I’ve been meaning to write for some time about my struggles to feel good after having 2 children in my mid-thirties.  But there was always a hurdle: I’ll write when I can stay germ-free for more than 5 minutes, when my diet improves, when I feel more energetic, when I get back into Pilates, when some of the lingering depression lifts.  Now that I’ve checked off the list, I can admit it: having children in my mid-thirties trashed my physical and mental health.  I think I have found a place of recovery; it’s not where I started, but it’s a good place to be.

It wasn’t until I saw this picture taken of me last Christmas that I realized I had returned.  I thought maybe in the apple orchard pictures from last fall I saw a hint of myself, peeking out in my eyes.  But then I saw this, and I knew…there I was.  Lori as I remember her…finally.

The journey started with a miserable first pregnancy followed by moderate, yet nagging, post-partum depression after Sara was born.  Did I treat it?  No.  Have I researched depression for a decade professionally?  Yes.  Did I know better?  Absolutely.  Did I suffer needlessly for months?  Yep.  Why didn’t I treat it?  GUILT.  100% Pure Mommy Guilt.  You can find it on the shelves of every Babies ‘R Us in the country.  It’s right next to the Eddie Bauer stroller, tucked in behind the designer cribs.  I was supposed to LOVE being a Mom.  I was supposed to GET HOW TO DO THIS.  I…never….fail.  It’s a harmful lie all American women tell themselves, but that doesn’t excuse my lack of self-care.

The weird thing about lingering mild depression is that it can become who you are, and you lose sight of where you began.  Am I better?  Yes.  Am I who I was 4 years ago?  I doubt it.  I’ll never know how much of my personality change was due to normal change of life “stuff” and how much of it was untreated depression.  But I do know that if you’ve had a baby, and you spend hours each day staring out your bedroom window thinking that even the air looks gray and you don’t want to leave the house due to an overwhelming paranoia that you cannot protect your child from the big bad world…you may want to call your doctor.

The remaining first year of Sara’s life was filled with growing pains, the loss of my grandmother, and small, easily treatable, but nonetheless, cancer.  And I wonder why it took me until her 1st birthday to smile again.  The second I felt like myself again, we got pregnant for Kelly.  Because we knew if we got one good night’s sleep, we’d never have a second, and truth be told, we really did want another child.  Not wanting to go down in the history books as “The World’s Worst Parents of Infants”, we tried again.

After Kelly was born, and Greg brought us home from the hospital after the pre-eclampsia resolved, as I showered off the blood, bruises, and band-aids…I felt a RUSH.  It was almost a high.  I was ALIVE.  God had sent me a message of LIFE.  Not only did Kelly not have the Down’s Syndrome we once feared she had, but she and I also survived Hellp Syndrome.  We were alive and together as a family, and at that moment, I vowed to walk the long path back to myself.  My family needed the old Lori, full of spunk and scrap.

Had I known how long the walk would be, I might have settled for feeling like shit forever.  Because I did.  In simple and grotesque terms…I felt like shit.

The “feeling like death on a stick” played a large role in my decision to leave my career.  When I quit my job and stayed home, it became crystal clear how horrid I really felt.  The mental fog and physical fatigue were nothing short of plague-like.  I went to my doctor one afternoon, just to complain about “feeling like shit”.  He said, “Of course you do.”  My OB said, “Sister, you should feel like shit.  Your body has been through a war. You have tiny children.  Be patient.”  My Opthamologist gave me the best medical advice I could have received, “You never see the bullet that gets you Lori.  You are not dying today.  Go home and enjoy your children.”

Patience ain’t my thing, so onward I plunged.  I drank more water.  And then some more.  I ate more fresh fruit and vegetables.  Then I stopped buying any produce in a can.  I started picking my own food right out of the fields.  Now I’m growing it in my backyard (waiting on a garden is akin to starving).  I quit my job to turn the stress-meter on its ear and then I cranked my life down to a crawl.  I wanted to examine the seconds as they passed, hoping that I could find the path back to health.

By far, the best thing I’ve done for myself was to start taking Lypospheric Vitamin C.  Dad had been begging me to try it for a long time, but I eschewed it as “hippie” stuff that only Dad tries.  He’s OK with me calling him hippie, because when all the other kindergarten kids took Hostess cupcakes in their pockets for snack time, I took wheat flour pancakes as stiff as the sole of my shoe and a baggy of carrots.  I was a snack-time freak show in Kindergarten, but I’ve turned into an adult freak show who didn’t change clothing sizes until I hit 35.  In case I forget to tell you…thanks Dad.  But seriously, 32 years later, I can still taste those pocket pancakes….ugh.  Why were they so shiny?  If anyone is interested in knowing how I buy this wild Vitamin C, send me an email. I don’t sell it.  I don’t make a dime from telling you that I love it.  But I swear, take it for 30 days, and you’ll see a difference in your immune system and stamina.  Greg’s migraines have seen a 70% reduction since starting this particular form of Vitamin C last year.  It’s nothing fancy.  It’s just Vitamin C coated in a fat so your body doesn’t destroy it in the stomach, thereby making it more bioavailable.  After 30 days on Lypospheric Vitamin C, my “so tired I want to lay down and slip into the abyss” days were cut by 80%.  No joke.  I feel like my immune system, which has always SUCKED, is hugging me every time I feed it a little fatty C.  I’ve now been taking it since last Thanksgiving, and I never have fatigue-plagued days.  I get tired.  I need sleep.  But I’m not dragging my head through the day, living in a conscious coma.

When I couldn’t seem to find that last bit of energy, I added Vitamin D.  If you take nothing else, take C and D.  Obviously as a person who wears sunscreen in the dead of Indiana Winter, I am Vitamin D deficient.  You can almost see in pictures when I started taking it.  My skin went from a dull pale to a healthy glow.  That last bit of fatigue that I couldn’t kick, seemed to lift.  The days went from endless to lightening fast.

I was left with my last hurdle: working out.  I worked out 4x per week before I had Sara.  The day I found out I was pregnant, I went to the gym, puked, and never went back. Working out is a habit…break the habit and starting again is like finding rain in a desert.  But I knew it was the key to my missing stamina, along with the ingredient needed to get into my clothes.  That don’t fit.  MY CLOTHES DON’T FIT DAMNIT.

So that’s the end of the walk: Pilates and running, which I am now doing a few times per week. I swear by both.  Please don’t ask me to soapbox working out.  I hate it.  I’ve always hated it.  But I can’t afford new clothes.  I’ll never be the shape or weight I was before I had the girls, but that was never in my plans anyway.  I just want to feel GOOD.  And for less “stuff” to flop around where it shouldn’t.  Um…and I might send a search party for my old thighs.  Where did THESE come from?  HOLY CRAP.

I now feel as if I am living IN my body, and less IN FEAR of it.  And oddly enough, the last bit of fear and anxiety left over from all the mild depression is lifting.  I sense the old spirit within me rising up through the Mother-Fear (we all have it: the fear that somehow we will lose our children…it haunts me to the point Greg tries to hide the newspaper from me on days the headlines have anything to do with missing or dead children).  I hear God telling me to live my life.  Walk through it, not around it.

“But God, I’m looking back at the beach, and I see where my set of footprints went from a single set to two long lines, making deep ruts into the sand.  What IS that?  Where were you?”

“My Child, it’s at those times that I had to drag you.  Kicking and screaming and crying for life to be easier.  Hiding in your shame that the work of caring for your family was more than you anticipated.  Rolling out of bed every day, swearing the fatigue would end you.”

“But God, what are those pock marks every few feet?”

“Dear Lori, those are the places where you fell flat on your face.  Lost your temper. Drank in a camping chair on your driveway at night.  Ate donuts alone in your car in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  Cried while sitting on the edge of your bathtub.  It is there that I picked you up, threw you in the shower, and told you to grow up.”

“Am I done yet?”

“Not….even….close.”

So there you have it, my big secret to health: more water, more sleep, more fresh plants, more vitamins, more meaningful movement, less stress (less money! ha!), less distraction.  Seems almost silly in its simplicity, doesn’t it?  Oh yeah, and if you can, have your kids younger than 35.  But no matter when you start a family, be prepared: children will be your end, and magically, your greatest beginning.  Godspeed to us all.