Life Update
we stopped fertility treatments, our house burned down, our dog died, we got pregnant, we moved into a rental, were rebuilding our house, and i am an emotional rollercoaster.
Hello!
Long time, no update, friends.
My last real blog, at least posted on the website, was on November 7th, 2022…. So. Almost 9 months ago.
Absolutely no real life update since then, great checking in, bye!!
Just kidding, since my last update, our whole world has changed. If you don’t follow me elsewhere, here is the update short and sweet, and then we’ll get into the nitty gritty.
- November 2022: I weaned off of my anti-psychotic medicine after 18 months. It was absolutely miserable, but we made it work. The doctor recommended I do it over 3 months and I said “hold my beer” and weaned off of Geodon in less than 6 weeks…. (do not do this, please)
- December 2022: our 3rd cycle of clomid (fertility treatment) WORKED. Sort of. It worked in the sense that I FINALLY ovulated after 2 years of unexplained secondary infertility. However, it failed in the sense that I did not get pregnant. Also, I broke my ankle (again) (no, not the one I broke in august, the other one… WHILE in the office… HELLLOOO workman’s comp(kidding, a joke, it is not fun times, lots of paperwork) and would later find out I need surgery to repair the ligaments ruptured in the incident.
- January 2023: Super busy month from what I remember. Our 4th round of clomid is successful, I ovulate, we do not conceive. We make the executive decision to stop fertility treatments temporarily and explore other options some time later in the spring….
Ok… here is where it gets interesting.
- February 4th, 2023: our house catches fire and burns to the ground. No really. It is gone gone.
- February 9th, 2023: my sweet 13 year old dog, Luke, can not overcome the stress of the fire, and has to be put down.
- Sometime at the end of February 2023: I realize I have not had a period yet, and to my absolute SHOCK and SURPRISE, we find out we have naturally conceived after 2 years of grueling infertility.
So, nitty gritty.
I’ll just make this also short and sweet, here are the answers to our most frequently asked questions:
- No, we didn’t recover anything in the house. We lost 99% of our belongings, including my car
- We stayed at a friends AirBNB for a week, then a hotel for a little bit, then back the BNB until the end of March.
- At the end of March, my parents bought a rental property for us, we moved in at the beginning of April. That is where we will stay until the house is rebuilt.
- Fire started in the garage, spread quickly to some flammables, exploded a propane tank and some gas tanks… fueled by a south wind with the garage door open, the house didn’t really stand a chance.
- Probably a power strip? Maybe a battery tender? Maybe just the outlet? It was unclear. Definitely electrical though.
- Yes. We were insured.
- Yes, we intend on rebuilding on our property, the contractor expects the process to take about a year.
- If I could go back in time and save one thing, it would be the Christmas ornaments
- The remnants of the house were demolished at the beginning of May. Its now just a large sandpit with a gravel driveway. Even with no house on the lot, we call it the “broken house” we visit a lot because, well, when your house is on fire and you have to run naked (no, really, I was not clothed) to your neighbors house for shelter and childcare… you get bonded in an unbreakable way, we are family now.
Okay. Lets fast forward to now, July 2023.
Currently, I am 25 weeks along, with a baby GIRL. If I am being completely honest, this season of life has been so incredibly hard.
I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed. I’m STRUGGLING.
In absolutely every aspect of my life, I am treading water.
AT HOME: we have what we need. we’ve replaced most of our *essentials* … you know, like a car, beds, couches, cookware, stuff you use everyday. EXCEPT, anything that requires much of a design choice. Reese and I are too overwhelmed to pull the trigger on those things like Plates/Bowls/Cups – nope. Silverware? Nope. Home Décor????? Absolutely not. So we *live* here, but it doesn’t feel much like ~home~ here…. As far as day to day life, we get through… I don’t cook as much as I used to. Its hard for the boys to live in town (I married a caveman and gave birth to a nudist). I finally caved and hired a housekeeper to help me keep up with maintenance.
AT WORK: after the fire my work gave me 30 days off, it was SUCH a blessing. With reese returning to work after one week, I was the one having to meet with adjusters, settle with insurance, all the chores and bs that came with it. After that month I returned to work and genuinely, the trauma had completely wiped my brain. I struggled to catch up, but did eventually, and then we got slammed with an unexpected busy season, and also pregnancy brain and being generally overwhelmed and well… lets just say my boss and I have not been seeing eye to eye. Without getting into a ton of detail, its been a rough go since I returned.
MENTALLY:
Right after the fire, I was gutted. Deeply depressed. I thought we would never recover. I’d lost my first baby, my dog Luke, who had been by myside since i was 15. I cried daily. A lot of the time 3-4x daily. At one point I asked my husband, “at what point do I stop crying everyday?” and he responded, “well, I did for about 2 weeks, and based off our emotional baselines, that puts you around a month and a half or 2.” …… which really made me laugh at the time, and I sort of agreed with him, but he was wrong.
Shortly after this conversation, I realized I was a few days late… Reese was convinced I was pregnant. I was convinced I was not meant to be pregnant ever again, and that the fire was proof of that (it didn’t make sense, but move on, it was a faith crisis).
After about a week of having “symptoms” here and there, I finally bought a couple tests. I woke up one morning, took a test, placed it upside down on the counter and left to get ridge ready for school. I forgot about the stupid test. I come back to the bathroom 20 minutes later after making ridge breakfast, and as I’m brushing my teeth I remember it. I casually flipped it over, absolutely sure it was going to be another negative and clear as day it was POSITIVE. THAT was the day I stopped crying everyday (which is weird because you’d think pregnancy would make it worse, right??)
This baby saved me. She was gift from Heaven at a time I so badly needed to hear from God. My miracle baby. She pulled me right out of my sinking depression and put things into perfect perspective.
- Thank GOD we didn’t have a baby when the house caught fire… the nursery was one of the most badly burned rooms in the house, the first room it spread to, and the fire started DURING nap time. (see picture below, but you’ve been warned, its pretty sad)
- Thank GOD I wasn’t heavily pregnant when the house caught fire…the stress alone could have sent me into preterm labor, potentially harming me or the baby.
Not only those two timings being perfect, but everything else seemed to fall into place…
We loved our little house, but it was never intended to be our forever home. We were going to outgrow it within a few years… but we couldn’t imagine ever leaving that property. We had begun small renovations, but had explored what it would take to add on 1,500 sq ft addition, but it seemed expensive and unobtainable with young children in the house….
Now, by the grace of God, we get to build our DREAM HOME on our PERFECT property with our chosen FAMILY as neighbors. FROM SCRATCH. That’s amazing!!!! A once in a lifetime opportunity! A blessing!
It sometimes feels so far away from being reality, but in 5 years, this will feel like a distant (dark and tragic) memory. At least that’s what I tell myself when things get hard.
Had it not been for baby girl, I truly don’t believe I would have been able to see the blessing in this so soon, if ever at all.
Don’t get me wrong… this still sucks a lot, all the time. Little reminders of things we lost will set me into a downward spiral… wanting a piece of clothing, seeing pictures of ridge with a special blanket or in baby clothes we thought all of kids would wear…. Shoot the other day I cried over a tomato that triggered a memory of our garden. Grief hits in waves. Its never ending, but we are choosing to grow around it.
THE BABY: Ok, so this post is a rollercoaster of emotions so far, right? Ups, downs, deep deep lows, unimaginable highs… That’s exactly how my mental health has been, a rollercoaster. Somedays are so busy, I forget I’m pregnant. Somedays I’m so busy, all I can think about is being pregnant. I’ve been into lists and bulletpoints this post so lets just keep it going, shall we? Here are all my pregnancy/new baby/postpartum related anxieties…
- For starters, we have no baby items, we lost all that, and we have not even began to replace anything. We don’t really even have a “nursery” for her in our new house, we plan on just keeping her in our room until the house is done…whenever that is.
- After struggling with infertility for so long, I am so so so afraid I am going to lose her, or do something that will harm her. Way more paranoid than I was with ridge.
- Also, she is WILD. I have been feeling her kick since TWELVE weeks… she kicks so hard that reese felt her at 16 weeks. At her ultrasound, she looked right at the monitor and smiled the biggest open mouth smile the ultrasound tech said he’d ever seen…. I think my girl is going to have quite the personality, and she has already filled us up with so much joy, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that she also radiates it.
- While I’ve always wanted to grow our family, I am so scared a new baby will take time away from Ridge… which I mean is inevitable, because babies also need attention I hear, but I am so afraid to miss out on Ridges milestones too… I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle splitting my attention in two.
- POSTPARTUM. Ugh, I really try hard not to think about this because I am more afraid of it than I am willing to admit. Its no secret postpartum rocked my world. I ended up suicidal and having hallucinations, narrowly evading a stay in a psych ward and being on anti-psychotics for 18 months… I used to say I was prepared for round two because “I had all the available resources”…. But, to be honest, this time around I really don’t. I have my husband, I have my therapist… but my psychiatrist (the best, my biggest champion) had a health issue and was forced to retire shortly after the fire, and I have not sought out a replacement. Partly because I’m busy, partly because I’m in denial that I need one, and partly because I went through 3 the first time I shopped for psychs and had an absolutely horrible experience and don’t want to have to go through that again. I am terrified of postpartum. Terrified this time won’t be different.
Well, so much for keeping that short and sweet. Now were all up to speed. It felt good to get it all down, to finally write again… its been so long, I forgot how much I loved doing it and how easy it felt to write the things that were hard to say aloud. Hopefully this keeps me motivated to keep updating the blog. I’ve had so many PPD/PPP mamas who have followed my journey over the last 3.5 years reach out for guidance, or ask how its going, and I want to be open and honest with this second baby… I have no idea what the future or my mental health holds, but for the first time in a long time I feel hopeful.
Here are some pictures of things i mentioned, the images of the fire and the aftermath may be triggering so, be advised.
Picture 1 - the house shortly after we all got out
Picture 2 - The nursery
Picture 3 - Baby K’s SHOCKING pregnancy test
Picture 4 - Demo Day!
Picture 5 - Baby K at 20 week Ultrasound, looking DIRECTLY into the screen and SMILING
Picture 6 - our growing family on our 4th of july vacation, i was 20 or 21 weeks along?
Plan C and a ½.
Hi friends. Wow, 2 posts in 2 weeks, who is she??? Could a depressed gal do THIS?? (spoiler alert the answer is yes)
I know you’re all dying to know - how did mommy weekend go? Are you still depressed? What’s the tea??
First off, mommy weekend was great. It was nice to have some time to myself and I started finally writing something I’ve wanted to write for a long time. It felt good to do something just for me.
Did it cure all that ails me – well… not really.
When I came home on Sunday my husband saw me sitting somberly on the couch, “it wasn’t everything you hoped it would be, was it?” he said.
“How’d you know?”
“Because being away from you two has never made me feel good.”
He was right, even when I was away, I was facetiming them, jealous of their little adventures and all the fun they were having. I was getting the alone time I needed but felt like I was robbing myself of the memories being formed of a beautiful spring day with my family. Mom guilt strikes again.
The week that followed was hard. I struggled with my thoughts, I was tired, I was stressed – still depressed.
I know I said Plan D was next, but I’ve concocted a new plan… We’ll call this one Plan C and a ½. Here it is – Plan C and a ½ is distraction. Filling the void with work/play/forced human interaction and making myself uncomfortably busy for the next couple weeks. You can’t be depressed if you simply have no time to feel, right?
Here’s the thing – this feels like a bad idea. This sounds like I am making my life harder, more stressful, tiring. If anything, I’m setting myself up for failure because you know what’s hard when you’re depressed? Everything. Everything is harder when you’re depressed.
But I’m going to try it anyway and maybe I can unslump myself by simply faking it till I make it. You know what they say, *HaPpInEsS iS a ChOiCe*. (this is satire, this advice is garbage don’t ever say that to a depressed person).
If it doesn’t work – I’ve got a psych appointment in a few weeks anyway so there’s always that.
Hindsight
How the stomach bug helped me process depression.
Its been awhile since I wrote.
In part, its because my last post was so intense, it brought up a lot of raw emotion.
But if I’m being honest with myself, its also in part because I was sunk in a bout of depression again.
I feel better now, but I knew I wasn’t myself. So here I am, after a few months of struggle, blessed with the ability to look back and say “that’s not me”.
So as an exercise in self-awareness, lets recap all the red flags I ignored. The things I knew weren’t “me”.
1. I stopped doing the things I enjoyed – like writing.
2. I fell behind on housework
3. Over-procrastinated my work work.
4. I craved energy, and in turn, was drinking excess amounts of caffeine (like double shots of espresso at 2pm)
5. I changed my nighttime routine – instead of putting the baby down and enjoying a show or game with my husband or watching something to unwind, I was going straight to bed… mostly before 8:30.
Those are just the big red flags for me, I’m sure there’s more if you asked my husband.
Let’s take it another step, how did I get there?
1. At the end of August, I had a few psychotic symptoms resurface after a few months strong on a new medication. I think I can trace this onset psychosis to mainly intense stress. Nevertheless, I felt defeated, I felt ashamed, I felt like a failure.
2. At the beginning of September, my doctors changed my medication to alleviate the psychosis. As a person who struggles with change, and with the concept of medicine, this caused me a lot of anxiety.
3. The med change was hard on my body, physically, the adjusting period took a few weeks and my body was TIRED. I felt like I couldn’t keep up with day-to-day activities.
4. On top of being tired, I started to get busy at work. I wasn’t so stressed about the actual work though. This time I began to stress about my own levels of stress. I’d say to myself, “if you don’t stay on top of this, the psychosis will come back, and then you’ll have to restart new meds AGAIN and then if those don’t work….” I’d start to spiral in negative thought. I was constantly anxious.
5. I became so anxious; I was literally making myself sick. Every afternoon around 2 or 3 when I’d feel like I’d accomplished a lot of my to-do lists, the ball of anxiety in my stomach would sneak up and tell me it wasn’t ever enough. Despite my best efforts, by early evening I’d be throwing up lunch, and neglecting dinner. This went on for about a week.
6. I was blaming myself. My therapist, Whitney, pointed out to me that instead of saying to myself, “these things are happening” I was saying, “these things are happening BECAUSE I am an insane person” or “BECAUSE I am not enough”. I was quick to jump the gun and point the finger at myself.
In our final exercise of self-awareness, I like to reflect on what helped me snap back.
The answer, this time, is short - The stomach bug. While I wish this reflection could be something profound and helpful, the honest answer is that I caught a nasty stomach bug. However, I do think a couple really important things happened during the 5 days I miserably fought this bug.
1. I was forced to stop. Forced to “lean into” the way depression makes me feel. Coupled over in stomach pain, I had no other option but to call in sick, temporarily drop my responsibilities and let my husband take care of the house and our child and just *lay* in bed for a few days.
2. FOMO (fear of missing out). While I was laid up in bed, I could hear my son playing outside the bedroom window or giggling in the living room, and I felt so sad that I wasn’t there playing too. It made me really look forward to filling dump trucks full of dirt or going on walks again – or even just sitting with him at dinner while he says/does funny things. I couldn’t wait to get back to mommin’.
3. I was in pain. Intense pain. A pain so fierce that reflecting on that pain made me grateful to have an otherwise healthy body.
4. I COULDN’T take the blame for this. There was nothing I could have done to prevent myself from getting the bug. This forced me to realize that not everything is my own fault. Things don’t happen to me *because* of anything… sometimes, things just happen. Good or bad, they just happen.
While it super-sucked and I don’t recommend trying to get a stomach bug to cure depression, I do think that this bug forced me to mentally reset. It put into perspective the things I love about life, and I lost interest in the “what-ifs” I’d been exerting so much mental energy on. I instead began to use that energy to plan out “when I feel better…” activities.
As it turns out, I have a lot of things to look forward to, and a lot of things in my daily life that I LOVE doing. I needed the miserability of the bug to help spin all those things back into a positive light.
This is a process my therapist and I used during the height of my depression and sometimes still circle back to as necessary, and it’s become my favorite tool. After an episode of depression, or psychosis, or anxiety or any other big mood change ask yourself 3 questions. What changed? What happened that made you feel that way? And What helped you feel yourself again?
I feel in control when I can reflect in this way. As the old saying goes - “The only doing better is knowing better” . When you begin to unravel and know more about yourself, you grow. There is so much strength and empowerment in self-awareness.
Soaking up the little moments I could during the nasty stomach bug
What the Suicidal Person Wants You to Know…
What the depressed or suicidal person wants you to know about being suicidal
This took me about 2 weeks to write – because even though I consider myself “recovered”, I am not too far removed from the darkness. It doesn’t take much for me to get *that* bad, but it has gotten a lot easier to bring myself out of it, and that’s progress.
Anyway - I’ve wanted to talk about this but it’s always felt a little dark, and I don’t want it to be. I think this is important. If people on the outside could get a better understanding of what severe depression feels like, they can be a better resource for their friend, sister, brother, parent, child, or stranger. They could help save someone’s life.
However, I realize there is no “light” way to talk about suicidal thoughts, but as a recovered suicidal person, I am going to try my best.
This is the picture the media, society, whoever… has painted of the “suicidal person”.
That person is sad. That person is pessimistic. That person is dramatic. That person lacks a support system. That person needs to pray more.
Very rarely are those things true.
In fact, these assumptions are incredibly unhelpful.
Here is my experience, here is my *darkness*
That person is sad.
I can’t even call it sad. Sad doesn’t touch the surface of what is happening here.
I wasn’t feeling intense sadness, I was feeling nothing at all – which is worse. Sadness implies you have something to be sad about. I had nothing to be sad about. I was in a life stage I had been longing for. I was a mom!!!! I’ve wanted so badly to be a mom! And yet, *nothing*.
I felt worthless. I wasn’t good enough to be a mom. I was failing my son, he deserved better. I felt guilty for not feeling happy. I felt guilty for feeling consumed by nothingness. It became physically painful for me to do anything, and when all my responsibilities piled up in front of me, I sat in awe of how worthless I was. I proved all those negative thoughts right. I fell so behind on my day-to-day tasks that I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t catch up; I couldn’t start over… and that’s when death started feeling like an option. I wasn’t sad, I was overwhelmed. I wanted a re-start button. The closest thing to a restart button, was death.
That person is pessimistic, dramatic.
There is no one on earth who wanted to be happy more than I did. I tried so hard to just *be happier*. I wanted to wake up and feel myself again. In my darkest moment I remember asking my husband as he held me sobbing “why does everything have to feel like this?”.
I did not want to feel what I was feeling. No one wanted me to get better more than I did. No one CHOOSES to feel depressed. Depression consumes you in a way that leads you to believe you have no other option but darkness, or more darkness.
I once had someone I love very much tell me, “It can’t be that bad”.
That sentence broke me. I was trying my very hardest to hold myself together, exhausting every fiber of my being just to barely scrape by, and for what? To be told I was, what? Dramatic?
It is that bad. No matter how it looks on the outside, if someone tells you its ~THAT~ bad, believe them. Love them, support them, help them… but do not doubt them. I’ve never broken my arm, but I know that it probably hurts. If you have never felt that pain, you can still muster up some empathy.
That person lacks a support system.
This may be true for some people, but it wasn’t for me. I had the world’s most supportive and understanding husband who was doing everything he could possibly think of to get me the help I so desperately needed, but I still felt alone in my own thoughts. I felt immensely guilty that my husband was having to take on my burden, I felt weak, I felt unworthy. Everything I was feeling on my own, doubled in size when I shared it with my husband, feeling shameful that he had to spend even 1 second of his time worrying about me.
To a normal person, you’d think “well that’s just not true, he loves you and wants what’s best for you, he was just doing his part, you aren’t a burden.”
You are correct, normal person, that is the case. But depression did not let me think that logically. It made me believe that I was undeserving of the love I was receiving, I was a bad wife, a worse mother. These thoughts cycled in my brain, worsening in intensity until I was so alone in my own head, it did not matter how much love and help I was receiving, I’d been convinced that if I was dead, my husband would have less to worry about.
It sounds extreme. That’s because it is.
People think suicide is “selfish”. I’m guilty of that. Before having experienced this darkness, I’d probably agree with that statement. I would have thought, “how could they do that to their families?”.
What I learned in the darkness is that suicidal people have been lied to by their depression. Depression has convinced them, as it convinced me, that their death would be a welcomed sigh of relief for their loved ones. That dying would be a favor.
Onto my last soapbox –
That person needs to pray more.
I got this “advice” a lot. This, to me, was the most harmful advice I received. Let me first clarify, this is the insinuation that the severely depressed person is somehow not “spiritual” enough, that they could “spend more time with God” and be “cured”.
I know people who told me this did not mean it harmfully, but in my darkest moments, this advice just made me feel more alone.
I had been praying, I had been seeking out God. Guess what? I was still depressed. I still thought I was better off dead.
At night, after my baby and husband had gone to sleep, I’d sit in prayer. Most of the time through heavy tears, I would plead for God to take away the pain, to take away the darkness, or even to just take me away from all of it, I’d tell Him how thankful I was for all the blessings I had, but I struggled to feel the joy of being “blessed”. I spent countless nights crying myself to sleep, only to wake up and do it again.
Depression would rear its ugly head and say, “not even God can save you.”
I was led to believe that God’s cure for depression was somewhere in between the lines of verses about anxiety, overcoming obstacles or finding strength. That simply isn’t true.
When the bible does address depression and suicide, the answer is far from “pray harder”.
In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is overwhelmed, he is tired, he is comparing himself to others and he just doesn’t understand “God’s plan” for him. He gives up. Elijah becomes suicidal and asks God to take his life.
God sends an angel to Elijah who tells him to “take rest, eat cake”.
When he is rested, Elijah seeks God again. He still feels unworthy and overwhelmed. God understands, so to ease Elijah’s burden, He names 2 men who Elijah can depend on to step in for him, and a 3rd man who is to be his right-hand man.
Gods actual cure for depression had 3 parts.
1. Take rest
2. Fuel your body (eat cake)
3. Ease the burden
This brings me to the real point of this post.
Lets summarize all the things that are NOT helpful to say to a severely depressed or suicidal person.
UNHELPFUL
- choose happiness
- just be happier
- you are just sad, sadness will pass
- you need to be more positive
- you are being dramatic
- it’s not that bad
- you are being selfish
- spend more time with God/in prayer
- maybe you need a hobby
- try making new friends
- everybody feels like that sometimes
- you need to “get out” more
(if I missed one, please DM me, I will add to this list because I think its helpful to know)
If these are all the wrong and unhelpful, then what is right? What is helpful?
Ultimately, what helped me come out of my darkest moments was God’s actual cure for depression. Those three things are what could help save a suicidal person. THESE things are helpful.
REST.
I needed to take rest, I needed to let go of all responsibility and just ~rest~. On a few occasions, that was laying in bed for the whole day. On those days, my mom or my husband would take on my household duties. I laid in bed, painfully fighting intrusive thoughts, but the laundry still got done, the baby got to daycare, the floors were clean (thanks mom). I didn’t have to watch those responsibilities pile up in front of me, I got to take the rest my mind and body needed.
EAT CAKE.
This goes hand in hand with rest. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t doing much of anything for myself. My mom came up and stayed with us and she and my husband planned dinners, she would go to the grocery store, she would bring breakfast up to my office, she asked me what I wanted for lunch and would make sure I got that thing. She was making sure my body was fueled and taking one more thing off my plate.
EASE THE BURDEN
You can see what a huge role my mom had in easing my burden at home, she was truly a God send.
My husband helped a lot too, he is also the one who researched therapists in our area and found one that he thought was the best fit.
Whitney, my therapist, helped me learn coping mechanisms, provided an outlet to talk to and an honest feedback to tell me when I wasn’t thinking logically or needed more intervention.
While I never told my boss outright what was going on with me, she could tell I wasn’t performing at my “normal” and when things got bad, I had to tell her the workload was just to much for me, and she took care of it. Somedays, I just called in sick because that was easier than trying to work.
Little by little I chipped away at what I could, but I couldn’t fully do it on my own. I needed support, I needed guidance, and I also needed medication. Those are the things that pulled me away from the darkness, and it didn’t happen overnight. It took weeks, if not a few months, to be able to look back and say “wow, I don’t even know who that person was, because it was not me”.
Helpful things –
- Is there anything I could take off your plate?
- Let me take *child* for a few hours so you can get some rest.
- Would you like me to come stay with you for a few days, I would love to help around the house.
- I saw this funny video and it made me think of you.
- Can I bring you a meal?
- Can I pick up some groceries for you?
- Do you need someone to talk to? Cry with?
- YOU are the best YOU for your family, they are so fortunate to have YOU.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis call 800-273-8255 to talk to a dedicated suicide prevention specialist. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of committing an irreversible act, call 911.