Visitors

A week ago, the kids and I came back from a long trip away from home. Anyone who has seven kids and has been gone for a week knows that you have a lot of clean up, sorting laundry, and work to do when you  finally get home. Well... we hadn't done all the work yet, and the house was still a mess. In fact, a little before we got home, Jonnie piped up in his carseat and said,  

"Mom, I'm pooped."

"Okay," I said, "We'll change you as soon as we get home."

"You're not going to throw me in the bathtub," he said worriedly. (He hates to bath!)

"No. We'll just change your diaper, okay?"  

Well, he was asking if I was going to give him a bath for good reason.  We went to get him out of his carseat and realized he had done more than just filled his diaper - he had a poop explosion!  It was everywhere!  We spent the next half hour cleaning everything up, and then I jumped into the van again and ran to a job interview. By the time I got home, I was exhausted. The kids were exhausted. I decided we would clean the house the next day.

BAD IDEA. The next morning I let the kids sleep in, and as I'm sitting on the porch couch enjoying the peace and quiet of the morning, here comes a big shiny suburban pulling into my long driveway. "Who is that," I wonder. Pretty soon, out pops our good friends Mark, Paul, Steve, and their Dad.

Now, let me paint this picture a little more clearly.  I'm sitting on the couch on the front porch, lounging while I look up job listings on my laptop. I have no bra on yet, I haven't combed my hair, brushed my teeth, or put my makeup on. The porch is crowded with furniture we are storing for someone as a birthday surprise, and EVERY room in the house is messy. Every. Single. One.  In fact, when I came home, I had dumped my suitcase on my bed frantically trying to find something I needed from it before I left for my job interview.  I came back from the interview and shoved everything onto the floor before I fell into bed, exhausted. The room was bombed.  I'm not the world's best clean freak housekeeper to begin with... but that day, every room looked awful.  The food storage we had relocated to the playroom while we were working on a project was all still sitting there. The huge beanbag full of foam squares had broken the week before we left and since I didn't have time to sew it up, the kids had them scattered everywhere downstairs.

Mark gives me a hug hello and walks into the house to see how the basement turned out, which he had helped us do the drywall on. He goes downstairs, where Amanda is still sleeping.  I awkwardly give the others a hug and excuse myself for a minute while I go get my brassiere on. When I come back, Steve says he wants to see the house so I start showing them around, cringing at every room we walk into.  We go upstairs, and meanwhile Amanda comes up to the main floor, oblivious that we have visitors. When we come back down, she is sitting at the dining table in her nightgown eating a bowl of cereal, totally unaware they were even here.  They all want to see the work Mark did down in Amanda's room too... and Amanda is freaking out because her room looks about as good as my room.

Ugh. Normally, I love visitors. But sometimes I think I need to get one of those signs on my door that says...

"If you come to see me, come anytime.  If you came to see my house, make an appointment."

I can just imagine the stories they had to tell their wives when they got home.

Oh well....

Bawling My Eyes Out

My sweet chili peppers.
7 times I have gone through PPD, with each baby it became progressively worse.
They're worth it. They're definitely worth it. I'm glad I'm their Mama!

I've been crying uncontrollably for the past 5 minutes and decided to write it down instead of keep on crying all night. Good idea right? Getting it out on paper always seems to help me.


So... the bawling. What is it from this time, you ask.

Tonight I happened to look on www.ksl.com and noticed a link to a story on postpartum depression. I clicked on it, watched it, and from there went to a good website on postpartum depression called pospartumprogress.com.  It is not a good website, it is an excellent website.  I've been there before, I vaguely remember, but tonight I clicked on this link talking about the 6 Stages of Postpartum Depression, and as I read it the tears started falling and I couldn't help but sit and bawl my eyes out.

The first five stages were fine. I completely related with each and every one. The sixth stage is where I lost it. I have for a very long time known that my postpartum depression had been tainted with an extra shot of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). I have come to a sane enough point to be able to identify that, and also identify most of the reasons behind it, but it has always baffled me why I still feel so traumatized when most of the things that traumatized me really have been dealt with by now. I had always attributed it to things that happened during the pregnancy and a short bit of extreme trauma in the weeks after the baby was born. Step number 6 really helped me understand why, and I can completely see now that a part of my PTSD has been caused by the trauma of dealing with the PPD and the changes it brought with it.

It just feels so good to know that I'm not the only freak in the world who has dealt with this to such an extreme level. It feels so relieving to know that there is an end, somewhere. There is healing. There has to be if others have healed.

One of the big things that brings me immediately back to the pain and trauma that I went through and opens the wounds up fresh and raw again is hearing that another woman is dealing with the same thing and going through postpartum depression.  I want to help, and hopefully I have been able to help a few. But I know I cannot erase the hurt and take away the pain for them. I know I cannot shield and protect them from everything they will go through. I cannot help and support them in all the ways I wish I could, and it breaks my heart. It is one of the reasons I am so open with this issue on my blog, because I don't ever want anyone else to feel as alone and isolated and hurt and hopeless as I did, without them knowing that someone else understands, someone else has been through this, and someone else cares.

So, for you fabulous mothers out there going through this little piece of hell... please know my heart is aching for you. Know that you are in my prayers, and know that I am only a phone call or email away.  Also, please take a moment to look over this website.  It really has an enormous amount of valuable help and information, both for you, and for your family.
 
One of the things that jumped out at me as I went through several of the pages of the website tonight was this sentence.

 ...the most common symptom of postpartum depression is not sadness at all- it is anxiety and agitation … and while many women who struggle might have periods of sadness, depression and tearfulness, the overwhelming symptoms that cause them great pain are difficulty concentrating, excessive worry, high level overwhelm, racing thoughts and difficulty sleeping. 

And I will expand on this... that the agitation mentioned frequently involves frustration, irritation, and lashing out at your children or husband. 

One of the difficult things is identifying that yes you HAVE postpartum depression, especially if you aren't feeling particularly sad or "depressed" in the way it is often depicted. You may not have an Eeyore face or a constant raincloud over your head... not everyone does. But if you are even wondering if you have PPD... there is a good chance you do. And a good chance you will NOT be able to just "get over it" on your own without a bit of understanding and support.

I'm here for you. Please call or email. It is the ONE thing that I can feel good about from the whole experience... helping someone else who may be dealing with it. 

May you find peace,
Rachel

Stillness

Tuweap overlook of the Grand Canyon, photo by me, of course.

Fun fact for you - I'm afraid of heights. 

No, that's not true. 

I'm petrified of heights. Yes, I think that says it a little better.  

Have you ever driven on a mountain road when it's zig-zagging up the side of the mountain and one side is up against the side of the cliff and the other side is a sheer drop off and every time the wheels on the car spin they shoot a bit of gravel off the side of the road and you can watch it fall gently down the side of the mountain as though it hasn't a care in the world nor does it know that in a moment it will be pummeling into the earth below and as a result will probably no longer even be a rock but a bit of powder for the wind to blow away? (And yes I know that was a run on sentence but that's about how much goes through my brain every time the wheels on the van turn, so pretty please, bear with me.) It scares me to pieces and I really prefer that Ryan drive on these roads, when I am asleep, and never tell me we ever drove on that particular road in the first place. 

But I'm straying. Fear of heights is not what this is about today.... it's about our outing to the Grand Canyon, which thankfully did not entail a drive up a zig-zaggy cliff. 

So, lucky us - and I mean that - we had friends and family come visit us for the weekend and they took us on a drive out to Tuweap (or Toroweap as you sometimes see it spelled).  This particular view of the Grand Canyon is stunning, and totally worth the long-ish drive to get there.  The pictures I took really don't do it justice. 

Ryan and Jonnie, overlooking the Colorado River

So imagine this. Me - petrified of losing someone over the edge, and 15 kids -  7 of whom are mine, all running loose at the edge of a 3000 foot drop off. My idea of a fun time!

For the first 20 minutes, I panicked. A lot. And told myself to breathe. A lot.

Because otherwise I was a little bit out of my mind.

But after they got all their wiggles out from the car ride and got tired of looking over the cliff, they started running around inland. Then, I was finally able to enjoy it. 

The Grand Canyon is breathtaking, to say the least. I simply cannot wrap my brain around 

how this river cut so deep into the sandstone, and between the wind and rushing water, the canyon was 

formed.  It's incredible. 

It's also peaceful. And still.  That is probably what struck me most - the stillness.

After the kids all went back to the truck for lunch and I knew that Ryan had Jonnie, I had a few moments to just sit. And look. And as I sat on the ledge looking northward, I knew that somewhere down below branches were rustling in the wind and a bird was fluttering by. There were probably even chipmunks running around, or a lizard lying in the sun. But I couldn't see any of it. Everything was still, and being there helps your mind become still too. 

Enjoy the pics.  I hope that just for a moment, you can imagine being there, and enjoy the peacefulness and stillness that we need in our lives every once in a while. 

Hugs,

Rachel

PS... there are some other shots of the kids there.  Thanks for coming to visit us y'all!

Laura, sitting at the edge of the drop off.

See the boat in the water near the bottom of the picture? Yes, it's there. Look again.

Here it is "up close". Now, I have a super zoom camera, and this is as close as I could get to the boat. 

Hopefully this gives you a perspective of how deep and wide the canyon and river are at this point. 

(There are deeper sections of the canyon.)

And a few more just for fun. 

Ty, Ta, Ash - three buddies.

Boston, enjoying a nice cold root beer. 

Jonnie and Braelin in the "peek-a-boo" rock.

My cousin Kaitlyn stayed the weekend and went with us.  Fun to see you Kait!