These days, I’m readjusting to work life and family life. I work twelve-hour-days and my daughter is still breastfed. So my 30-minute break becomes three 30-minute breaks. Then I get home and change uniforms, from nurse to mama/wife. 

Many women have fought for me to be in this position where I can be a working housewife, but some days it’s a lot. I try to think of the many positives here: I have a wonderful family, I have a roof over their heads and food/water to give to them, then I also have a job to help me with that, I have a husband who works and can bring his share to the pot, and we’re all somewhat healthy. See, nothing to complain about here.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I sometimes feel ungrateful to complain about things like being tired all the time now, or having to care for double the load of patients because we’re short staffed. So then I think of all the above and more and I feel like I should find reasons to be happy about any situation because so many would love just a piece of this paradise I live in. 

Honestly, I don’t think I’m writing to anyone. With one follower, this blog is more for me than anybody else. Like a diary of sorts. I started this in hopes that my ‘down’ feeling would dissipate. I’m too busy most days, with the kids where I don’t really think about it, but when I’m feeling overwhelmed and I have to explain to my husband why I need a moment and he has to stay with them, It aggravates me and brings back that feeling of ‘Oh my God, I’m stuck and this is it for me’. It’s a hopelessness that I had not felt before marriage. I love my kids and cannot imagine me without them, but I think if I could redo things, I’d take some time to know ‘me’ first before falling head over heels and becoming emotionally dependent on someone at the age of 19. 

I’m a quiet person and am somehow not able to make friends so easily. Maybe I’m not trusting people with my deepest feelings. Maybe it’s an ‘eldest child’ thing where we have to be strong for the younger ones and be an example and a model of strength, but I find it hard to open up to others about my deepest feelings of joy or sorrow. Except with my husband with whom I used to share everything. Now I just feel alone, with two kids as my best friends, confiding to a blog site. Growing up, I was not big on crying and I can hold back the tears most days, but these days, even my trusted writing therapy has not been able to help. 

If I had a redo button, I’d make one or two good friends along the way, between my classes and my jobs to pay for the classes. I feel that I am missing having a good friend to confide in, to laugh with, to cry to, and to sooth. A friend who could go out dancing with me (my husband hates going out dancing), spend the day at the park with the kids, tell me I’m good enough, and help me get my smile back when it falters. 

Right now, I’m feeling under appreciated and taken advantaged of. 

Let’s talk postpartum depression. 

I am a very optimistic person so depression was a very foreign notion to me. I would feel down for a moment, write a song or a poem, and the feeling would be gone. I would also listen to some music or dance. I would even have a good cry to let go of that feeling, dust myself off, and think of how I can change what’s changeable and adjust to what I can’t change. 

So when I gave birth the first time, it was a shock to me to feel so down. I took 2 months off, but started the time off a month before my due date. I went back to work and left my one-month old infant with my mother most of the time. It was one of the hardest things I had to do. I don’t cry so easily and am able to contain myself and my emotions until I write a song about it, but I felt it deeply that I had no choice but to go back to work if I wanted to continue paying my bills on time. I was pumping milk at work every 2 to 3 hours. I got a promotion right as I figured out that I was pregnant and I could manage the frequent breaks to pump. While I was at work, family members that did not usually visit, would visit my mother to see my newborn. I felt that nobody was really worried about me and how I was feeling. I felt that my husband, although the best father he could be, did not stick to keeping a 9 to 5 and sacrifice some pride to make sure I could spend some more time with my son. I was working 5 days a week from 3 pm to sometimes midnight and felt like I was missing so much of my son’s first months. I don’t think that I had a full-blown depression because I was able to function and care for my baby when i was home. Somehow, I slowly adjusted to my new life and the feeling dissipated, but I’m still not happy to have missed that time with my son.

My second time around, I felt the sadness during the pregnancy more than after. During the pregnancy, I was very self-conscious and looked at myself as undesirable. I didn't help that my husband was making music and working with some beautiful women. I found out he was ‘liking’ pictures of practically naked women online, and I lost it. He was quick to ‘unlike’ everything but I was so worried that my pregnant body was not beautiful. We fought a lot during the whole pregnancy. He felt like I was dictating his life and treating him like a pet. I expressed my body issues and he verbalized that i was ‘still beautiful’, but never really showed it to me. I cried many nights, thinking of how foolish I was for giving my love, my heart so fully just to feel so crushed by a man who didn’t seem to see how bad he was helping me feel. I worked until 2 days before my due date and many days, I felt too tired to get up but I had to, if I wanted to spend more time home with my little ones. Postpartum, I was overwhelmed. My mother-in-law fell ill a week before I gave birth and past away 7 days after baby was born. So my husband was at the hospital, than out planning the funeral most of the time. I did not want to seem inconsiderate to ask for him to be around, especially when I gave birth because taking care of 2 is very different from caring for one infant and being able to rest while she rests. To make matters worst, we had to drive 17 hours to my sister-in-law’s house a week after I gave birth, because of an imminent hurricane that ravaged everywhere it touched prior to us. Everything seemed to get in the way of my convalescence and keeping things light after I gave birth. We drove back home a week later. I still don’t consider what I was going through as depression because, again, I was able to spend the nights feeding and the days caring for both my children. I still found myself alone many days because my husband was still dealing with other issues with a family member after the passing of his mother that required many visits to an attorney. Days and nights would go by where I spent the nights feeding my newborn, days caring for my newborn and toddler, then he’d come home and say he’s going to rest. He was also overwhelmed with everything happening in his life and did help some nights, so again, to not seem ungrateful and inconsiderate, I would hold back my frustration. Anytime I said anything, his answer would be more cold than usual (before babies) or he would blow up and it would start a fight. Again, I got myself up and out from under my gray cloud by relying on my music (Writing a blog is also doing its part in helping get through it).

The second time around, my pregnancy was as easy as the first. I decided, with uneasiness and some fear, to labor at home. I reached out to a friend who’d done it 4 times and she recommended her midwife. After meeting the midwife, my husband and I decided to go for it. We had many questions up until labor day but we stayed the course and I had a home birth. I woke up around 5 am with contractions every 15 minutes or so. When they got about 10 minutes apart, I called the midwife who came with her assistant. I labored in my bathtub, got out when labor stalled a bit. The contractions just stopped and after 30 minutes, I decided to take it to my bed. After about 7 hours, baby girl was born. I did tear this time around. My midwife decided to not do a repair and let me heal on my own. It’s a month later and I’m practically all healed. 

Life is so hectic these days with the two small ones, that I find myself (usually try calm and very patient) very short-tempered and impatient. It’s gotten very hard for me to deal with my son’s usual unresponsiveness to his name or to your usual commands like ‘sit down’ and ‘come here’. I also feel some resentment toward my husband who also had to deal with his mother’s passing and funeral arrangements. I felt like I couldn’t ask for his help because it would make me out to be selfish and not empathetic to him. My sister comes by often and helps. 

A category 5 hurricane was on its way to us a mere week after I gave birth and we had to get in the car for, what would end up being, a 17 hour drive to my sister-in-law’s house. Again, I felt that my time to heal and rest was cut short because I kept having to show face when all I wanted to do was stay in bed and nurse. I also felt that this whole situation impeded my healing process. Although my midwife has assured me that I’m healing ‘beautifully’, the nurse in me has assessed the site and I don’t look the same. Anyway, I’m still in the healing process, so I’ll give it some more time. 

Baby girl is healthy and my son is getting used to her, acknowledging her presence here and there. He has not showed the usual older sibling ‘hair pulling’, ‘poking’, or ‘pinching’ that people warned me about, but he's not your usual child so I’m not surprised. 

Time to get back to them...

It’s been 3 weeks now since I gave birth for the second time. This time, i decided to face it while in my home.

O.K. a throwback to how I labored the first time: 

I was 40 weeks and 4 days pregnant. My doctor told me that I would be induced once I hit 41 weeks and I didn't want the Pitocin, so I walked, did my squats, and bounced on the exercise ball. I also took a teaspoon of castor oil (drank it and it tasted awful). It’s an old wives tale on how to get labor started. It worked because in the middle of the night,  at 2:30am, I wake up in full labor. I was having contractions every 2 to 3 minutes. Although I had prepared to labor at home until my contractions were 5 minutes apart, we had to rush out to get to the hospital. We almost didn’t make it there because we crossed paths with one of those long trains that kept stopping and backing up. We made a u-turn, went back on the highway and finally got to the hospital. In the meantime, I called my doctor, kept resisting the urge to push, and by the time I was admitted, I was 8 centimeters dilated and couldn’t get the pain meds I was crying for. I actually wanted to go about it naturally, without meds or anything, but my will power faded when the strong contractions started coming in. Anyway, I couldn’t get anything. The nurse put in an IV and I was attached to what I thought was a fluid IV bag. At 7:30am, my son was born. I had an episiotomy and I realized later that I was given pitocin and it all made sense. After my second push, my doctor said that baby’s heart rate was abnormal and that he needed to come out that instant or she’d give me an episiotomy. Baby’s heart rate was being aggravated by the unnecessary pitocin. I was already well on my way to being fully dilated when I got to the hospital and didn’t see the need to have the let’s-help-you-dilate-by-giving-you-stronger-and-closer-contractions medication. On the next push, I was given the episiotomy. I’m very easy going, sometimes too much so as long as my son was a healthy baby, I figured I didn’t need to make it a big deal. My son was indeed physically healthy. He was hitting his milestones beautifully every month, until i realized he wasn’t really talking and his eye contact was off (around 18-month and). In the meantime, it took me a good 6 months before I felt ok again. The episiotomy wouldn’t heal right so, after 2 visits where I was literally cauterized with silver nitrate sticks (they look like q-tips and they burn you at the touch), I had to have surgery. The first cauterization, I had no warning and the second time I cried once she told me I still had not healed properly and she had to use that again. The third time I went to the doctor, she had to do minor surgery and re-sew everything because of scar tissue. Needless to say, After that visit, I had decided to never go to her again. I had an appointment to get the stitches removed and have a follow-up but I cancelled it with no rescheduling date. I am a rehabilitation nurse (after surgery kind of rehab) so I got a stitch removal kit from work which I used to remove my stitches because I was done having painful procedures, I just wanted to heal. I used honey to help the site finish its healing process (underuse natural way to help with healing). A few days later (6 months after delivering), I was like new again. I decided that, if I was to get pregnant again, I would be cared for by a fellow nurse, a midwife, who would probably see me as more than just a number. I personally know some doctors, (friends and family) but the reality is, most doctors don’t see the patients as people but as disease processes and numbers so they don’t see or treat these ‘numbers’ humanely. 

This ends blog post #2. My babies need a little TLC!!!