The Aftermath - Part Two

Once I recovered from the surgery, things seemed to settle down somewhat. I was still dealing with severe anxiety, but I was learning to manage. We had made the decision to formula feed Hannah, and this allowed Steve to get up with her at night and let me get a full night's rest to aid in beating the anxiety. I started and stopped another medicine after it made me incredibly dizzy and made the anxiety even harder to manage (anxiety makes me dizzy, the medicine made me even dizzier...which then caused more anxiety, etc).

Sad, tired eyes with a newborn

Skin to skin after we stopped breastfeeding

Recovering from surgery, laying in bed with her placed on me

There were countless days that Steve would have to stop what he was doing (which essentially was everything) just to hold me while I cried. There were countless phone calls to my mom to cry to her about how hard life had become. Phone calls to my sister who understood how I felt and what I was going through. Phone calls to my aunt and friends. I constantly kept reaching out for a life raft to bring me back to shore.

And with all this going on, we were prepping for a major life change...moving across the country. We were trying to pack up an entire house while I could barely stop crying long enough help with small chores. It all fell on Steve.
I slowly started to feel a little better as the days ticked by and I was able to help out here and there. I wasn't scared to be left alone anymore. I wasn't debilitatingly dizzy all the time. My social anxiety was getting better (I had to cancel a hair appointment because I couldn't stomach the thought of going somewhere so public). I felt like I was starting to finally find my footing and put the anxiety behind me.

Train ride in the mountains before an epic anxiety attack

My rock holding our world together

I went to my 6 week postpartum appointment and bragged to the NP about how I was doing better. I even joked that my period would probably return soon (as it did at 6 weeks with the boys) and that maybe the hormones would help level me out. Ohh naïve woman. I had no idea what was around the corner.

Then came the darkest day.
My period started all right. Just as I thought it would. And with it came a slew of new hormones crashing around in my body, wreaking havoc on my mind.

All of a sudden, postpartum depression hit me like a tidal wave. It sucked me under the current. I couldn't breathe. I was drowning. All the progress I thought I made was gone.

I was sadder than I've ever felt, detached, scared, suicidal. I became terrified to walk past stairs in case my body just fell down them. I avoided parts of the kitchen to stay away from anything sharp.
I was scared to be left alone.
I was scared of myself.
I was scared of my mind.

I could not stop sobbing. Whole body, shaking, every fiber of me, just sobbing. I kept saying 'I can't do this. I can't keep doing this. I'm exhausted and I just can't go on. I'm not going to make it through this.'  No one had prepared me for how mentally and emotionally exhausting it is to battle with yourself day in and day out. Insomnia, anxiety, depression. To logically know this isn't how you really think, but to be so overcome with the devil in your mind. All the while, your body is recovering. Your baby (or babies) need you. You are in a fight for your life. I was terrified that a day would come where I was too tired to fight back against the darkness. That it would eventually consume me and I would be gone.

I was scaring Steve and I was scaring myself (and I'm pretty sure my mom). At this point, we were days away from moving. I thank God that I reached out. I thank God that I was able to keep my husband fully in tune with what I was going through. I thank God for my family answering the phone every time I called on the brink of no return. I called my aunt in desperation on the day I was supposed to fly out of Denver. She stayed on the phone with me as long as I needed, calming me down and distracting my mind. Then I called my sister and she convinced me that it was time I sought out more help to get started on another medication. I needed help beating this and I needed to stop being too scared to take more medicine. I saw a doctor the very next day and immediately got a prescription for Prozac and the number to a crisis line. I had terrible anxiety over trying a new medication, scared it would make me worse...but I was even more scared of what life would be like if I didn't take the medicine.

Moving truck is all loaded

Empty house - time to move

Steve and I decided that I should fly out to Alabama instead of roadtripping. The day of my flight, I was in BAD shape. I didn't think I could leave Steve. He had been my rock, my safe place, my sanity. Getting on a plane with Hannah was THE HARDEST thing, but thankfully it provided a distraction for my mind. Steve phoned ahead to my dad and stepmom to fill them in on the condition I was in. I don't think many people realized how bad things had gotten.

I made it to my dad's house. They took Hannah and essentially took the burden off of me to care for her for a few days. They let me take a unisom at night and just sleep through the pain I was feeling. I took the Prozac daily. My period started to come to an end. My hormones got under control a little bit. I was making it through the day. I was worried that this would be my new life...just making it through the days and never finding enjoyment again.

The boys at Great Wolf Lodge while I was in AL

Rocking outside in AL to find relief from anxiety

By the time Steve and the boys arrived in Alabama a few days later, I was slowly starting to find my way back to myself. Anxiety lingered as we moved into the new house and had chaos all around, but day by day, I improved.

Genuine happiness.

I'm now three months postpartum and I exercise every single day. I've changed my eating habits. I get as much sleep as I can (and luckily my daughter is sleeping through the night so my husband is getting sleep as well). I take my medicine religiously. I go outside every chance I get. I've drawn closer to God than ever before. I'm closer to my sister because of this. I've leaned on friends. My marriage has strengthened tenfold.

I don't understand why I have to walk through this after such a hard pregnancy and so many changes on the horizon. There have been many days where I say, 'but haven't I been through enough?!' But I'm making it. Most days now I am thriving despite the depression. I still have bad moments, bad thoughts, and bad days where I need to avoid the boys for a little bit and count the hours til it's time for me to go to bed to hopefully start a new 'normal' day in the morning. I have a toolkit now to help me through them. I am so thankful and grateful for this life. I'm thankful for my three beautiful blessings. And I am eternally thankful for my husband, family, and friends who have carried me when I needed it, propped me up on my bad days, shared laughs, tears, and hugs. I've already become so much stronger than the woman I was 3 months ago. I believe in sharing my story to help other mamas or their families understand just a little bit of this postpartum world. It isn't talked about nearly enough. Nothing is wrong with me. I am not ashamed. My body has been through a lot, and it just needs extra grace to heal.

And while I am not healed yet, I'm hopeful that the day of healing is on the horizon. Until then, I will continue to look for all the blessings in my life and thank God for all I have.

I'll keep fighting.

The Aftermath - Part One

It took a few hours for the shock of the evening to wear off. I couldn't wrap my head around how fast everything happened and just kept saying wow. Hannah instinctively made her way down to initiate breastfeeding, and we snuggled for a long while. Eventually, they took her to get weighed, measured, and cleaned off, then it was daddy's turn to finally hold his sweet baby girl for the first time while I tried to rest and let the adrenaline wear off.

We spent that night, and one more night in the hospital and then we were released to head home. Everything seemed great but in hindsight, I could see some warning flags coming with the way I was feeling. We finally had a full term baby to take home! What a different experience!

Once we got home, we introduced the boys to their new baby sister. They were smitten. We tried to settle into a new routine, with me trying to establish breastfeeding. Exactly one day after being released from the hospital, baby blues hit me like a mack truck. I couldn't stop crying...bawling. I didn't want to be near any of the kids, but simultaneously needed Hannah with me. Breastfeeding led to cracked and bleeding nipples. Baby blues left me with zero appetite. I literally went days without eating and I almost threw up trying to force myself to eat a chicken nugget. I started shedding weight at a bad rate. Anxiety entered my life. Bad, dizzying, life shattering anxiety. Anxious about nothing in particular but spinning out of control all the same. I would escape the kids to sit in our bedroom and cry, or sneak into Noah's room to sit in the rocker and just stare out the window...allowing myself to zone out. I couldn't bring myself to be around any type of company, family included.

Steve started to get extremely concerned so we made an appointment with the first available OB/GYN. We drove 40 min to the doctor's office, with me panicking inside. My face was red and my eyes a new level of puffiness from constant crying. She listened to me tell her how I was feeling in between sobs, while watching my husband bottle feed our baby girl because everything was making breastfeeding SO difficult. She prescribed me Zoloft to try and scheduled an appointment with a Behavioral Medicine Specialist to walk me through coping techniques. I left feeling hopeful for relief, but scared.

I took a Zoloft in the evening a day or so later. Immediately after, I felt really off. I went to the bedroom and laid down. Intrusive thoughts entered my mind. Bad thoughts. Harmful thoughts. I panicked and cried the remainder of the night, scared of my new reality. The following day, I met with the BMS and cried for over an hour in her office. She helped me find a few coping techniques, instructed me to stop taking the Zoloft, and to start slowly trying to drink ensure shakes and whatever other small things I could to get food into my body. I decided to stop breastfeeding since I was no longer providing nutrition to myself, let alone enough to provide good breast milk for my baby.

A few days after my appointment with BMS, I was experiencing unrelenting chest pain. It had gone on for a few days, and my anxiety was making me think the worst. I went in to Urgent Care to get checked out. Blood work, lung CT scan, lung X-Rays. Perfectly healthy. It's all in your head. (Thanks a lot anxiety). I'd never had anxiety before in my life so I didn't realize that what I was experiencing was a symptom of the beast.

The following day, I began having bad abdominal pain. Seriously. It was starting to hurt bad enough that I would grimace holding Hannah or getting up and walking around. Steve urged me to go back to the doctor. So off I went, back to Urgent Care.

Poking and prodding. Blood work. CT scan. I had an acutely inflamed piece of tissue right next to my appendix that needed to be removed immediately. I was given strict instructions to head home, pick up Steve, and head straight to the hospital to prep for surgery. I got home and sobbed. How can this be happening? I just had a baby barely a week ago and now I have to spend more time away from her to have surgery (after all the time away with the dr appointments). I was distraught. I was scared.

We arrived at the hospital and they prepped me for surgery. I remember silently freaking out as I signed the waivers and went over worst case scenarios. I tried to smile and use humor as we waited outside the operating room before they gave me the good juice to knock me out. They put me completely under, removed the inflamed tissue and my appendix via laparoscope, and I spent the night in the hospital to make sure all was okay. Walking around was extremely hard, as was using the bathroom. I was so sore for a week afterwards, unable to grab Hannah on my own or help around the house. If anything, I added to Steve's massive workload because now he also had to cater to me...but I recovered.

Hannah's Birth Story - Part Two

About a week after my cerclage removal, I was starting to get impatient. I had never been pregnant passed 36.5 weeks! I was uncomfortable and ready to get this baby out. I tried workout videos that women swore put them into labor.

Nada.

Taken the day before labor!

When I was just shy of 39 weeks, I had a moment of weakness. My OB had done a cervical check at 38 weeks, swept my membranes (OW!), and forced my dilation from a wimpy 1cm to 2cm. It's pretty common for women with cerclages to need to be induced. The cervix gets confused after being sewn shut and has a hard time remembering that it's time to open now! I was terrified of an induction and potentially having an induction lead to a C-section....so I took matters into my own hands. I am not proud of this and definitely do not recommend it.

Have you heard of the midwives brew?  It's a concoction of apricot nectar, almond butter, lemon verbena tea, and a teeny amount of castor oil. It isn't pleasant to drink, but the recipe swears that the other ingredients in the mixture will counter balance the laxative nature of the castor oil, and you essentially won't poop your brains out.

Incorrect.

I drank the mixture at 6 PM on June 18th.  At approximately 6:30 PM I began having excessive bowel movements. At 6:33 PM I was begging God to make the poop stop streaming out of me. At 6:35 PM I was praying that this would not work and that I would not go into labor because my ass was on fire. I had SO MUCH regret. It's comical to look back on. After my stomach seemed to finally be too empty to continue pooping, I decided I needed to shower and then lay down. I felt gross and depleted. My stomach hurt. Not contractions...just felt like a really bad stomach ache.

Around 10:30 PM, I went to the living room to ask Steve to come lay down with me since I was feeling so awful. Right after we laid down, I felt an INTENSE contraction. I pulled out my phone and started timing on a contraction app. Two minutes later, another really hard contraction ripped through my body. Then another. The app dinged an alarm and said to head to the hospital ASAP. This was not a drill. Steve called his parents to hurry over and watch the boys (they were in bed sleeping, none the wiser), while I kept timing contractions. I decided to go get in the van with a towel in case my water broke on the way to the hospital. While waiting, the contractions seemed to blur together with no end and no beginning. I was 1000% sure that if we did not leave at that moment, this baby would be born in our garage. I started to feel crazy pressure bearing down and couldn't even sit on my booty. She was ready to come out.

We left the house at about 10:45 PM and hurried to the closest hospital. I told Steve to just get us ANYWHERE with a medical professional because we didn't have time to make it 30 min away to our normal delivery hospital. As we were pulling into view of the hospital, I started to feel the urge to push. I WAS TERRIFIED.  I did not want to have this baby in the car! We peeled into the ER parking lot and Steve rushed out to grab a wheelchair. I was convinced that if I walked, she would just slip right out of me. Steve handed me over to an ER nurse and ran to park the car. The nurse saw me leaning in the wheelchair, unable to put pressure on butt and she knew we were in a time crunch. She got me up to the Labor and Delivery ward lickety split and I hopped out of the wheelchair and immediately yanked my clothes off, desperate to get naked and on the bed in time to push.

I shared my sense of urgency with the nurses, that my body had begun bearing down to push on the wheelchair ride up to the room and they rushed to get materials out and ready and rush a dr to the room.

The strongest surge pulsed through me. My body began involuntarily pushing. I screamed at the staff that she was coming RIGHT NOW. Laying on my side half twisted, I grabbed the side bedrail and let my body get to work. POP. My bag broke in that initial first push. Fluid poured out of me. I felt huge relief of pressure momentarily. Baby girl's head had been trying to push through to make her entrance with the bag still in tack.  The doctor makes it to the room in time to introduce herself and get in position.  Steve runs in the room from parking the car just in the nick of time. I briefly sighed in relief, then prepared as my body tensed for another final push. She was here. 11:25 PM, 6 pounds 11 ounces of healthy baby girl.

Hannah's Birth Story - Part One

We have three kids. That's still so wild to me. We went from not wanting any kids, to wanting one, to wanting two, to me begging for a third!

This will be a little long, so hang on!

We got pregnant with Hannah on our first try (I'm super fertile myrtle). The first trimester went by fairly uneventful, normal morning sickness and exhaustion. We were toying with the idea of waiting to find out the sex for this final babe, but I kept having strong feelings that it was a girl and I just couldn't be patient to see if I was right. To be honest, I had mixed feelings. I was expecting a third boy and looking forward to it! We know how to deal with boys! 

We made an appointment at 15 weeks with the same ultrasound place we had used for the boys, and as you already know now...it's a girl!  Not long after finding out the sex, I started daily progesterone as I had done with my pregnancy for Noah, and then the weekly cervical length checks began at 16 weeks. The appointments started out dull, with things measuring on track, and then things started to change each week. My cervix was shortening. The progesterone was not going to be enough to keep this babe baking. I had an emergency cerclage placed at around 20 weeks after my cervix shortened to 2.1 and started to funnel.

I arrived at the hospital by 5am to start pre-op for the cerclage placement. If you don't know, it's basically a metal thread that sews your cervix shut. It stays in until around 37 weeks. I was terrified. I remember my whole body shaking while I waited for them to wheel me back to the OR. The procedure is done in a C-section suite, and you walk in, sit down for the spinal, and then they get you in position to sew you up. The spinal was TERRIFYING for me. I was shaking so bad that I was nervous the anesthesiologist wouldn't be able to hit her mark on my back! Once I was in position, the anesthesiologist (thank God for her) rigged up a sheet so I wouldn't be able to see what they were doing (she knew how scared I was). She stayed by me during the whole procedure, chatting with me to try to distract. A few times, she had to hurry and adjust my drip from my blood pressure dipping really low and bringing on bouts of nausea. Once the team finished, they wheeled me back to a recovery room and I sat with Steve until the feeling returned back to my legs. I threw up off and on for a couple hours and generally felt AWFUL. Spinals/epidurals are not my cup of tea.

Once I regained feeling, we were released to go home and I was told to take it extremely easy while I recovered from the intense cramping. Once healed, I was supposed to take it easy for the remainder of the pregnancy to help keep that baby in!

The cramping was unreal. Physically, I hurt so bad that I couldn't move from the bed for over a week. Walking was really hard as well. After I was on the road to recovery, I ended up in Labor & Delivery with INTENSE abdomen pain. Like, there's an alien literally trying to claw out of my stomach, the pain was so severe. The first trip to L&D resulted in the nurses dismissing my pain as just round ligament pain and growing pains. I ended up back at L&D the very next day...Steve had to wheelchair me in because I was in such intense pain that I could not even walk. This time, the nurse on duty took me seriously and ordered a slew of tests. Outcome - C. Diff.  After my cerclage, I was given antibiotics to help fight off any infection from the procedure. This wiped out my immune system and left me super susceptible to C. Diff, which my in-laws unknowingly had and passed along to me.

L&D provided me with strong antibiotics and sent me back home. The antibiotics made me so extremely nauseous that I ended up back at the dr's (wheelchaired again because this time I was too weak to walk), and I received bags of fluids to help rehydrate me. Luckily, the baby still seemed A-Okay. I was given anti-nausea meds and returned home to nurse myself back to health (well, Steve nursed me back to health waiting on me and dealing with the boys since I was bed-ridden).

Towards the end of my pregnancy, we had a seizure scare with Julian. He woke up a few hours after going to bed and screamed out for Mommy and Daddy. I rushed into his room and held him while his whole body trembled and eyes couldn't focus. It was the scariest moment of my life. Steve took him the ER and eventually we took him to Children's to have an EEG done, and then an MRI once the EEG came back abnormal. Sometimes life just hits you really hard.

Fast forward through more dr visits with checks on my cervix and baby, everything looked great despite the immense pressure I felt daily in my cervix. I did not think I would make it to my cerclage removal at 37 weeks, but before I knew it we were back in my MFM's office to have it taken out. It hurt like %$&(*&. But afterwards, all the intense pressure I felt in my cervix disappeared! For once, I felt like a normal pregnant lady!

I started trying to ramp up my physical activity so I could prepare my muscles for labor. I bounced on a ball, walked around, played with the boys...I was sure I would go into labor right after the cerclage was removed! My body decided otherwise.