Always listen to your gutt

Checking in early usually means avoiding long line ups, it means printing off boarding passes, it means removing hastles of airport check ins right???  Wrong... when you have an infant in lap or are flying with Air Canada it simply means having the illusion that you won't be standing arond for 1.5 hours in a cue with really grouchy people.

We follow all the steps to check in and even call the airline to verify we have done everything correctly, and yet our family has to endure a hellish 1.5 hour checkin.  Not only do we have to wait in line as Air Canada doesn't seem to feel that families with children deserve any breaks   They inform us not to come in until 1:45 as our flight departs at 3:45 and we've already been checked in....

So despite our better judgment we believe said horrible misinformed person and we show up as they suggested.  We are told we have to wait in this line from hell with our almost 4 year old who hasn't had lunch and is running on cereal and a few organic cereal bars.  We look around at all the other pissed off parents and older people who haven't joined the ranks of the technologically savvy people and wonder WTF are they thinking?  Who does this to families.  First off we as a family of four pay more for a flight then the single person who smiles at us as they zip by our line in the already checked in so avoiding all the hastle line.  You can see the families with small kids wanting to throttle those passengers.  The other single older folks look at your off their head toddler and think why can't you control that horrible beast.  Meanwhle you want to sick them on everyone there so as to show the morons who felt families don't deserve any special treatment they should really consider a F'ing famly curotosy lineup.  

All the families towing car seats, strollers luggage for 4 waiting for over an hour, each of us looking longilgy at the line up thinking please just let us go...   When we finally do get to the front the woman takes our information yet fails to print off a boadinng pass for our youngest.  We have no clue we are missing anything so we lug our luggage to customs go through the painful process of having to scan our passports maunally ourselves, take photos of each of us and then continue with the luggage to they US customs offiical only to find out we can't get through without this boarding pass.

Lucky for us they did think of placing an Air Canada ticket adgent at the security gate and they give us a pass for our daughter avoiding us having to lug everything back around the corner down the hall to the previous line up.  Good thing cause our flight at this point is boarding.

So we rush through the security check point I won't even mention the water my partner fails to throw away and thus is found in the xray scan  We arrive at our gate late and my partner goes up to the woman tells her we were held up hoping she'd allow us to board the plane and instead are told to wait in line because we've missed the point where they fianlly cut the familes a break and allow us to board the plane early.

I swear if we ever fly AC again I am going to make sure I unleash my toddler on them so they can get some first hand understanding of why you just don't do that to families.  So if your travelling with kids and are told to just show up 2 hours before laugh at them and show up 3 hours early so you can actually sit and enjoy a coffee or at least try to instead of rushing throught he aiport yelling hurry up were gonna miss our flight.

Don't forget the passports

Travelling with 2 kids in tow may seem to some like a lot of work but it's really about prep time. Prepping for a trip with kids goes like this.  You write a list and then re-write it a million times.  You pack and un-pack about 10x in hopes to get the stuff you need to fit into the allowed baggage with no additional cost to you. You get the shoes your going to have them wear and realize the day before the trip the kids feet have grown and now don't fit into those perfect shoes you picked out for them.  Thus forcing you last minute to have to dig into the treasure chest of shoes you have stored, if your so lucky,  to find a pair that will work.  In the end though as long as you have your essentials, diapers, natural pain and cold meds, toys, entertainment, snacks and in my opinion a good stroller and carrier your all set.  The other stuff can be picked up when you land if you really need to and forget something your kids can't live without.  Lucky for me my partner is completely organized and writes list upon list so the likely hood we forgot anything is pretty slim but for some reason I am worried my bathing suit didn't make the cut.... Oh well we shall see when we land :)

We are heading to Hawaii for a 5 week vacation.  We have the house/cat sitter in place, and have been packed for about a week.  The kids are so easy that they really don't care about what is going on or they simply don't realize for the next 5 weeks they won't be home surrounded by the toys and familiar items that make most of us feel safe.  My youngest biggest concern is that her pack-pack (harness back-pack) comes along.  At a ripe old age of 21 months she really doesn't demand a lot other then boob and snacks :).  My son well he's almost 4 and let's say he's in between the OMG why are threes so bad and all grown up supposed to be Fantastic 4 stage.  We've packed an IPAD for him though we never allow him to play on one we've learned Air Canada has opted for IPAD's as the choice of entertainment source on their flights.  What is that about????? Who does that to people on a 10 hour flight.  I did call them and ensure there is a plug cause let's just say if we can't zone the kid out on movies about 5 hours into the flight the kids going to turn into Godzilla.  God help us all.

The flight is about 10 hours and with the added time before for check in and then baggage claim we should be travelling for a total of about 14 hours.  Arriving in Hawaii at about midnight our local time I imagine the kids will be a bit of a wreck.  It's expected with a time change and all.

So for today we have packed the car, are about to load up on food for the trip cause did I mention Air Canada also DOESN'T PROVIDE FOOD????? You don't want to know how much we paid for these tickets!!!! Ok I degress...so as I pick up the last minute food for our dinner on flight cause we refuse to pay for crapy airline food and finish the final touches of cat proofing the house we are fully prepared and ready to go.

If I forgot anything well it's too late now we are off.

Breaking the Silence

Like a black cloud coming over you Postpartum/natal depression engulfs you until you can’t see clearly.  You lose track of yourself, the person you once were, the person you once loved ceases to exist.  I am a doula, I am trained to see PPD/PND in my clients.  The warning signs that signal a woman is on a slippery slope were so easy for me to see in my years as a Doula.  However when you are that person standing on the ledge its as if you are blinded by the fog.  Looking back I can see how it began.  Going to bed early, hiding in the bedroom, pulling away from friends and family.  All the signs I question my clients for in the months after the birth of a child and I had them all present yet not visible to me.  How could I a doula be so blind to the fact that I was losing myself?  How could I have allowed this to happen to me?   Shame sets in, you begin to feel as though your feelings are wrong.  How could I feel so down when I got exactly what I wanted.  A baby girl I longed for,  a rainbow baby after two early loses.  It wasn’t just my own thoughts people are so unaware of what a few simple words do to a mom.  The words “at least you have a healthy baby” or “how can you be depressed you have beautiful children”.  As if this state of mind was my choice and not my captor.  

People think PPD/PND is definable by one set of rules.  Like if you have PPD/PND you must be crying all the time, withdrawn from your baby, tired, but it’s not the same for every woman.  Where one women will feel those exact feelings others may experience it in the form of anxiety or anger.   Some women feel like their baby is in harms way not from themselves but from the world, others may feel themselves are unable to care for their child.  Neither one is more definable than the other each leads to the same fog ridden path.  When I finally figured out what was going on it was too late.  I was knee deep in the fog and my relationship was severely affected.  Where stood my once best friend a stranger now took their place.  We were so distant and so apart we could hardly see the others pain.  

Each day I lived for bedtime, I longed for the hours to go by so I could retreat to my bedroom and be alone with my kids.  I lay in my room feeding my youngest and waiting for my toddler to fall asleep.  Then I would watch endless hours of Netflix watching one series and moving on to the next.  Watching them became a way for me to be numb, to silence the thoughts in my head, to have moments of clear stillness.  These characters become my friends in a way, I longed to see them on the screen and felt safe when I was watching them.  I reached out to people on Facebook and talked to them about anything but how I was feeling.  I withdrew from my friends because I was worried that they would think I was crazy for feeling this way.  Shame made me go deeper and deeper into hiding until I was so lost I couldn’t find my way back even if I wanted to.

One night when I was sleeping it came to me, the reason my birth affected me so.  It was at that moment that I realized something was seriously wrong with me.  I wasn’t myself, I needed to find me again and maybe the way back to my life partner would once again become clear.  One simple act during birth, the breaking of my waters, triggered in me a moment in time that had taken place over 20 years prior.  A moment I had not thought about for several years had somehow consumed me in a way, and I had no idea it was happening.   Once that became clear and I was able to voice it to my partner, I thought it would be easy to return home.  It isn’t that simple though, you can’t just return to the moment in time before PPD and pick up where you left off.  In the wake of destruction so much has to happen before you an even hope to put the pieces of your old life back.  I began taking my placenta tincture, the one I had prepared for myself as I had done for many clients before this birth.  I finally started to feel like me again, if it was a placebo affect as some call it so be it, because it saved me.

The fog doesn’t leave right away, it slowly gets clearer but I can’t say you ever feel whole again.   Once it touches you it’s almost like it makes a dent in your soul and will remain part of you forever.  People need to stop shaming women for feeling this way after birth.  They need to realize that it has nothing to do with them or with the children that are born.  Of course we are delighted to be mothers, of course we are beyond the moon that we have had these precious babies, it isn’t about that.  For those that have PPD/PND due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder brought on by the birth it’s ok to feel this way.  It isn’t OK for people to say things like at least you have a healthy baby, at least your baby is here alive and well.   I wish for once the medical world would see how important birth is not just for baby but for mother as well.  More than 50% of the women I spoke to ended a relationship after a bout with PPD/PND.  How can we then say that the only thing that matters in birth is a healthy baby?  When in the end PPD strips from you months, years of memories you could have had.  When it beats your relationship to the point where you may not ever be able to return things to the way they were before?  Birth matters of course the health of the baby matters but so does the health of the women, of the mothers of the families. 

I lost months, years of my life to PPD/PND.  I am not sure how things will play out in my life, I’m not sure if things will ever go back to the way they once were.  I’m forced to watch videos of my kids and try to remember how I was feeling when I captured those moments.  I am forced to remember a time when the love of my life was also my best friend.  I can’t change my past I can only hope that in my pain, in my sorrow you can understand your not alone.  I feel your pain and I hope you can see there is no shame in asking for help.  The shame lies in the medical staff that ignored our health, it lies in the people who instead of holding us shamed us into feeling like we don’t matter like we needed to hide.  Enough is enough we need to stand together and let others know that we aren’t going to hide from it any longer.  That were are going to fight for the rights of women everywhere to have their feelings understood, their voices heard and their mental health treated equally as important as their newborn baby.  No more silence.  To the women who took their own lives because they felt so alone I am so sorry that the system failed you.  To the children without a mother now, it was never about you and I am so sorry the system didn’t protect your family.  PPD/PND is a horrible road to be on but your not on it alone.