What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger?

THAT's my question of the year.

I think the answer is yes.

This post goes out to the other first time mother strugglers, like myself. I thought at 37, having partied and lived life to the fullest until now (traveling, writing, playing music, always working in the background), having a baby would be easy peasy. Oh how wrong I was. Turns out that the longer you have had your life to yourself, the harder it is to give it up, NOT the other way around. Especially if you were like me, who honestly was on the fence about ever having any kids in the first place and ended up with birth trauma and a major birth injury. You can read more about those first weeks at my other depressing new motherhood post here.
I don't mean to sound brutal. But having a child is brutal. Childbirth is BRUTAL. At least the way it went for me it was.

To top it off...this past 4th of July week I have to say I have suffered through one of the most intensely unhappy, miserable, terrible times I have ever known. I guess I could also say the past entire 6 months has been the same, at least mentally and emotionally inside myself, despite having brought an amazing, sweet, and beautiful little soul into the world. (See postpartum anxiety and PTSD part at the end of this post). But last week, on top of all the other chaos in my world (and thanks TO it) we moved from one home to another and despite multitudes of help and sweet people that held my baby all along, it was one of the hardest things I've done. On day one of new beginnings, sitting here at the new house, old house totally cleaned (down to the very last baseboard and doorframe) I feel a great sense of relief. I believe Rock Bottom 2013 #5 may be over. UGgghghhhhhh... and PHEW. Moving with a 5 month old is something I would not suggest to anyone I've ever known!

I thought the move from Pollock Pines to Nevada City in 2011 was as bad as it could get. I was in the middle of finals, our electricity almost started a fire the FIRST night at our Nevada City house and at 1 in the morning we had to collect goldfish and cats and GET OUT with a huge alarm sounding thru the forest. We stayed in a motorhome for 3 days at Art's parents while the landlord and prop managment figured out the problem. I had to drive to Folsom to finish finals a couple times whilst living out of a motorhome and trying to figure out where all my stuff was. It was pretty lame. But through all of this, at least there wasn't an INSANE CALIFORNIA HEAT AND HUMIDITY WAVE.

Vyvian Utah, the strongest boy soul in the world

Like this time. I have figured out that one of my major downfalls during moving is being a Virgo. I am a perfectionist and hate clutter and messes. Therefore moving is abominable to me at times. Especially this time because with a baby it was about twenty times more haphazard. See, with a baby like ours, someone always has to be holding the baby. Meaning where once there were two adults to help out in situations, there is now one. Whomever isn't holding the baby. And sure, you can wear a baby carrier thing like our awesome Beco, yes, you can "babywear" but it doesn't change the fact that you cannot bend down or over to pick things up or squat to do things (at least not with my injury), meaning whatever chores you are helping out with must be about waist level or higher. Which is also OK but still means that things like packing and cleaning which were once a cinch become extremely complicated. Thank goodness to my baby helpers so I could pitch in with our house here and there.

The worst part was going back to empty and clean clean clean our old house for a week and then returning to our new house in the 102 degree evenings,  and the house being like 90 degrees INSIDE. I was like, OK, WHAT ARE WE DOING moving to this new place??? (there were good reasons tho). It was hot and sticky and almost unbearable in the new house. Not to mention filled to the brim with unpacked boxes and baskets and boxes of junk, always those last horrid items that get moved from the old house. Plus our old house had air conditioning of the coldest sort. Icy AC. Brand new and central throughout home. This new house FELT LIKE HELL. Not to mention at about 40% humidity a swamp cooler barely does a thing and we were experiencing 60-70% humidity which is extremely rare around here. To top it off our new home's forest-teal green carpet felt kind of stiff and yet wet to the touch. SO GROSS. I was scared to let my baby crawl on it. (Still kind of am I HATE carpet). The heat wave thankfully only lasted until yesterday and today it will be a cool 91-95 here tops. I am utterly grateful to mother nature. It was 103 for way too many days!

To make matters worse, we had a precious $2250 deposit in the old house and it happened to be managed by the strictest property management around. Supposedly the owner, Betty Collins of Collins Property Management is super strict about CLEAN and will keep your money for very little reason. WE WORKED OUR ASSES OFF. And so did Art's entire family. Especially his dear young grandma Vickey who surprised us with Grandpa Gene as if they had become cleaning elves one morning, driving all the way from Placerville and getting some of the hardest parts out of the way- the areas without AC like the basement and garage area, filled with cobwebs and trash and junk and music studio equipment and piles of tools and planters, etc. I don't know how I'll ever return the favor.

What were we doing moving??? Our old house was spectacular. It looked over a stream with a beautiful deck and was perfect walking distance to Nevada City. It was across from a trailhead and was on a beautiful street. The deck was two and a half stories tall and on stilts. It was in a lush forest. Butterflies and red shouldered hawks and great blue herons abounded. It had all the amenities and great heating and a gigantic grand wood stove in a 20 foot plus ceiling lodge style living room with wood beams.

The big beautiful but dark living room

Springtime in the middle room

BUT IT WAS DARK. Nine months out of the year sunlight barely made it there. The lodge living room was DARK ALL of THE TIME even in the middle of summer. It felt cold in there to me. Too big and full of nothing for no reason. Too far in the forest with no neighbors driving by. I felt claustrophobic in the forest after giving birth. I used to LOVE this house to death! And suddenly it had become this place that seemed dark and ominous to me. The only thing I ended up liking was my garden and the birds. I started resenting EVERYTHING there. Our night routine for ourselves and the boy because I had insomnia. Like insane, awful, unexplainable insomnia. I started dreading our bedroom, the hallway, the dark living room, the shade of the cedars and tall pines which came every day at 3 in the middle of summer and in other seasons covered our whole house constantly. My dream house became my nightmare home. So odd. So strange to have loved a house so much and then to have turned on it from deep inside my new mama soul. We had such amazing parties there, so much fun, so much lighthearted goodness, and then yet suddenly the home itself became like a tall dark shadow... always preventing the light I felt I desperately needed, literally and figuratively. The new house we found had GOBS of sunshine! It is out in the open with a thousand stars to see above, even tho all horizons and hills around have oaks and pines and other trees. And Art's wonderful family lives across the street. Support system, check. I have never needed one so badly. Complete with a gourmet great Aunt (Pauline) and her composer husband as well as the coolest grandparents whom all reside on adjacent parcels of land here. To top it off, my solar lights now work all night long here. There is sun, sun, and more sun. And I have looked into it and have found out that sun is dire in regulating postpartum hormones!

the kitchen window looking out to the sweet garden there

I also came to find out that much of my postpartum mental struggle was from PTSD, in real life. Something I experienced from a very difficult birth and then a botched episiotomy that left everything down there a huge mess and led to being diagnosed with a fistula, which thank the Lord I ended up NOT having. For the first two months postpartum I thought I had a rectal-vaginal fistula. During those first weeks I experienced pain as bad as the birth itself (well... not quite but close) plus I read absolute horror stories about the condition online. About being housebound for the rest of my life. Insane stuff that was confounding me with darkness. And there are facets to this sort of birth injury that are heartbreaking, disgusting, and absolutely horrible. If you have never heard of a rectal vaginal fistula just imagine what the name conjures up and you are probably thinking along the right lines. Some people think they only happen in third world countries. THINK AGAIN. I am in a Facebook group of amazingly strong women who have suffered these fistulas, and all in first world countries with supposedly "good" health care. It is a rare injury but it happens and what makes it even worse is that most medical professionals are very uneducated on it. Here in the good ol' US of A our health and hospital care for new moms is actually very SUBPAR compared to some other countries. Anyways... I couldn't get in to a colorectal surgeon (who could tell me what was actually up with my body) until April, even though I birthed Utah in January. I was a wreck. I had panic attacks, was diagnosed with postpartum depression (which I actually didn't really have so much) and felt like I was living on the outskirts of my own life. The injury didn't just injure my body, it was ruining my mind. I was so grateful in the beginning of April when I found out that what I had was not an actual fistula, just something very close. The colorectal surgeon recommended (still does) extensive surgery that would require 2 weeks of laying down (no sitting up allowed), 2 weeks of NO FOOD except clear liquieds, as well as MONTHS, perhaps even a year, of not lifting anything or doing strenuous exercise. While having a new baby? YEA RIGHT!

Even tho I was relieved to not have an actual fistula I still was mortified at the issues my body was having. It overtook my psyche. I couldn't remember MY OWN LIFE. MY OWN MEMORIES seemed to be M.I.A. And around 6 weeks the pure, unadulterated insomnia began. I would get 4-5 hours TOTAL of sleep over three days sometimes, and not because my baby was keeping me awake. It was just me, lying there, awake. Like one hour of sleep one night, two the next, and three the next. I tried acupuncture, antidepressants (quit in three days though), meditations, counseling... nothing was changing it.  I FINALLY got in touch with a postpartum specialist, a wonderful woman who was able to tell me why I was experiencing what I was experiencing and how I could get back to my old self. My old self seemed like a dreamy vision. A girl who used to be happy, be excited for each new day and night, who studied, loved to celebrate everything, wanted the adventure of life at any given moment, whatever it may bring. I was gone. I could barely remember ME. Photographs and diary entries proved I had existed. I was scared to the point of considering suicide. I think it was the insomnia working against me, almost killing me. I felt like the birth itself was a weird dream nightmare. I would wake up at 2 am and could not stop thinking about it. It overcame me.  I couldn't let go of how wrong it had gone and how so many other women I knew seemed to have such normal births and recoveries, even when involving C sections. I felt like a failure at the entire thing, including new motherhood. It almost made me insane. At times I was an inch away from being admitted into a mental hospital. I had panic attacks at night, this awful sense of doom, of having lost all hope (upon losing sight of the sun or when dusk came). Dealing with all of this insanity while at the same time never having a moment to yourself to try to look cute or put on makeup and go out with the girls or go to concerts or play piano when once upon a time that is ALL YOU EVER DID is a mental and emotional ROAD TRIP to say the least.

Me and Utah, he's about 4 months

But my postpartum therapist/specialist, Lindsey Plumer, let me know WHAT WAS GOING ON IN MY BRAIN.  She assured me that she had seen similar situations in other new moms and just hearing that was a huge relief! I felt like all around me every new mom I knew was breezing through the whole thing, with semi-uncomplicated births and babies and no weird mental states. She told me that during birth there is a probable chance of trauma because of what is happening to your body, but most of the time the brain reaction to trauma ends neatly and those memories are stored in a certain area in your brain. However sometimes, especially when a traumatic event ends in a major bodily injury that goes ignored and/or denied, your brain does not close off the part of itself that kicks up the adrenaline and allows you to deal with the trauma. That is what happens with PTSD. She diagnosed me with PTSD and let me know that most likely it was causing not only the insomnia, but the severe anxiety (of which I had never experienced anything like before) as well as panic attacks and the detached feeling from my own life. And so I attended EMDR therapy which saved my soul. In real life. Actually saved my soul. Like I could remember my life pre-the birth. Until the end of June when i had the EMDR i could NOT remember my life before the birth. Suddenly memories came back. I could sleep. I felt like me again. I wasn't scared of night coming! I felt like I actually had BIRTHED my baby instead of having been horribly nightmarishly injured and accidentally wound up as a mom. Two sessions of EMDR after an introductory session with Lindsey healed my life. I can not tell you the struggles I had with this "PTSD" situation. The first 6 months of my baby's life was the hardest time in my life. I could barely enjoy my boy, although I DID very much bond with him and fall in love with him.

A sign in the bathroom at my therapist's practice in Roseville.

Update, September....

But I learned so much, now that I can see clearly and see that I made it thru. One amazing thing is that by some sort of miracle, and thru the echoes of so much love and kindness of my sweet and amazing friends, my body is healing itself enough for me to feel almost completely normal. I can run! I can lift anything I want (thanks to choosing no surgery)! I can have sex! I can hold my sweet sweet boy until he is 18. I blame this miracle on the awesome support of my friends and family, they have helped to heal me. They have told me TIME AND AGAIN that the body is an amazing thing in healing itself, and I began to truly believe them. I also believe that if I hadn't had the support system that I do I may not be alive right now. Also, our new home is beautiful and the land here is filled with wildlife. I go on evening walks with Ute and have seen quail, red-shouldered hawks, jackrabbits, deer, ducks and more. I love our new home and all of its sunshine. I love having family close by! I love living here. I love that I can remember my life before Utah's birth. And I am loving being a mother! Some days it is still hard, but most days I am so proud of how far we have come, the three of us. Utah, me, and my totally supportive awesome husb, arth.

One thing that I learned is that it is extremely difficult to find postpartum resources online. I had the hardest time finding my amazing therapist, who specializes in postpartum and women's issues. I am an internet research WIZ pretty much- I'm completely geeky about it- and it took HOURS to find decent postpartum links, and then to find the therapists in my area by calling and emails.

Utah and I at the new house, I'm giving a "motorcycle ride"...

I am going to create a website for women that covers the entire United States and pulls together resources for postpartum difficulties to make it much much easier for women to find the specialists and support groups that exist in their area. Not just for postpartum depression, but for postpartum anxiety, birth trauma and PTSD, birth injuries, etc. etc. I am GOING to make it happen. There is a reason I have been in school to learn web and graphic design for the past 2 1/2 years- and this is DEFINITELY one of them.

And there is a reason I had this beautiful boy baby. My mission to help other women being SECOND. The first is that this amazingly spirited, lovely, intensely happy and sometimes intensely mad wonderful boy soul NEEDED to arrive on planet earth. I don't mean to sound like every other momma in the world, but I'll go ahead and do so, THIS BOY HAS GOT SOME PLANS IN HIS BONES. I don't know what he's gonna do but I have a feeling he is going to ROCK THE BOAT in the best way possible. What more could a girl ask for? I gave birth to a revolutionary, I JUST KNOW IT.