The Dark Side of Mother's Day

***This is a personal post about my journey through and experience with my version of "The Baby Blues". It is not meant to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease, including Postpartum Depression. If you have any desire to harm yourself or your baby, stop reading this. It's not that important. Pick up the phone and call your doctor. Call your nurse. Call your midwife. Call 911. Get the help you need for you and your baby. Acknowledging that you can't do it on your own is the toughest, hardest, bravest, most selfless thing you will ever do in your entire life. And, I promise- you can do it.***

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Mother's Day is, traditionally, a day filled with light and love and laughter. There are overcooked scrambled egg breakfasts to eat. An adorable handmade card/picture frame/flower pot to open. A soon-to-be crushed orchid corsage to wear to worship. A lunch that you (hopefully) didn't have to fix. And maybe even a nap for you before it's all said and done. Mother's Day is a sweet and innocent and special time. But, for me, it hasn't always been that way. For me, becoming a "Mother" on Mother's Day came with a dark side. 

Before my first baby (Luke) was born, I'd heard all about Post Partum Depression. I'd heard about the 'Baby Blues' that some women could get after they delivered. I'd heard the awful, tragic stories of mothers who did unspeakable harm to their precious, innocent babies because of postpartum depression. I listened to those stories and wondered in disbelief how someone could do something like that to their baby. It seemed impossible for me to even imagine that. And, like I said, THAT was what I thought postpartum depression was. I thought that women who microwaved their babies or drove their cars into the ocean were the only ones who suffered from the 'baby blues'. Man, y'all. I WAS WRONG. 

For me, my version of the 'baby blues' was completely different. I never had the urge to physically harm my children. Not even for a second. I never had to fight the desire to drive my car into the ocean or burn my house to the ground. I never had any bitter or jealous or harmful thoughts to battle. But just because my emotions weren't telling me to harm by babies didn't mean they weren't awful. I was still fighting a war. A war within myself. A war within my heart and mind. One of the toughest battles I had ever faced. And, at least after Luke was born- I never even knew it. 

You see, I thought that as long as you weren't trying to stuff your baby in a microwave you couldn't HAVE the baby blues. I thought that if you weren't standing on the top of a building ready to plummet to the ground you couldn't HAVE the baby blues. I thought that if you weren't locking yourself in a garage with a running car you couldn't HAVE the baby blues. But y'all, I had them. I had them bad. Baaaaaad. 

I thought that it was normal. That the tears, the fear, the pain, the anxiety, that the valley of it all- was normal. I thought that the uncontrollable urge to cry and the inability to sleep were all natural, normal parts of motherhood. (And those things are normal. To a point.) So after Luke was born, I just sucked it up, swallowed my tears, dried my face and tried to press on. But I felt as if I were walking under water. Everything was hard. Everything pushed back against me. Against my mind. Against my heart. Against my peace. 

But here's the best part: IT DIDN'T LAST FOREVER. Eventually, the clouds lifted and I got back to my normal, happy, healthy self. It took some time. And some tears. And lots of prayers, but I came through it after Luke was born. And when I got pregnant with our second baby, Josie, going into the valley again was one of my first and biggest fears. I was petrified. But, after she was born, I never went to the dark place like I did with Luke. I came home and jumped right back into my life with both feet and never looked back. I got pregnant with our third baby, Nathan, and I wondered if I would be spared again. And, unfortunately, I wasn't. I would say that of all three, my valleys were the worst with him. Maybe it was because I knew what I was going through, but was unable to control it. I'm not sure what made it harder to deal with the second time around, but IT WAS. It really, really was. However, like it did with Luke- my skies eventually cleared and I got back to my normal, happy, healthy self.

Talking to one of my sister-in-love's made me realized that I wasn't alone. SHE had gone through the same feelings I was having, too.  And, as I timidly started to reach out to some of my other "Mommy" friends, I realized: SOME OF THEM HAVE FELT THIS WAY, TOO. And y'all- nothing, NOTHING in this world could have made me feel better than to knowing I wasn't alone. 

And I am grateful for that. And I'm grateful for my "Mommy" friends who shared their stories with me while I was in my valley. Without their support and encouragement, I know I wouldn't have been able to get through it. So that is what I'd like this post to be: I'd like to take my turn to help somebody else in a valley. I want to let her know that she's not alone. That there's been someone else who has been in her shoes before. Someone else has walked that rough road she's on and lived to tell about it. To tell her that the sun will rise again and she will get through it. To love and hug and encourage her like so many others did for me. This is my story. 

For me, navigating the days of my baby blues included some things like this:

• Peaks and Valleys. Oh, man, y'all. These were a doosey. For me, I'd be fine one minute, then completely hysterical the next. I don't know what would trigger it but it would come and go like nobody's business. I could feel it start to settle in over me, almost like a slow moving fog. It would slowly descend down until I was completely engulfed in one massive, inescable valley of tears and fears and anxiety. I felt like I was on one of those cave exploring tours when you enter those massive caverns. The tour guide would then warn everyone that they were going to cut off the lights in order to allow those of us on the tour to experience total darkness. WHO WOULD WANT TO VOLUNTARILY EXPERIENCE THIS? I know it gave me the heeby-jeebes when I went and I was a grown and married woman then. Anyway- that is what the valley felt like for me. That thick, dark, unpenetrable night. Ugh. The valleys were the WORST. Then, for reasons unknown, it would slowly start to subside. Little by little, I would start to feel better again. Lighter. Calmer. Peaceful. And then, at some point, I would start to feel 'normal' again. I would take pictures and post updates on Facebook or Instagram. I'd greet the visitors that came by with casseroles and outfits with a tired smile and a grateful hug. I would eat. I would sleep. I would relax. When I was feeling "good", I really was feeling good. And I'd stay that way, at least, until the next time the fog rolled in. 
• I hated the phone. If I was in a valley, oh my mercy I loathed to hear my phone ring. I would hear it go off and become immediately livid: "WHO IS BOTHERING ME? IF I HAVEN'T CALLED OR TEXTED OR SENT A SMOKE SIGNAL OR A CARRIER PIGEON TO YOUR WINDOW- WHY ARE YOU BOTHERING ME?!!!" So yeah, if I was in a valley, I wasn't really into chatting. Like at all. Not even a little. I detested the telephone. And the computer. And the camera. I was basically an antisocial lunatic. 
• One word: SUNDOWNERS. Y'all, this is not an exaggeration: the sight of the setting sun would absolutely send me over the edge. Nothing in this world was more depressing to me than to see those long shadows creeping across my back yard in that yellow/orange glow of late afternoon. "It's cooooming again. Another long, torturous night with the baby. You can't stop it. You will never be able to stop it. It is an unstoppable force." (Apparently the baby blues also made me feel really dramatic in an old black-and-white-zombie-movie kinda way.) I felt swallowed by the approaching nightfall. And, even now, I still don't know why the idea of the impending darkness made me so upset- but I know it did. It really, really did.
• The anxiety. Oh my mercy- the amount of anxiety one 9 lb. baby can cause me to create is downright unbelievable. The gnawing ball of nerves in the pit of my stomach- seriously! I can remember putting a freshly changed and fed and burped newborn Luke in his bouncy seat, straightening up to stand up in my living room, then looking down on him and thinking "Now what? What do I do next? What is going to happen now? Do I leave him?  How long will he sleep? What if he doesn't go to sleep? What if he doesn't stay awake? What if he needs to burp? What if he spits up? What if he's cold? What if he's hot? What if-what -if-what-if-WHAT-IF?!!!!!" I can only relate the anxious feelings I had then to what I remember feeling like before I took my Teaching Certification Exam. That raw, all-consuming, unrelenting ball of hot coals in the pit of my stomach that positively burned me from the inside out. Except now, there's no test for me to finish. There's no allotted time that will expire and put me out of my anxious misery. There's only this tiny, helpless, innocent little person that is literally depending on me to save their life. So yeah, I was a little anxious. 
• The tears. Seriously- I can take any of the desperate sobbing I may have experienced while watching 'The Notebook', any level of my PMS related weeping, any amount of pregnancy induced crying and double it. Triple it. No, don't do that- just imagine me rolling them all into one big heap, bringing that massive ball of tears to the top of a snow covered mountain and rolling that sucker to the bottom, picking up more and more and more tears as I make my descent to the end. Because THAT IS HOW MUCH I CRIED. By the bucketful. I am basically on a crazy train of tears that has no brakes. Once that thing leaves the station, I've just gotta hang on until it comes to a screeching halt into a pile of used Kleenexes. So yeah, I cried. A LOT. 
• I literally became a hermit. Y'all, I straight up became like one of those trolls who lived under a bridge in "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". After Luke was born, I was petrified to leave my house. While our babies are still newborns, we tend to stay away from public places like WalMart and church for the first few weeks to keep them as far as possible from germs and chiggers and the Bubonic Plague. But, really,  after Luke was born and again after Nathan arrived- staying away from church and the grocery store had much more to do with my lack of desire to see people. When I was in a valley, I had no desire to see or hear or speak to anyone. I remember after Nathan was born, straight-up hiding in the nursery at church during services for almost a month. I didn't want people looking at me or commenting about the baby or remarking how adorable he was or holding him or hugging me or breathing within a 27 inch radius of my body. I felt like a freak, y'all. I love people! My church family IS my people! I love my church family. They are awesome!!! I just.couldn't.do.it. I couldn't fake the chitchat and small talk that goes along with bringing your new baby to church for the first time. I knew I wouldn't be able to put on a fake brave/happy/mentally stable face so I hid. Like a troll under a bridge. I can remember getting dressed for services some Sundays, putting on my makeup and bawling-squalling-ugly-crying to Matt because I didn't know if I could do it. And bless him- he was amazing. He never, ever pushed me to do something I didn't want to do and was always, ALWAYS supportive of whatever I chose to do, whether it was going to be staying home or going to worship. But, as much as I didn't want to go into public, I knew if I "chickened out" and stayed home, I would feel enormously more guilty for not attending because NORMAL PEOPLE TAKE THEIR BABIES TO CHURCH AND I WAS DETERMINED TO BE A NORMAL PERSON WHO TOOK THEIR BABY TO CHURCH. I was just going to be a normal person who took their baby to church but stayed in the cradle roll room and watched the services on the live feed television instead of sitting in a pew with the rest of the congregation. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. For a few weeks, it was awful. But, in time, it got better. Instead of rushing in the doors and bolting like it was a Black Friday sale to the nursery, I would linger in the foyer and visit a while. If I got anxious, I would retreat to the nursery until I felt better, and if I didn't feel badly, I would venture onto the pew with the rest of the family. And, as the weeks went by, I needed trips to the nursery less and less and less until one week- I DIDN'T GO AT ALL. I cried tears of thankfulness in the van on the way home that Sunday because it was finally getting better. 
• The inability to eat. I think, for me, this had a lot to do with all the anxiety I had. Because y'all, when I was in a valley- I could NOT EAT. Nothing sounded good. Nothing tasted good. Nothing appealed to me. If I was in a valley, I would sit down and look at all the awesome food that my Mom, or Matt's Mom, or our church ladies prepared and it all tasted like sawdust. I ate because I knew I needed to so that I could nurse the baby, but, for a while, that was the only thing that kept the fork to my mouth. But it got better. It really did. And considering the entire cup full of Ben and Jerry's that I have consumed while writing this, I'd say it's safe to bet that I'm over that part. :)
• Not having it with Josie. For me, NOT HAVING A SINGLE SECOND OF BABY BLUES WITH HER was a double edged sword. A blessing and curse. I can remember praying with Matt on the way to the hopsital in labor with Josie "Lord, please keep the baby blues away with this one. I already have another baby at home who needs me. I can't go through that again with this one." And, He answered my prayer with a resounding "YES". Jo was born and I never shed one single hormones-are-making-me-freak-out tear. (But don't get me started on what an emotional train wreck I was when I was pregnant with her. I may have burst into tears during a church potluck because Luke was squawking/talking in a high chair. To me, it sounded like he was peeling the paint off the fellowship hall walls. I straight-up put our plates in to-go boxes and ran out of that fellowship hall like we were on fire. A friend of mine was sitting at the table with us. She has two girls. She knew that we don't find out the sex of our babies until delivery, but she smugly told me that afternoon that she knew I was, in fact, going to have a girl because I was crying over a stack of styrofoam food containers. She said girls make their pregnant momma's do crazy things. And, she was right. She absolutely was.) But anyway, I got home from the hospital and literally hit the ground running. Having Jo didn't slow me down one bit. I felt great! I felt like I could have conquered the world. I thanked God every day for allowing me to avoid the baby blues. So, when it came time to deliver Nathan, I continued praying the same prayers. I asked God to spare me from those dark valleys. To protect me. To surround me with a shield so thick nothing could penetrate it. But, this time, He said "NO". I slipped back into the valley almost immediately after Nathan was born. And this time, I could see it coming. I could see the ominous clouds forming, building, strengthening. And I was powerless to stop it. 

So, I prayed, y'all. I prayed HARD. I begged. I pleaded. I wept. I petitioned God to take this away from me. To keep me from those awful, dark feelings that I knew were going to come. But, He didn't. He didn't take me out of my valley. He let me go down into the deep again but He walked with me through it. While He didn't stop the attacks from raging, He became my fortress and my strong tower during them. He was the Light during my darkness. My Peace during the storm. My Comforter. My Rock. 

But wait, y'all. Waaaait. Because just like it happened the first time with Luke, in a few (sometimes loooong) weeks, it went away again. My valleys got shallower. They got easier to crawl out of and fewer and farther between. The fog that would roll in got lighter and lighter. My tears dried up. My anxious heart could start to sing with joy again. After some of the longest weeks of my life, I could finally go days at a time without going into a single valley. Knowing I was getting better was the best, most refreshing, most validating feeling I could have had.

I came out of these experiences a stronger, braver, less self-reliant version of myself. I couldn't have gotten through my valleys without my Guide. My Master. My Savior. After navigating my valleys I'd really learned what it meant to lean on Jesus. To be that lost sheep who went astray. To have Him carry me back to the fold. I really learned what it meant to be refined by fire. To have heat applied to my life so that the impurities and imperfections could rise to the surface to be removed. God used my valleys to show me how much I really do need Him. 

And, even though I have been through these trials, I still sin. (A lot!) But, even so- I'll always be grateful for the times I spent in the valleys during my baby blues. Because I know now, that because of them, I can see my need for Jesus more clearly. He held my hand the entire time, even when I didn't always realize it. He gave me supportive friends and family to help carry me along while I traversed these troubling times. I am blessed beyond measure for them. My cup runneth over.

There are a couple of things that I learned while going through this journey (twice!) that made surviving those troubling times a little easier, and I'd like to share some of them with y'all. Because maybe you are in a valley, too. Or know of someone who is. So here are some things that helped me cope: 

1. Routine. This one was a life saver for me. Our pediatrician recommended a sleep-training book, and I loved it. You can't put any of the scheduling or plans in place until they are 6-8 weeks old, but for me: Having a goal to aim for was an amazing help. Knowing that there was a framework I was building up to that would give me hope of some rest in the future was vital for my state of mind. I knew that, if I stuck to my plan, that the sleepless nights wouldn't last forever. So, for me- a routine was vastly important to my healthy state of mind. 
2. Battle Prep. Oh, man, y'all. I needed this one. I needed it every single day, because for me- the evenings were my worst times. What I needed to do was to take an hour or so to myself and for myself every night after supper to try and relax, compose myself and get ready to attack another long night of being up and down with the baby. So, for me, that happened in the tub. I'd run a bath, wash my hair, paint my toenails (that I could finally reach again), use some yummy smelling lotions on my poor post-delivery dry skin, blow out my hair and put on some fresh comfy jammies. For me, taking that time every night to refresh my body and mind would go a looong way in strengthening my resolve to make it through the long night until morning. 
3. Fun Products. This one is closely tied to #2, in that I needed and used a lot of these fun products during my 'Battle Prep' step. Before the baby was born, I bought some new scented body washes and lotions. I picked up a new bottle of nail polish and a full bottle of quick drying top coat, (Because nobody has time to wait for nails to dry with a newborn and everybody hates blanket creases.) and new set of some comfy jammies. I bought all these new fun products, but I DID NOT USE THEM. I put them high up on a shelf, away from temptation until after I came home with the baby and need that 'Battle Prep Pick-Me-Up". It was hard to resist temptation at times, but y'all, it was worth it. It felt so good to have new, fresh bottles of fancy schmancy lotions and body washes waiting for me when I was in a valley. New jammies made me feel better. Polished nails brightened my day. I know it seems silly, but it really did help me.
4. Meal Prep. When I was pregnant with Nathan, I cooked. Y'all, I cooked ALL THE THINGS. I created a Pinterest board and cooked my way through it. I made and froze enough meals in advance that I was set for like three months after he was born. (And not just because of my huge freezer. My Mom came and cooked a ton. Matt's Mom cooked a boatload of food. And then our wonderful church family brought food by the truck load, too.) So yeah, we had a lot of food around here. But having meals in the freezer that I could either throw into the crock pot in the morning or thaw and bake before supper time rolled around was a sanity saver for sure. Some of my Pinterest creations came out deliciously. (Think: Spaghetti Pie and Gumbo and Meatsauce and Mashed Potato Chicken Pot Pie) Some, however did NOT. (TIP: Chicken Enchiladas do not freeze well, y'all. They just....don't. We had three pans of them that took us forever and a day to finish.) But, when I was in the valley, those frozen rectangles of tin foil were such a blessing. I am so, so, SO glad I had them.  
5. Books. Oh, maaaan. Nothing got me through those weeks of round-the-clock, through-the-night, never-gonna-end feedings like reading. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Kindle app on my iPhone was a game changer. The first book I ever read on my phone was after Luke was born. It was Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers. It wasn't the first time I had read that book,(or the hundredth, for that matter) but it was my first time reading without paper pages to turn. *If you've never read it before, hear me now: Stop what you are doing right now and GO READ THAT BOOK. I have read it and given it away almost a dozen times. It really is that good.* After Josie was born I read the entire Hunger Games trilogy while I was up at night feeding her. Katniss Everdeen became my new 3 am best friend. After Nathan was born, I downloaded The Divergent Series, along with The Book Thief. 

And, while these books were/are awesome- let me be clear that these books should not and did not take the place of my daily devotional time in God's Word. Nothing, absolutely nothing could have taken the place of the peace and solace I found in my Bible. I would highly, HIGHLY recommend that any Mom who is in a valley pick up the book of Psalms. (David is legit, y'all.) Talk about a man who knows all about what it feels like to be in a valley- His psalms were like a balm to my weak and weary soul when I needed them most. They still are. So, if you're in a valley- go pick up Psalms and thumb through them. Find one that grabs you and dive in. I'm sure you'll find one that speaks to you like this one did to me. DISCLAIMER: I changed the male pronouns to female, not to add to or to take away from the inspired Word, but because, for me- it spoke much more clearly to me when I read them that way. 

"The steps of a woman are established by the Lord, and He delights in her way. When she falls, she will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds her hand." David- Psalm 37:23-24

So lastly, If you're a Mom, and you've been through something like this- I commend you. YOU DID IT. Earning the right to have your own place at the "Mother's Day" table is tough. Way to go, friend. I'm proud of you. 

If you're a friend or a family member who knows someone who may be going through valleys of her own, hang in there with her. She'll get through it. She will need you help, and His, but she'll get through it. In the mean time, though, help her out. Cook her a casserole. Buy her some yummy lotion. Get her some fuzzy socks. But most importantly- PRAY FOR HER. She needs those more than anything. 



What about you? Have you been through a valley after one of your babies was born? What did you do? How did you cope? Feel free to share (if you want to) your experiences in the comments below. You never know who might need to hear YOUR story of strength and survival.