The first step.

One normal day about two months ago I made the step.

 

It was sunny, bright beautiful day. I didn’t care.

 

I realized it was better than the snow and seemingly never ending winter we had been plagued with but I really didn’t care.

 

This was really nothing new, at some point amidst the trauma of the NICU I stopped feeling happy. It is like my body literally could not process happiness.

 

It feels like my happiness receptor is broken 95% of the time. Noah and the twins can still do something to make me smile and feel that spark and a good hug from the husband always cuts through the darkness but other than that I feel pretty numb.

 

That bright sunny boring day I was folding laundry and I just started to cry.

 

This deep painful ache, this unshakable sadness, this overwhelming constant anxiety got to its breaking point.

 

I had a number lost in my email inbox for a referral to a doctor and counselor, I quickly looked it up and nervously dialed the number. Then hung up.

 

How did I get here?

 

I paused, I have long suspected I needed someone to talk to. I have always had anxiety, my biological dad was anything but a good parent, my journey with cancer left me deeply shaken but this year really did me in.

 

I just wanted to will myself to get better. I wanted to be happy on my own. I wanted to shake it off.

 

But that never happened, these crying days were happening more and more frequently and with every passing day it seemed like all my symptoms were only getting worse.

 

I do not ask for help.

 

Really, you can ask anyone. Ask my mom or mother in law, really. They offer every day and any day to help and I don’t take them up on it.

 

So for me to ask someone, a stranger, for help with stuff that I don’t even like to admit that I am going through was near impossible.

 

I picked up the phone and dialed the number again.

 

A sweet lady answered and we went through my past year.

 

All three boys were napping and I was sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing into the phone to this poor stranger.

She comforted me and made my appointment.

 

It was a month away but it made me feel skeptically hopeful.

 

The day of the appointment came and Kevin drove me. If he wouldn’t have, I would not have walked into that building.

 

My first appointment was 2 hours long. She asked to see me the next day for another hour long appointment since the first appointment was basically a lot of paper work.

 

After that appointment I felt actually hopeful.

 

After an hour of talking she leaned over and answered my unspoken fear, “you are not broken, you are hurting, you are grieving, you are wounded, but you are not broken.”

 

For someone to say I wasn’t broken, meant I was fixable.

 

This hurt didn’t have to be forever. I didn’t have to struggle with every single aspect of my life.

 

That maybe one day I could be me again.

 

Many of you might wonder why I am writing this, it is because of the stigma with all of this. There is such a stigma to seeking help. Especially for mothers.

 

One of the most ass backward things of the past year is that I had a lactation consultant all over me for 6 months. Seriously. One from the hospital they were born at, one from the NICU and one from our insurance.

 

Some days I got 5 phone calls in ONE day about my breast milk.

 

How much are you getting in one pumping? How often are you pumping? How long on each side? Have you tried fenugreek? Eating oatmeal? Massaging? Basil or fennel oil? Mother’s milk tea? Have you talked to your OB about medication? How much milk will you be bringing in today? How are you feeling about breastfeeding? To you think you could try looking at a picture of them when you pump? How about you pump every 10 minutes for 15 minutes for an hour every day? Can you be here for every feed to breast feed tomorrow? Etc…etc…etc…

 

It surprised me that they were so focused on me and my milk that everyone seemed to forget that yes, breast is best but a healthy mom is more important…one of the biggest killers of a healthy milk supply is stress.

 

I was really shocked that admits this horrifically traumatizing experience the only people that ever seemed to get what we were going through besides our family were the nurses and we felt embarrassed leaning on them. I can’t tell you how many times they saw me cry. It was embarrassing. It was usually when everything was all ok, in the eye of one of the many hurricanes. It was only when things slowed down that my mind would actually allow itself to break down.

 

No one seemed to get there wasn’t time to get help for me, I was pumping 10 hours a day, going to the NICU every day and still trying to be a fully present mother for my toddler who was traumatized from all of this and deal with life in general. When could I even wrap my brain around the thought of getting help?

 

I just wish there was some program like the breast is best movement for parents with children in the NICU that isn’t a support group. We could have gone to a support group with other parents that had been in the NICU but we never could make the time because it meant taking time away from Aiden, Evan or Noah.

 

I just wish there was a program, a reach out that helped guide you through.

 

Walking through the NICU doors every day was like taking a step off of a cliff.

 

Calling the NICU was so terrifying I couldn’t do it. Kevin had to call and he would call me with the updates. I was so afraid to hear bad news.

 

Every moment of those 4+ months was a step into the unknown, we had no idea how to cope, how to survive it or if we even would mentally survive it.

 

There isn’t any amount of help or advice that makes the NICU any easier but something would have been nice. The NICU is a delicate line of Heaven and Hell. The biggest miracles occur everyday there, we have our very own. But at the same time the biggest tragedies occur along side those miracles.

 

Having your child hanging in the balance of the NICU and not knowing the path they will take is unbearable.

 

It is as if our journey in the NICU was that of a journey on a tight rope while carrying your children on our shoulders and every diagnosis or problem a weight. The tense, fearful, wobbly, heavy walk across has changed who I am.

 

And now that things have calmed down from what they were, they are no where near calm I have taken the step to get help.

 

Mainly so I can help my boys, all four of them.

 

I love them with all of my heart and they deserve better than this.

 

I hope that these steps are the ones that take me back to me…because I miss being me. 

 

Waiting in the waiting room…
hoping these first steps put me on the right path.

Our past 4 conversations tonight.

Me: Don’t.

Kevin: Don’t what?

Me: Don’t.

Kevin: Don’t what?

Me: Enough.

Kevin: Ok.

 ——-

Me: Lay down.

Kevin: Aren’t you supposed to buy me a drink first?

Me: No, not that. I need to poke at your ribs to see if I can make them hurt like mine.

Kevin: Oh…well that sounds ever better.

 ——-

Me: I heard a weird noise last night when you were in the room, what was that?

Kevin: It was the door on the dresser, the damper broke on it, so it slammed.

Me: Oh, yeah sure…blame it on the Ikea furniture, you know that stuff is quality material that never breaks.

Kevin: No, it was me closing the door to my secret hatch under the house.

Me: Like in LOST?

Kevin: Yeah, except with Bengals stuff and I watch Lord of the Rings in there and play Halo.

Me: The one in LOST where you have to type in the number over and over and there is a monster outside sounds better.

——- 

Me: Last night I fell asleep while Jimmy Fallon was on and I thought Eve was Michelle Obama when I woke up because I was confused but thought it was super awesome.

Kevin: I did too and I thought that lady looks like Michelle Obama and Eve. Except I didn’t really realize it was Eve. 

Me: So we were both right Eve is obviously working the FLOTUS look, only my situation would have been much cooler.  

A little late to the game…

So as we all know I am lame.

So it should come as no surprise I am late to the game with twitter and Instagram. I just got my first smart phone and have taken the leap into the bigger social media pond.

So if you so desire come follow me and get the smaller, quicker, easier, lazier, more frequent updates on us!

Follow me on Twitter: here 

Follow me on Instagram: here

 

 

 

 

Kevin-isims

While at Home Depot, with all three boys, all of whom were crying screaming.

(Note you will only understand this if you too are forced to watch the Disney channel far too much)

Kevin: This would be better if I had a rainbow Puffle. 

Me: It is sad that we even know what this is.

Kevin: Yes, yes it is.

Me: Did you just subtly reference Phineas and Ferb? 

Kevin: Why yes, yes I did.

Me: (sigh)

Digging out of the ruins.

I finally feel like I am in a place where I can allow myself to move forward.

Since the twins were born I have felt frozen in time. To me I still feel like I should be planning Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas.

This year blew straight past me, actually it ran over me like a train.

This time last year I was eating healthy, loosing weight, had a successful Etsy business and my future looked predictably happy. My kind of happy, a control freaks dream.

But life isn’t like that.

So here I am standing on the other side of the Hell my family was just drug through ready to brush off and walk forward.

It is a hard thing moving forward after a trauma, because you are all too aware you could be walking toward another trauma and you have to pick up all the shattered pieces of your life from the last trauma.

So I stayed paralyzed in my own personal Hell.

My mind never left my bedrest, the end to my pregnancy or the NICU. It is like all that pregnancy nesting took made a little nest in the middle of a hurricane.

I couldn’t leave the nest because leaving the nest meant accepting where my life had placed me.

And quiet frankly I didn’t want to.

I didn’t want to accept the lives my twins were handed because as their mom witnessing their first months on Earth filled with pain, tubes, tests, surgeries, near death experiences and diagnosis after diagnosis their future seemed so much more fragile.

I faced a new role, I was a mom of three, could I be enough?

I had to accept what and who I had become. I gained the baby weight with the twins and then some (and by some I mean A LOT) because eating was just about the only thing I did to get through this year.

I had to accept that I was “broken”. That I had post traumatic stress disorder, that I was depressed and needed help controlling my anxiety.

I had to make plans to fix both these things.

I didn’t want to do any of this.

But I am a mom, a mom to three beautiful boys, a wife to an amazing man and I NEEDED to do these things for them.

I NEEDED to do this for me.

Over the past month I have slowly started to see more clearly what I need and what my family needs.

And I wanted to do it.

I feel like the hurricane passed months ago but the clouds, flood waters and ruin all remained.
So now it is time to rebuild and clean up.

Time to move forward.

 

Kevin-isims.

Me: Kevin make sure you get Noah before he gets to that baby gate he scaled it this morning.

Kevin: The baby gates have passed their functionality phase and have entered their symbolic phase. 

 

I am a wuss and I know it.

So I admit this post will confirm my lameness but I’ll post it any way.

What the what is up with tv nowadays.

(Evidence #1 in lameness) Kevin and I recorded Late Night with Jimmy Fallon because lets be real….we don’t watch anything that late because we try to not be up that late.

With three boys under the age of two we must sleep when we can sleep, by sleep I mean lay there motionless, hoping that somehow not moving and laying still waiting for the next cry will somehow recharge us as well as real sleep.

If we are awake we are knee deep in baby/toddler drama. With diaper changing, bouncing, rocking, bottle making, spit up cleaning and outfit changing.

But we love us some Jimmy Falon. So the other day at lunch time we popped on Jimmy.

We were enjoying our weekly dose of Thank You notes when the commercials came on. Noah was sleeping on the couch on the remote and we didn’t dare disturb him.

Right before Jimmy was to come back on a nice little commercial for the upcoming series Hannibal came on.

Where someone was eating what appeared to be pork loin and they asked what loin it was and then it flashed to someone CHOPPING UP A HUMAN APPANDAGE.

I do not watch horror films. I can’t even watch Dexter or The Walking Dead.  So this pretty much scared me, like I am not eating lunch anymore excuse me while I go dry heave for the next hour.

When did cannibalism become late night tv programming?!

What’s next Freddy Kuger co-hosting with Katie Couric or Anderson Cooper?!

Can tv just go back to Full House and Home Improvement? Or at least not show humans being chopped up?

Maybe I am just too used to PBS and Disney…or maybe just maybe it is a little over the line to have a graphic series about cannibalism on NBC.

Hannibal…no thank you. I would rather watch Yo Gabba Gabba 24/7 which if you have ever caught an episode of it you know is usually worse than the though of having your arm chopped off.

Tell me this isn’t the worst thing you have ever seen…

Brotherly love.

Cuddle bugs.

Getting a picture with the three of them is like catching lightning.

moments growing into memories.

This time last year the only thing I was worried about was planning the perfect 1st birthday part for Noah.

In fact I was so worried about it all I remember from Noah’s last month of infancy is hitting every party store in a 10 mile radius and making sure I had all my pins planned from Pinterest.

What a mistake. Yes, I had my perfect streamers and full blown Mexican fiesta (he was born on Cinco De Mayo and I called it when I found out I was pregnant so it was a running joke) but if I could go back I would ditch the party and soak up that little 11 month old.

The twins weren’t even a thought yet.

I didn’t realize the turn our lives were about to take.

In fact we had just had the conversation that we would wait a year before trying for a brother or sister for Noah (God has quite a sense of humor).

About a month after Noah’s party I found out I was expecting. And we were given loads and loads of twin clothes.

Toward the end of summer it all got mixed up. I was too tired and too big to try to organize any of it.

At some point this fall while I was on bed rest in the hospital Kevin packed up all the clothes people had given us for the twins that they wouldn’t fit for sometime along with the summer clothes.

Last week I sat down to go through a tub of them, looking for 6 month clothes for Evan.

But there sitting on top of all the clothes were a little pair of khaki shorts.

Noah’s khaki shorts. The ones he lived in this past summer.

The ones he took his first steps in, turned 1 in, the ones I cuddled him in almost every day.

The ones that roughed it in the sand box at the park, the ones that lounged in the sand on the beach in Hilton Head on our first family vacation.

I held them to my heart and instantly tears filled my eyes.

My little boy, yes still little, was not this little.

Yes, I have two little brothers following his foot steps and they are even littler than that pair of shorts but it still stung.

It wasn’t a bad sting. More of a melancholy nostalgia.

I could instantly smell his sweet baby head, the one that is now usually a messy little boy sweat head. When I saw the worn knees from crawling I remembered that joy we had watching him take his first steps. I remember that he actually had to grow into these 6-12 month shorts and that they barely fit at 12 months, my boys don’t have butts.

I put the shorts down, wiped my eyes and left the pile of clothes on the nursery floor.

I went down stairs to Noah laying on the couch with a book and curled beside him.

I smelled his hair, kissed his cheek and hugged him tight because it hit me I am right in the middle of the sand pouring through the hourglass of childhood.

He won’t ever be as little as he is right now.

He smiled back at me and gave me a kiss.

We looked at his Runaway Bunny book over and over, backwards and forwards. We looked at the pictures and read the words.

But more than just reading a book and taking a break with him I was there in that moment. I was present and so aware that, that moment while seemingly very little was oh so big.

A moment that next year when I take his favorite striped shirt that he was wearing and pass it down to the twins I will remember that moment.

These moments may pass far too quick but they will never be grown out of.

The moments of toddlerhood I never want to forget.

 

• In teaching Noah how to talk I always say, “go get a book”, “get a book”. Over and over. So now he calls books, abooks.
• Noah would pick apples and tomatoes over any candy or cake any day. He goes crazy when he sees them in the store. I always have an apple in my purse. We took Noah to Ikea a couple of weeks ago and my purse apple was our saving grace.
• Noah calls Kevin, “add” trying to say dad. It is adorable. When he wakes up in the morning to check if Kevin is still home he yells out, “add?……add?” . He waits after every call to see if Kevin will come into the room. Lucky for him (and me) three days a week “add” is home in the morning.
• When Noah is done being somewhere he starts blowing kisses and waving goodbye. He usually wont stop until we leave. Such a polite way of saying, “I am over this.”
• When I wake up in the morning and go to wake Noah he smiles and gives me a kiss and a hug around the neck….could there be a better way to start the day?
• On the other side of that, sometimes Noah wakes up first and a couple of times he has woken me up by blowing in my mouth. Nothing like CPR to get your day started….it is a terrifying way to wake up by the way.
• He break dances. Really. He saw it once on tv and since then he adds floor spins and putting a leg in the air while he is on the ground to his awesome dance moves. He must have gotten his dance skills from his aunt Amy because Kevin and I can’t bust a move for the life of us.
• Noah is more upset when the twins get shots than when he gets them. He’s a very protective big brother. We have home health care nurses that come to give them shots and when they come he pushes them out the door and tries to close the door on them and tells them no.
• He usually has 3 or 4 binkys at all times. He likes to stack them and carry them around.
• He “crickets” his feet when he is falling asleep. He rubs them together, usually against me to fall asleep. He got that one straight from me. As Kevin put it, “pay back for all those years of you ‘cricketing’ me.”
• He is a little actor. Everything is dramatic. We put socks on him the other day in the bedroom in the back of the house…he then belly crawled from the room, through the hall, through the dining room, through the living room unable to walk with his socks on. But then once we put some music on he was magically able to dance. If he bumps his head and no one is around to see it/react to him he finds everyone in the house and reenacts the incident very emphatically…it usually involves him putting his hand on his head, squinting his eyes and “fainting“. I think we have a soap star in our future.
• Whenever he is about to do something bad he closes his eyes while doing it…like we can’t see him since his eyes are closed…the deep dimples and giggling give his plan away too.

These are just a few of the things I don’t ever want to forget….the things I wish I could freeze time for. So I figured I would write them down so one day when books aren’t abooks and I am not woken up with kisses and smiles and sometimes the beginning of CPR I will still have these moments, none of them forgotten.

 

the apple of my eye