Postpartum Depression

Or, postcards from the edge 

Wow, it’s crazy to think that the events I’m about to transcribe happened this time last year, in late August and September. It seems like just yesterday, and also a lifetime ago. Back when I launched into this blog I seriously wrestled over whether to write this post. The bulk of this story has focused on my pregnancy with Caleb, so on one hand it would make sense to end it with the delivery. But for me, as for many other women, the effects of the pregnancy lingered long after Caleb was born. So in that sense, ending the blog with his birth would be telling you a half-truth instead of the whole story.

  

It has taken me a long time to write this chapter, partly because for a while after I finished the last post I still wasn’t sure if I would go through with this one. And then after I finally decided to write it and was nearly done, Blogger decided to crash and delete everything. A meltdown ensued. Tears shed. Curses uttered (okay, more like yelled). Wine and chocolate consumed.  

But Blogger issues notwithstanding, this post was just plain a beast to write because there were so many moving parts to incorporate. That’s why I decided to write a post within a post. This one will deal with the postpartum depression (PPD) and anxiety and physical challenges I experienced, and this "Postpartum Part Two" post will focus on our struggles with nursing (since I figured not everyone would be interested in reading about breastfeeding, but I know there are women out there who, like me, appreciate knowing they aren’t alone in the battle of the boobs).
 

The greater difficulty in writing this part of the story, though, is that it has required me to go back and relive the darkest period of my life, a time I had gladly begun to bury in the past. What I'm about to share with you is intensely personal. Despite the impression you might have formed from all I've shared up to this point, I'm very much an INFJ and have the Myers-Briggs test scores to prove it. And I know full well that by sharing these things with you, I'm opening myself up to speculation, misunderstanding, and outright judgment.  

Yet while it's extremely difficult to relive the trauma and scary to make public my most private thoughts and emotions, even more sacred to me are Caleb's feelings. 

I am keenly aware that Caleb will be able to read this blog someday. In fact, that's one of the biggest reasons I wrote it, so that one day he would be able to read the full details of his special story. But I would never want him to read this post and think that what I experienced in those first few months after his birth was about him. It was not. It was about me, and about things that were going haywire with my hormones, not my heart. So Caleb, when you read this, please know that your mother loves you very much. I always have, from that first moment in the acupuncturist's office when I discovered you. And I always, always will.

Now introducing...the light of my life

Now you might be thinking, "Well if this is such a personal matter, why is she sharing it at all?" Good question. I'm sharing it because when weighing all my misgivings against the possibility that reading this part of the story might help even one person, I decided it was worth it. 

And I'm sharing this part of the story because, in my opinion, not enough of us women do.  

Back when I was battling postpartum depression and anxiety and struggling with breastfeeding, I felt completely and utterly alone. And yet when I started sharing my struggles with a few close friends and began reading the blogs of other moms, I discovered that some of them had gone through eerily similar experiences. So then my big beef became, "If so many of us have gone through this, why hasn’t anyone told me about it before? Why doesn’t anyone talk about it?" 

Moms can be each other’s loudest cheerleaders and harshest critics. We are mothers in an image-obsessed culture, and I will readily admit that I am as guilty of feeding into it as anyone. But I have learned over the years that despite our carefully crafted appearances, we are all fighting a personal battle of some kind. Sometimes the life that looks most put together is the one most profoundly falling apart. So while it's true that nobody likes a Debbie Downer and discretion is the better part of valor, if we only project the rosy and at times unrealistic side of motherhood, then we perpetuate a damaging cycle and do each other a grave disservice. 

So I’m talking about it. Because after all my complaining I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. 

Let me be clear, though, that as it was not my intent to scare people by sharing all the gory details in the labor and delivery post, this post isn't meant to frighten new or expecting moms. I don’t want to scare you. But I also don’t believe in hiding the ugly parts to shelter you from what "could" happen, because then if it does happen you might be left unprepared and feeling like you’re the only one experiencing it, as I did.  

Okay then, enough with introduction, am I right? Time to put Sara Bareilles’ “Brave” on repeat and do this thing!

Warning signs

I left off the last post right after I had delivered Caleb, when he lay nestled on my chest for the first time. What I didn't mention was that a few moments after I saw the doctor lift him out of me, one of my first thoughts was, "That's not my baby. That's John's baby." It was the weirdest thing and to this day I don't know why that thought went through my head. Maybe it was because even then it was apparent that Caleb looked a lot like his daddy. But whatever the reason, my brain could not make the connection that the baby I had loved and cherished and cradled inside me so long was the same baby who now was crying and squirming and immediately making his needs known. 

Then in a flash, the nurses plopped this baby I didn’t recognize on top of my chest and said what in my still foggy mind was a jumble of phrases that included "he's hungry," "skin-to-skin contact," and "need to start nursing right away." When it became apparent that Caleb and I were struggling with this whole nursing thing (which women are taught to believe is SO natural) the room became a blur of different strangers squeezing my boobs this way and that and contorting Caleb in different positions to try to get him to latch on.

Wait, you want us to do what now exactly?

After several nurses tried to help, all by offering different and mostly contradictory advice, they said we'd need to meet with a lactation consultant. Of course, it was a weekend and she wouldn't be in till Monday. So in the mean time they said I would need to start pumping to try to make the milk come in faster. When I pumped that first time, which I quickly discovered was more art than science, I had no idea that the pump was going to become my chosen instrument of torture for the next seven months. 

Meanwhile, Caleb was jaundiced and very sleepy. We had to wake him up to try to get him to nurse, which usually ended up being an hour-long exercise in futility. Once in a while he would miraculously latch, but within minutes he would fall asleep or give up. On top of that, I was hurting so badly from the perineal tear I could barely move, so John had to do all the diaper changing and tending to Caleb when I wasn't trying to nurse or do “kangaroo care.” 

Even in those first few days it was obvious to me that John was transitioning into his role as dad much more smoothly than I was transitioning into mine as mom. He was happy to change diapers and help me nurse and do anything that needed to be done. One time I awoke from a nap and looked across the room and saw him with his shirt off, carefully cradling Caleb against his bare chest as the nurses had instructed him. I'll never forget his next words. Still looking down at his infant son he said to me, "Everyone says he's perfect. I know he's not, but he's everything I want." 

Talk about heart melting! Meanwhile there I was, thinking that everything I wanted was a new ice pack, some more painkillers, and a big dinner.

Two peas in a pod

By day two, the doctor and nurses said we were going to have to start giving Caleb some formula because he hadn't had a bowel movement yet and it was important he start getting the jaundice flushed out of his system. I DID NOT want to give him formula. I had always planned to breast feed, and while I knew that sometimes there was an adjustment period in getting things figured out, I had assumed that it would work out for us. Both John's mom and mine had breast fed their children at a time when it was only beginning to come back into vogue, and my whole life, whenever I pictured myself as a mother, nursing my baby was a natural and assumed part of the picture. But I also knew that if we didn't start getting nutrients into Caleb it would spell trouble, so I agreed to it, thinking this was just a small bump in the road on our way to breastfeeding bliss. After all, several of my friends had experienced difficulty in the beginning and had to give bottles to their babies, and nursing had always worked out for them in the end. Why would our story end any differently? 

Every feeding period it seemed like a different nurse would come in and try to help me get the hang of it. One nurse, noticing how gingerly I held Caleb, said to me, “It seems like you’re terrified of your baby.” The words shamed me, because she was right. I was terrified. And I felt completely inadequate for this task suddenly thrust upon me. 

After drinking from the bottle a few times, Caleb's digestive system started working. On Monday, the lactation consultant came in and met with us. She talked about the importance of breastfeeding and said that kids who are breastfed get sick less, have lower rates of obesity (because apparently the fat in formula goes to their body and the fat in breast milk goes to their brains), have higher IQ's, are less likely to get leukemia (and who wants to give their kid cancer?) and are more likely to find lasting love and create meaningful lives for themselves (just kidding on that last one). 

After she finished preaching to the choir, she tried to help us nurse. But even she was flummoxed by the situation. Eventually we were able to get Caleb latched on, thanks to a nipple shield that my Mom had to run out and buy at Babies R Us, and while he didn't nurse for very long, it felt like a small victory. The lactation consultant said, "Stick with it. Ninety percent of women give up on breastfeeding, but I can tell it's really important to you, so keep at it." Ninety percent of women give up? I was shocked at the number. After all, most of my friends were breastfeeding their children and it had worked just fine for them. So I was 100 percent certain that I wouldn't be among the 90 percent of my fellow females, who in my mind must not have cared enough or tried hard enough to make it work. 

Meanwhile, I was still struggling to even get up and walk. One time when John was out of the room and Caleb started crying, I tried hobbling over to change his diaper. My “you-know-what” felt like it was going to fall right out of my giant mesh underwear, and then to make matters worse I suddenly felt the urge to go the bathroom. But before I could limp over to the toilet, I went. All over the place. I called the nurse and she came in and helped clean me up (God bless nurses. Seriously.) Then she told me that a third degree tear can sometimes cause continence problems…at both ends. Continence problems? What the @#$%?! What to Expect When You’re Expecting didn’t say to expect this! 

That afternoon as we packed up to leave the hospital I wondered how in the world I was going to manage all this at home on my own. Thankfully I had John and my mom, but this whole “being responsible for the life of a tiny human being while I can barely control my own bodily functions and can't seem to figure out how to feed him” seemed incredibly daunting.

Are you guys sure you know what you're doing?

From the mountain to the valley 

After we arrived home, I rapidly descended from the mountaintop of my miraculous pregnancy to the deepest valley I’d ever known. The suddenness and severity of the fall shocked me. Everyone expected me to be deliriously happy, and I did, too. But instead I was deliriously crying all the time. So while during the pregnancy I had felt like Peter, walking on water, now I felt more like Elijah, drowning in sorrow just days after my greatest triumph.   

If you’re not familiar with the story, Elijah was a hero of the faith and one of the most powerful prophets of the Old Testament. He raised a boy from the dead and caused fire to rain down from the sky in an epic showdown with the king’s false prophets. And yet instead of rejoicing after that spectacular victory, Elijah dove into a deep depression. He walked down from the mountain, found the nearest cave, and cried out to God in despair, battling serious self-doubt and even contemplating suicide. 

I remember hearing this story in Sunday School and thinking, “Man, what an idiot!” This guy had just seen God do truly incredible things and instead of being happy he was wallowing in self-pity? How was that even possible? What an ingrate! 

Yet as I found myself fighting my own battle with overwhelming doubt and despair, so soon after seeing my own set of miracles, I began to really relate with Elijah. It was a very humbling realization. But through it, I now understand that sometimes the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley afterward. And sometimes the deadliest enemy we fight is the enemy within ourselves. 

I want to make clear, though, that in comparing my depression to Elijah’s, I’m not suggesting that PPD was something within my control or something that I chose. But you know what? Maybe it wasn’t something Elijah “chose” either. I think it’s worth noting that when dealing with Elijah’s depression God didn’t begin by slapping him upside the head and telling him to “snap out of it.” Instead he gave him time to rest and then came to him in a whisper. Not a shout.

A pain in the rear

  

Okay, but enough of the soapbox, let’s get back to the story. People don’t talk much about the fact that the pain from the delivery can persist long after the baby is born. Thankfully while I was pregnant I had read this both hilarious and informative post, "Happily After Giving Birth -- 10 Things They Don't Tell You," from one of my favorite bloggers, Pregnant Chicken, so I was somewhat prepared for the post-natal scene, but nothing could have truly prepared me. The tear was so painful I could barely move, and let’s not even get into the bathroom situation. I had been taking painkillers, but the lactation consultants told me they might be making Caleb sleepier and decreasing my milk supply so I stopped taking them and relied solely on liver-destroying amounts of ibuprofen, which weren’t cutting it. (A doula later recommended a natural herbal painkiller called Arnica Montana, which actually did take the edge off a bit).  

On top of that, the bed rest was still taking its toll. Caring for a newborn after spending three months in bed was like going from 0 to 60 in nothing flat. A few days into it my feet and legs were hurting so badly I wondered what in the world was wrong with me. And then I remembered, “Oh yeah, I haven’t used them in three months!” 

I talk about all this more in my "Postpartum Part Two" post, but basically I spent my first weeks with Caleb fighting him to nurse for an hour, then pumping, then going back to lay in bed because it hurt so badly to sit up. But I couldn't sleep because I was so distraught over everything. And then 45 minutes later we started the whole cycle over again. After spending months in bed during the pregnancy, it felt like I had just traded one prison for another. 

I felt trapped. 

John and my mom fed Caleb his bottles, changed him, and rocked him to sleep. I would hold him sometimes to do skin-to-skin contact, which helped a little with the bonding, but then we would try to nurse again, which consisted of him screaming in frustration over not being able to latch or not getting out enough milk. So nursing created more of an antagonistic relationship between us than anything. But breast milk was really important to me, both for my health and his, so I continued to pump him milk, which other people then mixed with the hated formula and fed to him. As a result, I felt like one of those cows you see at the state fair hooked up to the mechanical pumps, mindlessly pumping and then retreating back to my stall. Completely disconnected from the feeding process.

Got Milk?

As the days went on it became clear that my lower half wasn’t healing correctly, so I went back to my doctor and he examined the whole unholy mess and discovered one of the stitches was actually pulling further at the tear rather than mending it. Once he fixed it I immediately felt a little better. Not, “Hey, let’s go on a bike ride!” better, but at least I didn’t require assistance to walk back to the car. 

I continued to have significant problems in my pelvic region and months later ended up having to go to physical therapy, but I’ll save that part of the story for the next and final post of the blog.  

Suffice to say for now that my physical injuries, along with my fragile emotional state, left me completely shattered. I felt unfit to be a mother, and that conviction, more than all the physical pain, was what really killed me.

Baby blues

People often refer to PPD as "the baby blues.” I don’t know why, maybe it’s an effort to take away the monster’s teeth. Because to me PPD felt much more black than blue. I can only describe it as hopelessness. And hopelessness feels like being dead inside. It is the death of your spirit, rather than your body. I tried fighting the despair, but it was like I was mired in a swamp and couldn’t untangle myself. I was desperately struggling to tread water, to keep my head above the surface, but every day the weights shackled around my ankles grew heavier.  

I was drowning. 

Not only did I feel disconnected from Caleb, but I felt he was disconnected from me. I had always heard about babies only wanting their moms in the beginning but it seemed like he was content as long as he was being held and fed by someone. It didn't matter who. If he even recognized I was his mother, I felt like he didn't care. There was one exception to that, though, and I will never forget it. One time he was crying and crying and neither John nor my mom could settle him down, so I climbed out of bed and went into his room and sat in the rocking chair and the second my mom handed him to me, he immediately quieted down and relaxed in my arms. It was the best feeling in the world to think that he wanted, that he needed, me. I could scarcely believe it, but I desperately wanted to. Yet the moment passed as quickly as it came, and the doubt rushed back in to take its place.

The crazy thing was, even though I felt disconnected from Caleb, I KNEW I loved him. It’s hard to describe but it’s like my heart is a violin and each person I love has a string. I knew Caleb had a string because I had felt it vibrating so strongly during the pregnancy. But the second he was born, the music stopped, and I didn’t know how to start it up again. In the blink of an eye I went from feeling inseparable, both physically and emotionally, from my baby, to feeling like someone had placed him in a rocket ship and sent him a million miles away. 

Sometimes I thought I could hear a couple of notes playing, though. Hearing Caleb’s cries twisted something inside me I didn’t know existed. I felt his pain. And when he’d push his feet against my stomach while I was holding him, I recognized the movement. They were the kicks I had cherished during the pregnancy, the signs that my baby was alive and well. And when I sang “You Are My Sunshine,” to him, the song he always kicked to in the womb, he would stop whatever he was doing and look right at me, and I could swear he recognized it. So I was grateful for these pinpoints of light that would occasionally pierce the dark, but the darkness remained. 

A moment of light in the darkness

I prayed and prayed to God, pleading with Him to bring back my feelings for my baby and to make nursing work for us. I had gotten used to Him answering "yes" to our prayers during the pregnancy so I thought He’d answer "yes" to this one too. But as day after day went on with no answer, I fell deeper into despair. God was nowhere to be found.

Have you ever hit rock bottom, only to find, to your horror, that the bottom is giving way?

Everyone kept telling me to hang in there, that it gets better in a few months. But I didn't have a few months. I didn't have a few days. I was hanging on by a thread, and the thread was unraveling. 

Missing person 

In addition to feeling disconnected from Caleb, I felt disconnected from myself. A couple weeks after Caleb was born, I remember looking in the mirror for the first time in days and not recognizing the person staring back. Her hair was dirty, her eyes were dull, her once athletic body transformed into a blob of fat and stretched out skin.  

I didn’t know where Emily had gone. Truthfully until that moment I didn’t realize she had left. Life had become one unending Groundhog Day…feed, burp, change diaper, freak out about something, do laundry, repeat. Pregnant Chicken put it best when she described motherhood as “perpetual motion with a generous layer of guilt and self-doubt spread on top.” I don’t know what exactly I thought taking care of a newborn would be like, but it wasn’t this. I mean I knew it would be hard, but it was so. much. harder. Maybe part of the problem was that during the pregnancy I fought to stay positive by focusing on all the good things to come, the precious moments cuddling with my baby and seeing him smile and hearing him coo (which turns out doesn’t happen for a couple months, who knew?).

But really, I don’t think anyone can prepare you for how exhausted you will feel taking care of a baby. Actually, exhausted is an understatement. And since I thought that being a good mom meant totally neglecting my own needs all the time, my tank remained completely empty. But a car can’t run on empty for long without breaking down. 

And I was broken. 

I’m someone who derives a lot of my identity from what I do. I like to set goals and cross them off the list, map out strategies and see them through, and receive a pat on the back for a job well done. But taking care of a baby is more like running on a hamster wheel than in a marathon, and figuring him out is more like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube in the dark than follow directions on a map. And he certainly won’t pat you on the back for a diaper well changed. So I felt like a duck out of water, which took me by surprise because I thought I would take to motherhood like a duck to water. 

This “out of my element” feeling, along with the nursing problems, left me with zero confidence in my ability as a mother. I was failing at the one thing I wanted most.  

And I hated myself for it.

Snooki envy

The cruelest part of it all was it wasn’t like I was a teenager or a party girl who wasn’t ready to settle down. I've had many dreams for my life, but being a mom has always been the biggest. On top of that, I had prayed so hard for months for Caleb to be okay. I knew darn well there were people who would kill to be in my shoes, who were dealing with fertility issues and adoption hang-ups and sick or disabled kids. And here I was holding the answer to my most fervent prayers, this sweet, beautiful, perfectly healthy baby, who just wanted to be held and whose cries were soft like a kitten’s meow. (Thank God he didn’t have colic, otherwise, I think I really would have had to punch my one-way ticket to the funny farm.) So seriously, what the heck was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I shake this overwhelming sadness? 

To make matters worse, I kept comparing myself to all the other moms I knew and all the ones I didn’t. I’ve always used a hundred different yardsticks to measure myself against others. Turns out motherhood is the biggest stick of them all. And by my estimation, I was never going to measure up. 

I looked at my friends, my Facebook feed, the other women in the doctor’s office, and all I saw were moms who seemed like they had it all together and were just so “goo-goo gah-gah” obsessed with their babies. Heck, even Snookie, who had a baby right around the time I did, was gunning for “Mother of the Year.” One early morning as I sat pumping at the kitchen table after another failed nursing attempt I read a magazine article in which she talked about how she had totally changed and loved being a mom and wanted a million more kids and oh by the way had lost all her baby weight already.  

Now I know very well Snooki could have been lying her tanning bed butt off. She could have merely traded her Cosmo at the club for a flask in her diaper bag. But regardless, in my fragile state at the time, as she waxed eloquent about the joys of breastfeeding and her newfound domestic bliss while I sat crying in the dark attached to a cold, unfeeling breast pump, she might as well have poured a bucket of salt from her old margarita glasses directly into my open, gaping wounds.

Jersey Shore no more?

A word to the husbands 

Fortunately the PPD never got to the point where I was in danger of hurting Caleb or myself. Nonetheless I honestly believed John and Caleb would be better off without me. Someone, anyone, could take better care of them than I could, and I felt so badly they were stuck with me as their wife and mother. Looking back I know that sounds crazy, but I was absolutely convinced of it at the time. And yet I knew I wasn’t going to do anything to remedy the situation. I wasn’t going to “end it all” or run away and abandon my family. So I felt hopeless, because in my mind there was no solution to the problem. 

I was the problem. 

A few months after Caleb was born I read this post by a woman who talked about her journey through PPD in her blog, Hysterically Ever After. The post really spoke to me, especially the part where she talked about the effects of PPD on her marriage. Like her, I’m grateful to be married to someone who is committed to giving me all the support I need, as I am to him. During all this turmoil, I desperately wanted to be the woman John fell in love with…the girl who was smart and engaging and warm. But I didn’t know where she went or how to find her, and to be honest I didn’t have to energy to look.  

So if you’re reading this as the husband of a woman suffering with PPD, I would just encourage you to be there for her. I know that’s probably a confusing statement; whenever I say that to John he responds, “Okay, but what does that mean?” For me at that time, it just meant being patient, being available to listen, being willing to do what it took to help me find my way back. Like she says in her post: 

“You can’t be the solution, but you can help her find it…Let her know that whatever she is going through is okay. Remind her that you will be there, that you are her rock. Even if she pushes you away, just be there. She needs you…While she is struggling to find the woman you fell in love with, you need to be the man she fell in love with.”

Panic at the disco

In addition to depression, I was also battling intense anxiety and something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. All the fears and panic that somehow were held at bay during the pregnancy came out after Caleb was born. I guess when you suffer trauma you have to pay your psyche’s piper at some point. There would be moments I would be holding Caleb and all of a sudden a flashback from the pregnancy would hit me and I had a hard time calming down and coming back to the present. Or I would climb into the tub for a sitz bath to soak my mangled lady parts and would suddenly panic, remembering those nights when I sat in that same tub and begged God to take away the contractions. 

The PTSD was a result of my bed rest experience, but the postpartum anxiety, I discovered, was closely linked with the PPD. While you don’t hear much about PPD, you hear next to nothing about PPA. Yet if me and the women I’ve talked to are any indication, it can be more common than the depression. 

I’ve never really dealt with full-scale anxiety before; I’d had maybe one instance where I had what could be considered a mild panic attack. But after I had Caleb, I started having panic attacks nearly daily, especially at night. They weren’t as bad as I’ve heard they can be. I didn’t think I was having a heart attack. But I felt like I was constantly being squeezed in a vice, and when the attacks came my body tensed up, my heart raced, I couldn't breathe, and my mind started obsessing over irrational fears about Caleb. 

Sleeping peacefully next to me the day before my first major panic attack

The first bad attack was the night before John left to go out of town for the first time since Caleb was born. Since he had to stay off the road the last month of the pregnancy, he had to get back to work the week after Caleb’s birth. Fortunately my mom was here and my dad was on his way, but the night before John left, as we were laying in bed while Caleb slept noisily in the bassinet next to me, I started freaking out big time. How was I going to take care of him without John there? How was I going to be able to try to nurse without him helping me? What if something happened to Caleb? What if he stopped breathing? What if I went somewhere and accidentally left him at the house? 

I don’t know why, maybe it was the result of how scared I was to be alone during the pregnancy, magnified by my physical disabilities and the nursing problems that left me feeling unable to feed my own baby, but the thought of taking Caleb by myself overwhelmed me. I felt it was too great a responsibility to bear on my own. 

John tried to assure me that things would be fine, that he hadn’t been much help anyway and I could handle things without him. But I couldn’t calm down. So I just kept quietly sobbing there in bed, gripped by anxiety and despair. 

I was terrified. 

The next bad attack came the following week, when John’s sister and her husband were in town and helping me with Caleb while John was gone again. I was pumping in Caleb’s room that evening when I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t make it there in time. My sister-in-law took Caleb so I could get cleaned up and then try to take a nap. But when I climbed in bed I felt the panic rising again. I finally called out to her and she came in and sat on the bed, holding Caleb while trying to talk me down from the ledge. She’s a social worker so she’s familiar with this kind of thing, and after she helped me calm down she suggested that maybe I call my doctor and tell him what was going on. I didn’t want to reveal to anyone what I was going through, but I also knew that if I didn’t get help I was going to end up in the hospital. I couldn’t keep going on like this. 

The next day I picked up the phone and called my doctor’s office. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For me it was more like a crawl. But I was on my way, and although the tunnel turned out to be very long indeed, I would eventually find my way back to the light.

Brighter days ahead

And that’s where I will leave things for now (sorry this was such a depresso post; I promise things get better). In my next and final post of "Caleb's Story," I’ll share my recovery process and then bring you up to speed with where we are today. 

In the mean time and as usual, here are a couple songs. The first, “New Song,” by Audrey Assad, was one I listened to a lot during this period of my life. The second, “Need You Now,” by Plumb, was one I only heard a few months ago, but I wish I had known about it back then because it so perfectly describes how I felt at the time.