Road Blocks

I feel like I've got a huge road block in my life. I'm at a complete stand still. I thought I could just cruise through postpartum depression and make it through to the other side but things are crumbling.

The past few months have been insanely difficult. My girls are missing out on a happy mama and I'm missing out of happy times with them. Every day is a battle to be happy. On Monday Gibbie actually asked me when she would have her happy mama back. That was the most completely heartbreaking moment of all of this.

The Hubs has been so amazing through this. He's kind and patient with me when I feel like the worst human being around.

I finally saw my doctor yesterday and was given a prescription, told to look at the blue sky whenever I can, and to workout whenever possible.

I'm eager to get back to normal. I miss feeling good. I miss wanting to be around people. I really miss feeling like a good mama.

Almost There

Hello Darlings.

I feel a breakthrough coming on. I think I'm getting close to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel a little bit better every day but only just a tiny bit. I'm inching my way through postpartum depression.

When I get depressed I can't bring myself to write. I tend to feel really bad about it because it is a great outlet and a lot of fun for me. I don't care if anyone reads this but I love to share my life. You would think that it would help me through the depression to share but I just can't now.

I'm hoping that by the end of July I will be back to blogging regularly. The girls are great, The Hubs is great, my progress is great. I've been working out a lot and trying my best to eat healthy and get plenty of sleep. I am determined to make it through to the other side and I hope you will be there waiting for me.

Until then, be happy, be blessed, and be yourself.

Weekend Wrap Up

As per usual we escaped to the mountains for The Hubs' birthday weekend. We usually stay in Ruidoso, NM but this time decided to go to Cloudcroft, NM for a change. It's about a two and a half hour drive from where we live.

I absolutely love going to the mountains. It rejuvenates me and makes me so happy.

We didn't realize it when we booked the trip but it turned out to be the exact same cabin group we stayed with last time we stayed in Cloudcroft which was almost exactly 4 years ago. I couldn't resist taking a picture with Gibbie in the same spot we took one when she was almost 8 months old:

(Side note: Squish is only 5 months old and that same sweater Gibbie is wearing above at 8 months old is super tight on her. Big baby!)

I hiked for the first time and absolutely fell in love with it. I can't wait to go again.

We're actually planning on going up again just for the day next month (maybe) just to go hiking again since it isn't too far away. Squish loved being carried on my back in my Ergo carrier for the first time:

The Hubs and I never get good pictures together but we decided to give Gibbie a shot at taking a picture of us. I think it turned out great!

Poor Squish is such a home body so she wasn't thrilled with vacationing. This was her second trip and she did much better the first time when she was about 3 months old. We forgot to bring the pack and play so she had to sleep in the king size bed with me (I'm not a cosleeper so I was nervous the entire time about rolling onto her). She screamed for over an hour each night before finally falling asleep. (We don't do cry it out so it was super hard to hold her and hear her screaming.)

Gibbie on the other hand is a great traveler and loves the mountains as much as The Hubs and I do.

The drive home wasn't as bad as the last time for Squish. Last time she cried for an hour, this time was only about 30 minutes! Progress!

Now for the downside of the trip. this is what my Weight Watchers food tracker looked like when yesterday was over:

Definitely not proud of this but to be completely honest I am not letting me bother me one bit. When I obsess about the numbers I get really down and then give up for a while. This time I'm not going there. I had a kick ass awesome weekend and I loved every bite of delicious food I took. It was food that I don't normally eat (and I am not feeling as well because of it haha).

Today I actually took a 3 mile week first thing this morning and hardcore stuck to the plan. I'm not sweating the weekend and I'm not sweating my Friday weigh in this week!

How was your weekend?

Friday Weigh In

When I changed from meetings to online only with Weight Watchers I also changed my weigh in day to Friday. I'm super excited about today!

I'm finally at a 10 pound loss! This is the first week I've been super tracking and I got in a 15 minute cardio workout on Monday and a 25 minute workout yesterday. I know that's not much but between never knowing when the baby is going to wake up and dealing with postpartum depression it's been hard to get out of bed in the mornings.

The Hubs' birthday is Saturday and we're going to celebrate all weekend. After posting this I'm signing off for the weekend to spend some quality time with my family. I'll have a lot of fun pictures to share on Monday.

What are your plans for the weekend?

June Goals

I'm going to completely ignore the goals I didn't reach for May. If you didn't read my post about May you can find it here. Here are my goals for June:

1. Talk to my OB/GYN about postpartum depression ASAP!

2. Have at least 30 minutes of alone time every week (a walk, a solo store trip, anything).

3. Eat at least 1 fruit or vegetable at every meal and at least 1 for my morning or afternoon snack.

4. Finish 1 book I've been reading for over a year.

5. Fit into favorite jeans.

I am still doing Weight Watchers however I just started tracking again last Monday after ditching the entire idea for about a month. I am only doing online now though. I started dreading the meetings so I'm thinking I'll do much better if that's something I don't have to worry about.

Do you have any goals for June?

May Recap

May was an extremely rough month for me. I still haven't quite recovered from it yet but I'm working on it. Occasionally I get little bouts of depression and I just take St. John's Wort for a week and I'm all better. The week turned into over a month this time and in the middle there was a lot of anxiety on top of it. I'm sharing this because I find it very important for every person who has children... it turns out I have postpartum depression. It looks like having a c-section rather than vaginal, taking hormonal birth control, and not being able to breast feed has just hit me very hard. Especially the not being able to breast feed. No matter how many times I've told myself it doesn't bother me it really does. I'm in the process of grieving over it now and I'm already starting to feel better. Allowing myself to grieve instead of just pushing the feelings down has made me very emotional but is helping the process of overcoming depression tremendously.

So, since it's been exactly one month since I've written a blog post please allow me to catch up on my family!

Squish was baptized in early May. Here we are with her Godparents/aunt and uncle. As you can see Gibbie is absolutely thrilled to have to wait even longer for some cake:

Squish decided to start rolling from front to back and we all missed it. I did take this picture before flipping her back over:

Mother's Day happened. For the most part it was pretty good. I had a much better day the day before Mother's Day so I consider that the official day for me. I feel like kids work very hard to make Mother's Day not so great for some reason. This is the one decent picture I took on the actual Mother's Day:

Gibbie had her preschool graduation. Kinda. We're putting her back in prekindergarten one more year before heading to kindergarten so she'll have another preschool graduation next year:

I cried through the entire thing even though I know she'll be there again next year. I think she could have been fine going to kindergarten next year but since her birthday is the day before the cut off date we chose to give her another year before having to get down to the hardcore learning stuff. It's crazy to me that if she was born 1 hour and 47 minutes later she wouldn't have even been able to go to prekindergarten yet!

Here's my favorite picture lately:

I can't believe how much she's grown and changed!

We celebrated out 6th anniversary on the 24th! Squish doesn't like being away from mama so we only had a short date but it was fun. Here's one of my favorites from our wedding:

Photo Credit: Leslie M. Harper

Gibbie was promoted to a white belt with yellow stripe a few days ago:

Finally, at only 5 months old, Squish can sit on her own. She's good for about 30 seconds before losing her balance:

How was your May?

Goodbye April, Hello May

April 2015 Goals:

1. Lose five pounds.  **I failed at this one. Actually, I succeeded but then gained some back.**

2. Work out three days a week. **Again another fail. I have a lot of excuses.**

3. Finish one book that I'm in the middle of.  **Finished reading Red Letter Revolution.**

4. Start using Gibbie's chore and consequence chart regularly again. **Half fail. I'm using the consequence chart but tend to forget about the chore chart by the end of he day.**

5. Do one thing just for me once a week. **Fail.**

I'm going to cheat and use a few of the same for May!

May 2015 Goals:

1. Lose five pounds.
2. Work out three days a week.
3. Finish another book that I'm in the middle of.
4. Meditate every day.
5. Cut back to only drinking once a week.

Do you have any goals for the month?