dear God, there's a cloud in my silver lining

here is the talk i am giving at MOPS (mothers of pre-schoolers) this month...its meant to be a 30 min talk, so yes, its long...but i would love some feedback on it :)

I am Angie Lackner; wife of 7 years this month to my wonderful husband, Jeff; and mother to two children, Peyton aged 3, and Willow, aged 7 months. Like many women, I have always wanted to be a wife and a mother, imagining how perfect it would be as I grew up…planning how I would be super-mom and wife…I was going to be June Cleaver in the 21st century! Then reality happened, and with it…what I like to call the cloud in my silver lining…postpartum depression.

Let me back up a bit and tell you a little bit about my life leading up to motherhood. I was born in southern Wisconsin, and put up for adoption. I was in a wonderful foster home until the age of 1 ½, when I was adopted by two fantastic parents. I was raised in a warm and loving home, as an only child and was taught right from wrong, was greatly spoiled, but was also generous with my things and myself. I went to church on occasion with friends or my grandma, but my parents never went. Overall, I was raised to be a good person.

Then the teenage years hit…and boy did they hit hard! I started dating, smoking, sleeping around, and basically lying to my parents as much as possible. By day I was a good student, but by night I was getting into all sorts of trouble. I was trying to fill a piece of me I didn’t even know was missing. Throughout my teens, I had multiple boyfriends and partners, stole cigarettes from my parents, smoked pot with my friends on lunch hour, dabbled in vampirism with boyfriends, and basically did everything my parents told me not to do. I put them through hell on earth and back again, and didn’t even care at the time. We tried counseling and punishments; we tried more freedom and rewards…nothing worked to change me or my actions. Not even having to ask a doctor for an HIV test in front of my mom at aged 16 changed my ways.

Also through high school and college I became very involved with Wicca or witchcraft. I started using Ouija boards regularly, reading tarot cards, doing magic spells, using crystals for healing purposes…I thought I had found my niche…but instead I was just putting a band-aid on my sadness and emptiness that was underneath it all. Throughout these years I battled depression on and off, and tried some various medications…but I hated the feeling of having to take medicine to feel “normal”…so I would stop. So I just continued to live my life, being happy some of the time, and faking it the rest.

Fast forward to my senior year of college…I was a music theory major at UW Whitewater. I was living in a one bedroom apartment by myself, had been going out with a pretty decent guy for the past 2 ½ years, had lots of friends, and was doing ok. Then my world came crashing down out of the blue…it started with going to be a counselor at band camp that summer…I ended up flirting with another counselor and kissing him…I felt guilt and shame and told my boyfriend…he forgave me, like he did the other time I had cheated on him in our relationship…but it still put a strain on us. Then I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a joint pain and inflammatory disorder, and also a dairy intolerance…(neither of which ended up being a correct diagnosis…but that’s a whole nother story.)…then I also had my first full out panic attack! I seriously thought that I was having a heart attack…my pulse raced, I started to sweat and get nauseous…I thought I was going to die…it lasted for about an hour or so that first time. After that, it happened daily, and got to the point where I could no longer sleep in my bed as that is where I would have them, so I slept on my couch instead…I skipped a lot of classes because I was too scared of having a panic attack in public…I didn’t have anyone over to my apartment because it was a complete mess and so was I…I basically became a hermit.

One day after all of this started, one of my good friends insisted on coming over because she was worried about me. She came in and instead of judging me for the squalor I was living in, gave me a hug and started cleaning my apartment….at the end of the day, we carried out 13 completely full bags of garbage out of my small apartment, and I finally had dishes to eat on again (I had since given up washing dishes and started buying paper plates and cups and utensils…so my kitchen was full of fruit flies…ugh!)…before my friend left, she left me a large framed poster of the footprints poem, and I set it on top of my bookcase. Every day I would look at that poster, and read its words… “One night I dreamed that I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there were only one set of footprints. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow, or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. So I said to the Lord, ‘You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there have been only one set of footprints in the sand. Why when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?’ The Lord replied, ‘The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand, is when I carried you’”…and then one day I realized that God HAD carried me for so many years and that I wasn’t alone! This was a huge revelation for me, and started me on my journey out of the pit of despair that I had been living in. I finally went and got help for my panic attacks and depression, and started on medication…I stayed on them this time, and they helped a lot. I got a little bit of counseling, but didn’t stay with that…and while I was better than I was, I still wasn’t truly happy, and I really had lost my direction in life. I was burnt out on music, and left college after 4 ½ years…my boyfriend and I broke up shortly after that, and I worked a couple of part-time minimum wage jobs until my parents told me to move back home to Stoughton, get a full time job somewhere, and get my life back on track….so I did.

The summer of 2000 was really the start of my new life…I moved back home, started to feel happy again, and found a full time job selling band and orchestra instruments at ward-brodt. At the same time, I met Jeff online, and we began dating. On our first date I knew that he was the man I was going to marry…granted it took him a bit longer to know that, but we did get engaged after 5 ½ months together. Around that time, I had to reface my demons…when I was to go up to MN to meet his parents, I got my first panic attack in years…I had since been off my medication for about 6 months and had been doing fine…but the thought of going so far away from my parents and out of my comfort zone all but crippled me. Jeff and his family were all very supportive and understanding, and they came down to Madison to meet me first. And eventually, after we had been together for almost a year, I was able to make the trip to MN and had a fabulous time.

While Jeff and I were planning our wedding, he made it known that he wanted to be married in a church. He was a Christian, and had always wanted to be married in a church. So off we went to look for a church to get married in. LakeView was the second church we found, and I felt immediately at home here with contemporary music, people in casual street clothes, and the very first sermon I heard here was about demons…hello!!! I knew about demons! Both Jeff and I walked out of LakeView feeling that we had found the right one. We quickly joined the newcomer’s class, and I had many talks as a seeker to various pastors and staff. Then, on September 10, 2001, while reading the Left Behind series of books, sitting alone in my apartment, I gave my life over to Christ. Then, the next morning, hell broke loose on the US…9/11. I truly believe that I was meant to come to faith in Christ prior to the attacks, so that I would never question my motives for it. God knew what he was doing.

So here I was a new Christian, engaged, getting involved with a worship team, and suddenly happy for the first time in my life. Jeff and I even stopped all sexual contact and spending nights together for the 9 months leading up to our wedding. I was able to quit smoking cold turkey and with just prayer as a help…basically God was blessing me in ways I never could have imagined, and I was suddenly a person who was 180 degrees different than the one I had been way back in high school…my mom was seriously afraid that I had joined a cult, as were some of my friends from high school. But no…I finally had the hole in me filled with joy and love and happiness…it was wonderful.

Fast forward into our relationship a few years…I kept pestering jeff to start a family with me…it put a serious strain on our relationship when I would end up crying every time we made love to each other because I was on the pill, and I knew we weren’t trying to have a baby…but jeff, being the wonderfully practical guy he is, wanted us to have a house, and some money prior to starting a family. I being the impractical one in the relationship was just really anxious to finally have someone genetically linked to me. I have not found my birth family yet, and always got kind of sad and depressed whenever we studied genetics in school…I just really wanted to see someone who had some of my traits. Jeff understood this as well as he could, having never been adopted, but he still really wanted to be a little more secure in our finances before we threw a kid into the mix. So just after our 3rd wedding anniversary, we became home owners…and shortly after that, we finally threw out my pills! I was elated! The problem then being that I just wasn’t getting pregnant! My cycles have always been irregular, and I saw a couple of specialists, and tried ovulation tracking with my temp and such, and even was thought to have polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS for short…that ended up being a misdiagnosis as well, but we didn’t know that at the time. So I went on a medication called metformin which was supposed to help me ovulate regularly, without going the next step to actual fertility drugs. Well after 2 months of that, I felt completely sick, and was still not pregnant…so I stopped. Then we went on vacation for a few days, and had a good time and relaxed a bit…and then the next weekend, almost 1 year to the day that we started trying, I got pregnant with my son, Peyton! I was so beyond thrilled as was Jeff and our families…peyton would be the first grandchild on both sides.

I had a basically miserable pregnancy…not at all what I expected. You always imagine a cute little baby bump and a warm glow and just general elation all the time….yeah…not so much here. I was completely nauseated for the entire 9 months…I had to go on zofran to keep from vomiting. I craved salt and spice, and seriously lived on taco bean tostadas everyday for about 7 months of pregnancy…then after that, it was fried egg sandwiches…I gained about 80 lbs…30 of which was water weight and edema…I developed severe carpal tunnel at 18 weeks which devastated me, as I could no longer participate on worship team or do my artwork…I also couldn’t type or sit at my desk at work anymore, and went down to part time, and then, 2 months before I gave birth, I left my job for good. We had known that I would be a stay at home mom, but we thought I would be working up until the baby came. I basically became a beached whale on my couch for those last couple of months, being miserable and pregnant alone…only really leaving the house to go to my docs appts as my pubic bone had also separated, and made it extremely painful to walk. My mom and Jeff were both worried about how depressed I was becoming…I would snap at them and cry at the drop of a hat…I didn’t really chalk it up to anything more than pregnancy hormones and having my life so disrupted by the painful side effects of pregnancy I was going through. My midwife at the time had suggested that I might want to go on some anti-depressants then, but I insisted that I would be much better as soon as the baby was out…boy…how wrong I was!

April 6, 2006, started out as an exiting day…my midwife was going to start cervical ripening to hopefully start labor, and I was finally going to get to meet my son! She had the wisdom though to schedule me for a growth ultrasound prior to the ripening to make sure peyton wasn’t too big…and boy did we get a surprise! He was estimated to be 11 lbs, 6 oz! So in complete disbelief, Jeff and I drove to the hospital and told my midwife that peyton wasn’t “coming out that way!” She agreed, and luckily the doc on call that day had an opening and could do a c-section that afternoon! So everything started happening fast, and we were going to have a baby that very day! I felt nervous and excited as we prepared for it, and I remember being wheeled down to the OR, and getting prepped…then…my memories are of how numb I felt in my head, not from the physically numbness, but mentally…I felt completely numb to what was going on…here I was having a baby, it was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of my life, and I felt completely indifferent to what was going on around me. It was kinda scary, but I shrugged it off to the meds. Peyton came out…all 11 lbs, 6 oz of him (yes, the ultrasound tech was exactly right!), and took to nursing right away like a champ! Jeff and my mom were completely over the moon in love with him, and I was just trying to make sense of the whole situation. I spent the next 4 days in the hospital, trying to recover despite the extreme panic that was setting in from lack of sleep and depression. The midwife prescribed a sleep med for me so I could get some rest, and it took the edge off, but it still didn’t take away the sadness and fear that was overwhelming me. But I still thought that it was just the “baby blues” that all the books talk about….so home we went. Well, even with all the help we had between grandmas and friends, I kept sinking lower and lower into despair…it took me a week to even change Peyton’s diaper. I would basically hold him to nurse him or if Jeff needed to fix some food or go to the bathroom, otherwise I stayed in bed. I was crying for absolutely no reason, and despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep…I felt like I was going insane. So I finally called the midwifes on a Saturday, and said that I needed some medication. They immediately called in a script for lexapro, and anti-depressant, and within a week I started feeling a little better. Also what helped me in this time, was Brooke shields’ book “Down came the rain” about her battle with postpartum depression. Mom and I both read it, and cried through it. It was heartbreaking to read, as so much of it I could have written, but it also gave me hope, because she found the light at the end of the tunnel. Brooke was able to eloquently put to words everything that I felt…I even had Jeff read it too so he could understand some of the hell I was going through. Here are a couple of passages that really summed it up:

“After only a couple of days of being home, my crying had increased and no longer occurred only in between feedings but during them as well. At times I even had trouble holding Rowan because of my choking sobs. Why was I crying more than my baby? Here I was, finally the mother of a beautiful baby girl I had worked so hard to have, and I felt like my life was over. Where was the bliss? Where was the happiness that I had expected to feel by becoming a mother? She was my baby; the baby I had wanted for so long. Why didn’t I feel remotely comforted by having or holding her?....As many friends called or came with encouragement and empathy, nothing seemed to help. Everyone continued to marvel at rowan’s beauty and alertness. They would say, ‘but come on, aren’t you in love?’ Trying to be honest, I’d reply, ‘not yet,’ but the truth was I felt nothing. Had they all immediately felt such love for their babies? My child was a source of joy to everyone who came into contact with her, except me. I couldn’t believe I was missing out on all the happiness they described and which I had so anticipated. I had been waiting to be overwhelmed by the deepest love fathomable, and all I felt was distance and dread. Nothing was as I had pictured it….Both my mother-in-law and my mother suggested that I stop breast-feeding to give myself a break. In fact, the consensus seemed to be that I give up the baby on the breast and move past that added pressure. But what nobody understood was that the breast-feeding was my only real connection to the baby. If I were to eliminate that I might have no hope of coming through this nightmare. I was hanging on to the breast-feeding as my lifeline. It was the only thing that made me unique in terms of caring for her, and it created an undeniable connection, even if only a physical one. Without it, she might be lost to me forever. If I continued, maybe I would eventually become less cut off from my own flesh and blood.”

I was amazed and touched by Brooke’s honestly and vulnerability in this book, and though it was hard to read while going through the depression, I felt it necessary, and highly recommend it to anyone going through postpartum depression, and also for their loved ones to read it too.

As I was slowly feeling better and more like myself, I started to fall in love with peyton…I was starting to feel capable of being his mom, and enjoying moment with him despite his colic the first 3 months. I also started figuring out the core of my depression…here I was, 29 years old, and for the first time in my life I was not the center of the universe! People were always asking about peyton first, and my friends would talk to him and ignore me at first…it was as it was supposed to be, but I was having a hard time passing the spotlight on to my child. Figuring out the reason behind this, made it easier to cope with. Some other things that really helped me were joining MOPS and having that few hours a month with other moms and WITHOUT my kid (knowing that he was being loved on by someone else of course!), and also joining Meriter’s mother-baby hour…once a week I went, baby in tow, to a meeting with other moms with similar aged babies…all of us were first time moms, learning as we went, offering advice to one another along with the moderator, not being afraid to just whip out a boob in front of each other to nurse, and no one batted an eye at a fussy baby. It was a wonderful environment for a clueless, depressed, brand new mom to be in, and I highly recommend it to any new mom out there! I also realized that I had been a bit mad at God at this time…prior to getting pregnant I had really been on fire for Him still…very active on worship team and in the church, I had even co-founded a visual arts team here and hosted many an art show. Suddenly I felt angry that due to me having this newborn, I couldn’t head up the annual church art show that year…MY project…and I couldn’t go to the Willow Creek arts conference either…both things normally filled my “God-tank” completely to the point of almost overflowing, and now I would have to go without both! I was really really mad at the timing of all this. Then I started to realize that this was just a season…of course I didn’t believe that when other people had told it to me before, but I was never one to listen to others…I’ve always had to do things or figure them out for myself….but that if I just gave this anger and frustration over to God, He would help me through it. So I prayed, and I prayed and I prayed. Then God did an amazing thing…He helped me finish a painting that I had started prior to getting pregnant in time to actually display in the art show, and it went beautifully even though I had no hand in running it. And the first day I got back to church, I was completely filled up with emotion from the praise run that day, like I know I would have been at the arts conference. God is good, and gives us what we need in the moments we need it. God gave me Peyton at that time for a reason, and I needed to start to enjoy him and stop dwelling on what I was missing out on. When in fact, the gift of a child is something so precious that in hindsight, postpartum depression is a small price to pay for what you get in exchange.

Life went on and I started relishing watching peyton grow and learn new things…I felt like myself…and we decided that it was time to try for a sibling for peyton…low and behold, it only took 2 tries and I was pregnant again! Right away, I felt my hormones taking control of my emotions and talked to my doctor and we upped my lexapro…and then I felt pretty good mentally, albeit exhausted, again. Although, whoever said that having kids 2 ½ years apart was the ideal spacing obviously wasn’t actually pregnant while dealing with a two year old! Pregnancy plus the terrible twos does not equal a happy momma! It was so exhausting that I actually FORGOT I was pregnant sometimes and then would be like, “oh yeah…we’re having another one of these! What were we thinking again?” This pregnancy itself was a little less miserable overall, but I did end up with insulin dependant gestational diabetes, and another 80 lb weight gain, and another separated pubic bone….but no time to be a beached whale as I had a 2 year old to chase.

My daughter willow was born on September 10, 2008, via planned repeat c-section…weighing in at 9 lbs 10 oz (way smaller than any of us thought she would be!), exactly 7 years since my becoming a Christian! I felt a bit less disconnected at her birth, but I did start to feel some of the old anxieties creeping up…but it really was a much better time in the hospital than the first time. But shortly after we came home, I started feeling more and more depressed again, and this time, quickly called my doctor, and we upped my lexapro yet again. I also knew that I had to get out of the house come hell or high-water with the kids this time around, and off we went to the mall and other play dates…I was able to recognize the warning signs this time much better, and the postpartum depression never got completely out of control.

I am now the proud mom to two beautiful kids, have battled postpartum depression and won both times….I’m still on the lexapro, and I no longer feel like a failure for having to be on meds to be “normal and functional” I see no reason to ever go off of them…and I am certainly not one with all the answers to motherhood, as I still have battles with various things every day…but I know what its like to have demons and sadness, and I know what its like to feel like there is no way out of the hole that you’re in. But I also know how amazing it feels when you are able to finally crawl your way out and brush yourself off, and start to feel like the person that God meant for you to be again.

48 more hours...

only 48 more hours till i'm kid free for 5 days! yay! my inlaws are bravely taking the kiddos in MN for a long weekend! i am really hoping to get my house cleaned from top to bottom, have some time with jeff, get some art work and ponies customizing done, and generally enjoy the silence and lack of responsibility! yay! so if you see me online much during the the 18th - 30th, please shoo me off! there are so many other things i need to do besides trolling the internet! lol

the only bummer is that i get the kids back on the 30th, then jeff leaves to go to atlanta on business on the 31st - 2nd...ugh! but then it will be peyton's 3rd bday the following weekend...so lots to keep us busy while jeff is gone!

so yeah...i'm really really really ready for a break! *does a "No kids in the house soon" dance! :)

angie

Sick and tired of being sick and tired!

so it feels like forever since all four of us have been truly all healthy at the same time for more than five minutes! gah! i swear we are just recycling the same cold and ick over and over and over again here in the house! tomorrow its supposed to be close to 50 degrees here and i am bundling up the kiddos, turning off the heat, and opening the windows for at least an hour to air out the house!

i'm tired of wiping snotty noses and listening to coughing all night. i'm tired of sinus headaches and babies being fussy cuz they dont understand whats wrong with them. i'm tired of being too exhausted to exercize and do some extra-curricular stuff like drawing or painting or playing music...i'm too exhausted to do much after the kids are in bed and the living room is de-cluttered to do much more than play some games on my DS or flip through a magazine and go to bed.

i'm tired of the kids going to bed late and waking up early...why cant peyton tell me that he's going to get up at 6 am the next morning, so i can get my butt to bed early the night before so i'm not needing to "rest my eyes" the next morning as he says "wake up mommy"?

why do my children not have hypersomnia like me? it would make my life so much easier...but no...i get the two kids that dont want to sleep as much as all the books and charts say they should at this age?

why cant i have medication that makes me feel like bouncing off the walls like a toddler? that would also make my life easier too i think :) my concerta only does so much...and i only bounce of the walls if i take it with caffeine and sudafed on an empty stomach...but then i'm shaky and usually have a migraine, so thats totally not worth it! bummer!

why cant i be a supermom every day instead of once in a while? why cant i be the mom and wife and angie that i envision in my head every day and night, but it just doesnt seem to happen in real life?

i know i need to be giving all these things to God right now, and i am trying...but i just needed to have a teeny pity party....now to get off the computer and do something productive.

angie