Monday, July 29, 2013

On Anger and Sadness

I've  been trying to write this post for at least a year now, but I never could get the words out right.  At the same time, I didn't want to just forget and move on with the next post like nothing happened.  This has consumed the last 18 months and is still part of my life, a part I wish would go away.



It started as postpartum depression, now it's just depression.  I guess I should have known when I came home with the twins that things weren't quite like the last time I had come home from the hospital. Landon's health issues had me on edge.  He was just so tiny, and those leads that kept him attached to the monitor kept me worrying about him.  He and Juliana adapted well to life at home.  The kind sisters in our ward set up a schedule to come over and help me during the first week, and it was such a relief.  It wasn't really about them doing anything, like cleaning or organizing.  I was just about having someone there, someone to talk to.  Later my parents came into town and my mom stayed for 2 more weeks to help out.  She was trying to help, I know, but I was still on edge and everything seemed to get on my nerves.

After she left we settled into a routine and I had to start getting ready to go back to work in just a few weeks, but I knew things weren't going very well.  I was managing ok, but the nights were killing me.  Andrew and I tried different strategies: getting up at the same time so we could go back to sleep sooner, taking turns getting up with the kids, having  one of us stay late and take the midnight shift while the other went to bed early and took the early morning shift,but we were both still exhausted.   I could barely get through the day and then I dreaded the nights.  I lost count of the times I yelled at Andrew and I texted him the words "I can't do this anymore."

Finally, when the twins were about 5 months old, I realized I needed help.  It's funny, when I had talked about it with my doctor, right after the birth,  I was completely on board;  if I started struggling, I would call him and ask for help, but when the time came, I couldn't.  I felt like my anger was justified somehow.  I felt like Andrew wasn't doing enough (he was), and Amber was always getting in the way (she wasn't) and the babies never slept (they did, of course).  I also felt like I needed to put up a front and act like things were fine.  I slowly realized how stupid that was.  I opened up to my friends, who had been having some of the same struggles, and I called the doctor's office.  And life has sort of gone back to normal, a less anxious, more muted, more peaceful normal.

 I think one of the hardest things about this has been accepting depression, and especially medication, as the new normal.  At the beginning, I thought I just needed what my doctor called a "boost" and and after a few months I'd be done, fine.  I've tried weaning myself of the antidepressants twice, but after a week or two, I feel that irrational anger and irritability coming back.

The thing is, I am my father's daughter.  I'm stoic, optimistic, a "suck it up and keep going" type of person most of the time.  And even though I have been taking medication for physical ailments for more than 25 years, taking antidepressants sometimes still makes me feel like I'm weak, like I can't deal with life without some kind of crutch.  But I'm also my mother's daughter, and my grandparents' grandchild, and I can't ignore their history of depression, now that it's a part of my own life, too.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Juliana

Where do I start with little Juliana.  Maybe I should start with her name.  It's a name that has become increasingly popular in the last few years, but that's not the reason we chose it.   It's because of this lovely woman, my paternal great-grandmother.  

Great-grandma Julia (Juliana) - photo taken at a studio in Temesvar
I have always had a bit o f a fascination with Grandma Julia.  I only met her when I was 6, and she passed away shortly after, a week short of her 100th birthday, but I've asked my parents time and again to tell me the story of how she and Great-grandpa Joszef moved from Germany to Temesvar (now Timisoara, Romania) and then decided to emmigrate to Argentina. As I grew up, I also became very familiar with some of the harder moments in her life.  She had several children (7, I believe) , but only 3 of them survived it beyond infancy.  She also lost her husband in her 40's.  Thanks to one my grandpa's sisters, there is a brief history of Julia and her family as they left their homeland and raised their family in a new country.  I haven't been able to find any information about her parents or her family, but so many family history records are released every year that I'm sure I'll find something one of these days.

Juliana posing (cheeky girl)
 Going back to her great-great-granddaughter, Juliana is very sweet.  She's very cuddly, especially with her dad.  Very much a daddy's girl, like her older sister. She has round, beautifully expressive eyes. She's a bit shy around strangers but warms up after a while and loves to flirt once she's comfortable with someone.  She's quite vocal  and has learned quite a few words already:  Mom, Papi, where are you? (weh ah youhh), tummy, kitty, banana (which she uses for any type of food) and fishy.  She also loves to dance, sometimes at inappropriate moments.  Just a few weeks ago, we were in church, singing  a hymn, and she thought that was great dancing music :)  Same thing with the National Anthem during the presidential inauguration.

Great-grandma would love this little namesake of hers.