Clench, hold and release

Ben's birth was blessedly straight forward & quick enough. After four hours of active labour & a second degree tear, our 7lb 6oz first son arrived. There are so many cherished memories from the days following his birth, but there is one that really stands out personally. Still now, ten years later, I can recall every sensation & the emotions that whipped through me at the time.

Ben was just over twenty four hours old & I was slowly wheeling him along in his clear plastic, hospital issue bassinet - feeling a little tender with stitches located where stitches had never been before. We had just been for a visit to the common room & I was making our way back to our private room, anticipating the arrival of lunch (& with any luck a little nap for the both of us). I had just passed by the nurses station & half way down the corridor, still another few rooms to go yet until our own, when suddenly the urge to pee came upon me with no prior warning.

Urgently. 

Really urgently.

The shock of trying to clench those bruised, battered & swollen pelvic floor muscles, only to find that they didn't really feel like clenching much at all has haunted me through every birth that has followed over the last ten years. It is one time I genuinely feared I was going to wet myself, in public, & not just a little bit either. 

I knew the importance of doing kegels during pregnancy & in the weeks & months following birth. I'd read the little snippets of real life experiences that were included in the articles of keeping your pelvic floor tight 'n high, written in by women who found out the hard way just how necessary it was to clench - pull it all in without pulling a face. 
With tips including, but not limited too, 'If you're doing the dishes or hanging out the washing, do your pelvic floors as well.'
Or, 'When you sit to feed the baby work those muscles at the same time - clench, release & repeat.'

Some how I mostly kept my bodily fluids within my body & high tailed it in a waddling, thigh clenched gait as fast as I could while pushing Ben along, still oblivious in his bassinet back to our room. That afternoon I resumed the clench, hold, release & repeat. Just a few at a time, enough to gently locate them & check they were still in potential working order, then slowly increasing the intensity over the following days & weeks. That call to nature was just far too close for comfort...& too far from a lavatory. 

Seventeen months later & half way through Rianan's pregnancy I joined a pregnancy exercise class run by a physiotherapist. Several times through each session she would run us through our pelvic floor exercises - advocating passionately just how important it really was to do them. Beginning as soon as we felt able to, while lying down to avoid putting too much extra pressure on our vagina's that had just gone a round in the boxing ring with a three kilo battering ram - or so it may seem. 

Rianan's birth was just as good as her older brother - a water birth, just under four hours & another slight second degree tear after coming out all in the one contraction. In the wee hours of the morning as dawn illuminated the clouds, I laid on my side while gazing at our daughter, memorising her five hours old newness, & began the first gentle clenches of those hidden muscles. This time, when nature screamed a waterfall was coming, I wouldn't be caught blindsided. 

After having more than the standard quota of pregnancies & births, I know how crucial it is to keep my pelvic floor stronger than my biceps. Especially if I want my bladder to stay where it belongs, along with it's contents, while taking Ben & Jack on in a round of soccer, chasing Blake & Will around in a game of chasey or joining Rianan in a display of kart-wheels & handstands. Though they aren't as easy as it was twenty odd years ago...

Over the last ten years I'm certain I've done more kegels than I have changed nappies. They've paid off though - especially after suffering morning sickness with Clay & hugging the toilet bowl every morning, or more recently finding myself succumbing to the sneezes of hay fever. 

If you are quietly suffering incontinence, no matter how mild or severe, go & see a physiotherapist who specialises in pelvic floor. Ignoring the matter won't fix anything. 

How many times have you clenched, held & released so far today? 

My foray with Post Natal Depression.

{Ben three hours new}

Out with the placenta, in with the Dolly Parton boobs. When your hormones change, flood in, it may catch you. I'm not talking the endorphins, they're the happy hormones. No, the despair, the dread, the frustration, the lonliness. Thoughts of what have I done?

Other times the little black cloud rolls in slowly. One little grey wisp at a time. Sneaky. Harder to notice, unobservant to the gradual changes. After all becoming a mother (for the first time or the eighth time) comes with a suitcase of upheaval. When life is already trying to find it's new axis, the seemingly smaller problems fly under the rated. In the beginning the little thoughts don't rate on the priority scale. 

Post Natal Depression.

This week is Antenatal & Postnatal Depression Week. Statistics show 1 in 7 women are diagnosed with Post Natal Depression. I believe the numbers are greater than that. How many women just keep going, even when they know their real self is hiding somewhere. Lost in all the mist.

That was me.

After Ben was born, & I've written about Ben's first year before, it was so far from how I imagined life would be. Our baby was not the happy, content little boy I imagined during pregnancy.

{A very familiar sight}

He cried. He was so hard to get to sleep. He screamed. When he did sleep, he didn't sleep for long at all.

There was already so many changes during that time - leaving full time work to stay home full time, Doug changed employment which also meant a change in working hours from a flexible shift roster to a Monday to Friday working week, plus work was now further away too. He left earlier & was home later. All of a sudden I was home by myself with Ben from 6am to 6pm. Add in Ben's aversion to sleeping & constant crying, I became an ideal candidate for PND.

Initially I tried to convince everyone around me that I was fine. I was coping & happy. It was easy to know all the right things to say to the community health nurse when she would ask how I was, how my moods were. The new mothers survey - occasionally I felt a little sad [tick box] but over all I was happy [tick box] at least that was what my manipulated answers indicated. I was still convincing myself that I was fine, I wasn't ready to think that I wasn't coping. To admit failure. I didn't open up to anyone about how I was really feeling. Not to myself, not to Doug, which is silly but true. That is what post natal depression did - it changed me. I fought internally against myself all the time. Every thought became a battle. Sometimes I would be desperate for help, for someone to really see the conflict inside my mind. But when asked how I really was, the mask came on. I was my own worst enemy.

I felt bad that Ben cried. A lot. Doug didn't do well with all the crying too, & after spending a long day at work & then driving home in peak hour traffic, I wanted to have it all together for Doug once he was home. Instead of a hot dinner, I had to pass over a screaming baby, because I just needed half an hour without grasping for ways to calm our baby. Again, silly but true. It changed my normal rational thoughts into something else altogether.
It was me who really wanted to start our family, my maternal clock was chiming loudly, while Doug was happy wait another few years, so when life wasn't perfect, I took all the problems on myself. Thinking I was the one who signed up for this, not Doug. My thinking was skewed (screwed). I felt guilty, accountable, for everything that was wrong with our baby, though none of it was my fault. This was the depression, the little dark voice telling me I had made my bed, now I had to lay in it. 

Slowly I began to lose myself. The way I was feeling, I thought it was just a new mum thing.

When I thought of post natal depression images of women not being able to get out of bed came to mind. Constantly crying. Ignoring their baby or wanting as little as possible to do with him. Failing to bond. Crouched in a corner or against a wall. Shutting out the world & everyone in it.

I didn't have problems getting out of bed each day. I didn't cry without good reason or desperation. I loved Ben & interacted with him (though at times it was with a forced smile. A happy mask because I didn't want to scar our child with buried memories of an expressionless Mum gently shaking a rattle in front of him) I only sat against a wall when I was listening to Ben cry while taking a break from trying to rock him to sleep. I went to our local mothers group. We went for walks & family dinners.

I didn't have post natal depression - according to my thoughts of what post natal depression looked like.

But I did.

I knew I did, but I was in denial. I thought it would go away as Ben got older, got easier.

Maybe it would have, maybe not. I honestly can't say if I could have continued on the way I was feeling, without reaching for help.

My GP was great, we started a treatment plan for Ben's reflux, which was quite severe & a root cause for many issues we were having. I started taking anti depressants, along with regular visits to track & document my depression & Ben's reflux. I was advised that there may not be any noticeable differences for up to three weeks, so when within four days of commencing anti depressant medication I felt great, coinciding with Ben being a little more settled than usual as we got a handle on his reflux, I thought to myself 'Ha, I don't have depression, it's just when Ben has a bad day, it's hard. It's not me after all.'

Without seeking medical advice first, I stopped taking the anti depressants. Two days later I crashed emotionally. I was back to how I felt two weeks earlier. Flat, unenthusiastic, sad, at times desperate. For what I can't specify. Perhaps desperate to feel like 'me' again. Desperate not to feel useless when our baby cried & I couldn't calm him. Desperate not to be stuck how I was feeling.

While I was back in my grey mist, Ben was still more settled & sleeping a lot easier. So it wasn't Ben. It was me as well. That was the moment I accepted I did have post natal depression.

Immediately I started taking the medication again & when we went back to the GP a few days later I told him everything that had happened. It was a relief, to find 'me' again. All those martyr thoughts evaporated, if Ben was crying I knew it wasn't because it was something I was or was not doing, I didn't get so tangled up in obsessing over nap times. I let go of the happy mask I was clinging to as a life line & let every one in. After four or five months, with Ben's reflux as good as it was going to get without invasive treatment, I slowly weaned off the anti depressants. 

{In the post birth bliss, before the getting lost in the grey mist of depression}

That was ten years ago. The emotions I felt during those horrible months still haunt me, settle over me like a heavy cloak when I think back to those heavy months. My heart beat picks up, the dread in my chest returns, the itchy nose that preludes the tears. The feeling of precariously teetering on an emotional ledge. It wasn't until I was out the fog of depression that I could clearly see exactly how bad I really was, how much I had ignored the little warning signs & over looked all the persistent, small negative thoughts. 

After that hellish & displacing experience I swore that if & when we had another baby I would would never go back to that lost version of myself again. I would seek help the moment I thought it was more than the 'three day blues' or lasted longer than a week.

In the weeks & months after Rianan was born both Doug & I kept a very observant eye on how I was feeling, how I reacted, how present I felt, & also following the births of Jack, Blake, Will & Clay. Thankfully it was a one off, because while at times I have felt sad in the post natal months, it was never anything close to that depressed fog that slowly absorbed who I was.

If you think that maybe, just maybe, you don't feel like who you are, if there are some dark clouds hanging around that can't be shaken off, or wonder that maybe you might have antenatal or post natal depression - please speak to someone.
Your doctor, your husband, partner, friend, mum, community health nurse, strangers on a parenting forum, anyone.

Because that grey fog, it really, really sucks.

Places to reach out for help

http://www.panda.org.au/vic-pnd-directory

http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/public/depression/inpregnancypostnatal/resourceslinksreading.cfm

http://www.beyondblue.org.au/resources/for-me/pregnancy-and-early-parenthood

http://www.beatbabyblues.com.au/links.aspx



**This is just my side of our story with post natal depression. I haven't touched on how my depression affected Doug. How much he took on & tried to help, even when I wouldn't let him. That's another post for another day.

Momnesia ~ the barest bones of a memory

It happened again. It's not the first time & I'm sure it won't be the last time either.

I forgot my PIN number, right in the middle of paying for my items. As hard as I tried, I just could not remember those important four digits I've used several times every day for the last seven odd years.

After the EFTPOS machine beeped & informed that there was an incorrect PIN entered, for the second time, I admitted memory defeat. The last thing I needed was to lock myself out of my bankcard at the first of many shops I needed to visit that day. As quietly as possible I muttered to the shop assistant that I had forgotten my PIN & would need to call my husband for him to remind me of those four essential digits that had escaped me. Imaginably, after this confession, she was thinking 'who on earth forgets their PIN number' or, 'it's probably a stolen card', while smiling politely at me as I bumbled my bankcard back into my purse & tried to make a hasty exit - as hasty as one can while supporting a baby in a sling who is squirming around trying to grab anything in reach, including other customers. As I temporarily walked away from the counter maybe she wasn't thinking of anything but her next break time & it is my own embarrassment filling the void of her unheard speculations. Either way I was blushing & flustered.

Sudden thoughts of early onset amnesia plagued me as I walked back to the car for my phone. (Funny how my thinker couldn't recall a simple code, but could easily recall many instances over the last few years where my memory just packed up & left. Ironic.)  Wondering when is baby brain more than a superficial forgetfulness & the beginnings of something more serious. My thought processes can be a tad dramatic sometimes, running away with a worst case scenario before I've even had a chance to think rationally. It's quite common for several possibilities, where there is a tragic end, to flash before my eyes at the beginning of any health related incident. Blake has bruises all over his legs, my mind jumps ten steps ahead & is suddenly convinced he has leukemia. Will develops a persistent & constant cough, this means he must have whopping cough & is going to infect Clay who is not yet fully immunised. Jack screams as though he's dying after falling off his bike, immediately my mind relays all the horrible bone breaking, skin shredded injuries he'll have. I like to think I'm not the only one who does this, that it is a parenthood induced condition. Hands up who else has a mind that fills with numerous potential nightmares when it comes to something horrible happening to your children...Or when they just fall off their bike. I love these little minions something fierce & would do anything to protect them, so if that means my brain is always preparing for the worst possible scenario, then bring on the gray hairs.

I digress, back to the shop assistant. She thoughtfully put my bag of unpaid goods aside & patiently served the next person while I made a hasty walk back to the car, fruitlessly unable to remember those damn four numbers. It seems under pressure I can remember all my past PIN numbers, Doug's PIN numbers, phone numbers from childhood friends twenty years ago & the due dates of our minions (which none of them arrived on, so are essentially useless numbers, only holding a sentimental value.) But I could not recall four numbers I use every day. Even cell memory was no help, my fingers couldn't do the walking (or the recalling) this time.

Getting Doug on the phone, I awkwardly ask him what my PIN number is. He says "Oh what, ****, that one?"
Even as he says the numbers out loud & I repeat them back to him there is no strike of familiarity. No flash of recognition. Clearly there is little hope for me. My memory, or lack there of, is on it's final legs, or on it's final cells. I blame the kids. They are all reasonably smart which they obviously, & figuratively, sucked my brain dry got from me. From Doug they got his sense of humour, which he still has in abundance. Unfair. You need your wits about you in this house & I'm at a clear disadvantage.

The precarious & inconsistent working state of my memory has long been a source of humour (or exasperation) between us, especially since Blake's pregnancy & has only spiralled downward with each positive pregnancy test there after. One of Doug's excuses reasons against having a seventh child is because he fears for the thin strands of cognizance remaining. Apparently the hiatus my memory took during our last pregnancy was at best amusing & at worse perturbing. Sadly I have no argument, even I was aware of just how ditzy & off with the fairies I was. Heck my forgetful state during Clay's pregnancy even exasperated me, at least on the rare occasions where I remembered what it was like not to feel the fuzzy & cotton wool filled haze of pregnancy brain. 

With Clay now six months old, I think this is as good as it's going to get any time soon. Especially with remembering everything going on with the minions. If it doesn't get written on the calendar, who has what excursion, on what day; who needs to be where at what time; doctor appointments for whom & when; what bills are due when, then there is every chance I will forget. Even written down isn't a fail-safe guarantee. Geez they're lucky I can remember their birth dates & most of the time, their names.

Maybe it's time I tattoo my PIN on my palm. It may not be subtle, but my memory needs all the help it can get these days. Plus I'm not sure I could handle admitting I've forgotten my PIN again to Doug & get away without a teasing.
 

　

Earning your stripes

I remember a few weeks after Ben's birth that the scales showed I was back to my normal weight. What I remember the most is how my body had changed. For the better.

The flat, taut stomach was upgraded to a soft, nurturing belly. The pale breasts evolved to provide nourishment & comfort. The bright & bag less eyes softened to a more tired yet life filled gentle glow.

Six times over. 

I have looked in the mirror many times in the days, weeks & months after each of our babies have been born, & been thankful for the changes I can see. In awe of all that my body has achieved.

There is no way I would trade all the little signs that give proof to the lives this body helped to create, to have back the body of my 17 year old self.

My arms may not be slender & graceful, but they are more than capable of calming a distressed child, carrying a gurgling little baby, providing a safe haven for an emotional daughter & a sense of security of an insecure son.

My legs may not be slender & toned, but they are more than capable of chasing a toddler before he reaches the road, kicking around a soccer ball with a soccer-crazy boy, playing hide & seek with an energetic four year old.

My belly may be a mere glory of its former self. But there is nowhere more comfortable for my husband to rest his head at night together on the couch. There is no where more ideal for a greatly anticipated baby to grow healthy & strong.

I have gained silvery stretch marks. I have gained spider veins. I have replaced muscle for curves. I have gained an incredible amount of self awareness & self confidence. I have gained more emotion than I know what to do with at times. I have gained more love than my heart feels like it can contain, yet it doesn't burst but just grows & grows. I have gained six little bodies to tuck into bed at night.

There is nothing I have lost, as I have gained so much more than I could have ever wished for or dreamed possible.

I love my silver stripes, even if my hair is falling out