After Thoughts | The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

In the weeks following Buzz's birth, I found myself alone in my thoughts. When asked what I was thinking I would simply say "oh, nothing". I cannot describe the hold I had on my inner words. It was almost like my own little secret.. something nobody could take from me.

There are stages of grief one goes through when they experience a loss, we are all aware of this. But something I never realized was that a loss can come in many forms.

In the last few weeks of my pregnancy I expressed my feelings of bitter sweetness. I had enjoyed every moment of this gestation and I wasn't quite ready to give it up. When it got down to the last few days i felt I was ready. I told Buzz it was time, that his daddies and big brother were ready to meet him.. that I was ready for him to come. I knew it was getting close but I was hesitant to get excited over the possibility of any progression. I attributed this doubt to my previous experiences with stalled labor. Looking back now, I realize it was a reluctance. An unwillingness to be done.

Done can be defined in many ways. This pregnancy was by far my best physically. I ate extremely healthy and I stayed very active through it all. I enjoyed every moment of this experience -- this oh so amazing journey had made a full circle so perfectly. I celebrated this [still do] but i was [still am] very sad to see it come to an end so quickly.

After Buzz's birth I felt amazing.

Natural labor and birth is like an addictive drug that lifts you high above the clouds.. floating beneath the stars for days, sometimes weeks.

For anyone that has not experienced this miracle, I promise you cannot fathom just how unbelievably exhilarating and empowering it is. I relived those spectacular moments for days and still do sometimes.

But then there were the other days. the days I felt like a ton of bricks were weighing on my shoulders. The nights I would lay in bed eyes wide open with streams of tears running down my cheeks and in to my pillow while everyone else drifted off to sleep. The times I heard you are fat and ugly and useless even though I was being told I was beautiful and wonderful and oh wow, how did you lose all that baby weight so fast -- you look amazing. The times I secretly cried in the middle of the day at my desk and in my car because I was so stressed and felt like life had lost it's purpose even though I knew I was the luckiest girl in the world with the best partner, family, and friends you ever could ask for.

I am going to stop right here for a moment to elaborate on what I just wrote. first, I will never regret either of my surrogate sons. I am and will always be very proud and thankful for the very miracle of their being. I do miss them. But I miss them by distance and time between visits. I miss them just as much as I miss their fathers or my niece, or any other distant family member. This was separate from them. Never in my life have I ever felt like this after having a baby. This was my fourth delivery and my second surrogacy, so these feelings -- these emotions, came as a huge shock to me. I also never thought I would ever share these feelings with anyone else.. not even Bear.

But I did. And I am going to share them with you too.

I am no longer ashamed of the thoughts and feelings I experienced in the weeks following Buzz's birth. In fact, as I sit here today I consider them a blessing. One of my favorite sayings is everything happens for a reason. And to follow that up I will quote my grandmother, when she explained to me why bad things can happen to good people, and say "we are only given what we can handle".

[When you are pregnant the world revolves around all the wonderful things you will experience as a new (or subsequent) mother. You learn about your growing baby, the labor and delivery, and what a newborn requires after birth. Your dreams are filled with the anticipation of all the amazing things you will do and have. But not many people talk about the ugly side of postpartum. The cramps and bleeding, the leaky boobs and troubles breastfeeding, fatigue, stress, and out of control hormones.]

I went on for weeks keeping this little secret to myself in hopes that if I ignored it long enough it would just disappear. Like sweeping dust under a rug, eventually that mess is going to pile up so high it will trip you. And it did. But it didn't only affect me. It hurt my family as well. Anyone that knows me well enough knows that nothing in this world means more to me than my family. So it was in this moment that I realized I needed help. I needed to expose the dust that accumulated from beneath that rug before it did anymore damage.

I was scared. I feared that Bear would think I was crazy. I had this notion that if she thought I had that p-word thing she wouldn't want me to have our own child in the future. That any subsequent birth could and possibly would result in the same awfulness. I felt tarnished.. a black spot on my pregnancy-birth record forever. I couldn't even say the words out loud. When I confessed my problem, the p-word didn't escape my lips. In fact, those words angered me to even hear coming from hers.

postpartum depression.

She said it. She actually mentioned it casually one day as if we were talking about a TV show or something silly one of the kids did or said. My insides screamed and my skin crawled. I wanted to put my hand over her mouth and pretend I didn't hear what she had just said so carelessly.

It took me a few weeks to come to terms with my new label. I felt ashamed and looking back now, I don't really know why. We talked about it more and I started to feel comfortable saying it. I have postpartum depression. We even discussed the possibility of me having it again in the future. To my surprise and much relief, she said if it does we will just talk about it and deal with it then. Wow.. I couldn't believe it was that simple.

As the days continued I felt less off. I had no idea actually admitting my problem and talking to my partner was going to begin my healing process. I started to do things I enjoyed. I spent time with my family, I read, wrote, took pictures, and cooked. I started accepting compliments with a thank you instead of disregarding them in my head as lies. I actually started to believe I wasn't all that bad. I grew more confident in myself as a mother, wife and friend. I made myself (and my family) a promise.. I was going to be honest and open. I was going to live life to the fullest and celebrate it again! And in doing this I became empowered again, taking back my life in a sense. Which is the most amazingly-wonderful life anyone could ever ask for!

Writing comes easy for me. It has always been an outlet that refreshes and heals. I can sit here with a blank screen and plug away at the keyboard filling the screen up with words piled upon words that I am always excited to share. This entry however has me second guessing. It has been sitting in my drafts for awhile now and hitting that 'post' button is making me a tad nervous. But I know it is something I have to do in hopes that someone out there will benefit from my humility experience.

Grandma's words were so simple and so true that I will pass them along again, in my own words..

We are only given the things in life in which we are strong enough to handle. and we are given these things in life so that we can share with others in the hopes that we [and they] may learn and grow from them as well.