Happy.. and sad....

Today is my daughter's second birthday. I can hardly believe it. Two whole years we've survived being new parents, dealing with a lot of really amazing AND difficult milestones. First steps, first bumps on the head, first colds, first teeth, first fevers, first words, many tears, many giggles, many good times too.

I can't believe that things have turned around for me so much, considering everything I've been through since my pregnancy in 2004-05.

I had a very very difficult pregnancy. I gained a TON of weight, and she was a big baby to boot, so I had a very big problem with mobility. Basically everything in my body HURT. I had head cold after head cold at the end of my pregnancy, and I had broken my big toe when I was about 6 1/2 months pregnant. My back and sciatic nerve was chronically pinched, resulting in extreme pain down my back to my tailbone, excruciating groin pain, and itchy, burning feet. I had to go on sick leave for six weeks before her birth as I could no longer sit at a desk without being in extreme agony. The only thing I could do to feel better was to curl up on my side on the couch or in bed. I spent a lot of my pregnancy that way. I'm a pretty active and enthusiastic person, and to be that debilitated did a number on my psychological well being. I felt so trapped and so burdened, it was awful.

Although a day to be happy and celebrate my daughter, as the one who was pregnant and gave birth to her, I can't help thinking about what I was going through two years ago yesterday (Abby was born just after midnight so most of my labour with her was on June 21). It was a difficult, excruciating labour and delivery that left me with a bad case of post traumatic stress disorder and postpartum depression. I won't go into the gory details, but she was a big baby, and needed a lot of time, and a lot of effort for her to get out. It was an "assisted" birth (vacuum) which means her progress out into the world was slow and we needed help.

Because she was so big, she didn't rotate quite right inside me and came out half-sideways, which was extremely painful. I was stuck in the transition stage of labour, which is the most excruciating, for many, many hours, without any pain relief. I remember thinking that I just wanted to die, that I hoped a big nuclear bomb would drop out of the sky and end it for us all. For hours, I struggled with the pain, not knowing that it actually was hours that were passing. I remember struggling with the pain for 3 hours (this part of labour, the "experts" say, should last about 20-40 minutes.. for me, not so lucky - all total it was 7 hours) and then freaking out, and going into a pain-filled haze around 3pm, and finally getting an epidural, and looking up at the clock and it was 7pm. What happened during those those last 4 hours, I will never remember. I felt guilty for a LONG time about wishing that we would die at that time. I have been able to put some distance between that event and I can now understand and have compassion with myself for thinking that. I didnt really want us to die, I simply had long passed my pain capacity.

With the epidural in, relief came immediately. I got to relax for a bit before the marathon 4 hours of pushing started. Nobody in prenatal class ever warns you just how hard the pushing stage is. During that part of labour, I strained my right rotator cuff, which took about a year to heal. I may have also herniated a disc in my back - at some point either during pregnancy or labour I herniated one of my lowermost discs in my back and had painful/numb tailbone, legs and feet that I still suffer from today.

When the birth was over, after going to my hospital room (without my daughter - she had to spend the first night in the NICU on account of being extremely exhausted and running a high temperature) I started having my first "postpartum depression visions" - which were horrible, extremely intense visions of awful, painful injuries and deaths of infants. And in those visions, it was ME who was doing the maiming and killing. I would try and lay down and these visions would flood my mind. I'd be so shocked I'd wake up, sit right up in bed (despite being awake for about 72 hours straight and having just delivered a baby) and my heart would be racing. I'd try to lay down again and just as I was drifting off, BOOM I'd be hit with another vision. It got to the point where I was petrified to go to sleep, and to be alone with her. I pretty much dozed off and on in 20-40 minute increments.

Once I got home, the combination of the postpartum hormone mess, the fatigue and the intensification of the visions resulted in me becoming agoraphobic. I could not leave the house unattended. When I was alone, I could not go outside, I stayed inside all day long with the doors locked. I was petrified to put my daughter in her stroller, or her car seat and take her in the car, or to even hold her (I thought I'd drop her or hurt her). It was all I could do to get through the day.

My parents came up a lot during the summer, I didnt have to be alone too much. The PPD symptoms really were at bay when I was not alone. I actually felt that I just might be able to pull off this whole motherhood thing. But when September came, my mom had to go back to work, and I was really on my own. I remember one morning, literally hanging onto my husbands feet, crying and pleading with him NOT to leave the house, not to leave me alone with the baby, to stay home from work just one more day. He didnt understand my extremely bizarre behaviour, and had to get out, and left me laying on the floor, sobbing.

Fortunately my husband had a sympathetic boss who gave him 2 weeks of extra paid leave, and we had a vacation coming up, so he was able to stay with me the entire month of September. I dreaded the thought of him going back to work in October.

At that point I knew I'd really benefit from some decent sleep. I had a few extra sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet from years ago, At least at night, I could get some relief as the medication choked off the anxiety for several hours at a time to enable me to sleep. Unfortunately this prevented me from getting up with Abby at night to feed her. I hate to admit but my husband was more of a "mom" to Abby than I was. I still feel guilt and shame to this day that I could not function as a "real mom" would, being up at night to tend to her offspring. But I just physically and emotionally couldn't cope with any more sleep deprivation.

During that time, I also had fantasies of getting in my car, and driving as far away from Ottawa as I could. I figured I could be in Toronto by the end of the day, Northern Ontario by the next day, and Calgary by the end of the week. I wanted to just keep driving until I hit the Pacific Ocean. I believed that my family would have been much better off without me, that I had made a huge mistake, and that I was just not capable of being a wife and mother.

Little did I know at the time that these were all the classic symptoms of postpartum depression.

The desire to run away, the visions, the anxiety and and the complete collapse of confidence, some experts say, is a subconscious brain-stem reaction to a difficult birth. The visions are apparently the "fight" response from one's rudimentary brain trying to subconsciously strike-back at the object that it thinks caused the body pain - the baby. The desire to run away is the other side of the classic "flight or fight" reaction - the flight.

These reactions are subconcious - they are generated completely out of the conscious part of the brain. When they enter the realm of the conscious and rational part of the brain, they are extremely disturbing (to put it mildly).

PPD was a difficult experience indeed, but it was a piece of cake compared to what happened later on - the loss of my father, the excruciating episodes of gallstones, surgery.... on the work front, the transfer of my position to a new branch and massive change in my work life was not even on the horizon - I'm still dealing with the emotional aftermath of that one. I loved the job that I had when I left on mat leave, and I can't do it anymore. Those of us who were transferred were shunned by the rest of the group (probably under the illogical assumption of "If it can happen to them, it can happen to us, right?") as well, there's been a lot of ridiculous made-up horse-trading of responsibilities that have removed the more interesting work from our mandate, and replaced it with tedious and uninteresting administrative work.

I know, I know I should be thinking about my daughter today, and how great she is. And she is. She's amazing. She's the best thing that ever happened to me. This morning we woke up and we sang Happy Birthday to you and she danced around the kitchen. And asked for us to sing "AGAIN!!" and "AGAIN!!" while grinning like a fool. I think she's the funniest kid on the planet and I'm so happy that she came into my life. I wish her entry into this world had been a bit easier, but you take what you get.

Today I have so many mixed feelings. Gratefulness, appreciation, relief, happiness, but I still can't shake the wiggly wobblies I'm feeling about how hard things were last year at this time. And how much worse things were to come. I'm glad I don't have the ability to see the future. Had I seen that whole storm coming, I don't know what I'd have done.

One thing I've learned from this experience is that the saying "at least you have your health" is really true. There's little worse in the world then being incapacitated, sick (mentally or otherwise). I'm so happy to be re-finding myself after years of illness and grief. What's been prseented to me (my family and my life) is so amazing, I seem to be learning day by day to appreciate the moments, and not take anything for granted. Losing my father four months after Abby's birth really hit home how short our lives are, and to appreciate, it, for someday, for ALL of us, our souls will have to leave the planet. Our childhoods, young adulthoods, middle age, and old age (if we are lucky enough to get to all of those stages) are full of amazing experiences that we should all be open enough to experience and enjoy. Life is linear - you don't get a chance to do those things that you have the opportunity to do NOW.

Happy second birthday baby. Mommy's here. And despite it all, I'm happier than ever!

And.. it will soon be CAKE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOOPEEEEEEEE! Happy to you CAAAAKE!!