The Valley

I know I have friends eagerly awaiting miss Mikelle's birth story, but there is another story I need to tell first. 

Part One: The Valley

This is a story that I’ve wanted to share for a while. I’ve gone through a couple drafts. My time hasn’t been spent on correct grammar or sentence structure but rather on finding the right words. For over a year I’ve felt called to share this, the story of my time in the valley. 

The details were blurry for me up until around late December/early January of 2012/2013. I know that Elijah was born in October. I know that the holidays happened. I know that I was yelling at my children a lot. I know that I was a jerk to my husband. I know that I couldn’t handle even the littlest situation, like a poopy diaper or a crying baby. I can’t tell you for sure when it ‘got bad’ I just remember being there. I remember when it went bad. Jason remembers me telling him later that I poked myself with needles.

It was the day before Jason started back to work and I was done. I was a horrible mother and wife. In my mind my family deserved better. I couldn’t get my act together. I was so needy, testy, emotionally disconnected and overly emotional. Jason walked out of the house after I picked a nasty fight that he didn’t want, to finish up some work in his office. 

When he walked in only an hour or two later I was crying. I was kissing our children and telling them that I loved them. I was telling them goodbye. He knew something was wrong. I asked him to just take the children out for a bit. I asked him for some alone time, all the while crying. He refused to leave. He knew something was wrong. I remember begging and pleading with him to just leave.

Between the goodbye hugs and kisses, the pleadings he got the picture. He understood even better than I did. Something was wrong. He asked me what I was going to do while he was gone. I wouldn’t tell him. He said he wouldn’t leave until I told him. I lied to him. I told him I was just going to take a shower. He didn’t believe and said he wasn’t leaving. 

After over an hour of talking me down he knew I wasn’t planning anything great. He said we had a problem and that we needed to fix it. I’m not sure how we got to this point but I remember telling him I needed help and felt like I couldn’t ask for it. Two days later he started a semester of four classes of graduate level work. 

A note on suicidal thoughts: those thoughts seem rational when you are depressed. I’ve always viewed people who committed suicide as people who weren’t close to God, who sinned. In my mind if you were depressed it meant you weren’t right with God. I know that poking myself with a needle is harmful. I get that, now. In the moment it felt like the right thing to do. I get that committing suicide is harmful. I get that, now. In the moment it felt like the only solution. I cannot tell you how much I cried out to God to help me. I don’t feel like He abandoned me, I just felt like I was failing as a Christian mommy and wife. It made sense to me. I see now how sad that is. I see now that Satan was attacking. This is why I’m writing out my story.

My husband who was just as oblivious as me to my mental state asked me one simple question. ‘Do you think you are depressed?’ Eventually we got to the answer that yes, I was depressed. Things changed after that. He is an amazing man with a great heart, I am so blessed. He asked me what I needed and basically, I needed help with everything. If I couldn’t handle something, he left work and came home. He never let me get back to that breaking point. He helped me decide how I wanted to beat this post-partum depression and he was behind me 100% as long as we were making progress. We changed our routines. They seemed like little things but cutting out homemade from scratch meals, having help with the housework and kiddos helped. It wasn’t perfect by any means. I still broke down, I still couldn’t handle life, but I learned to let go of things. 

A big part of dealing with PPD for me was trying to figure out whether I should or should not use medicine. I felt shame in using pharmaceuticals to help. Jason and I implemented many changes in our household in the beginning of 2013 in an effort to help me fight the battle of PPD. I took it as a spiritual challenge as well and spent a lot of time in prayer, crying out to God, listening to music that reminded me of my purpose and reading the bible. As much as I learned and grew through the spiritual side I still wasn’t Heather. I wasn’t me. I had to overcome the shame of using medicine. It was very personal for me. 

I was only on my medicine for about 2 months before my hormones started regulating themselves. I went from a place of hopelessness to happiness once I started on the medicine. I know I made the right decision because I was able to be the mom and the wife that I needed and wanted to be. I really appreciate that my family stood by me while I fought to combat the depression but I loved being able to give back to them. And then I went from happiness to feeling like super mom. I mean it. I could tell when I didn’t need the medicine. I weaned myself off of my medicine while Jason was away on a 2 ½ week mission trip. In hindsight had I not been ready that wasn’t the best time to stop taking them but, I did great. I didn’t feel depressed anymore. I felt normal and happy and myself.

I’ve had to spend a lot of time processing this time of my life because it has impacted me in many ways. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve grown closer to God, my husband and my children. We process things differently. I let go a lot easier. Things are just things. I would love for my children to eat perfectly healthy but more importantly I’d love for them to be raised in a loving, Godly home with daddy and mommy. The little things are little things.

 

In sharing my story I want it to be clear that I’m not doing this for attention or more advice. I want it to be a part of my testimony. I grew up in a Christian family. I grew to love the faith my parents taught me. It has always been a prayer of mine that I follow Him no matter what, even in the darkest times. January 2013 specifically was a very dark time for me. I had rationalized that I would commit suicide. Satan found a battle ground and he started waging war on my faith. While I did tackle the hormonal imbalance with medicine I recognize that Satan saw this mental weakness as a perfect opportunity to attack me. I fought back. I was so very shaped by the war, by the everyday battles. I came out stronger, more dedicated and more in love with my Savior. Satan, he lost. It’s the story of his life. This is the story of my life.

My mom’s wisdom:

I was sharing and reflecting on my story with my mom on our trip to Houston and she pointed out something that seemed profound to me that I wanted to add it to my story. She feels that Satan purposely picks the post-partum time to prey on families. If he can get a mother to disconnect from her family or even take her life then he not only impacts one person, he impacts an entire family and even generations to come. I found this to be so true for me. If I let the thoughts that Satan was pouring over my PPD impact me negatively I would have taken my life. God uses the family to spread the Gospel and he mimics the church after the family because it is such an influential sphere. I believe in spiritual warfare and I believe that Satan sees the tender time that a new mommy faces and he sees the hormones that play a role in learning how to be a mom. He takes that tender precious time and wages war, not just for one person here on earth, but for an entire family for eternity. Part of why I’m sharing my testimony is show he doesn’t have power, God has the power. Satan can’t win unless we let him win. And I don’t want him to win.