Coping with Postpartum

To all of the people who don't believe there's such a thing as postpartum....well, my middle fingers salute you.

I guess you could say we started my second pregnancy on pins and needles. Before conceiving my now middle child, I had suffered a miscarriage, which left me holding my breath for my entire pregnancy. Every flip-flop, bump — or  the worst, no movement  — for a day or so made my mind travel to some dark places. I was googling the “what if’s” and “how longs” for everything that frightened me.

Our little cuddle bug came one week early. Her head was covered in soft dark hair and her eyes were as big and bright as a full moon. But what really set her apart were a set of lungs that would put Adele to shame. She was perfect and so stinkin' cute. We were in love and grateful to have another precious blessing that would also be a playmate for big sister. As if this wasn’t enough stress, we were in the middle of selling our downtown condo and moving to suburbia life. My husband started a new rigorously demanding job soon after her birth and during all of this transition in our life, we discovered our daughter had severe colic. Like, I want to stab myself in the eardrum colic. Postpartum depression snuck up on me like a fat ass zit on the tip of my nose,

I was back at the Google game, except this time it was:  “what the f*&^ is wrong with my child?” For months, the of guilt washed over me and I continued to question, “why is it so damn hard for me to figure this out?” To add to the drama, I woke up one morning sick with fever and chills which prompted my husband to call my OB. I had double mastitis so badly, my fever reached 104 and the infection was rapidly moving up towards my neck. My husband was a bit nervous because the infection was spreading quickly, but I was hell bent on nursing, so I continued despite how horrible I felt. Allow me to paint a picture, nipples covered in red blistery scabs, oozing blood, and knots so crushingly painful, my eyes would water at the thought of them. Luckily, the antibiotics began to work and I enjoyed some relief physically, but breastfeeding was still an uphill battle. I cried; all day, every day. The constant flow of tears cause eyes to remain bloodshot around the clock and bed was the only cure to comfort my anguish. Late one night after nursing, I burped my daughter and noticed her spit-up contained chunks of blood, arriving there via the scab from my nipple.  That was the moment I decided I should stop nursing — it just wasn't working out for me. I was disappointed that every time I turned around there was a new challenge to face and desperately needed something to numb my pain. Helplessness set in and I began a vicious spiral that would change the course of my life.

I am the type of mother that tries to do everything opposite from the way I was raised. I so badly wanted to scream at my precious infant who had no idea how badly her little screams were triggering me. But I had made a conscious decision to handle intense situations with a loving approach. On the outside, I tried to appear like  a mom that wasn't losing her shit despite enduring the code red level colic of my baby and still be a present parent to my school-aged daughter. But under those layers of a facade I was withering away mentally and feeding my growing battle with alcoholism. The guilt and shame of my history was showing up daily to torment me.. The sum of my Dad issues, parenting issues, and childhood trauma began to spill over into my current life, adding a new self-imposed demon to the list as I began to hate myself for not knowing how to be the perfect parent and wife.

Each night I would rock my screaming daughter to sleep as tears ran down my cheeks and I cried out to God for help. I was extremely overwhelmed and tired of not getting any relief. Exhaustion hit a point of no return and so I turned to the only thing that I knew would knock my depression out quickly: alcohol. I started my love affair with this soothingly toxic drink that took all of my troubles away after the first two glasses. I had not touched alcohol since the night we discovered we were pregnant and after two months post baby, I was slamming bottles of wine like my life depended on it. I crossed the line when I went from wanting alcohol to soothe my pain into needing the alcohol to escape the triggers that were eating the hell out of my soul. The "switch" happened quick for me, the switch that I hear so many talk about in my recovery. I used to drink for fun, or just to decompress, but during this time of my life I drank to numb the chaos of life and to get out of my head. Within four months of drinking postpartum I made that chemical switch. I started hiding bottles of wine in my closet so that my husband wouldn't question how much I had to drink that night because the typical two to four glasses of wine was not cutting it for me. Six months after giving birth to my second daughter, I had a single car wreck and  found myself in and out of an alcohol induced blackout. I don’t remember much from that wreck besides sitting in the back of a cop car with a convicted DUI on my record.

Postpartum is REAL, folks, and so is alcoholism. It waited for me to become complacent with drinking and in a situation that had me stressed to the core before it took over my life and caused a heap of trouble. My life had become unmanageable. I was restless, irritable and discontent - trying to take control of my own life. I would go weeks without washing my hair, days without bathing or brushing my teeth. I was not taking care of myself mentally or physically. The thought of wearing a pair of fishnet panties and pads the size of depends was traumatizing enough to keep my ass planted where I was. I isolated myself from friends, family and activities ...and drank myself to sleep. I used alcohol to try and fix my problem instead of reaching out for other sources of help. It was by far the most humiliating, mentally and physically time of my life and it took a long time to forgive myself. Today, I am grateful for that moment. I am grateful God gave me a second chance at life. I am glad that I can reach out for help when I have hit the point of “I am about to go batshit crazy if I don’t get help.”  It was a hard lesson I had to learn, but it lead me to a path of empathy, acceptance and love.

I don't blame my DUI on postpartum because ultimately I have the freedom to choose what path to take... my point of sharing my struggles with postpartum is to shed some light to others who may be experiencing PPD as I did. Take care of yourself, get out and enjoy beautiful weather while rocking those sexy ass fishnet panties, call friends and family, take a bath...even when you don’t feel like it,  ask for help and the infamous “sleep when your baby sleeps” ha! Yeah right...sleep as often as you can. If dishes and clothes have to pile up for weeks…..oh well. That is materialistic shit and can be replaced. You can’t. Happy trails to you, my postpartum Momma’s!

XO

~Chasity

Warrior Wings

Over the past few months our Instagram account has flooded with responses related to trauma. So we are pulling some of our skeletons out and sharing them with you...

I am a child of domestic violence. Throughout my past I've experienced many triggers and images of the torture I witnessed at a young age. This made it difficult for me connect the pieces so I could make sense of it all. For years I was haunted by this one image of my mother. I've had nightmares about it. Thought about it in random settings. Obsessed about it without completely understanding why it continued to resurface.

When I decided to see a therapist about my drinking, we did a thorough inventory of my past. Things that triggered me to drink, made me sad, or brought on anxiety. I give many thanks to this therapist for helping me take a deeper look into my past, myself, and urged me to journal the triggers so that we could process them during our therapy sessions. I had many pages of the specific image of my mother written out. The image was a very vivid picture of my Mom. She was crying, gasping for air, sitting in the middle of our yard in torn pajamas. She told me and my siblings that she was having an asthma attack so I never questioned it. My therapist and I decided to focus my trauma work around this image.

Weeks of review and dissection led me to a strong feeling of fear, a fright or flight response that told me something was off. I learned at an early age to trust that feeling. It helped me close my eyes and cover my ears when I sensed imminent danger and run for help when shit hit the fan. I began each therapy session focusing on this image and began to pick it apart. I was finally able to understand why this vivid image continued to haunt me. Below is a tidbit from my book surrounding this scenario....

In the middle of the night, I awoke to screams and the sound of glass shattering. I knew the protocol for those nights....it was to keep my ass in bed until Mom broke free from my abusive Dad. I laid in bed waiting for Momma to run out the screen door. The slamming of our screen door was the sign that Mom had escaped from my Dad and made it outside. I quickly jumped out of bed and opened my bedroom door. Dad, on the opposite side in his room obliterated and in blackout mode, cursing and lying on the bed, too drunk and high to move at that point. My brother and I ran through the house screaming for Mom. I grabbed the phone on the way out and ran to Momma while dialing 911. We called EMS so much they knew us by name. As we opened the screen door, I could see Momma. It was the same image that haunted me. She was sitting in the middle of our grassy yard, hand on her chest and a frantic look in her eyes. I jumped down the stairs and walked over to her knelt down to kiss her cheek and rubbed her back whispering "it's going to be okay, Mom". She was panicking and gasping for air. Her hair was a mess while she sat in her torn pajamas in the middle of our yard. Mom had red marks up and down her arms and neck. She gasped for air and whispered “water” in between breaths during her "asthma attack". The cops never did much when they were there. Sometimes Mom would press charges but Dad always manipulated his way out and other times she would give my Dad a pass. 

My entire life I believed Mom was really suffering from asthma (she does have a history of asthma) until I talk through it step by step with my therapist. Those were not asthma attacks. Those were panic attacks from Mom getting abused mentally, physically and emotionally by my Dad. I felt helpless during those nights. I wanted to beat my Dad up, but I was scared shitless of him. There was nothing I could do except comfort my Mom in those horrific moments. We waited for Momma to catch her breath and settled down. Once we knew Dad had passed out for the night and we were safe to go back inside, my siblings and I would wrap blankets around Momma and walk with her into our home. We made Momma sleep in the middle of me and my siblings so we could protect her. We all cuddled up and cried until we fell asleep.

After relaying the actual events surrounding that image to my therapist, my cheeks were soaked with tears. That was the image I unconsciously carried with me whenever I felt helpless. I had pieced together the image that haunted me for years and made me feel like my entire spirit had been sucked out of my body. It was intense, sickening and therapeutic. I was disgusted by the thought of what that man did to Momma, his own children and countless others. But I had solved the piece that needed to heal so I could move forward. I left therapy that day with a sense of pride and accomplishment, thanking God for uncovering a piece of my past that I longed to heal. The vivid image rarely comes through my mind these days but when it does I welcome it, envision that little 7 year old girl helping Momma off the ground and wiping her tears away, looking my Dad in the face and saying

THANK YOU! Thank you, Dad, for making me a strong ass warrior..... I release the image and I let it go.