Having baby number three was such a blessing to me. My husband and I suffered a miscarriage while trying to have a third child and when I got pregnant and carried Jilly Billy to full term we were so happy.
When I had my first child the transition was hard- my husband and i had no idea what to expect and it took a bit to get the hang of things. Obviously we eventually did get the hang of things because we decided to have a second child.
Going from one kid to two kids was such a breeze for me. Things just somehow fell all into place and life was good. Once Alli was a year old we decided to have a third child and got pregnant when she was 15 months old. I wanted all of the kids to be two years apart and things were going exactly to plan.
But something didn't feel right- something inside of me felt like something was wrong. Well, something was wrong and I ended up losing the baby. It was such a soul shattering thing to go through, even worse than when I had a miscarriage when my husband and I were first married. I pretty much bottled up my feelings inside and soldiered on with raising my two kids. I felt like I should be thankful for already having two healthy kids and felt selfish for wanting a third. For a brief amount of time I swore off having anymore kids- I just could not deal with the heartache if something happened again.
After a few months of silently mourning I decided that I did want another baby. We ended up pregnant a couple of months later and after a few months of constant worry that something bad was going to happen I made it into the second trimester with a healthy pregnancy and then went on to deliver a full term healthy baby girl. What joy my husband and I felt to have added a beautiful baby girl to our family.
Once I was home from the hospital and my husband went back to work real life set in. The easy breezy days that I imagined did not happen. I felt like an emotional wreck plus my recovery from the c-section was not going well. I felt like I wasn't being a good mom to my older kids, that my house was in shambles because I wasn't keeping up on the cleaning and that I was being a terrible wife to my husband.
I am stubborn and proud and you know what I did about these issues? Nothing. I just went on with life pretended that these issues didn't exist. I was a shell of the person I once was but I was too proud to admit defeat and ask for help.
Was it post partum depression? Now that I look back I think it could have been. I was so overwhelmed by bringing home a newborn to a home with a four year old and two year old already in it that I felt like a crappy mom. I also had all of these pent up feelings about my pregnancy losses that I have never dealt with in a productive manner- it all just added up to me feeling awful and useless. You feel down about your life and then you think about how good you have things which makes you feel more down because how dare you pity yourself when there are others who have it worse than you.
How did I end up dealing with these emotions? Well, it took my husband having a very honest conversation with me to snap me back into reality. The way I had been dealing with my feelings was affecting my family and it was pushing away the one person who had always been there for me- my husband who was the person who I chose to spend the rest of my life with.
Now every day I try to think about what makes me happy- I think about how much i love my husband and how I have been in love with him since we were in high school. I think about how my husband is such a wonderful man who loves me, faults and all, and is such a loving and caring father to our children. My kids can be monsters but they are also loving children who bring joy to my life.
Am I a perfect mom now? Um. no. Like everyone else I take life day by day. I no longer feel like a complete failure, which is how I felt after I had the baby, but I still get a little down on myself at times. Being a mom is such a hard and complex job and I am doing the best that I can do and trying to give myself credit for doing my best at it.
