DIY Name Wall Art

In a huge departure from the normal posts documenting my struggles with motherhood and challenges to my faith, here's something I made recently for my two daughters.  They hang above each of their cribs right now and will hang above each of their beds once they are sharing a room.  These were super easy (no artistic talent needed) and cheap (I spent $8 total for both).  Would you like to make one for someone you know?

  



Materials:

1. Pre-matted picture frame in the size and style of your choice.  Design tip:  White frame/mat/background paper will look most like "nursery" art if that's what you're going for.  Moneysaving tip: I purchased mine from Goodwill for about $4 each.  They were originally gold frames that had poster art on the inside.  All I cared about was that the frames were approximately the same size and that they came with a mat.  I then primed/painted the frames/mat/background paper to match.  Warning:  If you paint the mat to match the frame/background paper, use a very thin layer of paint.  Some parts of my paint that are bumpy press up against the glass and look like black marks.
2. Scrapbook and solid cardstock paper.  If you cut out all of your letters/icons from one pattern/color, you will only need one sheet of scrapbook paper.  You need one solid cardstock paper as the background if your frame doesn't already have one you can use.  Design tip: Large patterns will not show up properly on the letters/icons.  Stick with small patterns or solids. Moneysaving tip: For the moon in Carla's version, I used cardboard packaging from a packet of sandpaper.  It's a different material from the other papers, but I didn't want to purchase yellow paper just for that tiny amount.  You might be able to make the entire thing out of various cardboard packaging you already have!
3. Mod Podge or Elmer's glue
4. Printer, scissors, and transfer paper or crayons for transferring letters/shapes to scrapbook paper.  Or a Silhouette if you're lucky enough to have one!

Directions:

Print a B&W version on regular paper.

1. Use your printer to print the name using large, simple block letters onto plain paper.  I used size 110 bold Ariel, with small caps.
2. Look around online for a simple clipart graphic for the animal or whatever icon you want.  I picked the animals for my daughters based on the Chinese zodiac year in which they were born (Carla = ox and Rachela = rabbit).  Don't get too fancy here - the simpler the image, the easier it will be to make it look nice.  Print that out onto plain paper also, or freehand draw an outline if you don't find what you want online (I made up the cow for Carla's version).
3. If you have transfer paper, transfer the letters/images onto the scrapbook paper.  I didn't want to spend money on transfer paper, so here's my cheapo way of transferring the images.  Use a crayon to color over the entire back side of the printed images (not the side where the printer printed).  Place the paper on top of the scrapbook paper so that the crayon part is facing the scrapbook paper, and the printed letters/image are facing out.  Now use a pencil to trace the letters/image.  The crayon will transfer to the scrapbook paper.  Trace slightly to the outside of the outline so that you can cut off the tracing lines.  Or you could print the letters/images as a mirror image (requires flipping the image using graphic software before printing).  Then you can trace onto the back of the scrapbook paper and not worry about your tracing lines showing on the front.
4. Cut out letters and images.  I used scissors for most and then an exacto knife for the inner parts of some of the letters.
5. Glue letters/icon onto background paper.  Optional: Cover over entire thing with a layer of Mod Podge or slightly watered down Elmer's Glue to provide a clear coating.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and if you end up making one, please leave me a comment to let me know!  Happy crafting!

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How Depression Affected My Prayer Life

Soon after I had my second child, there was a famine in Africa.  There's been a famine in Africa for as long as I can remember, but this one was bad enough to make it to the news.  While struggling with intrusive thoughts, I lost the desensitivity that allowed me to read about suffering and then move on to celebrity gossip without blinking an eye.  I heard that some starving babies didn't even have the strength to cry, and it made me depressed for bringing my babies into such a sad and painful world.  I purposefully avoided the news so that I wouldn't read about it or see any pictures about it. 

I had the same one-sided conversation with God every day, "How could you give life to so many people and then just leave them to suffer, starve, and die?"  I felt foolish for trivial prayers over my kids' sleeping or eating habits.  I stopped praying for myself or for my kids and prayed only for Africa.  If God wasn't going to do something about a cross-continent famine, why would He care about making my domestic life easier?  I thought I would go ahead and do Him the favor of removing those prayers from His Queue so that He wouldn't have to toss them out Himself.

Honestly, I kinda thought that my life would be the same whether or not I prayed, but my prayer strike taught me that prayer is about more than giving God my wish list.  I found myself with a weightier load on my shoulders.  I was less sensitive to sin creeping into my life.  I became more self-centered.  I still don't have a satisfactory answer to the problem of unanswered prayer, but I learned that prayer is about more than just getting what I ask for.  I still pray for Africa, but I also pray for my kids, myself, and other people now, too.  I try to focus less on asking for things and more on giving my burdens over to God.

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Medicating with Will Ferrell

During the time when we were sleep training my daughter, she often took short naps lasting only 15-20 minutes.  She was a ticking time bomb that kept me on edge even when she was asleep.  During this period, my sister sent me two DVDs to help pass my time, and I watched them in short spurts over several naps.  What I didn't expect was the deep feeling of dread and disappointment I had when each movie ended.  I could almost feel my heart physically dropping in my chest when the credits rolled.  Both movies are great but not cinematic masterpieces (Baby Mama and Stranger Than Fiction), but I became incredibly engrossed in them because they provided an escape from reality.

His girlfriend left him for an actuary.

With the end of each movie, I was forced to face the depression, the stress, and the anxiety again.  I felt kind of pathetic for being depressed at the end of a movie, but if there's no shame in taking antidepressants, then I suppose there should be no shame for anesthetizing with Will Ferrell.  So many activities in life are just distractions from reality: TV, blogs, Facebook.  I've found that self-reflection is often the biggest enemy of someone struggling with depression, and sometimes these superficial distractions are what keep us going.

On the other hand, I'm not sure God wants us to medicate with media.  I suspect the only things keeping Him from yanking these superficialities out of our lives are His gentle mercy and patience.  I hope one day I will be able to come face to face with my depression and offer it up to God in exchange for a deeper understanding of His grace and abundance.  For now, I'm acutely aware of the depression lurking in the corner of the room, but I only have the courage to look at it askance, trying on most days to just pretend it's not there.

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Single women, mothers, and the nuclear family

I recently read an interesting Atlantic article on the current singleness epidemic among women, and while the topic was singleness, the article also made some broader statements about how women participate in society.  One idea in particular struck me:

“We are not designed, as a species, to raise children in nuclear families,” Christopher Ryan, one of the Sex at Dawn co-authors, told me over the telephone late last summer. Women who try to be “supermoms,” whether single or married, holding down a career and running a household simultaneously, are “swimming upstream.” Could we have a modernization of the Mosuo, Ryan mused, with several women and their children living together—perhaps in one of the nation’s many foreclosed and abandoned McMansions—bonding, sharing expenses, having a higher quality of life? “In every society where women have power—whether humans or primates—the key is female bonding,” he added.

Image: graur codrin

My mom lived with us the first month after I gave birth, and I still went into my room to cry without her knowledge almost every night, so having other people around won't prevent PPD.  But my mom's presence did help with a lot of new-mom anxieties.  She didn't know how to use the new, high-tech diapers we have these days (she used cloth back in the day), but she reassured me of some obvious truths:  newborns can't be controlled by a schedule, kids are resilient and won't be easily messed up, and most importantly, it will get better.  Not to mention her cooking and what a relief it was for me to have someone else do baby-rocking duty when I couldn't stand it any longer.   I believe in the traditional, nuclear family, but it's quite possible that the way our nuclear families are organized (each one separated by walls, fences, and a lot of space) may not be the way God intended. 

I don't see our society ever moving back toward communal living, but the concept goes a long way in perhaps explaining why motherhood is so hard for so many of us.  Stay-at-home-moms have a martyr complex about their brains turning to mush for the sake of the kids, and working moms have a constant guilt complex about not being home with the kids.  Maybe if we lived more communally, SAHMs would have more of the community and intellectual stimulation they seek and working moms would have a greater ability to work from home to be around their kids more.

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Sleep Training (or my first regret as a mother)

I try to avoid drive-by prayers where I treat God like a genie in a bottle (eg: "Please make the neighbor's dog stop barking!" or "Please help me get to my client meeting on time!").  But my two most common (and often only) prayers when I was initiated into motherhood were "Please make this baby stop crying!" and "Please make this baby go to sleep!"

At six weeks, my daughter started waking up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep.  I knew she was tired because she would cry and claw at me with her little baby fingernails, but no amount of nursing or rocking would put her to sleep.  One time I held her for two hours in the middle of the night, and then she got the hiccups.  The hiccups put me over the edge.

My husband and I decided to sleep train our daughter.  I had read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (HSHHC) and was sufficiently spooked about the adverse effects that sleep-deprivation would have on my baby's neurological and emotional development.  I had also read Babywise and was afraid to raise the clingy, needy child that it described would be the result of my not taking a hard line on teaching my baby to self-soothe.  So we let our baby cry.  She cried over an hour for some of her naps and over two hours most nights in the first few weeks.

She's a great sleeper now, but my first regret as a mother is having sleep trained our daughter so early.  Even though I was at the end of my rope physically and emotionally, I feel like I traded her emotional well-being for mine.  It was either me suffering or her suffering, and I chose for it to be her (although technically it was both of us suffering because I think a part of my heart literally died from hearing her cry for so many hours).  I wish I hadn't been so weak.

I doubted myself as a mother.  I thought I had no maternal instincts, and when I started believing that about myself, I could only make intellectual decisions based on books that I had read.  My co-worker had told me that Babywise was good as a guideline, but my rules-based approach to the world did not understand what it meant to use something as a guideline.  I kept out of trouble by following rules.  I made good grades by following rules.  You always get the right answer when solving a math equation by following rules.  What did it mean for something to be a guideline?

I'm still a big believer in crying-it-out (CIO) for sleep training but just not at such an early age  (I made it a goal to hold out until at least 12 weeks with my second, but God saved me by giving me a baby who puts herself to sleep without crying).  I'm also still a big HSHHC and Babywise fan.  I kept Babywise next to my glider after having our second child and referred to it almost daily in the beginning.  But this time around, I had a better idea of what it meant to use it as a guideline.

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What do you do all day?

One of the big things I struggled with after I became a stay-at-home-mom was what to do with my baby all day.  Of course, I spent a lot of time nursing/feeding her, changing her, and trying to get her to sleep, all of which took a lot more time than it sounds.  But there was also this troubling thing that a lot of baby books call "awake time" where the baby isn't eating, sleeping, or pooping, but just...awake.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm not a baby person.  I think babies are cute, but I don't really have the need or desire to hold other people's babies or play with them.  When I get together with other moms, I'd rather have an adult conversation than to play and babytalk with our kids.  Yet I decided to stay home to "enjoy this time," so I felt like I needed to spend every waking hour playing or interacting with my daughter.  I asked other moms what they did all day with their kids and tried to implement the suggestions:

• Read - 2 minutes if you read a whole bunch of board books
• Go for a walk - not possible 6 months out of the year where I live
• Peek-a-boo - 3 minutes (baby could go longer, but I get sick of it)
• Sing - 5 minutes if I sing every song I know multiple times
• Dangle random toys in front of them (I came up with this one) - 1 minute

After many long minutes of sheer boredom, I would think, "We must have passed at least 30 minutes!  It's probably almost naptime!" only to glance at the clock and see that I barely made it past the 10 minute mark.  (Now I always divide my guess by 2 before looking at the clock, but my estimate is usually still too high.)

So here's every (sane) SAHM's dirty little secret: You can do other stuff.  Do chores, work on a hobby, "like" a few things on Facebook.  My friend of a friend at efootprints advised playing with kids in 15 minute chunks.  Having "permission" from someone I consider a supermom to not spend every waking minute interacting with my child was liberating!

Just don't get your expectations too high about what you can accomplish.  If your wife is a SAHM, or if you're tired of your SAHM friend being a "bad friend," please read the next part very carefully --> The time is not consolidated.  Some days it takes me an entire day to do one load of laundry.  I worked on a few home improvement projects that would take a normal person two weekends to complete but took me two months.  I've also found being active (eg: chores or crafts) was more acceptable to my toddler than reading a book, surfing the internet, or talking on the phone (my sister is starting to develop the skill of talking over crying babies, but I don't assume my other friends have that skill).  Also, the time that is spent interacting with my kids is very draining, so sometimes I just want to do nothing when I have free time, and that doesn't mean I'm lazy.

Of course, I still think it's important to spend a lot of quality time with my kids.  I have them "help" with my chores or activities, but I also make time each morning and afternoon to do what they want to do, to hug, kiss, and sing to them, and to make sure I am paying attention to them.

Even though I no longer suffer from postpartum depression (I'll continue to blog about that process in other posts), I still struggle with "regular" depression sometimes.  The sheer boredom and tediousness of taking care of little children contributes a lot to the depression, and having permission to do other stuff has helped me tremendously.  It seems like common sense now, but for the longest time I felt guilty if I wasn't spending quality time with my daughter every waking moment.  I hope sharing my experience frees up other struggling moms to take time away from their baby if that's what they need.

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What misconceptions do you have about counseling?

For anyone seeking counseling, finding the right counselor might seem overwhelming.  There are so many different counseling designations, approaches to therapy, and on top of that, you need to have chemistry with whoever you see.  My friend who is a counselor recently addressed many of my misconceptions about counseling.  Below is a condensed version of an email she wrote in response to my asking what differentiates the types of therapists (counselor vs. psychologist vs. psychiatrist) and in response to my frustration that I never got a clear diagnosis of PPD.  I wish I had known the information below before seeking counseling so that I would have had a better idea of what to expect (it’s very possible that my counselor was using the goal-oriented method, but I just didn’t see it because I was focused on getting a diagnosis).

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The term "therapist" or "counselor" is just a loose word for any professional who has a license to engage in therapy. This is usually an LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor), an LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker), or a Psychologist.  LPCs, LCSWs, and Psychologists can all do the same thing, but they just have different designations from going to different graduate schools.  It is really someone's training and expertise (not the letters behind their name) that qualifies them to address clinical disorders. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who gives meds--but they usually do not provide any therapy.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of therapists out there who just do “talk therapy”--they listen, support, and "explore" with you.   It sounds like you were frustrated with this approach and would have benefited more from therapy that was goal-oriented and had specific therapy approaches designed to decrease symptoms, get to the root of irrational thoughts/lies/myths, and develop healthier coping skills.

Also, the therapists that I am on a team with don't really spend a lot of time focusing on the diagnosis.  Even if your therapist told you that you had PPD, a skilled therapist would be focused on:

1. Identifying the specific symptoms that are interfering with your quality of life,
2. Coaching you in coping skills to decrease and eventually eliminate the symptoms,
3. Explore what made you vulnerable to the symptoms and then addressing this vulnerability area (ie: the root issue causing the symptoms), and
4. Walking with you through the cognitive and behavioral changes so that you can see progress and feel better.

The only reason therapists will "diagnose" is to help clients make sense of things and to help them normalize what they are going through, but the real focus of the therapy should be on addressing the symptoms, getting to the root of how to cope, and being sure you understand what made you vulnerable in the first place so that you have LONG term healing.  A good therapist will help you connect the dots by understanding the deeper issues underneath the symptoms and how to change that, not just put a band-aid fix over your symptoms.

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For better or for worse

Men can be pretty clueless most of the time.  I asked my husband to pick up some winter squash for one of our meals this week, and he came home with decorative gourds.  I know a guy whose wife had the baby blues after having each of their kids, and he said, "I don't know why she was depressed.  I mean, she just had a baby, so shouldn't she be happy?"

Image: nuchylee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

On the other hand, men can be exceedingly patient and compassionate, despite not knowing what's going on.  When I asked my husband whether or not he thought I had postpartum depression, he said, "No."  He later claimed that he was afraid saying yes would cause me to feel sorry for myself and get even more depressed.  Whether he really knew I had postpartum depression or not, what matters is how he treated me.  We had the same conversation almost every day.  "What should I do?  Will I ever feel normal again?  What if I'm like this for the rest of my life?  Do you wish I would stop being this way?"  And every day he engaged in this conversation with me with patience and a listening ear.  It wasn't just my depression and anxiety he had to put up with either.  I was irritable and angry, and my husband bore the brunt of it.  He later told me that he literally had to recite Bible verses to himself on the way home from work to be able to face whatever he was coming home to.

One time near the end of one of my counseling sessions, I was talking about my husband and how he had an unwavering faith in God.  He read the Bible, prayed, and did memory verses every day.  He reminded me that God was good.  He told me that God loved me.  He trusted God to heal me.

And then I cried.

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Mental health and faith

People with mental health struggles (depression, panic attacks, OCD, etc.) are often encouraged to pray for God's healing in their struggles.  Pray for joy instead of depression.  Pray for peace instead of anxiety.  Pray for trust instead of fear.  I completely agree that we should pray to God for healing and grace in these areas.

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

However, our focus is often on how our faith can positively impact our mental health struggles, and we don't often discuss how our mental health struggles impact our faith.  PPD and intrusive thoughts, specifically, were destructive to my faith.

The scary thoughts I was having on a daily basis forced me to confront "the problem of evil" in a very personal way.  As soon as I gave birth to my first child, I knew that I would do anything to protect her from fear or harm.  So why did God not protect us from all the fear and harm in this world?  Instead of helping me to understand God's unconditional love, having a child actually made me question it.

Happiest robot on the block.

The problem of evil has been one of God's PR problems for a long time, and I know what the correct Christian responses are to these questions.  But sometimes knowing the correct answers don't keep your heart from asking the questions.  Hint:  The correct answers have something to do with "free will" and "It's not about me, it's about God's glory."  Call me crazy, but I'd rather be a happy, little robot than to live in a world full of broken people with free will.  (Unfortunately, have yet to find proof that this world is actually all about me.)

My faith struggles resulted in something that I hope no other Christian has to experience.  I started to fear that God would punish me for my thoughts.  I would lie there at night having waking nightmares about terrible things happening to me or my baby, and I would think, "God is going to punish me for having these fears by making these things come true."  I wanted to fly away, to hide my thoughts from God, but I knew I could not.  Writing these words, I am filled with a deep sense of sadness for how a relationship that was supposed to bring light to my life actually filled me with a dark and dreadful fear.

Although the intrusive thoughts have lessened, they awakened in me an awareness of evil and resulting fear that I have not been able to shake.  The apostle John wrote, "There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love."  Oh how I long for the day of my perfection!


Droid Image: Ben Jacobson

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The postpartum trifecta: depression, anxiety, and intrusive thoughts/OCD

As I mentioned previously, postpartum depression often involves symptoms other than depression, including anxiety and intrusive thoughts (my husband would like to add a fourth category called postpartum aggression).  I actually only recently learned the term "intrusive thoughts," prior to which I referred to them as "scary thoughts."  Postpartum intrusive thoughts might include thoughts of your child getting sick, of you doing something to hurt your child, or of someone else doing something to hurt your child

Back when I was struggling with it more, intrusive thoughts would just pop into my mind.  It's not like I was sitting around thinking, "Hmmm, what are all the possible ways my child could be hurt?"  No, I'd be cuddling with my daughter, and all of the sudden the thought of something really terrible happening to her, sometimes at my own hands, would pop into my mind.  It was very disturbing.

I'm not going to go into detail about what my thoughts centered around in case there are any postpartum moms reading this.  Thinking or reading about scary things can actually make intrusive thoughts worse.  I believe my intrusive thoughts were aggravated by me looking at some pictures of POWs from a war documentary book.  Don't ask me what I was doing looking through a war documentary several weeks postpartum.  I'm a very intellectual and well-read sort of person.

In addition to having scary thoughts about things happening to my daughter, I also had scary thoughts of things happening to me.  I would lie awake at night imagining various scenarios of things that put me in a sweat and made my heart pound.

Emma Pillsbury wiping a grape.

My intrusive thoughts were bad enough to affect my behavior.  On the bad days, I wouldn't leave the house because I was afraid something would happen to me or my daughter.  Severe intrusive thoughts can lead to OCD.  The intrusive thoughts are the Obsession, and the Compulsive behaviors are rituals that help you cope with the thoughts.  The classic depiction is of someone constantly washing their hands or cleaning things.  Think Emma Pillsbury from Glee.  But let me tell you that in real life, coping with intrusive thoughts is not cute and fun like an episode of Glee.

I mentioned the intrusive thoughts to my counselor, and she only told me that "thoughts of mortality" are common for postpartum moms but didn't say much more about it.  My husband knew I was having scary thoughts but didn't understand the extent of how much fear they created in me until two years later.  This whole time, I thought my intrusive thoughts were some macabre part of my psyche that had suddenly come out and that it was primarily a spiritual issue.  I didn't trust God enough.  I didn't know His love and was therefore afraid.  I was relieved when I only very recently learned that there is a biological basis to these thoughts.  I'll be sharing more in future posts about my experience with intrusive thoughts, how they affected me spiritually, and other thoughts I have from the experience.

Have you ever battled any of the postpartum trifecta: depression, anxiety, or intrusive thoughts?  What helped you to cope?  I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment.  If you have questions, please also feel free to leave in the comments.  I will address any questions/comments in the comments or in future posts.

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Postpartum depression and trusting God

The thought that my postpartum anxiety might never go away was a devastating thought to me.  Imagine being anxious about a whole host of things related to your newborn child, and then on top of that, being anxious about the anxiety itself.  Now, you might ask at this point where my good Christian faith was.  And I will be honest.  I did not want to have faith that God would to heal me.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Notice I did not lack faith that God could heal me.  I never questioned his ability to do so.*  He is all-powerful.  He can do anything.  And that is what scared me.  He could heal me.  Or He could not.  And if I trusted Him for healing but it was somehow part of His comic plan for me to suffer like this for the rest of my life, I don't think I could have handled that disappointment.  So I protected myself and did not let myself hope that things would get better.

I haven't always been such a spiritual cynic.  In the past, I would pray with great faith for others.  You had a falling out with your friend?  I'll pray for love and healing.  You just survived a natural disaster?  I'll pray for emotional healing and the rebuilding of your home.  But in the end, I was still in my nice, cozy bed in my nice, air-conditioned house living my nice, first-world life.  I also prayed through major life decisions.  God, please provide a job for me.  But if I don't get a job, I'll just move back home.  There was always an out in the past.  When it really came time to trust God with my life, I was too scared to.

*I'm not advocating that anyone pray themselves out of postpartum depression.  I believe that God can heal us of anything but that He may use medicine, counseling, or other resources to aid in that healing.

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Postpartum depression: my biggest fear

I consider a counseling session successful if I cry.  It means that we didn't just sit around making small talk about surface issues but that we hit on a topic that is painful to me - the reason I am seeking counseling in the first place.  I distinctly remember two times that I cried during counseling for my postpartum depression and anxiety.

The first time I cried was during my first counseling session.  My counselor asked me what my biggest fear was.  I answered immediately.  It was that my panic and anxiety attacks would never go away.  My answer and the tears that came with it surprised me.

I suspect that for many women, the worst part about postpartum depression/anxiety is not knowing when and if it will go away.  When you are in the midst of it, the pain is so severe and so constant that you can't imagine the possibility of being normal again.  More terrifying than hearing your baby cry, more terrifying than the thought of hurting your own child, and more terrifying than the thought of someone else hurting your child is the thought that there may not be an end to the anxiety that is eating you up.

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Counseling: some frustrations

Even if I never changed out of my pajamas all the other days of the week, I would always do my makeup and wear something cute for my counseling sessions.  I didn't want her to think I was a total loser, even though I was already revealing to her what a dysfunctional mother, basket-case wife, and terrible daughter-in-law I was.  One time we showed up to a session wearing the same shirt from Ann Taylor Loft (different color).  That was a little weird.

Image: nixxphotography / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Getting the most out of counseling is difficult for me.  I'm constantly worried about what the counselor will think of me, which makes it hard to be completely honest.  When I would talk about the anxiety I had regarding my in-laws and how I was pretty much blockading them from seeing their one and only grandchild, I couldn't help but think, "She's probably hoping she never gets a daughter-in-law like me."  I tempered myself and never revealed to her the true depths of how anxious I was, how I was afraid to lose my daughter's love to my in-laws, how I wanted to be the only one in her life.  Instead, it became more a conversation about getting comfortable with other people taking care of my kids.  It was helpful but didn't really address the core issue I was dealing with.

Counseling is also very frustrating and sometimes awkward.  I never really know if I'm supposed to just start talking about myself, or if I should let her lead with the questions.  Sometimes I felt like she would ask a lot of questions about a particular issue that was irrelevant to my issues.  Other times I would bait her with something that I thought was perhaps part of my dysfunction (my need for control, for example), but she would gloss over it.  The most frustrating part is that she never really gave me any advice or a diagnosis of any sort and instead would always just ask me how I felt about things.

Me: My husband said that I should be open to the idea of medication if that's what I need.
Counselor:  And how does that make you feel?

Me: Someone suggested that maybe I should just face my fears and start dropping off my daughter with my in-laws on a regular basis.  Then I would see that it wasn't so bad.  (Please tell me that's a bad idea!)
Counselor:  How do you feel about that?

Stop asking me how I feel!  Just tell me what to do!  Yes, I was annoyed that my counselor was trying to get me to explore my feelings.  You definitely don't ever want me as a counseling client.

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Getting help for postpartum depression requires telling someone

I tried to get help from my OB, but it just didn't work out.  Before you have a baby, the nurse gives you all these pamphlets and brochures about postpartum depression, and they even make you sign a form that says you have been educated about it.  I used to work on the financial side of the healthcare industry, and I'm a big believer in preventive health.  So I compliantly went to my six week follow-up visit fully intending to get help for what I was sure was postpartum depression.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

However, when the triage nurse asked me if I was experiencing any signs of postpartum depression, instead of saying, "Yes, I wake up crying every day.  I don't want to get out of bed when my baby cries.  I have panic attacks that start when I wake up and don't end until I go to bed.  I can't breathe."  I said, "Um, I think I might have a little bit of anxiety."  I watched her write "anxiety" on my chart.

My OB then walked in looking at my chart, and cheerily asked me how I was doing.  I beamed at her and said, "Great!  I'm doing just fine!"  She never asked about the "anxiety" written on my chart.  I don't blame my doctor.  She asked how I was doing, and I didn't answer honestly.  She was trained to take care of me physically, and she is extremely competent at what she does.  It's just not easy to come out and say, "I think I have postpartum depression" the way it's easy to say, "I have really bad nausea," or "I think I have hemorrhoids."  I was insecure about a lot of things, and I guess I would feel like a drama queen saying I had PPD.  I was a little afraid that she would say it was nothing, and then I would be really embarrassed.

The way doctors educate and screen for postpartum depression should really be designed by psychologists instead of legislators or whoever came up with the current method.  Instead of making you sign something saying that you received PPD education before you have the baby, they should also give you a short, one-minute quiz a few weeks or months after you have the baby.  I don't know if some doctors already do this, but I'm assuming it's not required by law, since I didn't get any such quiz.  It would be much easier to circle a bunch of yes/no questions than to come out and say "I think I have PPD."

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Postpartum Anxiety

Postpartum depression is a bit of a misnomer. Although PPD is characterized by depression, many women also experience anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or OCD (among other things) when they are postpartum. My own postpartum depression soon turned into a raging anxiety.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Depression is like being stuck in mud. It slows you down to the point where it’s easier to just lie there than to do anything. It’s like going into involuntary hibernation. Anxiety is the complete opposite. Anxiety fueled by postpartum hormones is like swallowing a sparkler and having those sparks fly around inside of you constantly. Every waking moment is one long panic attack. My heart was constantly racing, breathing always on the verge of hyperventilation. I’m not sure which one is better.

My anxiety was triggered by my in-laws moving to our neighborhood within a month of my giving birth. It was just too much change at once for me to handle. I worried that my in-laws would be over all the time, even though they have always been nothing but polite and genteel when it comes to manners. I worried that I would be responsible for my in-laws’ happiness. They had sold their dream retirement home in another suburb to be near us after we had their first grandchild. I worried that my daughter would love them more than she loved me, and that was the crux of my anxiety. A friend consoled me by telling me that mom would always be at the center of a young child’s life. Even when the circle expands to include more people who love her and for her to love back, mom would still be at the center. I knew it was true, but I was so scared of losing her love that I wanted to be the only one in the circle.

I know...very dysfunctional, co-dependent, and insecure. I was crazy. Crazy in thinking that way, and crazy in my anxiety. However, I’ve come to realize that we’re all a little crazy and dysfunctional, but we’re just too scared to admit it because we’re afraid of what people will think. My best friend and I will often start conversations with, “This is kind of embarrassing, and you’re going to think I’m crazy, but...” I think if we would all be a little more honest about our dysfunction, we’d realize that crazy is actually pretty normal. So maybe my fears about my in-laws were actually kind of normal crazy, but the level of anxiety I felt was truly crazy crazy. I was sure that my body couldn’t sustain the elevated heartrate and shallow breathing much longer. The physical effects of my anxiety were going to shorten my lifespan. So I went to see a counselor.

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Birth begins with loss

With the birth of each of my two children, I went through a mourning period.

I cried for the loss of my marriage when I had my first child. My husband and I were still married and committed to each other, but I knew things would never be the same. People say that your children shouldn’t be the center of your life. But how do you not center your life around your baby when she constantly needs your attention?

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

With the birth of my second child, I cried for the loss of the only child relationship I had with my first daughter. When my oldest daughter first saw me in the hospital after having my second, she was hesitant to come toward me. It broke my heart. For the next week or so, I couldn’t look at my first child without crying.

The loss that I felt with each birth was devastating, probably not proportional to what I was actually mourning. I would cry uncontrollably at home and in public. I woke up from sleep crying. I cried during meals. Any sad thought would cause me to break down into tears. But like most bouts of crying, the crying also somehow felt good, like an emotional cleansing. I suppose you can’t welcome something new into your life until you’ve first said good-bye to the old.

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Getting out of bed

I suffered from postpartum depression. I remember the baby’s cries waking me from my sleep. A feeling of dread immediately enveloped my whole body. I knew I needed to get up, but I felt like I had lead weights on my arms and legs. My body was immobile.

Image: Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s like being in the middle of a dream in the early morning, when you’re half-awake but still mostly in your dream state. A very small part of your consciousness wants to wake up, to move, but you can’t. You try to open your eyes, but they won’t because they’re already open in your dream. You put all of will into opening your eyes, moving an arm, moving something, anything. Finally, with one last shove of effort, you open your eyes, and you’re finally awake. That was the amount of effort it took for me to get up out of bed when my baby cried.

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Finding other moms like you

People often say that raising kids is “the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” I’ve found it to be true but also a gross understatement. When I had my first child, comments like, “It will get better” didn’t offer much encouragement to me. Instead, I took solace from a woman who candidly proclaimed to me (in church), “It was hell the first few months. I hated it.” I wasn’t alone.

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I didn't hate my baby or hate being a mother.  Quite the opposite.  I was in love with my daughter, possibly a little obsessed.  Ok, definitely obsessed (will get to that later).  I hated always feeling inadequate. I hated not being in control.  I hated that instead of becoming a more warm, patient, joyful person, motherhood  had made me anxious, jumpy, and cynical.

Most of my mom friends are the "I <heart> being a mom" type, but there are a handful who are the "I hated it" type.  I leaned on the "I hated it" type more in the beginning, but more recently, I have also found real encouragement and great tips from the "I <heart> being a mom" type.  It's good to have both.

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