Opening up about Depression and Stress

Yet another disclaimer:

I've likely been struggling with depression for a very long time. I admit to being in therapy on and off basically since I was 8 ish, I think? I mostly rejected it after high school (ya know, when I had the right to refuse) except for a few very short visits in college, when I was coerced into going by a professor after I was one of the first on scene after a school shooting.

That being said, I've never really felt much help from therapists. I'm so much of a realist that often, when I find my problems overwhelming, the only thing that makes me feel better is actual solutions to my issues. Merely talking through them can and does help vent some of my emotions, but just trying to take a positive viewpoint isn't often a particularly helpful plan for me.

I have a really hard time making a distinction between what I hope for and what I plan for. Frequently, if I hope for the best, and it doesn't happen, I feel completely unprepared to handle the outcome and any hiccups. Whereas if I plan for the worst in the first place, and the situation comes out even slightly better than I planned for, I'm very happy and have an easy time handling tough situations. I'm not saying this is the right or healthy way to think/feel, but it's how I get by.

For that reason, merely taking an optimistic view of any situation is incredibly difficult and potentially very painful to me. Therefore when people suggest that me thinking positive about my problems is the best solution - I tend to lash out. Whether it's anger or just tears or more feeling of being overwhelmed depends on a ton of other factors, but either way I tend to reject that and shut down.

Now, with my current predicament, I'm trying so hard to be positive. I'm thinking maybe in these first few weeks of motherhood, in this new club I didn't want to join called NICU moms, I might actually get a Twitter and/or Instagram account. I want to use some hashtags for things like "real life c-section bellies" and "this is what recovery looks like." I feel like a dairy cow (seriously, 1.5 LITERS of breastmilk every day?!), and that's OK with me. I also want to show other people that you can suffer from depression and hit lows that other people can't understand and will shame you for and get angry at you for, and you can still do a great job handling a situation anyway.

I want other women and mothers to know that even if you them suffer from birth trauma that borders on assault, have more unexpected setbacks, and your child doesn't actually meet the expected medical milestones on time - you can do it. You can get through and make it to the other side, and you don't even have to totally breakdown.

I had to withdraw from the online support system I had built during pregnancy. I was part of a fabulous forum and group of ladies who were all due in July (or nearly). I enjoyed having these women to celebrate and commiserate with. Unfortunately, they also bore the brunt of the worst of my lows in the last 8/9 months. They were the people I didn't censor myself with when I felt hopeless, maybe just because those ladies couldn't commit me when I lost my mind. Either way, when things got really rough, I was too much for the group as a whole to handle. So I removed myself. I'm not upset about it, just sad to have lost that fun group and that support. Losing them added to my feelings of isolation in this ongoing adventure. Even so, I kept on going. Other people can too, even when they feel alone.

Sometimes it's easier for me to be positive when I'm all alone. Sometimes it isn't. At times, I find myself feeling as if I need to defend my right to be upset when people start offering "advice" or their sentiments. It can be very demoralizing when even loved ones make comments that appear to devalue my emotions/feelings. I cannot just focus on the positive end when I feel as if I'm surrounded by people that refuse to even acknowledge the negative events at hand. 

Sometimes traditional or cliche comments and expressions make me feel worse-they just don't resonate well with me. Hearing that I should just be grateful for what I have when I'm deep into a low and have more struggles piling on can make me feel even more hopeless. Telling me to seek help when I already feel like I'm begging for it makes me feel inadequate. Telling me to buck up when I feel like crawling into a hole and never coming out can make me feel like I've already failed.

I know that the people that offer their support all intend to help, however when my responses frustrate them everything has a tendency to blow up. When I find it necessary to defend my emotions and refuse to disregard the shittiness of the situation I find myself in, others feel that I am rejecting their support. To those people, please know that I'm not trying to-but that your flavor of support at that moment might actually make me feel worse. Which isn't YOUR fault, but I don't think it's my fault either. When I'm in the depths of a depressive low, having my feelings seem to be invalidated or not acknowledged by others can be even more overwhelming and merely adds to the all encompassing isolation I'm already surrounded by.

That all being said, I have some friends and acquaintances that feel hurt by some of the things I've said and the ways I've rejected their support in the last few weeks. I won't beg for their forgiveness. You can forgive me or not, I won't judge you, but if I pushed back against the things you said or did, it's because in order for me to navigate through the shit-storm I was dealt, I had to. I have no hard feelings for anyone, but when I'm enduring one of the hardest times in my life, I cannot be too sorry for putting myself and my feelings first. Part of surviving a traumatic event even somewhat intact lies in your ability to do/say/feel/act as your gut insists. Had I just accepted my awful delivery and pretended it was perfectly acceptable, I could not have found the strength to stay present with my son. I could not have drug myself out of my hospital bed and into a visitor's lounge at 36 weeks after that birth. I would have been busy wallowing. Not everyone's path to acceptance of life's trials is the same or pretty and I refuse to believe mine is any less acceptable than anyone else's.

Just please remember that no one can truly understand anyone else's life path or their approach to it. So if you find yourself arguing with someone who is struggling, especially if they're potentially depressed, all I ask is that you ask yourself if arguing can even possibly help. If not, then why bother?

For those who worry, I do intend to attempt to find a therapist once again. No promises it will stick. But I have to wait until Legan is home, for my sanity. Right now, one of the biggest reasons I can function is because I know I'm doing everything I can do help him heal and to get him through the cascade of issues he's faced too. Taking time away from sleeping, pumping, snuggling, feeding, and eating could potentially send me over the edge of an emotional waterfall. I know in my head and my heart that right now, what I NEED to do, is spend 12-15 hours a day at the hospital, caring for my son.

It took me roughly a week to be able to say "my son." Even "my baby" was hard to say at first, because as I came out of anesthesia, missing the warm wiggly creature that had grown in me, it felt more that he'd died than been born. He was stolen from me in a violent attack. That's what I felt. Being kept away from him for so many hours afterward only exacerbated that. Now we are back together, even if not entirely whole or hale. Perhaps he can't come home just yet (but soon, hopefully, as he's off air support and he's starting to eat finally!), but I am still the one who he reaches for, and the one that feeds him. He knows my voice. So as long as he's here, there is no more restful place for me to be than in the rocking chair next to his crib - preferably holding him while we both snooze.

I spend at least some of the last few months (yeah, like 4 of them), thinking that we should not have this baby. That with where we were at financially (and therefore for me emotionally) that having a baby now was a terrible idea. Thinking that if I had known then (sept/oct) what I know now (we'd be house-sharing and continually relocating and very broke with a lot of medical bills), that we never would have chosen pregnancy for this life stage. All I could think of some days was that we should find a nice family to adopt this child. The few people I told I don't think took me seriously. There were many nights that this kept me up all night long.

It took 5 full days after Legan came into our lives for me to be sure that he belonged with us. No one else can understand how his life started. No one is better situated to tell him "I know how you feel." This was revolutionary for me. It was an emotional breakthrough. At least a door opened towards healing.

I'm anxious to get him home not JUST because that will mean he's healthy and happy and I'm no longer stuck in a place that I dislike so much...but because it will mean that the family is finally reunited. Poor Barley & poor Eric, they have both been missing me like crazy too as our schedules barely allow us to see each other while awake.

Until then, I shall just count down the days until my family is intact.

And I'm not apologizing for how I feel about it.

 

And I'm not ashamed of these tears. This was our first real meeting and he was so sick.

 

This was a good day, first time really snuggling - now that his oxygen support was unobtrusive enough to snuggle. 

 

I had just woken up after a lovely short nap. 

My Hellish Birth Story - WARNING-GRAPHIC

So here's our story of how little Legan came into this world. Its very long, and very hard to type out. It's probably not an easy read either.

Let me preface this with a disclaimer. It was awful, and quite honestly I hope sometimes to not remember it. Yes, I realized this means forgetting the first time I saw my son. Yes, it might be worth it to me.

Also note, 90% of the time during this story when I use the phrase "I asked..." or anything similar, I do mean that either my husband or I questioned each decision and action. He was 100% supportive and tried extremely hard to help me advocate for myself and my wishes. He was part of absolutely everything from the time he got home until about 10:50 pm.

I started contracting around 1 pm Monday, June 6th. The contractions were only mildly uncomfortable, so I thought it was more braxton hicks, but I timed them just in case. So I made some lunch, chugged a bunch of water, and watched a movie, hoping to calm things down. 

They didn't really slow down, so I called my midwife group. Contractions were 5-7 min apart and lasted 25-45 seconds long. Mary Kay suggested that I go into their partner hospital (out by them - so roughly an hour from us with only minor traffic) to get checked out. I explained that it would take a while, but she suspected we weren't in a terrible hurry. So I called Eric to tell him to come home now (he left work at 4 pm). I got our last minute stuff thrown into our bags (that I had packed the week before-yes!) and we left shortly after he arrived home. We got to the hospital at about 7 pm. They put us in the waiting room there for 35 minutes. Then took me to triage, took vitals, had me give a urine sample and put me on monitors (fetal heartbeat and contractions) and left for 45 ish minutes.

I was a little concerned at first when they left us in the waiting room for so long, but it was in the triage room that I really started to suspect there could be a problem. No one EVER took care of that urine sample. It is important to note that it was barely yellow because I was super hydrated after all that water I drank - and had continued to drink. The midwife finally checked me at about 8:15 and said I was at 3.5/4 cm and 90% effaced and was most likely in active labor. Then I reminded her that my little one was breech. I so wish I had NOT done that. It's possible that they would have been forced to catch him vaginally had I not reminded her of this, considering how fast things went from here. The doctor came in once I announced the breech position. They did an ultrasound real fast and confirmed that his body was exactly where I had suspected for the past few months.

So I asked if we could do a steroid shot to help his lungs and try to stop labor OR do a version (the manual baby turning). The doc said he wanted to wait for another cervical check in 60-90 min to decide if it was actually active labor, and then we'd go from there. He didn't want to do a version because that might further labor along. He seemed to be under the impression that labor might just stop on its own, and then we could try a version, steroids, and bedrest for a little while.  I was concerned because contractions were definitely still 4-5 min apart and 60 seconds long, but OK. I decided to trust his judgement. I should have pushed the issue of the version and stopping labor, but I really thought he knew what was best, and I honestly wasn't in a ton of pain. Contractions were totally easy for me to manage, I spoke through most of them, a couple of slow deep breaths, but honestly running a half marathon was worse than what was going on, so I accepted the fact that maybe it was in my head, and this wasn't active labor.

So now it's nearly 10 pm. I get another check and we're at 4.5/5 cm dilated, bag bulging. So I request steroids and a version again. They tell me they don't want to do a version now because that could cause the wrong presenting parts (ie in this case his butt) to descend into vagina and it's too late for steroids or to stop labor. They try to scare me with the fact that if they try to turn the placenta could rip free or the cord could come out first - both of which would be true dangerous emergencies to my baby, so therefore a version is a terrible idea. I might add at this point that I had done my research and read in multiple places that versions have been tested in early stages of labor successfully. Oh well, apparently this doc doesn't believe in that idea. So I ask them if they're planning a section and they won't confirm that either, they say they want to see how things go, and maybe he'll flip or labor will stop?

Then immediately they send someone in to start an IV and I ask why, and what's going with it. They said it was just normal saline in order to be ready for a c-section, and because maybe contractions will stop if I just get hydrated (uhm, haven't stopped yet, and my clear urine sample is STILL sitting on the table not 3 feet from my bed - I'm still in triage). The IV they want to start isn't going to have any steroids or drugs to slow labor so I turn it down for now. I ask for a second opinion on surgery. Another doctor is sent in. The two of them pretty much tell us that we have no option besides c-section, so if I refuse it then they will ask us to leave and go elsewhere pretty much. They tell me that they will not condone or support a vaginal breech delivery, they won't even be present for it. It had just been 15 minutes since they refused to confirm that they intended a surgical birth in the first place...wtf people?

I bring out my birth plan (so glad I had 3 different versions of it and one was for a c-section).I wanted to know if we could do this without the surgical drapes. I had seen a c-section video without drapes last week. They said no. I asked about a clear drape, so I could see birth. They said they didn't have any. I asked if we could lower the drape for the final pull out. I was turned down. EEK!

They did agree that Eric could come in with me, he could announce the sex, and they would delay the cord clamping. They also agreed that they would leave the cord super long and he could trim it. They told me that they would allow baby to be brought straight to me and I could have skin-to-skin for a moment and that they would do all of the exams on baby in the room, visible to me, and that I would be allowed to try nursing in the recovery room as soon as I was stitched. So I tried to be positive - maybe this would be OK.

The anesthesiologist comes in and we talk options for pain control. Top 3 options are spinal shot, epidural, and general anesthesia. Spinal is a single shot into your back around your spinal cord. This is nice because it wears off pretty fast, it's a very low dose of drugs, and still gives great pain coverage. Epidurals are the most common pain relief option for any birth. It's very similar to the spinal but instead of a single dose injected, they leave an IV catheter in your back, so it can deliver a constant drip of drugs to keep you numb for longer. It's still a pretty quick recovery and you are still awake to meet your baby at birth, so it's a solid choice for many women. The general anesthesia is putting you completely out cold. You don't get to witness birth or meet your baby right away. Also, your husband/partner can't be in the room with you, so he/she can't meet baby right away either. They recommend to me that as a young healthy woman with no previous surgeries and only a single baby, the spinal should be sufficient - they don't anticipate needing more pain meds than that. I almost opted for the general knock out - as I'm so terrified of doctors and surgery, but I decide that I can be strong for this baby and I can mentally handle meeting him/her at birth, even though it's not a birth even remotely like what I want. I go for the spinal to keep the drug dosage as low as possible and hopefully keep me from feeling too out of control for too long.

So I finally sign the surgical consent and they take me back from triage right to the OR. They take about 45 min to get me set up and the whole time I'm crying and scared and they won't let Eric in until I'm done. They insert the urinary catheter before doing the spinal. That did not feel awesome. Oh, and did I mention I'm still contracting? Now contractions are lasting about 90 seconds, and they're coming every 2 minutes. So barely any rest between them. This is what they call "transition" in labor. It's frequently the hardest part for moms to get through without drugs. It also means that you are just minutes from entering the pushing stage of birth - baby is literally moving through the cervix and into the birth canal at this point. After the catheter is inserted, they make me sit up curled up for almost 10 full min while she "preps" for the spinal, but I'm pretty sure the actual part she needed me in that position for took about 60 seconds. They ask me if I can swing my legs up onto table, and I totally can. They lay me down and start draping. They DID find a clear drape, thank god. So I'm trying to be positive. They ask me if my legs are numb. I let them know that they are kinda tingly but I can move just fine. I start twitching my toes and curling my feet around a bunch, as much as I can without moving my legs.

Right now, the drape that is supposed to separate my upper body from abdomen is at my chin. So I'm a little confused because I've seen other photos of c-section births where the baby is laid onto mom's breast/chest for a quick photo op - but my breasts are on the wrong side of the drape. Consequently, Eric and I spent a lot of time continually moving the drape off of my chin. It makes me tickle and feel claustrophobic when it's literally resting on my face. I feel a strange weight on my legs. I ask them if they just strapped my legs down. They tell me they did. I'm kinda getting confused as to why they aren't narrating for me what's about to happen. I'm further confused that I felt them strap my legs down.

They took some weird pincer looking guys and pinched my stomach with it. I definitely exclaimed "Ow!." It felt like they had giant tongs with needles attached to them and they were pinching my stomach fat just to make me squirm. They would pinch 3-4 times and then stop for a minute or so. They did a few sets of this, not explaining what they were doing or why. They asked me if my legs felt numb, and I was like "Uhm, not really?" The skin was still slightly tingly but I can shake my toes around and feel like I could walk if I needed to. I was that aware. I was confident my legs would support me, albeit a bit awkwardly. They kept pinching me. I stopped saying "ow" around the 5th or 6th time because they obviously didn't care. Then they finally brought Eric in. almost as soon as he sat down they started cutting. And I screamed. I had labored silently through this whole thing, even though while they were doing the spinal and I had to hold still during my strongest contractions. But now I was screaming and telling them I could feel each cut. They told me that I would feel pressure and not to worry. They reiterated again and again that I was going to feel pressure. Eric assures me that I wasn't literally screaming at the top of my lungs - although at the time I felt like I was. It was like a dream where you try to hard to yell and no sound comes out, except that some sound WAS coming out. I have been assured that I was at least at or slightly above normal voice level, so everyone in the room could definitely hear me. I wimpered, I cried, I yelled. I begged and pleaded for them to stop.

I had gone in expecting to be able to feel the pressure and sloshing around inside of me. I guessed it would make me nauseous and uncomfortable. I've had wisdom teeth broken apart and removed in several pieces while only under Novocaine. I know what it's like to have the true pain blocked but still feel pressure surrounding the work. This was NOT pressure I was dealing with.

This hurt way more than anything else ever had, worse than kidney stones and about 20 times worse than the contractions I'd been having just moments ago. I told them in was pain, I almost couldn't hold my abdomen still but I was terrified not to. I kept curling and uncurling my toes to show them I could, my feet were in a constant state of movement just to give me something to focus on. I told them I could feel the band that was holding down my legs. They didn't respond. They kept cutting and pulling and I kept screaming. They took several minutes to maneuver his rear end out. Eric said maybe 3-4 minutes to deliver his butt. They actually had to pull most of his body backwards, against my contractions, back up into my abdomen. Everything besides his head and shoulders was already descended into my pelvis. They were nice enough to let Eric announce the sex. Then they took several more minutes (all while I'm screaming bloody murder or trying my damnedest to do so) to get his head out. It took a lot of shifting and re-positioning. Once one of the surgeons (or maybe assistants) nearly laid down on my upper stomach to shove from the top. That made me nauseous but was less painful than anything else. They finally got him out.

They did let Eric trim the cord - they didn't do a delayed clamp like we had agreed on. Legan did cry immediately, quite well. They gave him a 1 min apgar (which I couldn't hear because I was screaming as they yanked me around more), but he scored a 9 out of 10. They let Eric hold him for about 15 seconds, I got to touch his head, and then they took him and stood between him and I while they rubbed him off and did other things. I'm not sure what, as I couldn't see and no one was talking to me besides Eric. I find out later that apparently in the time between when they first started cutting and now they had administered 10 mL of morphine to me through my IV, twice. I didn't feel any relief.  Somewhere in there they had asked his name and how to spell it. I confirmed it with them somehow. I couldn't tell you, but at least it gave me something to focus on.

Did I mention again that he was great during this? He held my hand and told me to yell if I needed to. He told me I could squeeze his hand as hard as I wanted. He narrated what I could see and figure out. He was great.

At this point, seeing as there's nothing left to see, I had shut my eyes and continued screaming. Eric tells me later they had pulled my uterus out, inverted it, and scraped it out. Then they started stitching. Eric was about to tell me, but I told him instead. I just kept asking "can't you just not?"

Less than two minutes after they had pulled Legan out of my sight they said he needed to go to the nursery and asked if Eric should go with. Eric sounded like he wanted to stay with me, but I told him to go even though he wanted to stay with me while I screamed. I didn't want Legan alone, so I chose to be alone. By now, my uterus is back in and stitched up. So they start piecing the rest of me together. Tears are streaming down my face, I'm now alone, scared for me, scared for my baby, and in intense pain. There's no longer anything else to focus on.

Insert BRILLIANT new idea here. I started counting each individual stitch. At this point, I think I finally got taken seriously. The charge nurse (a nurse for sure, and I think that was her title) told the anesthesiologist that they had to DO SOMETHING for me. Then I woke up in recovery. I was never warned that they were putting me out, or asked. But it was great to just wake up done at this point. In fact, I have NO idea what drug was used for my spinal OR the general anesthesia either, but I can tell you one was great and one was terrible. I am not going to make accusations of any sort of error made in actually applying the spinal block. It's entirely possible that my system/body just did not react as it was supposed to, or that for whatever reason the dose that should have been sufficient was not. All I know is that it clearly did not do its intended job. On the other hand, the general they gave me was great. Instant out, instant back in. I did not feel groggy or sick or especially weak, considering that I'd just been cut up and put back together.

That same (charge?) nurse was there in recovery. She told me that she'd never seen anyone in as much pain as I had been, and that she tried to help, but she wanted me to have the chance to meet my little guy and see his birth. She was the one that had suggested the morphine (this is when I found out about that), and the one that apparently suggested the general as well. She let me know that my son was in the "Special Care" nursery, although she wasn't clear that that mean NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), or at least the closest this hospital had to one. They did at least wheel my bed to the nursery window for about 4 seconds before they brought me to my room. He was on the far side of the room, laying spread-eagle in just a diaper under a heat lamp, all alone. I got to my room around 1, 1:30 am on Tuesday.

All I wanted to do was meet my baby, but my bed didn't fit into their nursery, and he was "too sick" to come to visit me - so he couldn't leave. Now, I understand that they don't want me up and walking around too soon after surgery, but after everything I'd been through, plus a lack of a clear message as to what was wrong with him, and all the stress of the last few hours, I couldn't sleep. I didn't at all feel as if I'd given birth. I felt like my son had been forcibly and violently extricated from me, and stolen away. After months of falling asleep to his little kicks and squirms I was instead hollow and still inside. I was told that I would be allowed out of bed 12 hours post-op and I could see him then.

My mother and I started asking everyone about 2:30/3 am when they could find me a wheelchair to visit the nursery. They balked. I didn't understand. I didn't ask to walk, or get the catheter/IV out. I just wanted to see my baby. They told us there was only one wheelchair on the entire floor of the hospital, but that they'd "see what they can do." At 5 am we were finally told that I could go see him at 6. At 6 am we waited anxiously. It was finally 6:30 am when that same charge nurse came for m. Then we had to do all sorts of dumb vitals and crap, and I had to get cleaned up some before I could sit. I willingly carried by own urine bag on the wheelchair to facilitate this operation. It was 6:45 am when I finally got to meet and touch him. It had been 7 hours since birth.

And still no one told me what was really wrong, just that he was breathing "kinda fast" and he couldn't keep his pulse oxygen level up. They just said he needed help breathing. We watched his numbers stay about the same all day Tuesday, they even let me hold him skin to skin just a little. The first time I did, it improved his pulse ox. The second time it didn't so we had to stop. At some point his doctor said that they were giving him antibiotics and had done a blood culture to stave off and find out if there was an infection that led to his early birth and difficulty breathing. They had done a chest x-ray and it didn't look like pnuemonia, but perhaps "premature respiratory disease." They didn't really explain what that meant. To me is just sounded like his lungs were immature, but they weren't clear. He was on 30-40% oxygen (normal room air is about 21-22%. We were hopeful that he'd bounce back quickly.

Overnight Tuesday he got worse and worse. His doctors came in at roughly 6:30 am on Wednesday and told us that he needed a level three NICU and they wanted to move him to a children's hospital downtown (read: nearly 2 hours from home with only moderate traffic). We instead suggested another hospital out by us that has the same level of NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) as the downtown location. The original hospital wasn't too keen on the idea, but they made the phone calls and everything was approved. They also offered to discharge me early, at 36 hours post op, instead of the usual 72-96. I jumped on the chance. I felt like hell, but being confined to one hospital while my little man was nearly an hour away was unacceptable. 

 They did make us watch about 40 minutes of educational discharge video before they would let me go. Unfortunately, 90% of that video was about caring for your newborn when you take him home. That was terrible and didn't help how awful it felt to see a breathing tube in my little guy, and to watch him get rolled away in the scariest looking incubator/gurney contraption. That was one picture I just couldn't take.


The new hospital has been lovely since then. His breathing tube was pulled after 5 days, and we're now working on weaning him off of the last little tiny bit of air support. Of bigger concern at the moment is his unwillingness to eat so far. He digests feedings through his feeding tube no problem, but we're having a little trouble convincing him to stay away and to suck in order to eat.

I have no doubt we'll get there, but in the meantime, I'm pretty busy shuttling around from home to hospital, in addition to trying to make as many of his feeds as possible, while still pumping him breastmilk and finding time to eat and sleep. He's had nothing in his stomach besides what I've produced, and I've been lucky to produce a ton. So we're looking into options for milk donation as we have almost a one month's supply of milk frozen already, and he's less than 2 weeks old!

We'll have more updates on little Legan shortly, plus I'm working on posts about my physical recovery, as well as a look into depression and the role that plays in his birth.

Maybe one day I'll be able to look back on this med-free surgical delivery and feel as if I gave birth, but for today, I still feel like it was merely a traumatic event I had to live through in order for my son to come to be. It was at least 2-3 days before I even really was able to feel like a mom or able to say "my son." So Legan and I, we'll work on healing together. I have a feeling he's going to manage it faster, and for that I'm glad. At least he shouldn't have any emotional scars from this experience. The NICU nurses do their best to make sure he never has to cry for anything!

Legan Scott, 6 lbs 11 oz, 19.5", 6-6-16

Pregnancy Myths & Truths

Time for something resembling a soap box post. Read or don't y'all - these are MY opinions, and I'm no professional.

I am so terribly tired of all of the alarmist posts/articles/lists of things/clickbait out there on social media and such. They're everywhere and annoying at the best of times. As soon as you're pregnant though the ridiculousness just goes through the roof. So here's my list of my 6 most irritating pregnancy myths, and also just for fun, 6 truths that either I wasn't warned about or I completely failed to understand the depth of.

Yeah, this book? Screw this. Didn't read it, don't want to, wouldn't suggest it. You might as well just go check yourself into an assisted living facility and expect everyone else to take care of you and all of your meal prep from here on out.

1. This is a two-part'r. 1st is that you will never sleep again, because you will be up all night worrying about your children forEVER and they will never learn to let you sleep either. 2nd is that you need to sleep a ton more during pregnancy in order to keep you and baby healthy. First off, if the first part were true, then why is it that I remember my mom having strict rules as a kid about when we were allowed to wake her up? I should never remember her sleeping in. Obviously parenthood can do a number on your sleep, but saying you will never sleep again is just alarmist and ridiculous. Also, pregnancy tends to be uncomfortable, and causes its own worries. So telling a sleep deprived woman who deeply wants to sleep but pees 84 times a night and has fire-breathing dragon amounts of heartburn to get more sleep or she's hurting her baby isn't doing anyone any good.

2. If I get told one more time what foods I shouldn't eat, I will beat that person's head in with a raw t-bone steak and grind sushi in their face. Ok, so I know that the listeria bacteria is particularly dangerous to babies in utero. I get that and I agree. But do you know what items have been found with listeria in them lately? Ice cream, bagged salad, and oatmeal bars. Those items also aren't cooked and were purchased from GROCERY STORES! So I'm going to eat my steaks medium rare, my deli meats uncooked, my raw fish sushi and I'm not going to worry about it. It seems that listeria is a crap shoot and I only eat rare/raw meats from places that I trust anyway. There's only so much worrying you can do and you have to eat something, so DO IT! Also, I do agree that some types of fish are known to regularly have too high of a heavy metal (usually mercury) concentration. I agree with limiting those, but honestly who regularly eats shark?

3. That you look wrong. Whether that be too large, too small, too high, too low, boobs all wrong or maybe just not pregnant or too pregnant at different angles or at the wrong time. The famous: "you're WAY TOO BIG for having x months to go". Or "you don't look pregnant at all" to the woman who has put on 20 lbs and feels like she's smuggling a basketball. Every body, every baby, every fitness level, and every digestive system affects pregnancy differently minute to minute. So every person is going to look different all the time. Why must people tell you that you're wrong? Trust me, I've spent months now staring at baby bumps and boobs, and the likelihood is that you look exactly like you're supposed to. 

4. All of the stupid before & after pictures and amazing (or terrible) snap-back to your pre-pregnancy body pictures. Or "use this incredible item to snap back quickly" and there's the associated before & after shots. Now not only are there about 10 zillion ways to affect the photo with lighting, clothing, posture, and make up but THEN add in photoshop. It's all crap. Let me demonstrate. The first two pictures are me being comfortable. The next two are me trying to look fit and awesome. I took them all within the same 2 minutes. Check out how different I look, and I didn't use photoshop, makeup, or even change the lighting or clothes to help. Just assume the photos you see online are assisted in some way to help someone's process/product/body look better/worse for their own purposes.

5. Being told: you need to/you will connect with your baby during pregnancy. You know what? Everyone's in a different emotional place. For some women, that may change on a week to week or month to month basis. Don't assume that just because you aren't bonding with your baby when they stomp on your bladder that you're doing it wrong. Maybe you'll feel bonded early and lose it as you get more comfortable. Maybe you'll not be able to bond until you feel each and every movement from their little bodies. Maybe you can't bond until the baby has been in your arms for a few weeks. This is all OK and you're NOT BROKEN.

6. Any/all of the old wives tale's on sex, symptoms, etc. If I believed half of them out there, I must be carrying fraternal twins because this baby reads about 1/2 and 1/2 exactly on what sex (s)he is. So unless my leech arrives intersex and with no clear answer at all, I would say that all the tales are just wrong. Also the idea that you glow? Ha, that's hilarious. It's called overheating and greasy skin due to hormones and a lack of time/ability/desire to shower.

So here's my list of my truths that I picked up as I went along. Some are based in scientific fact, some in just historical fact, and some in crazy experiences.

1. 3rd trimester is a hilarious limbo, and just when you try to adapt to something it changes. You either can't sleep or all you can do is sleep. Just when you feel like you've got a handle on how to physically manage an awkward task your belly or boobs will grow or your balance will shut down and your method won't work anymore. I haven't been proud of myself for cutting my own toenails since I was about 6, but hell I told everyone about it yesterday. I think the point of the third trimester is to convince the woman by the end that no matter how bad labor/delivery/newborn phase goes, it's preferable than spending more time dealing with the baby inside and wreaking havoc on your organs.

2. People will say really dumb things to you. No, like seriously stupid things, things that just don't even make sense at all. Like "are you sure you're not having twins" or "you're completely carrying that baby in your (insert random body part that baby can't get to here)". Nope. I'm pretty sure that on my ultrasound in my second trimester they'd have found a second baby. I'm equally content in the idea that I'm carrying said single baby in my uterus, which is located in my abdominal cavity. Give me your hand, I can identify certain parts of him/her. Baby is in the stomach. No, my face or ass are not pregnant. My whole body is pregnant. Into this category also goes any and all comments about your preferences for labor/delivery such as drugs or no drugs and all that jazz.

3. A little bit of alcohol will NOT kill you or your baby. Now, I'm not suggesting that you drink during pregnancy, or that alcohol is good for the developing baby. We all have heard about fetal alcohol syndrome and/or FASD and I'm not going to argue that it's a real problem. I will make note however that when our parents were born, their mothers were encouraged to drink to get through pregnancy. So if I decide to have a few sips of my husband's drink or maybe a half a glass of wine consumed over 3 hours after dinner, I feel pretty confident that no one is being terribly harmed. I just have a rough time believing that a sip of a cocktail is worse for my baby than the Tylenol I needed to get through my several weeks straight of headaches in the 2nd trimester. 

4. Your life will be completely different even if you try to keep things mostly the same. I managed to keep active, keep busy, ride my horse for a long time, and I'm still running. That doesn't mean my life is even remotely the same. This is unrelated to the fact of course that I'm living 1300 miles away from where I was when I found out I was pregnant of course. My dog doesn't respond to me the same way anymore. Nor does any member of my family, any stranger on the street, or my husband. It's just a fact, life is already terribly different. I'm convinced it will be more so as time goes on, but still. I thought things mostly didn't have to change until I hit late 3rd trimester, but I was wrong. At 5 weeks along I grew out of most of my pants and my whole life was instantly different. I only hope that I get most of my bladder back...and that I see my feet in the same size again.

5. Pregnancy can be very isolating. See above point. Your whole life is different. And while having your family and friends (and hopefully partner) be extra solicitous isn't a bad thing by any means, you will inevitably be going through things that the people around you can't participate in. Sure, other people can feel your belly and moms who have been there can commiserate. But every pregnancy is different and each woman is in a different mental/emotional/physical/financial place as well, so no one can truly understand what you are going through. Or the exact strange abuse you are taking from the inside. Who's baby kicks their ribs from the outer side while they're still in your womb? Seriously child? Either way, no one can live your exact life with you, and even your partner's life just isn't affected the same way. Unless maybe you're on bedrest from super early and your partner has to take over EVERYTHING. Well, even then they have the chance to at least leave the house.  

6. Even if you do everything right, things can still go wrong. It doesn't matter how fit you are, how young, how well you follow all the "dos and don'ts" lists you cannot control a thing. There are plenty of super fit women who eat really well who end up with gestational diabetes. There are young fit women who end up with all sorts of pregnancy or delivery complications. There are babies born with all sorts of congenital problems that have NOTHING to do with what their mom ate or drank (or didn't), or chemicals she inhaled. There's nothing you can do about some situations, and many issues that can arise that you can't foresee or plan for. There is a reason we elected to forego a lot of the fetal testing, because a lot of it is not 100% accurate as a screening test and most things we just don't need to know before birth. We did screen for CF genes, as it runs in my family for sure, and we did the anatomy scan at 20 weeks because that picks up major physical problems. Anything else, we can/will find out at birth. Also, no matter what I do, it's up to this baby, not me, as to whether (s)he will flip over to allow a vaginal birth. Even though I'm fit and I'm doing all the exercises, it just might not be in my cards to have baby go head down.

In short, most of what you hear is crap and the most important stuff you can't really be told because it's different for everyone. So worry, or don't. 

Mostly, being pregnant is like the rest of your life. You have no control over anything and most stuff you read on the internet is a lie anyway.

Don't sweat the small stuff, don't read too much on Google, and especially be careful not to click on things that provide absolute lists of things you cannot have/do/eat. 

Pregnancy Update Week 35

Baby size/Important facts: Baby should be around 20" long and 5.5 lbs! Baby's weight should be about 15% fat too. On the other end, skull is still thoroughly unfused to help with delivery. 

Size comparisons: Honeydew melon, plate of fried chicken, still a ukelele, 50 lbs rubber hex dumbbell, or a carton of a dozen eggs. 

Weight Change: Total gain of ~31 lbs. I dropped a little weight. No one is concerned. Stomach is being shrunk.

Waist Change: 

• Week 10
• Waist: 29" 
• Bellybutton: 33.5" 
• Size gain this week alone:
• Waist: 0.5"
• Bellybutton: 0" 
• Total gain: 
• Waist: 6.5"
• Bellybutton: 11.5"

Maternity clothes: Doing as well as I can. I feel like I'm starting to grow out of some of them. Shirts barely covering belly and some bottoms becoming terribly uncomfortable. But I still have several dresses and a skirt, plus one pair of shorts that's 100% ok, so I'll get through for sure. 

Bra changes: Starting to really strain my sports bra. 

Stretch marks: Still not seeing any. Still surprised!

Sleep: Still struggling here. Crotch pain, having to pee, sinking too far into bed to move easily...well there's just no answer. I'm only comfortable in any position for about an hour, and then it takes a lot of work to move.  

Workouts: Had to cut my last run short. I think my barefoot style shoes are no longer supportive enough for my weight, but we don't have the income to spend on more supportive shoes right now. We also don't have great access to softer surfaces to run on - it's all asphalt, concrete, or uneven grass. In short: shin splints are stopping me from running. Lungs, the rest of my legs, and belly are all willing enough. So I'll try again in a few days after my shins stop hurting. I still need to work on more squats, but they're becoming harder. Yoga has also moved into feeling ridiculous plus making me nauseous due to lack of stomach space. I really wish I had a prenatal yoga class to go to, they might have more creativity in coming up with things. I have only managed finding about 3-4 poses that work for me right now and each doesn't last long - therefore yoga just doesn't seem worth the effort. Why change clothes and lay out a mat for like 5 mins? 

Diet: Doing well in general with getting in decent food most of the time. My crazy schedule in the last week had a few days high in processed meat and lower in veggies, but when I'm literally in the car or at a doctor's office from 8 am til 1:30 pm, sometimes a deli sandwich and some beef jerky with apples and ritz crackers are the best you can do without eating out. So I do what I have to.  

Best moment this week: Had a great time with my dad and some homemade tacos on Memorial Day. Great plan!

Miss anything: Exercise in general. Feeling like a total lazy waste of space, but every single thing I try to do is exhausting, painful, or squishes my stomach in a nauseous fashion.   

Food cravings: Not really. I've entered into the point where I feel terrible after eating for about 2-3 hours, but if I don't eat every 2-3 hours I get terrible heartburn. I've decided there's no answers.  

Anything making you queasy or sick? Uhm, yoga, eating, sitting. Pretty much I feel like my stomach is starving and wants all the food, but then nothing fits and it all makes me uncomfortable with gas, nausea, or heartburn. I can't figure out an exercise/eating schedule that works for me. 

Sex Guess: Not really. Probably a boy just because I mentioned hoping for a girl and this kid is certainly stubborn enough to want to challenge me even in this.   

Labor signs: Still having a ton of BH, but no real pain, so we're not REALLY viewing them as a labor sign. There's some evidence that my mucus plug (seriously don't Google that if you don't really want to see gross stuff) is starting to fall apart. That isn't immediately concerning, so onward we march!

Symptoms: Braxton hicks, compressed stomach, terrible rib pain, terrible crotch/pelvic pain, nausea and/or heartburn. So it's really not so bad so long as I don't have to move or eat or anything. :)  

Baby position: Counting down the days until we schedule our ECV External Cephalic Version. The date should be right around June 14/15 and I should be scheduling it next Wed the 8th. Hopefully I'll be finding out on that day what the protocol is for everything about that, plus what happens when I go into labor and everything. I'm frustrated that they haven't given me that info yet. 

Belly button in or out? It goes further out everyday I think.  

Emotional state: Not getting any better. The more people try to convince me that c-sections are awesome/great/not so bad the worse I feel. Feeling forced into major abdominal surgery when you don't really believe it's necessarily the only or best option doesn't feel good to me. Continuing to worry about how my dissatisfaction with everything about how life is going right now is affecting and will continue to affect my baby. The more everyone tells me to "just focus on a healthy baby" and "stop worrying about the c-section" the more I worry that I'm no good at all for this baby. I will worry about a stressful delivery/recovery period, because no recovery is easy, and my recovery from surgery is likely to be much worse than most because I find hospitals and surgeries pretty horrifying. Just putting on a hospital gown or even thinking about doing that sends me into instant tears. I find it all demoralizing and awful. I was looking forward to having a med-free birth and finding it empowering to see what my body can do. Instead, everyday I get closer to having a birth that I pretty much don't participate in at all that I'm a mere bystander to. That's not more helpful to me. 

Looking forward to: Getting some answers from my midwife on Wednesday. Not knowing what the next step is, or will be in particular circumstances/outcomes, just leaves me more to worry about. 

Hoping to get another post up in the next few days too, relating to more pregnancy awkwardness. Unless I get too busy with my 6 appointments for various things next week...

Underwhelming Your Overwhelmed Self

I'm starting this post with a hint of trepidation. It's been a very tough six-ish weeks for me, and considering that we'll be adding our little one to the outside world in the next 3-8 weeks, I don't see it getting remarkably easier. That being said, I'm putting together a list here of things that you just don't really need to worry about when you can't find the energy - be it physical, mental, or emotional energy that's lacking. In the 3rd trimester with a huge move, life upheaval, and while trying to sell your horse it's safe to say you probably fall into exhaustion on all three fronts.

So here's my not-at-all official analysis of things to NOT let freak you out when you're otherwise overwhelmed, plus some ideas on how to put your life back together a bit when you can. 

1. Eating perfectly. Let's be honest - if time and money were no object, most people would eat organic fruits/veg/meat all or most of the time. We'd have homemade meals 3 x a day or even more if possible - because we could pay someone else to do it. That isn't to say we wouldn't all splurge some on pizza or other comfort foods, but still. When you're overwhelmed with life though, you might be struggling just to remember to eat, much less worry about what it is you're putting in your system. That's OK - kinda. As long as you don't let it go on for too long. Don't beat yourself up over not having the energy to cook if you realize you haven't managed a full nights sleep in weeks - that's just being unfair. 

2. Getting all of your exercise plans in. Again, if time & money didn't affect this it'd be easy to get in 5 workouts a week, and each one would focus on a different muscle group or goal and you'd be perfectly toned. Well, maybe. At the very least you could have a custom fitness plan made by a personal trainer just for YOU and you would have time to get your workouts in plus eating, sleeping, working, relaxing, and taking care of your family and/or social needs. Sometimes though, you need to realize that if you have been on your feet all day for several days in a row - you probably don't actually need a full workout schedule - or your extra physical activity for that week should be stretching or something else low impact. You can't expect your joints to love you for pounding the pavement if you've been standing on concrete for 50 of the last 90 hours. 

3. Keeping the house immaculate (or even mostly clean). I am the first person to admit that while I hate most housekeeping duties, I do LOVE a clean house. I find it very satisfying to come home after a long day and have a clean home. At the same time, if I have to make the choice of whether to take 30 min for myself for the first time that week or to scrub the kitchen, well screw cleanliness! There's a bright side to having a dog, and that's to help you keep the floor clean - at least of crumbs/food. I mean, in my opinion a certain amount of housework strictly has to be done to keep a house functioning - if you don't have any clean dishes, towels, or underwear life gets very difficult. But sometimes those are the only things that truly get taken of due to pressures/stress - and that's OK too.

Now, that's not to say that it's helpful or healthy to throw all of this to the wayside at the same time or for months on end. Of course, if your current life suddenly involves taking care of a sick relative or any other life shattering event - sometimes you just have to get by however you can manage. Assuming that isn't the case, you can put some plans in place to try to keep some parts of your life on track and to eventually get it all back there.

For me, I have two basic strategies I use to either keep my life from falling completely off track or to help rein it back in.

For the first one, it's more of a give-and-take approach. I take a few minutes before my week starts and try to map out how it's going to go, and figure out when I can make what concessions. The idea is that some days housework is being laughed at, or maybe a few days are spent sitting on your ass as much as possible, and yet other days turn into junk food marathons. The trick is to make sure not more than one of these is happening at once, insofar as you are able of course. 

For instance, last week I knew I had a day where I was going to spend most of my day on the go, unable to eat leftovers and likely to have to surrender to whatever food I could get my hands on the easiest. BUT, I knew I would have the chance to get in a decent amount of walking around. So I made sure that morning to at least get a couple dishes done and the trash taken out before I left so that housework wasn't COMPLETELY thrown away with my diet. Another day, I knew I was mounded underneath piles and piles and piles of laundry. Who knew that brand new cloth diapers had to be run through the wash 4+ times to get absorbent? Don't even get me started on the sanitizing procedures for used diapers... So that day I knew I was going to be a slave to my washing machine and dryer and spend much too much time folding baby clothes to. So that day, I dedicated to mostly the house, but made sure to take the time while clothes were drying to get decent food made. 

This plan is all about compromising daily so that your total week outlook doesn't look/feel horrible on the health front. Make sure to try to take one day too where you have at least some time to yourself so that your emotional health doesn't fall apart.

I use this method mostly to get on track as best as I can during times of ridiculous stress. Once I feel like things are settling down - or at least working their way into the new norm - I tend to switch to my second phase plan. 

Plan B

But it's not the morning after pill, even though it can feel like it, when you finally get to "wake up" from the fog of ohmygodwhatdidIdolastnight (week/month/whatever) and realize you have to fix at least something in order to get your life back, you get to my Plan B. Maybe you just finally finished unpacking your house (guilty) or thank god your kid's school just started up again...you have a chance to catch your breath and get back on track. So you can graduate from the above "getting through" plan and start making the conscious decision to put your health up front again. 

The plan: you use the give-and-take approach as a backdrop, but slowly make ONE aspect (food, exercise, or house) your primary goal. So for instance on a given week you make the effort to not let more than one aspect fall behind a day but you also make sure that you have a primary aspect that isn't ever thrown to the dogs. I usually do this in a specific order. I put food first, then exercise, then getting the house in order. There's a reason for this: food is the fuel for your exercise, so you can't workout if you aren't fueled correctly. 

So I go through probably 2-3 weeks where maybe housework still falls apart or gets ignored a bit, and maybe I'm only getting sufficient physical activity once or twice a week, but I'm back to my healthy eating habits 5-6 days. Because it all honesty not only is that as good as it ever gets, but I feel like as long as I'm not a professional athlete or physical trainer in some way, it's as good as it ever needs to be.  After I have managed this idea for a few weeks, then I add in workouts as my secondary focus. So maybe for another couple of weeks housework is still only barely get done enough (like the dishes are done and you have enough clean underwear and the toilet and fridge aren't actively growing anything), but you make sure still to have healthful food 5-6 days a week and get your workouts back up to 4-5 days a week - because honestly that's about as much as I feel is NECESSARY for most people. If you work really hard on 4 days, you can have 3 rest days as long as you aren't completely sedentary on all of them. 

Finally, after at least a month of getting back on track, then I add in my more regular housekeeping schedule. This refers to the more "deep cleaning" aspects, ya know what happens when you get beyond the 2 min counter/table wipe and the picking up of the absolute essentials from the floor.. The one nice thing about house work is that even when you're in the thick of things, if you can find 15 min every day to do light maintenance, most things don't get totally out of hand. This is of course excluding dishes and/or laundry which sometimes get overwhelming. But if you can do just a smidgen even when you're exhausted - but stay away from the trap of deep cleaning anything - you can usually keep afloat. I try to make sure to get a quick shower/toilet cleaning in every two weeks so that I can avoid spending time truly scrubbing it. Or at least I can for now. We'll see how that thought changes when we have kids. But if I get totally overwhelmed at that point, then I'm relying on my dear husband to step it up and make sure the bathroom isn't growing stuff. 

That being said, sometimes you have to take a sanity break from all of it. Stress can do crazy things to everyone and everyone manages stress differently. To those of you in the thick of disaster, you do what you need to to keep on keeping on today. Whether that's a gallon of ice cream, a telenovela marathon, or refusing to get out of your pjs...or in my case sometimes all three. But don't take too long of a break, because your life won't wait for you indefinitely. Just make sure to tell anyone who gives you grief for your time out....

What was your last big stressing event/circumstance that led you to take a break from healthy living?