The fog is starting to clear

Well it is about time that I am upfront and honest with everyone, some of my closer friends and family already know this, I have been suffering from MAJOR postpartum depression.  And it totally sucks!
Things are starting to slowly get back to "normal", or however normal life can be with a 9 mo old and 2.5 yr old! :)  I am having more good than bad days, and not feeling so tense and overwhelmed ALL the time.  I still have my moments and days but I feel like I can see the light at the end and I am getting closer and closer to feeling like I did before I had Will.

Will's birth was not a normal one, and again most do not know all the circumstances surrounding it, but to sum it all up without grossing anyone out his birth was an emergency c-section for his safety.  Will needed to be resuscitated after birth and then was in the NICU for a week for antibiotics and breathing issues, we think infection caused but nothing is known for sure.  He was in the normal newborn nursery after birth for almost 48 hours before being transferred.  Once in the NICU (newborn intensive care unit) we really could not hold him as much as we wanted and I really felt a different bond to him as with Emily, a lack of a bond.
It was heart breaking to have to leave him at the hospital and go home and now we were visitors of his, only able to stay for a few hours at a time (if we were lucky).  It was so difficult to care for a toddler and try and be at the hospital as much as possible for Will.  I do not know what we would have done without my parents to help us, and keep Emily for a whole week and let us move in as well when Will was still in the hospital.  It was such a blessing to be 5 min from the hospital instead of 25!  We did not have to do laundry, cook, or do any other daily activities.  Could visit will and come back to see Emily and eat and try and get some sleep.  Recovery from the C-section was very difficult for me, and I was really not expecting that on top of everything else!

Anyways, I have to analyze everything, I really think that my body never had the "normal" hormone response during and after birth and defiantly not a normal recovery and I did not get all that newborn mother baby bonding time and breastfeeding issues resulted as well as the depression.  I had the baby blues at first, I did with Emily too, but at about 8 weeks after Will was born I realized these "blues" were here to stay and they were MUCH more severe than the blues I had with Emily.  And I would hate myself for the thoughts I was having, and lack of motivation, and everything else that went along with it.   That would make everything worse, I knew my kids deserved much more and so it was just a horrible cycle.  I knew I needed help when I was crying one night and just wanted to leave everything behind, just walk out of the house and not have to deal with it all.  That is really hard to admit.

So I got help, and was put on an anti-depressant, and things have slowly VERY SLOWLY started to turn around.  I do not love the fact that I have to take medicine everyday to be able to function and feel normal but I know that I deserve to feel good and my kids deserve a mom who interacts with them and plays with them and cuddles and loves on them.

On my bad days I just feel tense all day, "down", and totally overwhelmed.  The littlest things cause me to loose it, I was yelling at Emily so much.  I would feel awful about that and then just be super depressed and just not even be able to get out of bed at times.  I would put on the TV in our room and Em and I would lay in bed and I would hold Will and feed him and let him sleep in my arms.  We have got our moneys work of watch now on Netflix, that is for sure!  It was a chore to just to get us all fed during the day.  Cleaning the house, laundry, and everything else just did not get done.  I was doing just enough to keep us going for another day, I would get us (or at least Emily) fed and most days that was it.

It was too much to get out of the house, I had to fake everything and put on a smile for hours on end if we left the house.  I could never let anyone know how bad it really was.  After all I just had a baby, you are suppose to be all happy and in love with your baby and feel blessed and joyful   It was just too much work to leave the house, and the times that we did because we needed to I was a completely drained emotionally after we got back home.  We would only be gone for an hour or so at a time and that was all I could take.  After trying to survive like this for a few weeks/months I finally opened up to my closest family and friends and that did help, I no longer had to fake it with them.  I could be honest and that provided a few "safe havens" and people I could be around without having to work so hard when we were out of the house.  I really helped to have that, because I really did need to get out of the house.

I am so thankful to have a close friend and my sister that I can open up to about how I am really feeling and can just vent.  I am VERY thankful to have Paul, he has been amazing through all of this.  He has not said anything about the state of the house, or having to dig through laundry piles to find socks in the morning.  He has been understanding and helps out with the kids when he gets home from work.  He works a full time very demanding job and then comes home to take care of us and me when I am at home all day and should be taking care of the house.  I am one lucky girl to have such an amazing husband who loves me so much and loves his family so much.  He has put up with 9 months of chaos around here.  And I have not been the easiest person to be around during this time either.  
The last week or two I have really started to feel like a new person!  I have so much more energy, have had happy days, and instead of being so tense and anxious all day it is just when I start to get overwhelmed.  I no longer start the day in a state of being overwhelmed.  I still have a long ways to go but it is refreshing to start to feel "normal" again :)

Will has been a challenging baby.  I do not know if it is the fact that he can play on his own for short periods now, starting to sleep for 5 hrs at night, or hormones finally starting to re-balance or a combination of everything.
As most of you know I am no stranger to depression, dealing with my fair share in the teen years and into college.  I thought that I had passed that point in my life and gladly left it in my past.  I never imagined how severe postpartum depression would be or could be.  What I have experienced in the past 9 months was a thousand times worse than my darkest day as a teen.

I am blessed to have the amazing family that I do, and LOVE my husband and kids SO MUCH.  I am glad that I am starting to enjoy life again and now during night time feedings my tears are of joy.  I look down at the little man I am feeding and feel so blessed that he is here with us, we came so close to loosing him.

I feel a little more free after getting this all out, or getting out some of what has been going on in my head.  Now lets see if I can find some recent pictures to share.  I can not believe how much Em and Will are growing and changing every day.  Some of my biggest regrets of all of this is that I do not have the daily pictures of Will as I did with Emily.  But I am trying not to kick myself while I am down, and just getting on with things.  I could go on and on about all my "regrets" of having to deal with everything...

 EASTER MORNING

                                                                           

Cuddling in bed

Childrens Mueseum

Family Pictures!

We enjoyed one of the last nicer afternoons at my parents house last weekend.  My dad took our family picture for us!  I love having our family picture done and am so thankful that my dad is willing to do it for us.  The photos are always amazing and Emily loves her silly Grandpa!  My dad has yet to edit the photos and give us the final draft but I got a copy of the images and was looking through them tonight and LOVE them, I am so excited and will share the finished product but had to give everyone a sneak peek :)

I can not believe November is almost half way over already!  We have enjoyed our fall so far and are looking forward to spending time with family over the holidays.  

Emily is changing so much every day and I love to see how she is growing into a smart, funny, and beautiful little girl.  This morning she asked for a banana for breakfast, we had jsut finished them yesterday, I told her we did not have any more.  She looked at me and got this look on her face and said "Go to Grandpa's house?"  She was determined to get that banana even if we had to take a drive!  She ended up settling for some grapes and toast with nutella on it.  She has started to draw faces when coloring and "writing" letters.  

Will is a very happy easy going guy!  The perfect addition to our family.  He started on reflux medicine a few months ago for gastric reflux and since that got into his system he has been a much more happy baby.  He loves to watch his sister and is starting to reach for toys.  If he does get a toy it goes right to the mouth for him to explore it.  Will is starting to have more awake and alert times of the day and Emily likes that he does more than just sleep now!  

Paul is keeping busy at work and his hobby of making money :)  He has started buying storage units at auctions with Brandon, Paul continues to go to a weekly auction and finds anything and everything to buy and resell.  

I have started to really enjoy cooking, I have been trying to cook from scratch more ever since Emily was an infant with all her allergies so I knew what was in everything.  My newest challenge this week was roasting a whole chicken and have now used the left over chicken all week (and still have some left) I also made chicken stock from the bones.  Monday we had roasted chicken with veggies, Tuesday was chicken tortilla soup, Wednesday is auction night for Paul so the kids and I ate at my mom and dads, Thursday was chicken pot pie, and tonight (Friday) is left over night. I have enough chicken for 1 or 2 more meals just depending on what I make.  All that from a $4.95 chicken!

Braem Update :)

Well it has been awhile...my goal of monthly updates just is not happening, guess that comes with being a mom!

And I realized when I logged in that maybe I should change the title of my blog since our recent addition of a little man in our house :)

SO SO SO in love with our newest addition to our family!  William Thomas came into our lives at exactly 8pm on July 12th, he is now 15 1/2 weeks old.  I am adjusting to being the mom of two little ones.  I apologize for those that I have not been in contact with much.  We had a very traumatic birth experience followed by an unexpected week in the NICU - leaving my baby at the hospital was one of the hardest things I have done!  And I have been suffering from some sever post partum depression.  I have been trying to hide it, but it is much less exhausting to get it out for all to know.  I no longer need to make excuses for things and myself!  Things a getting better slowly and I am so blessed to have two healthy kids.

Here are some recent pictures of my loves :)  I will try to be better about updating blog more often but I am not making any promises :)

Will is 3 months and Emily is 2 yrs old in these pictures, we had a great day taking them and both kids really liked being outside for the afternoon :)  

18 Months!!!

Wow, I can hardly believe that Em is 18 months.  Emily is doing very well, growing and changing every day.  She continues to amaze us, I can not count the number of times Paul and I just look at each other and say did you hear that or did you see that.

The terrible twos have started...some days I can not wait for Paul to get home and help.  Emily likes to run the show around here and is one stubborn little girl.  Her favorite word is "No" many days, and has her idea about how things are suppose to go.  She is also the most sweet girl ever, and loves to help mommy out.  She has one chore of putting away her dirty clothes in the hamper, and does a very good at it (sometimes too good of a job).

Behavior is a new "issue" but typical of her age.  She knows what things are "no" around the house, and likes to test us.  She has started to have her babies do these things.  She knows that she is not suppose to touch the shelf of CD's, so she will go up to it and touch them and say no - no.  Then she goes to get her baby and makes the baby doll touch them and flip them off the shelf.  Baby or Oliver (the cat) get blamed for many things Emily does as well.  I do not know how many times I hear "baby did" during a day.  So Emily and Baby have started to get time outs, and baby always gets out of time out first while Emily remains for another minuet.  It seems to be helping some though the one time I threatened a time out Emily pondered the decision, did what she wanted to do and then marched right over to time out - put her arms up and said "up" for me to lift her over the gate into the time out area.

Sleep continues to be a battle at our house, at 18 months Emily has yet to sleep through the night (except the random times that add up to three in her whole life).  It is very normal for her to wake three or four times a night still.  I know much of this is habit at this point, except when she is having a tummy flair up and then she wakes from discomfort.  We just have not been well enough long enough yet to get a good sleep routine established.

She has well over 50 words, speaks in phrases and babbles lots of sentences.  She does all sorts of "tricks" but does not preform on que with others around :)

She is now just over 20 pounds (3 ounces over) and 31 inches tall.  She is doing very well on her Gluten and Wheat free diet.  Paul and I have decided to put off any formal diagnosis and testing as far as Celiac Disease goes.  Emily would have to be on a full gluten and wheat diet for 8 weeks before testing can start!  She would have blood work first and then a colonoscopy and biopsy of her small intestine to test.  After many discussions between us and the doctors we have decided to put this off.  She has started to actually gain weight, and is developing well, on her new diet so we are not up for changing things just yet.

Update on our little man, my OB doctor is having me come back in more frequently from this point on due to increased contractions and dilation.  I am suppose to take it easy, that is not always easy with a toddler!  Paul does a great job helping me out with things once he gets home.  But we do not want this little guy thinking he can come sooner than he is suppose to.  I am over 25 weeks now - less than 15 to go!  We are still pondering name choices...

Here are some recent pictures

Helping Mommy Read

OK, this is the link that I posted in the previous post...I thought this would be more easy :)

16 months!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANTS88N-U6o

That is a cute video of Emily helping me read one of her favorite books.

Emily is now 16 months old, and we can not believe how quick it went!  Emily continues to grow her vocabulary daily and is doing many 2-3 word phrases.  She runs all over the house, loves pretend play with her baby dolls and farm/zoo little people set and likes to ride her ride-on toy all over the house.  She also likes to give her baby and stuffed animals rides on it.  She is starting to get interested in the potty, but I think potty training is still a ways away.  She has to help flush the big potty, wash her hands, and sit on her little potty every time we are in the bathroom though.  In an ideal world Em would get potty trained before the new baby was here,  but I am not going to push anything I know it will happen quick once she is interested in it.  Emily now has to help pick out her clothes (even the socks, she really likes socks...) and is starting to help get herself undressed (not always at appropriate times).  She still has a very strong personality and has her own ideas about how things should be done that we battle with daily.  The terrible twos have already started I think, or I hope that is what these tantrums are otherwise I do not know if we will survive anything worse :)  I am happy that Em has such a personality and it makes for some pretty good stories now.

Baby update.  I am now 16 1/2 weeks along, and things are going well.  My tear on the placenta is pretty much all healed up as of last week.  I am still suppose to take it a little easy and not do a lot of heavy lifting or anything that really causes me to strain because until it is all healed it can re tear.  But it was looking good enough that they do not need to check it again until my regularly scheduled 20 week ultrasound.  That is scheduled for the end of February and we are planning on finding out if we are expecting a boy or girl as long as baby cooperates.  We are all very excited about the baby, when we tell Emily that Mommy has a baby growing in my tummy she lifts up my shirt and says "nah, so silly".

Happy New Year

This year we rang in the new year by getting comfy on the couch and renting movies.  The third movie of the day/evening ended at around 11:40 so we watched some TV waiting for a count down to the new year.  I was changing channels at the wrong time and we actually missed the official "New Year" by a few seconds...oops :) Paul had got some ginger ale to toast at midnight, so we still had our toast a little late and then went to bed.  I did not stay awake until midnight last year, so I was glad that I made it until 12:05 this year :)

I am looking forward to all that 2012 will bring our family!  Our biggest change will come in July with the addition of a new little brother or sister for Emily!  Paul and I are so excited to meet our new little one, only 27 more weeks to go (not that I am counting down or anything).

Emily had her 15 month well baby check right before Christmas and she had a great check up, we just need to keep working on helping her gain weight but other than that everything is going well.  Emily was actually up to the 1% in weight at exactly 18 lbs.  She is still far from being on the growth curve for her weight but is now gaining slowly!  She was 29 1/4 inches long that puts her between the 20-25%.  She continues to change every day and just amazes us!  At 15 months Em has at least 50 words if not more, runs, does tons of pretend play with her baby dolls, is constantly jabbering and playing.  She still enjoys books, but would rather you read out loud while she walks around and does her thing.
Sleep continues to be a battle at our house, we have our good weeks but those are followed by several bad ones...Even during a "good" week she still wakes twice at night but will at least go back down to bed without many tears.  Our more trying nights are her waking almost every hour and lots and lots of tears (like crying for an hour before going back to sleep) and long days with cranky Mom and Em.  These bad nights a usually due to days of mucous stools and once we figure out what was triggering it and get her to feeling better we get sleep back on track until the next flair up...I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to stay home with Em, I do not mind waking at night - I feel bad for Em that she is in so much discomfort at times.  I am glad that I can comfort her when needed and we can just take it easy the next day.  

I had some bleeding last week, so I saw midwife at UIHC and an ultrasound was done to check everything out.  Baby looked amazing (measuring 5 days larger) but my placenta has a small tear that they will keep an eye on.  All should be fine :)

Opening presents at my parents house

Decorating the Christmas Tree at my parents house the weekend before Christmas

Emily really liked the ornaments 

Em being Em :)

Em LOVES her new stroller she got from Santa

We had a wonderful Christmas, we were able to visit Paul's family all in the Rockford, IL. area it was very nice to spend time with them, as we only get to see them once every few months.  Emily even met some family for the first time!  Emily really got the hang of opening gifts by the end of the long weekend.  It was nice to see Grandpa and Grandma Jorgensen several times over the  last few weeks with my mom being on break from school and my dad taking some extra vacation days around Christmas.  Em loves spending time with "Gapa" and "Gama" and uncle Ethan and Tally the dog are big hits too :)