#write31days: PostPartum Depression - How Did You Know? // Introduction and Rules of Engagement

Last October, I attempted #write31days but without a serious mindset... quantity really- I wanted to write more. And I did! It was great. Today, I am starting this challenge over with a more guided topic. Postpartum depression.

I discussed ideas with a few friends, and this topic came up multiple times. How do you handle PPD as a Catholic women? How do you handle it with residency? How do you handle it with multiple children? What does it feel like? What should others know about PPD? The questions went on and on...

My "rules" for this series are short: this topic is personal and I am currently living in it. This is not an abstract for a dissertation. I do not have 20/20 hindsight yet. I don't need any medical advice, as I keep in close communication with my own PA + Dr., as well as being married to one. My husband and I practice many different types of coping mechanisms as well, which I will write about too. My situation is 100 percent unique and I am writing only about myself. These posts are directed at no one, and still, I am opening myself up to share my experiences. If I can help one person, it will be worth it. Please respect this adult conversation at face value.

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How do you know you are depressed (PPD) and it's not just the baby blues?

This is the number one question many women ask. I am on baby number three in three years. Shockingly to many, this is not the cause of my depression. My depression has to do (mainly) with external factors in my life which I do not have [much] control over. I mention this because I have bonded with my third child wonderfully, just like I did with my other two.

I mention this because many women dismiss their feelings because they do not fall into the normal realm of what depression looks like. If you are taking anything your baby does personally, that should be a warning sign. A baby is for cuddling and feeding. A baby wants love and affection, and cries because something is wrong - or nothing is wrong! All three of my children spent the first month or two of their lives crying "just because"... baby wearing, baby swinging, and being okay with crying.

My main symptoms are anger and irritability. Everything bugs me - but what sends me over the edge is the perpetual whining of my three year old. Grace repeats herself constantly, and this is normal! There is nothing wrong with this! But for me, it was nails on a chalkboard. Combine this with anxiety if the house descends into madness (thanks, Laura); if I've forgotten something I am supposed to do; if I watch time tock by, paralyzed by what I should do...

This is not a normal response to stress. This is, at the very least, a reason to talk to a medical professional. If you have a feeling something is off, your intuition is probably right. Don't ignore it.

I knew something was wrong when Grace began whining and I just had to leave the room; I wanted to punch the wall repeatedly. I called the phone nurse at my OB's office, and as I told her my symptoms, I started sobbing.

I am currently taking medicine, which I will address in another post. Medicine combined with exercise and other coping mechanisms for healthy living is key - we cannot expect medicine alone to "fix" my feelings, anymore than we should think "natural living" is enough for women to cope.

With my first two children, I would feel sad and overwhelmed and stressed from time to time... with Stephen, there were times when I wanted to leave the house. I wanted to punch the wall; I wanted to cry and yell; I wanted to curl up in a ball and ignore everyone. These are not normal response to stress. My medicine is only 20 mg, but it is enough. When I hear whining, I can respond calmly or ignore it. I can find order in the chaos and I can laugh. I am 110 percent a better mother taking medicine, and I feel much more like myself.

And this is really the most telling part of depression - I didn't feel like myself. I didn't know this version of Julie, and I didn't like it. I love my family and I wanted to enjoy these young days. This is why I sought help and now, this is why I am writing about postpartum depression and anxiety. The only thing to fear is *not* accepting help. Don't try to rationalize your feelings or dismiss them. If you need help, ask for it. This is scary, and that is okay.

Before Grace's eye surgery; when I had first started medication

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Days 8 & 9: Dr. Julie Baldwin, Reporting

Today, there was a Halloween party with my MOMs Club group, and since we make maybe one meeting a month, I decided to go all-out. Please note that I was the only mom in costume, so Will called me "The Cool Mom." OH YEAH.

I won't tell you what I originally planned on doing (because: next year), but after my sister-in-law Ellen gave the girls these adorable onesies, I knew what we had to do.

Dr. Julie Baldwin, Radiologist, and her two skeletons.

Wearing an old pair of Will's scrubs, and one of his white coats, "fixed" with a little masking tape. Nooooo, it's JULIE Baldwin, MD. Duh. Do you even read this blog?!? I like to think that if I went into medicine (which is never), I would go into radiology because a) less messy; b) attention to detail; c) no needles (I think?).

ANYWAYS, it was fun and everyone liked our costumes, and easy. Scrubs are mega-comfy, though untucking the top to feed Laura was less graceful than my usual attire. Now, will the REAL Dr. Baldwin please stand up?

A selfie for funsie. We look good in our role-reversal.

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Rambles of a Fool

A family update, sort of, since today is a giant game of two truths and a lie. So here's my truths (and a teeny lie, maybe.) 

This weekend, we spent a lot of time helping Grace with her right hand and arm. There are mixed opinions on what "delayed" means for a six month old, but she vastly prefers her left hand and arm, so she was evaluated today. It's not a cause for alarm (Will was quite pleased how much she flailed it around a few nights ago while distressed), but it raise a few flags. We want to have her evaluated early to see what we can do with her at home, and, if necessary, get her the help she needs to help better develop her right hand and arm's motor skills. Legs working great, and she's flying by all her other milestones!  

Little Lefty Baldwin

The weather is really nice down here, and I'm torn between taking Grace out on walk after walk or face the music... err, laundry. I've had to come up with a rewards system for myself to motivate myself, but mostly, I need a new routine. Grace is starting to really take regular naps now, so maybe it's time?

My ideal day: mass in the morning; home for coffee and breakfast; play with Grace; nap time for Grace/ writing time for me; Grace up - lunch; afternoon walk + play; Grace nap/ chores/ start dinner/ writing; Grace up; dinner; family time; family rosary; Grace books + bed; clean up from dinner; my time; bed time.

What really happens: Grace wakes up between 2-3:30 am, ready to play; She gets up again between 5-6 (Will retrieves her); I am groggy till 10 am; play with Grace and clean up; forget to go to mass; nap time for everyone (Except Will, who is gone at school); lunch time; afternoon prayer; more play time and clean up time while also answering e-mails; maybe exercise; fix dinner; run errands; nap time?; fall on the couch in defeat and watch a show; clean ALL THE THINGS; play time with Grace; Will home for dinner; I wonder how the house got messy again so fast; family rosary walk; books + bed for Grace; Julie time; bed; Grace wakes up; put her back to bed; bed.{More or less... okay, less. Definitely less, plus more editing/ e-mails/ reading.}

Baldwins cheer for UK so now, so do I!

Will's contract, etc. arrived from PA, and my flight to Philadelphia has been booked - my MIL, Grace and I are house hunting at the end of the month! Bank hunting too, and definitely visiting the Promised Land (a.k.a. IKEA). Mostly, I'm feeling good! I've [very recently] had to stop myself from Google searching "residency spouse survival stories" and "how to survive residency" ... not that I'm not thrilled: I'm just "realistic" about my future.

When I was a nanny, I was lucky enough to work for two fantastic families. Even better than that, I worked for two EM doctors. Not only were they gracious enough to let me pick their brains, but their lovely wives gave me even more insight and advice, and I got to experience the kind of hours and schedules I can expect in the future.

There are a lot of pluses: Will won't be on call. Will won't ever be on call.
Then, there are the cons: Will is going to work extremely long hours for the next three years.

I think my husband is so lucky to be entering the field he loves; a field where he gets to help people get through their immediate crisis. It won't be easy, and I know it'll be frustrating at times, and I know he'll thrive. With medicine, it's amazing how much a person's personality seems to dictate their field of interest, and Will seems to be made for this. I'm excited to watch him jump back into clinical work, as well as continue his research interests.

And really, I'm just amazed at how God uses his mercy and love to lead us by the hand through the darkness of life. Life, where nothing is guaranteed, and all love is taken at a price. Love in God, however, is rooted deep, and faithfulness shows how a path we took by accident can lead us through the woods, and a tree we barely noticed before is the one giving us shade.

As I really grow in my marriage and in motherhood, I get to know myself more and more. As I learn how to cook better, and find small victories, I relish in feeding my family. As I continue to write and read for pleasure, I love being off the hamster wheel of deadlines [sort of... types the EIC of Ignitum Today, contributor, etc.]. Or, to put it better, I like not being paid to write about things I didn't really care about, or have interest in expounding upon. I really like exploring my writing interests more.

I like finding my limits, and being okay with them. I like indulging a little bit more, organizing a little bit more, and getting outside more and more.

It's easy to watch people's lives now via social media and compare your life to theirs: don't. Don't ruin your ability to be happy by wishing on another's star. Don't always want and never see what you already have.

There is a line in Caritas in Veritae about the Church being responsible for creation -- and so are we: our own life is the greatest creation! It's not as hard as we'd like to think to cultivate a bit more beauty in this world. Here are a few things I am doing:

• Take the time to dress well
• Make the bed
• Tidy the house
• Open the windows to let in fresh air 
• Talk a walk; admire scenery
• Read a good book
• Keep an art journal
• Spend less time online
• Have regular prayer times
• Write one thank you note or letter
• Indulge in a hobby
• Have a picnic (inside one fine too, if weather dictates)
• Explore the library (especially the main branch); enjoy visually appealing books, like graphic design, anatomy and physiology, 
• Learn something new, for fun!
• Buy flowers (I like tulips best)
• Drink tea or coffee from a tea cup
• Cook/ bake something that smells as good as it tastes

(Anything you like to do?)

This lady is the most beautiful part of my life!

Okay, I've abused my readership enough. Off to keep working on my pet project of putting all my pictures/ videos into new locations. Post to follow, obviously.

Happy April!

P.S. I really hated this video of the Lion King cast singing 'Circle of Life' on a plane... don't watch it. 

Evil Don't Look Like Anything

Week Two: Contraception

"Evil Don’t Look Like Anything" by Julie Robison
"Beyaz Yourself" by Elizabeth at Startling the Day
"Wearing Crucifixes and Condoms" by Trista at Not a Minx

This is the second post of a Lenten blog post series called "Bright Maidens". We three are from the oft-mentioned, widely-speculated upon demographic of young, twenty-something Catholic women. We're here to dispel the myths and misconceptions- please join us for the discussion!

Today's blog carnival is hosted by Fire of Thy Love

This week’s discussion of contraception is not a judgment of people who take it, or meant to belittle or dismiss its helpful medical benefits. But it is false to claim that most women currently on hormonal birth control are not on it to prevent pregnancy, and it is folly to defend any contraceptives as a safe way to have sex.

First of all, sex isn’t meant to be safe. Holding hands is safe. Sex is supposed to be exciting and the ultimate sign of love and commitment between two spouses in the marital bed. Sex is a risk; every act of love may result in a new creation. Sex is a bond, physically and emotionally. Contraception attempts to take away all the risk, lessen the bond, and leave the sensual excitement. There is no longer a need for commitment, just mutual consent.

At the beginning of this year, I was assigned to write an article for Our Sunday Visitor on a poll sponsored by Human Life International America and done by the polling company inc./ Women’s trend. I thought it was going to be very cut and dry. The teleconference press conference was a half hour, and I was the only journalist who asked any questions. Total weak sauce on the side of the journalists; the information was fascinating and the women speaking were fabulous—like Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a breast cancer surgeon and co-director of the Sanofi Aventis Breast Cancer Center at the Steeplechase Cancer Center.

She said, “It’s long been known that estrogen/ progestogen combination drugs such as the pill does cause breast cancer. In fact, in 2005, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, put it as a Group I carcinogen.”

From what I've read by the Mayo Clinic (Dr. James R. Cerhan, 2006), the question of this connection between hormonal birth control and breast cancer should not even be a question any more. But I've now discussed it with multiple friends in med school and found other results. My mom is a cancer specialist too, and this topic has fascinated me since high school. I had only heard snippets of this growing up, mostly concluding in “inconclusive results.” But did y’all know that a woman’s risk for breast cancer is increased by 52 percent if she takes the pill for four years before her first pregnancy? The National Cancer Institute, according to its Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results data, shows a 400 percent increase in non-invasive (“in situ”) breast cancer in premenopausal women since 1975!

And this poll, which surveyed over 800 women between the ages of 15 and 44, revealed that only 19 percent knew about the links to breast cancer. Of those participants, 3/5 admitted to using birth control to avoid pregnancy. My article, "Most women unaware of birth control pill health risks, poll finds," continues to be republished in newspapers, the latest being San Diego's Southern Cross. The research I did for it, the people I talked to and encountered, not only changed my perception and understanding of contraception, but my attitude of its noxious hold on society and the pedestal it arrogantly enjoys.

Even before this article, I had done a lot of research on the family and family planning for my senior thesis on the degradation of the family with the expansion of government (focusing on the black American family and the Moynihan Report). Did you know that the black community saw the work of government-sponsored Planned Parenthood as an attack on the black community for decades? As they rightly should have- it's an unfortunate part of American history that the black community was targeted by "family planning" centers to lessen the amount of black people.

Even today, it was recently released that, in New York City, 41 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion in 2009. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, that’s 87,273 abortions. More than half of those were black babies. And that is only one major city, in one country. This is happening all over the world, to babies of all colors!

Which brings us back to contraception: yesterday evening, at RCIA, we talked about temptation and sin. The thing about temptation is that the Devil is taking something good and twisting it for his own, malicious ends. Temptation isn't the bad thing- it's how one chooses to respond, in what we do or fail to do.

For example, at one turning point in the movie Down With Love, Renee Zellweger has let Ewan McGregor's character think he was tricking her into bed the whole time, when really, she had him him fooled: 

Then you, the great Catcher Block, would know that you'd been beaten at your own game... by me, Nancy Brown, your former secretary. And I would have, once and for all, set myself apart from all the other girls you've known, all those other girls that you never really cared about, by making myself someone like the one person you really love and admire above all others: you. Then, when you realized that you had finally met your match... I would have at last gained the respect that would make you wanna marry me first and seduce me later.

This, of course, is not how people should date, but Zellweger has it down: marry first, seduce later. Unfortunately, the Devil knows people lean towards the good in this world. So what does he do? He turns people's hearts so that evil appears good, or at least, equal to the good. Because seducing is just as good as marrying, right? This is why free will is so important and our capacity to freely choose the good over the bad. Contraception- which starts with contra, meaning against- is detrimental for sex and the people who use it because of its very purpose, which is to disconnect the physically and emotionally sacred act from the physical and tangible formation of little souls.

Sex while using contraceptives outside and inside marriage (the current statistics say 85 percent of sexually-active Catholics use some sort of birth control) has taken its toll on the very institution of marriage, weakening its foundation and meaning, as well as being linked to health issues like breast cancer, and a substantial increase in infertility, divorce, and abortion over the past half century.

One of my favorite songs is a murder ballad by Okervil River called "Westfall":



The song is about a boy and his friend who kill two girls. The end stanzas are the ones which give me absolute chills, when the band really speeds up and the passion is almost pleading--

And when I killed her it was so easy
that I wanted to kill her again.
I got down on both of my knees and...
She ain't coming back again.

Now, with all these cameras focused on my face,
you'd think they could see it through my skin.
They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it,
but evil don’t look like anything.

C.S. Lewis said, "By mixing a little truth with it, they had made their lie far stronger." Contraception claims to free women, free them from their “biological repercussions.” But when you compare men to women, they are functionally the same. One's masculine or feminine vocation aside, men and women have very different natures, while retaining the ability to do similar tasks and activities.

The difference between men and women, without oversimplifying the matter, lies in the woman's ability to create (with the man), carry and then give life to another human being. That is why women must defend this gift and calling: bearing children is the ultimate litmust test- it is the one thing men cannot do! They do not have the inner tools for it, medical procedures and flukes aside.

While doing research for my senior thesis, I had the pleasure of reading many fantastic documents like Pope Pius XI's "Casti Connubii". Delivered in Rome on December 31, 1930, this is a very important treatisie on Christian marriage, especially since it followed the 1930 Lambeth Conference, which loosened the Protestants' historical rejection and objections to birth control. I wish I could share more of this wonderful encyclical, but this passage held me particularly rapt:

This, however, is not the true emancipation of woman, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family, as a result of which the husband suffers the loss of his wife, the children of their mother, and the home and the whole family of an ever watchful guardian. More than this, this false liberty and unnatural equality with the husband is to the detriment of the woman herself, for if the woman descends from her truly regal throne to which she has been raised within the walls of the home by means of the Gospel, she will soon be reduced to the old state of slavery (if not in appearance, certainly in reality) and become as amongst the pagans the mere instrument of man.

This is why contraception, with its outer appearance of helping women and relationships, actually does the opposite. It cheapens sex. It alleviates commitment. Contraception, like drops of water wearing down a stone, lessens the dignity of the human person when used to avoid becoming pregnant. It reduces romance and equalizes love. Even more so, the attitude of an “unwanted pregnancy” attempts to relinquish the newly created child’s dignity. But a person does not have worth because its mother wants it; as the Lord says even when your mother forsakes you, I will not.

Yes, God. I know, my rosary is getting near your ovaries! But people forget that their rights are not more important than right and wrong. People don’t want to be reminded that God’s law is eternal and, in the end, we all must answer for what we have done, and what we have failed to do. Contraception does not deliver people into more freedom, it decieves and corrupts charity.

This, I suppose, is my biggest problem with contraception: it warps people’s minds about what is life and what is not. It darkens the intellect. It takes the grave and moral matter of life and turns it into a gray matter. But anyone who has an abortion or uses contraception admits de facto that sex results in babies. Why else would they use contraception? If it’s actually a clump of cells growing rapidly, you might want to see an oncologist, not an ob/gyn.

Russell Kirk, on the object of human life, said,

Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

May we all look upwards, without fear, and towards hope in the Lord's already given gift of life. Happy Tuesday, y'all!