For the raising of myself

I've been a nurse since before I could legally drink. I graduated in 2004, youngest in my class, youngest to be hired by Athens Regional Hospital, still a kid. I celebrated my 21st birthday with my coworkers just a few months after I started working.

Nurses raised me. Keri Jo mentored me in high school and through my first early hard losses when I didn't know how to cope with losing someone's uncle on Christmas eve, and later coached me through the first baby lost in a delivery.

Nurses threw me my wedding shower, my baby showers, and every small celebration in between, because you live more of your life with coworkers than family sometimes, and celebrate more holidays with them too. When I couldn't nurse my first baby, and couldn't cope with postpartum depression, my coworkers walked me through it. When we took a leap and moved to Nashville my coworkers paid for our gas and hotels for the trip down.

I have learned to budget, sometimes to coupon, to work hard, to step back from the job, to lead and be led by amazing nurses, amazing friends. 

For a long time, becoming a nurse was the only decision I felt really confident in making, and I am grateful that I still love what I do and the people I do it with. 

Happy nurses week to all the nurses who raised me, delivered my babies and let me deliver theirs, grieved my miscarriages with me, help me parent and help me wife, and who stay up long hours working with me sometimes more than they get to be with their families!

The Fourth Void

We never had a baby that wasn't edging the last baby into toddlerhood just a little sooner than they liked. This is the longest span of time we've not had a newborn since I married my husband. I am simultaneously grateful for this space and filled with an ache to fill it. It is strange to feel the pull of something so strongly, in all the little things of our daily life I see so clearly another child. I long for the chance to relish and enjoy the smallness of infancy that disappears so quickly that we never really seemed to be able to notice because things were so busy.
I feel the fourth void like a missing child. I can so clearly see our family with four kids that it sometimes feels like something is missing, or I am leaving one behind.
I want to barter and bargain by saying I will do it as much on my own as I can, I will sleep less and not care. I will do as much of the house work and child work as I can, give as much space as I can. These won't tip the balance or make the difference. I know our life, we are both all in.  I want to promise alone time. I want to promise an addition to our house that will give us much needed space. However, additions are years off and alone time in one and two hour increments is not really enough. I would do anything to have this baby I feel is the perfect ending to this space and time in our family. The problem is, anything isn't in my power to give.
I feel like I will always regret not filling this fourth little void,  I am afraid I won't stop wanting this. I am afraid my heart will hold this sadness and I won't get over it. I am afraid it will make me angry and snippy, and short even though I see the opposing side too.
Where do you go when there is no compromise, there is no such thing as half a child. There is no love loss here on the issue, I see the tenderness in my husband as he watches me grieve through this. I also see his feelings of finality that he cannot change. So we sit at an impasse, happily married and in sync in every issue but this one. Years have drifted over this impasse, and still we wait for an answer we can't seem to find. What is more regrettable, the baby never had or the baby hard fought for? I truly don't know anymore

When my heart is overwhelmed, walking with depression

This week, this month, this year has felt long. This day, very long too.  Today I was overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed by kids who left for school and came home from it out of sorts, tearful, and sad/mad on a Tuesday. Overwhelmed with angry neighbors over trees that are too tall, too overstretched, and too weak to be left standing. Overwhelmed with knowledge that today would be a baby day for us. If things had only been different in June. Today would be 2 weeks before my due date and delivery day.
Overwhelmed because on good days my depression feels like a distant angst. On mediocre days like a well known companion that I am able to set aside enough to function. However, on days like today it is a tidal wave of anxiety and sadness that presses down until I eek the kids into bed in time to not see me succumb. It is sleepless exhaustion with the foreknowledge that morning is coming and I will need to get out of this bed to make breakfast, hug my littles in hopes that today is their better day, and carry out the things of daily life.
I find things stacking up inside me with no time to process or even acknowledge them. I also find that parenting through depression often requires me to compartmentalize just enough to make it through the day. There has not been time for what feels like an enormity of emotions I might feel if I allow myself to start. It is an old fear that if I were to begin the task of processing through this grief in me that it would overtake me and place me so deep that I would not be able to find my way back, I would not be able to get out of bed, parent through, or work through. I would succumb to it, as sometimes I want to. I am grateful for a husband who is patient with me. Who puts me to rest when I don't feel well, and tempers himself from frustrations I express without knowing the sharpness of my tongue  when I am expressing them. I think I am learning to make peace with this struggle, to own it more than I used to, and to start figuring out a better way than just compartmentalizing things enough to get by.


I should warn you when I'm not well
I can tell
There's nothing I can do
To make this easier for you
You're gonna need to be patient with me
How can I warn you when my tongue turns to dust like we've discussed?
It doesn't mean that I don't care
It means I'm partially there
You're gonna need to be patient with me

Wilco

Dark side of the full moon

I've been aware of my struggle with depression since college, but looking back I see how it was affecting me even when I was as young as ten.
In college I would have these spaces of time where the thought of getting in the shower and slitting my wrists sounded comforting compared to living with the heaviness of my mental feelings.
I didn't find real help until I was in my 20's and reached out for a third time, and thankfully was sent to a practice where, for the first time, I was given medication and true mental health counseling.
Then, we had a baby,  another baby, and one more baby.
After our first baby I was never sure where his fussiness started and my mania began. I felt they were interlinked, it certainly made it harder on everyone that he never stopped crying, however I used to stare at him and have these longings to walk away and never come back. I dreamed and hallucinated some fairly harsh things, and frantically called my dad, a friends husband I'd only met once, and my husband in complete hysterical tears hoping they would rescue me, hoping they would take this baby away all the while being terrified they would take the baby away.
It was 6 months before I had any feelings for my first baby, and I still have these blank spaces with no memories from that time.
With our second baby I went in feeling I knew myself, I had back up plan after back up plan, medications lined up, sitters to help, and the transition was much smoother. So much so that I walked into my third pregnancy without any reservations. I'd never considered prenatal depression, I'd only ever worried about the end game. As stressors began to build that year found us putting our oldest in therapy with concerns broached about Aspergers, my mother in law was suddenly diagnosed with cancer putting my husband in an inaccessible tailspin, then I attended a traumatic delivery and suddenly became convinced there was no way this baby was going to safely make it through. I went off all my medication, terrified it would cause a cardiac defect in the baby.
It was so isolating, I was unable to communicate with my husband and didn't want to add to his already heavy emotional load.
I am still so grateful for my cousins who came and decorated my nursery and sat with me through Sean traveling back and forth to Canada when I couldn't go. I was too far along to fly and attend my mother in laws funeral, and she never had the chance to meet my sweet daughter, something that to this day still makes me so sad. I remember the disbelief and relief when they put Elsie on my chest, and all I could say to my obstetrician was, I didn't think she would be alive as I cried tears or relief. The gravity of that emotion was my first clue that I was not ok. Two weeks in I knew for sure this old intense heaviness was not getting better only worse, as I avoided showering, and finally called my obstatricians nurse crying hysterically.
I am lucky that all along the way there were people reaching out. I was screened at Hanks first pediatrician appointment, at my postpartum appointments, and when I asked for help from my practitioners I received it. With Archie and Elsie my obstetrician looked into different therapies and alternatives for me to help with the process. I was lucky, but a lot of women are not.
Until we watched this documentary together, Sean and I never really discussed these time periods in our marriage and parenting journey. We moved on, we had babies, we raise them and walk past those times of struggle. We are lucky.

Mindfulness and the goodness of God

It's 7:15pm, we should be getting ready for bed on this school night of crabby children who have cried over spilled water, unfair game play, markers, biting her own finger while eating a brownie, and several other meltdown worthy catastrophes that have happened since I walked back in the door at 6. Instead of bed time routine they are jumping on the trampoline in our buggy end of summer back yard while I write and listen to the cicadas making their evening racket.
This is my perfect bliss evening, if only Sean was home not at work. However, sometimes I rush them to bed in my desire to get a few snatches of time with Sean instead of enjoying this sweetness.
I have had small floods of gratefulness as well as sentimentality this last week.
Exiting a space in my life where I've felt if not doubtful, at least a little bitter over the gifts I perceived were being given only to be snatched back.
It can be an easy thing to doubt the goodness of God when things feel anything but good. When trying to to figure out how to parent and work through depression, loss, exhaustion, I admit this failing comes to me often.
For a week now in my mindful quiet I've challenged myself to acknowledge God's goodness in any small thing I could find and one thing has come back over and over, the goodness and sweetness of being loved by others. In particular there are a handful of people I've been loved by simply because Sean chose and loved me.
My mother in law who, before she ever met me, chose to love me with such openness only because her son did. She wrote me a letter the first time we dated that contained some of the most open acceptance I think anyone had ever approached me with, and this was a theme in my relationship with her. Even though her son moved far from her, she sent him with prayer, blessing, and a joy mixed sadness to Philadelphia. I never knew I could miss someone that we didn't get to see often so much, but in all sorts of little ways I miss her in our days. I miss my kids not knowing what an amazing loving grandmother she was to them.
There's a long list of friends we hardly ever get to see, but when we do it feels like our home away from home. I am grateful for the family and friends I gained when I married Sean.

8 Weeks of Summer

There is one week of summer break left before we send Hank to second grade, Archie to Kindergarten, and Elsie to a TBD school of choice 2 times a week. Twice a week this nest will feel empty for the first time since our first wedding anniversary.
While I am pinning bento box meals, searching for the right back packs, and gawking at the absurd school supply list, I am also taking stock of our summer. We chose for all three kids to be home, not to have a set plan for each day; to fill our 8 weeks with $1 movies, park outings, pool swimming, home days, lego building, trampoline jumping, firefly catching, and in general the luxury and bliss of not having to have any plan at all. The kids have happily started a morning routine of granola, yogurt, and pound puppies. It has been perfect, as perfect as an imperfect family could wish for. Not instagram lovely, or pinterest perfect, but messy real life perfect.
I have watched our kids grow and stretch emotionally and physically. We've struggled to support Hank to find his way as a sensitive kid in a noisy and insensitive world, and battled decisions on counseling, medication, how much we are able to help vs. how much he needs. I think he grew 3 feet this summer, and weathered emotions of Hemingway proportions. We chose to start an antidepressant this summer, which was a decision heavy with worry, doubt, and even some self reflective guilt over the things we pass down to our kids. It feels like a taboo subject, children who need more mental help than hugs and home love can give, but if anyone wants a soft heart and open ear to discuss it, we've skirted around it for a couple years in our home.
Archie has grown into something the same and wholly different than what I expected. The same confident silly boy at home, and this unexpected shy little man when out at a friends or in a class. His oft uttered request for confirmation on any given thing is, "Right Hanky?" He is long and lanky, which reminds me of my brothers, because I swear he eats twice his body weight each day, and I can still see his spine through his shirts. He is fearless and bashful all at once.
Elsie. Is. A. Pistol. She is a sharp witted, strong willed, force of a girl to be reckoned with. She defies us at every turn with a toss of her curls, a stamping foot, and the phrase "are you kidding me?!" I can't discipline her without laughing, and once she knows you are laughing she is already aware she has won. Most of the time when I choose a stance or a hard line, two hours later I regret it. I don't know if I will ever get her to apologize for anything. Ever. I hope she speeds through life with fire and fury unapologetically, like she does now.
It is 8o'clock, we're off our nighttime schedule by an hour because while I have been sitting outside writing, they have been jumping on the trampoline and catching fireflies in cups. This is the sweetness of summer nights without plans or obligations. The sweetness I always hope to preserve through the school year, but that usually gives way to lunch packing, school prepping, and general needs for sleep before spending a day out of home learning. Thank goodness for 8 weeks of summer...

My body fails me all the time

It is a frustrating thing to feel your own body betrays you. Not in an aging way, or in a broken down aches and pain way, but in an integral, basic function sort of way.
My body doesn't like to stay pregnant. It doesn't matter with what sort of desperation I desire the baby, it doesn't matter when I bruise my body over and over every day with the appropriate blood thinners, it doesn't seem to matter what I do at all. I have jokingly said before that I have no problem getting pregnant, it's the holding the pregnancy I can't seem to do, and like a car reservation, it's the holding on that really counts isn't it.
I have three lovely kids, I am happy to have them. I remember my OBGYN in Philadelphia telling me he was not sure how my placenta managed to support poor Hank, but here he is, and I am appropriately grateful. I am grateful for postpartum hemorrhages, postpartum Lovenox, and even the postpartum depression that has gotten me the three sweet faces I own. I hope my frustration is not mistaken for not counting my blessings.
They don't fill this fourth little void I feel in my heart and in my family. They don't take the space of what I was holding in my mind and my arms ten months from now.
The truth is, I wanted this baby. I wanted it with such a fierce desperation that I gave myself a lot of false hope over this last week. I fooled myself into thinking it was meant to be, because the only way we would have a fourth baby was by complete chance and mistake. And for that reason alone, I felt it just might stick.
Unlike other times, this one was particularly drawn out and painful as I twice witnessed the slowest little beat, then came home and prayed each day that it would get stronger not weaker, and I silently telepathically urged that baby to get stronger each night in the quiet of my bed. I held my husbands hand and wept when it didn't, then I held my friends hands in the O.R. and wept while they removed this tiny thing I never wanted to let go of and felt guilty for letting it be gently drawn out of my body. When you are all emptied out, it is a different kind of grief. It's one most people don't talk about much, because it is awkward and hard to verbalize what it feels like to lose something so small that no one saw with their eyes or held with their hands. I held it in my bones and my blood, in my very inner self. While I am grateful for the relief, I still grieve the loss of morning sickness and nausea at every turn of my day. I grieve drinking and enjoying coffee again, and I feel guilty for my grief. It is an awkward thing to impose on the people around you. This is why women don't talk about their miscarriages I think.