Welcome back to another Sunday newsletter! It’s kind of crazy that it’s been twenty-nine weeks of these. Although this months, I made it a goal to write an article a day, I am sure that once my semester starts next week, these weekly newsletters might be all I write for awhile. And that’s okay!
I wrote about this earlier in the week, but journaling with pen and paper just hasn’t been my favorite lately. This was hard to accept at first, because I’ve been journaling pretty consistently since I was nine years old. But, it has been way easier to keep up with writing when I’m typing instead of using a pen, so I’m rolling with it! During a pretty chaotic phase of my life (because yes, five kids and a dog and a marriage and work and law school and everything else is chaos, who knew), I’m leaning into blogging as a way to document my and my family’s life.
This Week in Review
I’m not gonna sugarcoat it… this week sucked. Bad.
It started off okay enough. We dropped off Kennedy, Thomas, and Eloisa to their other parents Sunday night, then came home to a quiet house. By Monday morning, everything had been washed, cleaned, and put away, and felt like I could breathe a little easier. I knew I had a final on Tuesday, so I tried to spend all of Monday resting and studying. I’m long past being ashamed to admit that I use our kid-free weeks to my advantage. They’re not as “kid-free” anymore, but there’s still a big difference between having five kids in the house versus just having five-month-old twins. Usually, by the end of a kid-free week (well, usually by Tuesday or Wednesday of those weeks), I am feeling recharged and ready to tackle another chaotic week.
Something changed Monday night, though, like a switch flipped. I started struggling really bad with insomnia, which lasted all week. I am a monster when I’m postpartum AND sleep-deprived, so it felt like I was fighting my inner demons all week just to not rip Kevin’s head off. I started having really dark thoughts around that time, too, and those also lingered all week. My appetite vanished, along with my will to get out of bed in the mornings, and I cried every day. Sometimes, I was just extra weepy over minor things that didn’t matter that much, like my favorite sweater getting stained. Other times, I was crying so hard I was practically hyperventilating, and nothing seemed to calm me down. This, of course, made it even harder to fall asleep at night.
My sweet husband did the best he could to help, and I did my best to accept it. I kept saying over and over this week that I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but Kevin reminded me that it could be postpartum depression, and my best friend pointed out that it could also be the hormonal crash that comes after weaning, too. Either way, it has very much felt out of my control and beyond typical sadness.
Thankfully, this ain’t my first rodeo! I was able to push through, and I know that a part of coping with it looks like this: naming it and talking about it and letting others know how I feel. Does it feel a little… embarrassing, maybe, to admit publicly how bad I’m struggling? A little bit. But I’d rather this than say nothing and put on a fake face every day and suffer in silence, so here we are.
Because I was able to recognize pretty early in the week that whatever was happening was mostly out of my control, I was able to instead focus on salvaging it. I wrote about what I do when life gets hard postpartum here, and I’ll be implementing all of those habits I wrote about immediately. I also ordered some magnesium gummies to help me sleep at night (they are supposed to arrive tomorrow and I can’t wait), I’m going to try and walk my dog for at least fifteen minutes every morning, and I took lots of time this week to rest, something I typically hate doing. I did stuff when I needed to, but I also enjoyed lots of naps on the couch with my dog, lots of afternoons cuddled up with my favorite blanket and a book, and honestly, lots of rotting. I also pulled out all of my fall decorations today, and I would be lying if I said that lighting a spiced pumpkin candle hasn’t made me feel at least a little bit better.
I know that I probably can’t “fix” whatever is going on in just a few weeks, but I am trying to get my mind as right as possible before I start school next Monday. I’ve said it before, but once school starts, the next several months are going to be tough, on me, my marriage, and my family. I have one last semester of classes to get through before I graduate in December, then I need to put all of my effort into studying for the bar in February, and all the while, I need to be finding a job. If I can just make it to there, if I can just pass the bar and start working, it will feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders. But I need to make it there first.
I’m reassessing my priorities as I head into this next season of life. I can barely manage my life as is, honestly, and so I’m cutting out all of the extra fluff. That looks like deactivating social media, distancing myself from high-maintenance friendships, and simply carving out more time for me, my husband, and my kids. I love what my support system looks like right now, and I think a part of being an adult is recognizing when you’re functioning at maximum capacity. I don’t have time to be meeting up with all of my friends, going for runs, making it to every social event, and going for date nights every week right now, and that’s okay. Also, while we’re talking about reasons I’m focusing inwards on myself and my family going forward…
The twins are six months old!!! They have been changing so rapidly lately. Both girls are trying so, so hard to crawl around, and honestly, they’re making progress! There’s a lot of army crawling and scooting and rolling involved, but they are both figuring out how to move. We also started solids this week, and it’s been super fun to watch them taste things for the first time. So far we’ve tried an apple purée and a pumpkin purée, and I also gave them each half of a banana this morning.
Evelyn seems a little more on board than Emersyn, and Evelyn tries to grab the spoon from my hand and shove it in her mouth herself! Emersyn is a good sport and will taste test what I give her, but she’s not quite ready to explore foods herself yet, and neither of them seemed to know what to do with a banana this morning. I remember my first daughter being more than ready right at the six month mark, but every baby is different, so we’re playing it by ear. After all, that’s the whole point of baby-led weaning! With my first, I was a stay-at-home mom, so I had all the time in the world to come up with a whole weekly meal plan and cook and prep finger foods for a literal infant. This time around, though, I won’t have that much free time, so I’m going to have to find a way to make baby-led weaning still fit into my family’s very crazy schedule.
I attempted to weigh the girls at home, and according to that, they each weigh around fourteen or fifteen pounds now! They are still comfortably in 3-6 month sized clothes, though, as well as size 2 diapers. In a way, I’m glad that they are on the smaller end, because it gives me more time to enjoy them being babies!
This next week, in my mind, is our final week of summer. My daughter has been in school since August 10th, but tomorrow, my two stepkids have their first day of school. It will be my last week of freedom, though, so I am holding on to that! Kennedy starts third grade tomorrow, and Thomas starts kindergarten. Then, Friday is Eloisa’s sixth birthday, and her party will be Saturday. During all of those milestones, I will also be attempting to finish my bar application that I started last week, so that by the time I start school on August 31st, I can just focus on surviving until December 11th. And, of course, celebrating birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, and all of the other special moments in between. Being a mom of five who’s also in law school means you get really good at living with a foot in both worlds! I can’t wait to make all of my kids feel loved and celebrated this next week as they each begin a new chapter of their own, and I’m excited for what these next few months have in store for us, even if it does also scare the crap out of me.
Nor Height, Nor Depth
As I detailed above, this past week has been really hard on my mental health. I spent most days feeling completely hopeless and alone. As I’ve struggled to feel like myself again, though, I couldn’t help but remember one of my longtime favorite scriptures.
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39
No matter how bleak things seem, God loves us. No matter how far away we feel from the light, God loves us. No matter how sad or discouraged or depressed we feel, God loves us. The list could go on forever, because no matter what, God loves us.
Postpartum hormones have a way of making you think crazy thoughts. I have spent this week feeling like a burden to my loved ones, an annoyance, unloved, unwanted, and lots of other things that just are not reality. It doesn’t matter how much my best friend or my husband or my sister assured me that wasn’t the case, those thoughts have been really hard to shake.
But it is so comforting to know that despite all of this, I have a Heavenly Father who loves me deeply. Who is waiting with outstretched arms for me to run to Him. Who will always be there for me, no matter how impossible to love I am feeling. It is so comforting to know that nothing — nor height, nor depth, nor postpartum depression, nor anxiety, nor hopelessness — can separate us from the love of God.
Step by Step Parenting 