Our Trip

We just got back from spending Christmas in California with the families. It was soooo wonderful. My heart hurts to go back and be with family. Hubby and I (well really just Hubby), decided that we would save money if we drove the 1200 miles over 2 days. We would have had to purchase 4 tickets since J turned two while we were down. The trip down was a breeze. We took the minivan with gifts for the kids, all of us and the dog. We packed a cooler and a DVD player (but forgot the charger) and some games for the kids to play with. We drove from 11pm on the 20th until 3pm the next day and then stayed the night in Stockton and made the rest of the trip the next day – total time in the car 22 hours. The drive home was a different story. We were packed to the limit with gifts so there was little wiggle room in the van. The morning we were supposed to leave J got the throwing up flu, she puked pretty much the whole way home anytime she tried to eat or drink. We also we pummeled by the worst storm to hit the West coast in 5 years. In some of the places we traveled they had winds of 165 mph. And for some reason the dog decided to pee on my seat twice when we stopped to change diapers and get food. We left at Midnight on January 4 and didn't stop until 4pm, and then we got up at 7am and drove until 9 pm – total drive time 30 hours. YiPes! Needless to say I NEVER want to drive it again. All in all with food, lodging and gas I don't think it saved us any money. But it was nice to have our own car while we were down.

Aside from the hellish drive home the trip was amazing. We both miss family soooo much, it was hard to leave. I got physically ill when we had to go. Now we are back and in the swing of things. School started for both of us again on the 7th. Baby M has started sleeping through the night, J and L are going to bed at 8:30 now (we still have to lay with them, but that isn't not so bad). Once we got home L and Baby M started throwing up, but it only lasted for each of them for about 24 hours. Baby M has started rolling over. Yay.. can't wait for him to sit up.

PPD

I am so blessed by all that I have; my kids, my family, and all of our health. I am very much looking forward to this year. It is weird; last year was so hard for me. It was a accumulation of several things. My sister, N, moved back to California after graduating college, so all of my family was in the same area again, except for me (and my sister, T, but she never lived by us – she's a Florida girl). L had to have two corrective surgeries for his urethra. I lost my grandma and couldn't go down and be a part there for her service. I continued to go to school through my delivery of the baby with no breaks, and then things kind of felt like they were falling apart. When I should have been feelings so blessed to have my beautiful babies, to be able to continue my education and the fact that Jeff and I were getting along great – I didn't feel that way. I felt (as I can even see in my blogs) run down, overwhelmed, hopeless, anxious, irritated and angry. One day when I went to MOPS I heard someone say that they felt that way. While other women in the MOPS group gasped at her honesty (the things she was saying weren't pleasant) I felt like she could have been reading a page from my life. She said she had post-partum depression. I felt relieved to know what was wrong with me and that I was not this horrible mom and wife, like I felt like I had been. If you have known me for any amount of time you know that I usually a very happy and goofy person and I just hadn't been myself. So after lots of debating with myself on whether or not it would make me a "bad" Christian, I decided to go to the doctor. I was diagnosed with severe post-partum and put on Zoloft. After a week of taking the medicine there was a definite change. I was able to feel happy and not irritated or frustrated.

I look forward to this New Year. I am hopeful and grateful for all that I have. I am writing this blog just in case someone else has felt this way. I thought that PPD was crying all the time or wanting to kill myself or my kids, but it's not just sad, it's much more than that. I struggled with taking the medicine; I don't even take pain killers so I was nervous. But my dad said that it's like a diabetic needing insulin, just like them, having 3 babies in 3 ½ years made me have a chemical imbalance. I have to tell you I am so thankful for the medication. I did not take it while I was on vacation and there was a definite change in me. So now I am back on it, I just have to remember that it is not something to stop taking because I feel better, that just means it is doing its job.