Postpartum Elation

I’ve been known to suffer from the more than occasional bout of depression. The clinical kind. The baby blues kind. The oh my god why is this happening to me, what the hell is wrong with me kind. I’m no stranger to lows. Sometimes they’ve required medication, sometimes they’ve required major life changes and sometimes they’ve required a simple solution of un-slumping. The point is: I get sadness. I understand anxiety. I am well aware of what it feels like to be an emotional mess.

When my sister in law, Meganne, was getting ready to give birth to my nephew a few weeks ago, I called my brother, Austin, and told him, “Please be warned that your Love may be an emotional mess for awhile. Please don’t take anything she says personal for at least the next six months. Hormones are the devil. If she tells you that you are messing anything up or that you are worthless, I promise she doesn’t mean it. She really does love you. I promise.”

I’ve been there. At that point, I had given birth twice. I had brought two babies home from the hospital. I had cried over the smallest things and yelled over the smallest things and lost my shit over the smallest things. When I brought Brodie home, I cried for weeks over just about everything. I spent a lot of time on the couch thinking, “I can’t do this. I’m outnumbered. I’m not going to be able to keep up. I’ve made a mistake in thinking I could be a mother to two children. They deserve better than me.”

And I believed it.

While I know there were also times where I was happy, where I was grateful, where I was overjoyed, those times often get overshadowed by the sadness, by the tears, by the hormonal mess that was Krysten during those times in my life.

Currently, I’m dealing with something very different. Something I’m not as familiar with. Something that I want to make note of so that next week if I find myself on the couch, crying, thinking that I’m even more outnumbered, I can always remember where I was today. And today I’m dealing with something I’ve started calling Postpartum Elation.

It sounds a little like this. And yes, these are actual things that have come out of my mouth the last few days since I gave birth to Miss Elizabeth Everdeen Nunn…

“I feel like my heart is going to burst open and rainbows and butterflies are going to pop out.”

“I want to bottle up the feeling in my insides right now so I can share them with everyone in the world.”

“I love you. And you. And you. And you. I love everyone.”

“This is what life is all about, right here, this moment, nothing else in the world matters but this.”

“I want to hug everyone.”

I know, corny right?

I. can’t. help. it.

Because I know that hormones can play tricks on anyone, I will admit that I’m a little skeptical of these feelings. Sometimes I fear that at any moment the bottom is going to fall out and my high is going to become a low. Maybe because I’ve done low before, maybe because I know hormones have a mind of their own, maybe because I believe I can’t possibly stay happy for long periods of time. Whatever reason, I’m not delusional enough to think there aren’t going to be rough days, hard moments, overwhelming situations, anxiety attacks but, today? Today those things are nowhere to be found and all I have is the beyond blissful good stuff.

And I wanted to write it out because, as Kurt Vonnegut says, "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

And it is. It is SO NICE to be here. To feel this way. To have this life. To have this family. To have this feeling. And no matter what happens tomorrow, I will always know I had it today. 

 My water broke at 11 pm. When Jeremy and I got to the hospital, we literally got a mad case of the giggles. We laughed for an hour straight.

 In love. On impact. I didn't know just how bad I wanted her until she got here.

 A BOW!!

 And then there were three.

 Celebrating our Ten Year Anniversary in the hospital with Chili's take out and cuddling in a hospital bed.

And I just had to share.

Happy Tuesday, Friends

go. do. be.