what I wanted other moms to know: "It's not some big, scary, awful thing. They're not going to lock you away or take your baby from you. You talk to your doctor, then you talk to a therapist, and then it gets better. Just do it if you need the help. Don't waste another minute wondering if you should. If you're not you, if it's not getting better, if everything's OK but for some reason it's not—do it."

Then another mom volunteered that she's been on Zoloft and it's made everything better. That she hadn't been herself. She held back tears.

Then the discussion leader herself said that she'd been to counseling.

I wondered if anyone would've said anything if I hadn't.

There were about 18 of us in that room. Three of us acknowledged our experiences with PPD. Three of 18. Even more than the one in eight that studies show. One in eight of the moms you know have struggled through PPD, maybe more. Maybe it's you.

And even if it's not you, it's hard. Babies are a blessing. They're the biggest, greatest, most wonderful blessing a family can wish to have. Lean on whomever you need. Love them, too.

Stay-at-home moms, working moms, part-time working moms—all moms, we're all working hard to make our children the best little people they can be, to give them the best lives they can have, to make things better for them than they may have been for us. We're raising a generation, all of us. And we all deserve to have each others' backs.

We all deserve to have mom friends to sit by the pool with every now and then, we all deserve to talk about our labor stories and laud the wonders of the epidural together, no matter what our choices have been since we painfully, blessedly became mothers. We deserve the support, the help, anything that helps us to be better mothers to our children. We deserve hobbies and blogs and nights out. We deserve a long bath and a glass of wine. And by being kind to ourselves and to other moms, we'll pass that kindness along to our children.

That's an incredible gift.

P.S.—Lana went swimming for the first time, at the pool with the other moms and babies. It was all I could do to keep her from diving in completely. She loved it. I loved it. We're lucky ladies.

You're Not Alone, Sister

I want to hug you. I want to hug every mom. Every single one of you.

Yesterday was a particularly low day.

I couldn't stop crying on my way home from work. I took the wrong exit ramp. I had to ask my husband, on the phone, where I was going. He asked me, "Do you remember Hawaii?"

"Yes."

"Wasn't it the best time of your life?"

"It feels so far away now."

What ended up actually helping me was his walking me through my surroundings: "Do you see signs for Howard Avenue? Just keep heading west until you get to the freeway, then you head..."

"I know where to go from there. I haven't completely lost it."

A funny choice of words when I lost myself on my way home from work, in an area I've lived in for three years.


I thought I'd had PPD this whole time, because there have been spells of weepiness here and there. Yesterday showed me that I haven't had PPD this whole time. It's hit hard now. It's made worse by bad days. External stressors make the internal struggle a wreck. A mess out of me. I took the wrong ramp. I almost didn't know who I was.

But I did know. There was sane, happy, regular old me somewhere. Taunting me, almost, with the promise of the fact that I know what a normal life feels like. That I can be present, that I can be smart, that I can be on the ball.

I continue to make jokes. I continue to laugh. I continue to pretend things are normal to the people who don't know, mostly for the fear of bringing them down. For fear of scaring the pregnant woman at work about what may be (1 out of every 8 moms, y'all) to come. For fear—that's been justified—that people just don't know how to handle this truth.
I continue to enjoy the beautiful moments. I toss my daughter in the air and I hold her so close I'm sure she can't stand it. But she does. There's not a second I'm with her that I regret. Not a second that her smile doesn't bring one to my face.

I'm not broken. I'm not weak.

I mean to say that despite the beautiful sunset rainbow I'm looking at as my baby sleeps, I am sad and conflicted. I mean to say that some people don't know how to handle someone with PPD. Or any mental illness.

But I'm grateful for the national conversation sparked this week about depression. Admittedly I am just now starting to consider it a physical illness. I hope that the paradigm is shifting. I hope.
I want you to know that most moms hate and love their lives. I want you to know that no one's Pinterest version of their lives is the whole truth. Behind the perfect-looking recipe is a messy kitchen counter and a sink full of dishes. You are not alone. Not a single one of us is perfect.

I want you to know that I made it home. And good news was waiting for me there, news that made my day, along with a long, long hug from my husband and playtime with my daughter. News to come.

For now, I'll try to rest. Another therapy session tomorrow. This time I'm looking forward to it. I like that.

I Knew it Was Bad When Coffee Couldn't Make it Better

Though chocolate might make it better. I will take that kind of help.

It knots up my chest to think about telling my boss I have PPD. I guess there's no need for her to know. But it might help in explaining why I'm leaving work early every now and then (for counseling appointments) and I'm afraid it may turn into something bigger. I guess it can't hurt for her to know. There are times I feel like I just might break.

I hope this is PPD and not just motherhood. What if I go to my counseling session tonight and the therapist tells me that this is just what being a mom is? This constant state of feeling awful but loving your child so, so much? It can't be motherhood. It can't.

I mentioned the other day how I wanted to avoid medication if I could. The doctor offered Zoloft to me like it was candy. He said "This is a chemical imbalance, something with a very physical basis and solution." But I guess I don't agree with the solution part. I'm glad he's not my doctor (my doctor sent me to him because she was booked through the afternoon but wanted me to see someone right away).

I'm excited but also all up in knots about the appointment tonight. I'm taking my baby. I'm not giving up time with her for these sessions—I mean, it's counterproductive to my PPD to spend less time with her. And she's so well behaved most of the time that it won't hinder our session. I don't think. (Watch, I just jinxed it.)

I'll let you know how it goes. I hope the knots and the courage and the scheduling and the running around are all worth it. She's worth it.

UPDATE: Worth it. My fears about the therapist were unfounded. She did what she's there to do: Validate my feelings, encourage me to talk through it, give me hope that it will get better. She did even more than that. It's strange but I have to admit that I went there so full of hope, so excited that I would be making the best sort of friend—the kind that's paid to listen to you. Well, I don't think we'll be best friends but I believe this will be extremely good. In fact, I don't know what I would do without it.

My baby breastfed during my session, like the angel that she is. My therapist asked, "Have you been tired?"

"Exhausted."

"Trouble concentrating?"

"Extreme. I've never had that problem before in my life."

"Withdrawn from things you normally enjoy doing?"

Somehow, these words, when written, DO seem like a script. Like something unfeeling out of a textbook. And maybe they are. But I suppose it means she's either a really great therapist or I am desperate for some sort of help that I felt like they were the right human questions to ask. They're what I've needed to be asked, rather than all the unfeeling demands that surround life as a mother.

She's confident we can make progress without medication, and if we need that extra boost, we'll use it. I'm confident. And I'm confident any mother can do this.

We just have to be able to accept the help.

The Hardest Phone Call I've Made as a Mother

It's not like me to be a downer. But right now, to post anything other than this feels inauthentic. I hope that by sharing this, I encourage other mothers to seek help when they need it, although that can be a really, really hard thing to do.

I lied in the fetal position on the bed, not sleeping, for two hours last night. I never do that.

My husband wanted to talk, but I told him that I thought what was best for me was to lie with my baby.

I had cried the whole way home. I cried anytime I wasn't with my baby.

This morning, I made the call from my desk at work. I guess I didn't care who overheard me tell the receptionist, "I don't know if there's anyone in the area specializing in postpartum depression, but..."

Her tone changed immediately and she said she'd talk to my doctor right away. I got a call back within minutes, from a nurse who spoke to me as if we were at a funeral, or as if I were a child who'd gotten hurt. This was surprisingly OK for me, but since I was at work, I continued speaking in a "normal," upbeat office tone.

"I gave birth January 30th."

"I can't say when it started, more so that I've been waiting for it to go away and it hasn’t." (The baby blues, as they're known. I'd thought my weepiness in the weeks after birth was normal and part of having family stay with you while adapting to being a parent. Oh, it is normal, you say?)

"I don't have a specific plan, but I just started thinking of it yesterday, which is what prompted me to call." (re: hurting myself.)

"I'd prefer to avoid medication if I can. I'm not sure what kinds of options that leaves me with, but definitely avoiding medication."

I'm glad I called. I don't know what's going to happen next, but I think the courage it took to call beats out the consequences I'd face if I hadn't. The consequences not only for me, but for my daughter and for my husband. 

I'm hopeful for the first time. I'm hopeful that some sort of treatment may help change my thinking about depression and mental illness. When I struggled with depression as a young adult, I always attributed it to something: The turbulence in my home and family life, being an outcast at school, being rejected by crushes. While maybe those things were triggers, perhaps they weren't to blame. Perhaps there's just something I can see as clinical that makes me respond in this way to stressors. Something resulting from the physical process of giving birth and becoming a mother. And somehow, maybe, it means I'm not as fucked up as I sometimes think I am. Perhaps I'm helpable.

UPDATE: I'm seeing a doctor today. I'm impressed at how much of a priority they make this. They practically ordered me to get in for an appointment.

I want to thank Abby Heugel for posting this on scarymommy.com yesterday. For some reason I stumbled upon it while lying in the fetal position and related to every. Single. Thing. About it. Thank you for helping to give me the courage to make that phone call.