Postpartum

"I can throw this away for you if you like," said the Walgreen's pharmacy tech. He was holding my empty bottle of Motrin in his hand. I'd taken one a day from that bottle since Danny was born. He was done using the label on the old bottle to fill my new prescription.

Little did he know the battle that was waging inside of me.

"Yes, that'll be great," I said, confidently. I had won again. I tried not to look too triumphant as I heard the bottle clunk in the trash underneath the counter.

When my babies are born, I have a borderline obsession with objects that were part of those first few days and weeks of life with them. Not just the first outfit they wore home from the hospital, but the plastic from their first package of diapers, or the mug they send home with me from my hospital stay. I don't know what my reasoning is. Something along the lines of being able to preserve their tenderness and innocence through clutter. I know I struggled with this when Grace was born and that if left unchecked it could hinder my progress in getting to and keeping a healthy state of mind as a new mom, so when we got home from the hospital this time, I took a garbage sack through the house at least once daily and threw away stuff. If it hurt to throw something away, I tried to step out of my emotions and look at it objectively. How happy are you going to be in three years that you saved the styrofoam cup you chewed ice chips from as you waited for labor to progress? If I couldn't provide a rational answer, it went in the garbage. I will admit, I hung on to the disposable cover to Danny's bilirubin bed for three days before it went in the trash. He'd punched out that cute hole with his arm! Some things must be allowed a little more time. :)

This is one facet of my personal experience with postpartum depression. I wondered to what extent I would experience it after Danny was born. I am thankful that it has been fairly mild this go round. It's interesting though, this experience at Walgreen's happened 45 minutes ago. I have step back and laugh a little that I really do have to think that hard about throwing away an empty prescription bottle. The fact that it's a decision at all tells me it's still lingering a little, but the way I win a little "battle" each day makes me so thankful that I am doing so well.

Here are some other facets to my whole postpartum experience.

I love my hospital experience. I am especially emotional after giving birth, and it makes me especially appreciative of the care that is shown to me by the nurses. It actually makes it really hard for me to go home. Not that I don't think I will be taken care of at home, but I become attached to my nurses. This time one of the nurses slid an envelope into the paperwork I was bringing home the evening we checked out. When I got home I opened it to find a card signed by all the nurses that had cared for me. It made me cry. Now it makes me smile. It did not go in the garbage.

For several days after giving birth, I have a heightened sense of how fragile mortality is. Danilo turned on Tarzan one night at home shortly after Grace was born, and I didn't tell him, but I got so upset inside and couldn't enjoy the rest movie when Tarzan's parents were killed by the cheetah in the beginning. I can (kind of) laugh at it now (having just experienced becoming a mother again), but I was truly, truly angry. 

The hardest part of the postpartum experience for me is an intense fear or anxiety that settles in and nearly paralyzes me. Fear of all kinds of things. Parent-killing cheetahs, Danilo making it safely home from work, and mostly over the responsibility of being a parent. Will I be able to do this as well as my parents did? I feel so broken and inadequate. This little person depends on me for everything. Will I be able to rise to the task and give them everything they need? I was comfortable with life before the baby and now I feel like my whole world has been thrown up in the air and come down scrambled. Will I ever experience normalcy again?

The night we brought Danny home from the hospital, he cried all night long. I wanted Danilo to sleep so we could have at least one alert parent the next day, so I made a bed on the floor in his room and tried to calm him from sun down to sun up. As I lay there, I had a wave of anxiety rush over me all night long. It was kind of uncomfortable and scary, but I just kind of let it do its thing.

Because this time I can say, hey, I have a three-year-old now and I felt this way when she was born too, but now she is mine and her daddy's whole world. It took several nights to figure out and adjust to life with her, but now it's impossible to imagine life without her.

Something else that has helped make my postpartum experience easier this time round is having Grace here with me. At a time when my emotions could cause me to take life and myself and this whole experience too seriously, Gracie provides comic relief. She laughs when he burps. She laughs when he spits up. She laughs when he goes cross-eyed. She laughs when he chooses to relieve himself when his diaper is off. It's a truly amused laugh. And it makes me laugh too. And while I laugh, I'm thankful that I'm not all by myself taking life too seriously.

Lastly, I taught a lesson a couple of months ago to the young women at church on the topic of grace. It changed my life. I have come to understand that after all we can do, God will bless us with a strengthening power (grace) that will make the seemingly difficult or impossible possible. So when postpartum panic starts to set in, I just remember my testimony of His grace and move forward. Sometimes the manifestations of His grace have been through my own daughter Grace, sometimes a text message from a friend, a priesthood blessing, or a clearer understanding of what I'm going through. These verses were part of my scripture study this morning and I loved them:

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.
It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
Lamentations 3:21-24

Surely I am not the only one who has become attached to an empty package of newborn sized Pampers. If you have fun postpartum experiences too, I would love to hear about them. :)  

feeling good

Nephi, Blogging, and a Bout with Depression

If you haven't ever met Nephi, I am thrilled that I get the chance to introduce you. Nephi is the first prophet whose story is told in the Book of Mormon, and he is physically and morally strong. He is the youngest of his brothers, but because the oldest two are hard-hearted and generally choose wickedness over what is right, the Lord chooses Nephi to be a ruler over them. The two books of Nephi are filled with stories of Nephi doing one noble and courageous thing after another... and I'm going to tell you about one of them.

Nephi has traveled several days into the wilderness with his family when his father tells him that the Lord has commanded Nephi to return to Jerusalem with his brothers to retrieve the brass plates from Laban. The brass plates contain the records of their ancestors. Nephi's answer is firm and resolute... he will go. After a few attempts at visiting Laban, it becomes very clear that Laban intends to kill Nephi and his brothers and to never hand over the brass plates. On what becomes his final attempt, Nephi approaches Laban's home and finds Laban drunk and collapsed on the ground. The Spirit constrains Nephi to kill Laban, and when Nephi hesitates, he is instructed that "it is better that one man should perish than that an entire nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief..." without the record. Nephi kills Laban, retrieves the plates and grants Laban's servant his freedom if he will join them on their journey to the promised land.

Nephi is righteous and firm and unwavering and inspiring. And as our Sunday School teacher pointed out last Sunday, he is also human, and he grants us a glimpse of that from time to time. The first time the brothers attempted to get the plates from Laban, they cast lots to see which one would go and make the request. The lot fell on Laman, the oldest. He leaves on the errand but returns empty-handed and tells his brothers that he had to flee because Laban threatened to kill him. And then the scriptures say, "...and we began to be exceedingly sorrowful." Reading between the lines, I see a young man trying to do his best. He has just completed a journey of several days through the wilderness back to Jerusalem with a couple of his brothers most likely murmuring most of the way. And when they try to do what they have been sent to do, their lives are threatened. I think for a time Nephi was at a loss for what to do, and I am so thankful he wrote that he was exceedingly sorrowful about it.
Because I want to be like Nephi. And there are times in my life when I am temporarily at a loss for what to do, and during those times I don't feel like I'm being like Nephi... until I saw this side of him. The important thing is to know the end of the story. We know that after his period of sorrow, however long or short it was, he rose to the occasion and with the help of the Lord accomplished with his brothers what they set out to do (read the whole story here).

Every so often I hear debates going on about the "best" way to blog, especially as women. I've read women wishing other women would be more honest and not present their life in such a picture-perfect light on their blog (have you seen this? It's written by a guy in his twenties to poke fun at mommy blogs, and it's stinking hysterical). I've also read the other end of the debate where people have discussed how it's possible to be too honest and share too many complaints regarding how unfairly life is treating you with whoever out there might be listening. I think there's value in both ends of the spectrum. When I see a picture of a beautifully decorated mantel or a spotless kitchen, it inspires me to make my home a more beautiful place. I am guilty of arranging things in a way so that I wouldn't be embarrassed to post a picture of it on the internet. On the other hand, I have been grateful when friends have opened up about a truly horrendous day at their house and how it made them feel, because it makes it easier for me to not take myself too seriously when I am dealing with a similar situation at a later time. What it all comes down to is that if you are blogging regularly, it must be satisfying, and you can blog about whatever you want to, whether you're at either extreme of the spectrum or somewhere in the middle.

I think Nephi (not a blogger, but still a writer) fell somewhere in the middle. He desired to record the events that showed how good the Lord had been to him and his family in the good times and the bad. He is always uplifting and inpsiring and encouraging. But sometimes he opens up and is extremely honest about how certain situations made him feel when appropriate, and that's when you read language like, "O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh...I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me" (2 Nephi 4:17-18).

I'd like to fall somewhere in the middle too. When I post something, I feel like I've made a small contribution to the world, and I want to make sure it's positive... so I try to share the very best of me. Somedays the best of me might include how I am coping with the worst of what is going on.

So I think that's why I want to confess to you that I just emerged from an episode with depression. It was the strongest it has been since this point in my life. I'm not even quite sure what caused it. I think my emotions were very close to the surface after experiencing such a wonderful Christmas that it left me open and vulnerable to an emotional crash.  I hid it well. I even had to confess to Danilo that it had happened tonight before I posted this for anyone else to read. I started to recognize it for what it was one night when I realized how excited I was to go to sleep because it would be a temporary escape from reality. If you have never felt the pangs of depression, I expect a statement like that to sound ludicrous to you. After all, I have a loving husband, and a precious daughter, a warm home and food to eat. I truly hope you never know why. Don't be alarmed though. I am armed with tricks and techniques to combat it that I didn't have the first time depression came knocking at my door. While I'm never excited when it rears its ugly head, I am thankful each time it has happened because I become more familiar with what it is and how to better cope the next time. There is a book called Living With a Black Dog: His Name is Depression that I found a lot of comfort in reading during the last stages of my first bout with depression. Anyway, the last page of the book has a picture of the man embracing the black dog. While it can be fearsome and horrific, I too have learned to love what my black dog has done for me in teaching me humility and compassion and a mountain of other lessons I treasure, as well as strengthening my relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

As I came out of my first episode with depression, which had lasted nine months, I emerged with a passion to extend hope to anyone who found themselves in that condition. If you are there, I want to tell you that I have been where you are, and there is a way out. Even for you.

70

Wait for it...

SURPRISE!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

My darling grandma turns 70 today and last night her kids and grandkids squeezed ourselves into her kitchen to surprise her when she got home from a fall leaf drive with Grandpa. We took turns expressing our love and appreciation for Grandma's faithfulness and dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ, for providing a warm beautiful setting in her home, for her delicious baking, and patience during piano lessons. I want to elaborate a bit on what I said when it was my turn. I have always loved how ladylike my grandma is. She is a beautiful woman inside and out and I have always admired how she takes care of and carries herself. I have had a love/hate relationship with my height over the years. I'm not ridiculously tall, but taller than average, and I'm usually okay with it until somebody points it out (once I was at a dance with the Spanish branch and Danilo hadn't arrived yet, so my mother-in-law encouraged a 14-year-old kid to dance with me. His eyes scaled from my toes to the top of my head and he shook his head. "Muy grande," he said, walking off. Maybe I should have grabbed him and taught him a quick lesson on the top ten things you should not say to a girl, but I didn't end up doing him the favor). I know height is kind of like straight or curly hair, you tend to wish you had the other no matter which one you've got. One day though, I realized one of the reasons my grandma is so ladylike to me is because of the way she carries her height, confidently with no apology, the way it should be. And so did her mom, my great-grandma who I adored as well. The day I realized that, I decided I was going to embrace my height and never go back. Happy birthday to a lovely woman who I am so thankful to be able to enjoy in my life. 

She loves spring too.

I know because one of her new favorite words is "ah-sai".

Thank you for your kind responses to my last post. During that bleak time I described, I had no idea this little girl lay in my future. I have been as blissfully happy as my despair was deep.

After reading one more excerpt from my journal that year, you might understand why I felt I needed to post what I did.

I gain a little bit greater insight each day, and each one gives me the strength I need to hang on and keep trying. I have these highs when I know that everything is going to be all right and I almost feel like myself again, only a more refined, polished young woman than I was a year ago. It gives me a great desire to help others, ANYONE who ever finds just the act of living to be painful.
It was one little way I hoped I could. If I can offer you any further encouragement, I would love you to let me know.


Thank you again for your kind words.

I love spring.

I can finally say that although I don't understand all of it, I am grateful for what I have experienced this past year....It was like I'd been hit by a train. Depression leaves you with nothing to live for, you hardly have the will to open your eyes, even though you have everything to live for.

the earliest stage of my depression
that smile is not real; I didn't know what was happening to me

I know how suffering feels. I know how it feels to be completely hopeless, to feel like you've lost everything, like you're garbage, to loathe yourself. I know what it feels like to believe that God has abandoned you, and that it's all your fault.

Christmas Day 2005
I don't know who took this picture, but I didn't feel I was worth
the lipstick on my face; I'll spare the pictures on the days I didn't
make an effort to get ready for the day

But what a glorious gift it is to come to the realization that all of that is lies, and that in your suffering you have actually come to more fully know God, understand what He went through, and become more like Him.

This comes from my journal, February 2006. I was realizing that I was overcoming a near year-long battle with depression and that I was going to make it. As a result, that spring was especially meaningful to me. It was like as the world was coming back to life, so was I. I saw everything with new eyes. And every time spring comes around again, those same feelings and memories of being excited to live and love life again return more powerfully than they do at any other time of the year.

Some of the most important things that came to me as a result of this most defining time of my life so far was:

1. A deeper love and appreciation for family. I am not capable of expressing what I learned about how much my parents love me through this experience and how it brought me closer to each of my sisters and brother.

this is the picture that hung on the wall during my depression;
I remember looking at myself in the picture thinking
"where did that girl go?" I started to believe she wouldn't
ever come back

2. I met this boy not too long after

finding my ultimate definition of happiness after so much despair

and 3. I emerged with the assurance that GOD IS ALWAYS THERE, present, mindful of you, even when you are convinced He isn't. This understanding has helped me every single day as well as through other difficulties that have come.

The following song on this video brings me to tears when I consider it as a prayer. My sister Hailey discovered it when she went to Lion King last year, and I want to thank her for being a giver and letting me share it here, because I know it is meaningful to her as well. To anyone who has ever experienced an endless night. If you are still there, may you find the strength to hang on because I promise dawn will come.


It almost makes me uncomfortable to write this last part because I don't know how to say it, but there may be some of you reading this that remember this period of my life and you were part of the answer to many many prayers. Your concern, your love, your support, and unconditional friendship helped me to make it. Thank you.

Jesus the Christ

Several months ago I took this invitation to heart:

I energetically encourage you to establish a personal study plan to better understand and appreciate the incomparable, eternal, infinite consequences of Jesus Christ’s perfect fulfillment of His divinely appointed calling as our Savior and Redeemer.

--Richard G. Scott, April 2010

I decided the way I wanted to come to understand my Savior's purpose better was to read Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage. I have been eating away at it a little at a time every morning as I eat my breakfast.

As the Christmas season approached this year, I was searching for a way to make this Christmas a meaningful one for me personally, and decided I would finish the 550 pages by Christmas day. That has meant reading 10-15 pages a day instead of two. When I decided to make it happen, I knew it was going to be something I would really have to make an effort to do and that would be a sacrifice of my time... but as the case always is in situations like these, when I have tried to do something for the Lord, He has blessed me with an experience far greater than my sacrifice.

I am truly at a loss for words to describe what I have learned about the kind of Man Jesus the Christ is and why I am grateful He came to this Earth to minister, atone, and die for us. One of the realizations I am making is that all that our cherished Christmas music says about Him is a true description of who He really is... and if that is the case, what a wonderful, majestic, merciful God He is, and oh what reason we have to rejoice.

Born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth. Born to give them second birth.

Son of God, love's pure light radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace.

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of righteousness! Light and life to all he brings. Risen with healing in His wings.

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns. Let men their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains repeat the sounding joy.

I know more deeply that He lives. I know more of His greatness and majesty and love and mercy and how much we need Him. I love Him. I hope this Christmas season allows you to find a way to more fully come to know Him too.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Testimony

Some things I have learned about Jesus...

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

John 1:5

This verse is testimony of someone who knew Jesus when He was on the Earth. The Word was made flesh, the Son of God who was also a God Himself, came to Earth in the form of a man to live among us. That is why choirs of angels sang. That is why a new star was shining so brightly. That is the significance of this time of year.

But why did He come?

And he beheld Satan; and he had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced.

Moses 7:26

Enoch saw this in vision. It makes my stomach turn. Because we have the gift of agency, we are able to work out our own salvation, but every one of us will also inevitably fall from time to time. This would place us in Satan's grasp, which would be a miserable place to be. But we are not lost, because...

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. But if any man sin and repent, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 2:1-2

These are truths I want to pass on to my little children as well. The Father sent His Son as a newborn baby to the Earth to live among us, to show us the way, and to perform important work that would allow Him to be our advocate with the Father.

Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.

1 John 2:24-25



I can think of no greater promise than to know that the things that matter most to me on this Earth can be mine to enjoy eternally. I am thankful to my Savior for that reality, and I share my testimony of these things in His name. Merry Christmas!!

Bring On Those Wonderful Holidays

A Saturday ago my family had tickets to Savior of the World at the Conference Center. The program was really beautifully done and even though it wasn't even quite Thanksgiving yet, I feel like it opened up the Christmas season. It brought the story of Jesus's birth and life on earth to life in a way I had never seen before and I am thankful because I have thought back on it many times since. Here we are with my family just before going to see the show. Our smiles are a little larger than usual because Danilo and I had just made a special announcement a few minutes earlier that I'm sure will be a post all of its own once Brittney has been to a doctor's appointment.