Okay, I lied. It's definitely been months since my last blog. Do you have kids? Okay, then you understand!
So, I guess it's time to finish the story...
The piece of paper my dad handed me had the name "Erin Silvertooth, Psychiatrist" written across the top along with a phone number. My dad hadn't really seemed in the right kind of mood to provide me with any more details of this mystery woman, but I certainly wasn't going to question him at this point in time. An appointment was made for the following day.
I sat in Dr. Silvertooth's soothing waiting room, listening to the what I'm pretty sure was the same Enya type music that's played when you go get a massage. I anxiously picked at my fingernails and tried to figure out how I was going to explain to her everything that was going on in my head, without sounding like a terrible mother. The door opened and Dr. Silvertooth appeared. She was much younger than I expected, and looked like a girl who I absolutely hated in high school. I attempted to push that thought aside and NOT get mad at her for sleeping with my boyfriend.
We sat down in her dark office and had the basic introductory conversation, exchanging names, me thanking her for agreeing to see me on such short notice, her thanking me for agreeing to come in for help. Then there was silence. I looked at her, wondering if I was supposed to just start talking, or if she was going to initiate it. But then she pulled out her notepad, got her pen ready, and said "So Ginnie, why don't you tell me what's been going on." And with that, all formalities were tossed aside, and I burst into tears.
It all came pouring out. Everything. I guess one of the lessons future psychiatrists learn in Medical School is to never make a facial expression of surprise or judgement when listening to a patient. No matter what I said, Dr. Silvertooth kept the same calm, understanding look on her face. This couldn't have been easy when I was explaining to her that during my pregnancy, I had wished I were pregnant with cats, because I knew how to take care of cats. Before I knew it, I was telling her things that I had been too ashamed to even think about. I told her about the time when Justin came in to say goodbye on his way to work early one morning, and I pretended to be non-responsive. He was shaking me, turning lights on, saying my name loudly in hopes that it would wake me up. To this day, I still don't really know why I did this. Maybe I wanted him to think I was dead so he wouldn't have to go to work. Maybe I just wanted attention from him. Maybe I was so reluctant to be around my babies, I would stop at nothing to get Justin to take care of them instead of me having to. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter that day in Dr. Silvertooth's office. She just listened and took notes.
At the end of our session, Dr. Silvertooth put down her notes and looked straight into my puffy, tear stained eyes. I waited for her to tell me it was time to put me in the looney bin. Instead, what she said surprised me. "Ginnie," she said. "You have been going through these problems, and nobody has known to tell you that what you're suffering from is not insanity, but Post-Partum Depression. I am so sorry that you've gone all these months without feeling like you had anyone to talk to. You poor thing." I sat quietly, looking blankly at the pastel colored wall across from me, tooka a deep breath, and the waterworks started all over again. I don't know if I was crying because I was sad or scared or what, but I do remember feeling a sense of relief... finally, I could stop feeling guilty and hopefully start feeling better.
Dr. Silvertooth decided to put me on Lexapro, an anti-depressent that would also help with my anxiety. Although I had never been one to go for the pills, Dr. Silvertooth explained to me that without pills, the only other option would be to see a psychologist, who could help target where my anxiety and depression were coming from, and I could perhaps get better with some deep breathing exercises. Hmmmm... okay, pass the pills, please!
The first couple of weeks on the Lexapro, I didn't really notice a difference, and I thought I was doomed to be stuck in a world of dark clouds the rest of my life. Why wasn't it working? I almost gave up. But then, slowly, about a month after I started the medication, I saw the sun through the clouds. I'm not even exaggerating. It was as if something in my brain snapped back into place. I could think again. I could laugh again. I was ME again. And I loved it...
I'm not going to give you every detail of what happened in the following months. Let's just say that I suddenly believed again that life was worth living. I didn't want to fall asleep and never wake up. I didn't want to sit in my room and cry. I actually LIKED my husband again! And oh, those babies. I finally really, REALLY loved my babies. I became the mom who laughed over hiccups and burps, and couldn't get enough of their funny facial expressions. I talked about poops and crawling and rolling over and different methods for getting little ones to eat their pureed green beans. Now don't get me wrong... I definitely still had my moments where I wanted to scream because Ashton wouldn't sleep, or cry because Graysen got more attention that day than Ashton did. The great thing about the medication was that it didn't numb me from all emotion... it just helped get me back to who I was before this mess.
I'm sure there are some of you reading this who have very negative opinions of me, not only as a mother, but possibly as a person in general. I understand the fear of pills and being drugged up and "loopy", and I don't blame you for turning your nose up at me or my choices. You obviously haven't been through this yourself. But I also know there are some of you who are going through (or have already gone through) this same thing, and have felt like you were alone. YOU are the people I'm trying to reach. YOU are the ones who don't have to go through this hell without any help. I'm not saying that Lexapro is the answer, or any other pill for that matter. But I do know that when I was at my lowest, I wanted to be done. Done with life. Done with everything. And I just want to tell you that IT CAN GET BETTER. Okay, that sounded really corny and I swear nobody is paying me to advertise for them :)
Time to go for now. Hattie's waking up, and Ash and Gracie are getting impatient waiting to play on my computer. So, until next time... okay, I need a catch phrase. I'm thinking "Stay sane!" has a nice ring to it.
Stay sane!
Monday, September 12, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Post Partum Depression: My Delightful Journey Through Hell, Part One
So my original plan was to blog once a week... you can clearly see that hasn't happened. I wish I could say that I've just been really busy and haven't had the time to write, but that's not entirely true. The reality is that I have really been scared about putting into words my experience with Post Partum Depression, so I've made up excuses for the past couple of months as to why I couldn't sit down and pound it out on the keyboard. Well, no more excuses... time to bite the bullet and let everyone inside of my head. And maybe, just maybe, I can help someone else out there suffering from the same HELL I did four years ago.
As anyone reading my previous blogs can see, the whole "baby" thing didn't come as easily to me as I thought it would. Most people will say that's because I had twins, and while I'm sure that is a big part of it, I think it is just as easy to become depressed with one baby as it is two (or three, or four, God help those poor moms!!). From the day that Ashton and Graysen were born, something just didn't feel right. I was excited, of course, but there was something looming over me, like a dark cloud, that prohibited me from truly loving what I was experiencing. Naturally, I thought I was just tired and that the hormones were doing crazy things to my body, making me cry for no reason or lash out at anyone who looked at me funny. So, we left it at that. Ginnie's tired and hormonal. Great.
As the months dragged by, I should have begun feeling better. We had the girls on somewhat of a schedule, and we had all sorts of grandparents coming to help us get some sleep. But the dark cloud kept getting darker, and kept getting bigger. I knew I loved my babies, but I didn't FEEL anything for them. Every time they would wake up, I would dread getting them out of their cribs, and most of the times I would cry as soon as they whimpered. I made Justin get up most nights to do feedings, claiming I didn't feel well or that I was too tired. The truth was, I didn't want to be around my babies. Sure, they were cute, and sure, they were learning new things all the time, and I should really have cared SO much about them eating solid food for the first time, or sitting up, but all I wanted them to do was sleep. That way I could be alone. And I couldn't tell this to anyone, because like I've said before, it seemed that EVERYONE around me was in love with their new babies, and couldn't talk enough about the color of poop their little one squeezed out that morning. I went along with it, and added my own comments: "Oh, Ashton pooped bright yellow this morning, but Graysen's was dark green! How crazy, since they're on the same diet!" I mean, seriously??
Things continued to go from bad to worse. I started out not wanting to be around my babies, but then, as if that weren't bad enough, I started having these terribly disturbing visions. I would be giving the girls a bath, and suddenly, a picture would flash through my mind of my babies drowning. I would be playing with the girls on the floor, and as I would blink, there was a vision of one of them being smothered by a pillow. Now, before you go calling Child Protective Services on me, please know that I never did anything to harm my children. In fact, these visions never even showed me doing these terrible, horrible, unforgiveable things to my sweet, innocent children. It was just happening all on its own. And I couldn't get the visions out of my head, no matter how hard I tried. I think that's about when I started "losing it."
In July, the girls had just turned three months, and my entire family got together to spend Independence Day in Idaho at my parent's cabin. I was so excited to finally have all of my sisters around me, plus my parents, plus my husband, plus my babies. In my mind, this was exactly what I needed to get better. I knew that if I could just get out of the middle of nowhere, Montana, and be around my best friends in the world, I would get past this and the cloud and visions would go away. I could not have been more wrong. I remember being so irritable and emotional, snapping at everyone in my family, crying for no reason, and being furious when people couldn't keep the girls on the schedule like I did. I honestly don't know how everyone put up with me. But that wasn't even the worst part.
The flight from Idaho Falls to Denver was a little rough. Big deal, right? Okay, I forgot to mention that I have this incredibly over the top, annoying, really irrational fear of flying. So when I say the flight was "a little rough", picture the rest of the passengers dealing with it by reading a magazine, and picture me hunched over in my seat, sobbing, my head in a paper sack trying to breathe normally, and holding my mom's hand so tight I'm lucky I didn't break her bones. Yep, that was me. Definitely one of my finer moments. But it gets worse. Our next flight was from Denver to Austin (I was going to Texas to spend some time with my family before heading back to Montana). I did NOT want to get on that plane. My mom, dad, and youngest sister all tried their hardest to calm me down, and explained to me that they would help me get through the flight, and reminded me that it was only two hours on a plane. I tried to calm down. We boarded the plane, and my mom was holding one baby while my sister held the other. The cabin door closed. I shot up out of my seat, told my family and babies goodbye, and headed for the front of the plane. My mom told me later that she watched me in disbelief, talking to the stewardesses, explaining that I had a family emergency and had to get off the plane. My parents and sister were saying to each other "No way... She'll come back. She wouldn't just leave her babies." Oh, but I did. I turned around and waved at my parents, sister, and children, and walked off the plane.
I guess you can say that at this point, I had hit rock bottom. My husband was so angry with me for getting off the plane that he wouldn't speak to me the rest of the day. My parents and little sister, who had all been so patient with me, were finally at their wit's end. I ended up renting a car and driving the sixteen hours to Austin instead of enduring the two hour flight. During my spontaneous roadtrip, my poor parents and sister had to take my screaming three month old twins and attempt to be their mothers for the next 24 hours. I was told later that my youngest sister started crying while giving the girls a bath that night. Normally, Ashton and Graysen are happy as clams in the bath, but they were apparently inconsolable, and my sister simply said, through tears, "This isn't how Ginnie does it. We're doing something wrong." To this day, I feel so awful that I literally dumped my problems on my family. They did not deserve that.
When I finally made it to Austin, I walked into my parent's house more scared than anytime I had broken curfew in high school. It was silent when I walked in the door, and as I made my way into my parent's bedroom, my heart was pounding. My dad was sitting in his bed, reading a book, and looked up briefly as I walked through his door. He didn't get up, didn't put the book down. He simply handed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it and said, "She's expecting your call tomorrow. You need help." Then he went right back to reading. I knew he was right.
Okay, so if this were a book, now would be a perfect time to start a new chapter. And since the next part of my story deserves a title all it's own, I'm going to wrap it up now and leave you hanging till I get time to sit again (I promise it won't be months). Please feel free to leave me comments. I would love to hear your stories too...
As anyone reading my previous blogs can see, the whole "baby" thing didn't come as easily to me as I thought it would. Most people will say that's because I had twins, and while I'm sure that is a big part of it, I think it is just as easy to become depressed with one baby as it is two (or three, or four, God help those poor moms!!). From the day that Ashton and Graysen were born, something just didn't feel right. I was excited, of course, but there was something looming over me, like a dark cloud, that prohibited me from truly loving what I was experiencing. Naturally, I thought I was just tired and that the hormones were doing crazy things to my body, making me cry for no reason or lash out at anyone who looked at me funny. So, we left it at that. Ginnie's tired and hormonal. Great.
As the months dragged by, I should have begun feeling better. We had the girls on somewhat of a schedule, and we had all sorts of grandparents coming to help us get some sleep. But the dark cloud kept getting darker, and kept getting bigger. I knew I loved my babies, but I didn't FEEL anything for them. Every time they would wake up, I would dread getting them out of their cribs, and most of the times I would cry as soon as they whimpered. I made Justin get up most nights to do feedings, claiming I didn't feel well or that I was too tired. The truth was, I didn't want to be around my babies. Sure, they were cute, and sure, they were learning new things all the time, and I should really have cared SO much about them eating solid food for the first time, or sitting up, but all I wanted them to do was sleep. That way I could be alone. And I couldn't tell this to anyone, because like I've said before, it seemed that EVERYONE around me was in love with their new babies, and couldn't talk enough about the color of poop their little one squeezed out that morning. I went along with it, and added my own comments: "Oh, Ashton pooped bright yellow this morning, but Graysen's was dark green! How crazy, since they're on the same diet!" I mean, seriously??
Things continued to go from bad to worse. I started out not wanting to be around my babies, but then, as if that weren't bad enough, I started having these terribly disturbing visions. I would be giving the girls a bath, and suddenly, a picture would flash through my mind of my babies drowning. I would be playing with the girls on the floor, and as I would blink, there was a vision of one of them being smothered by a pillow. Now, before you go calling Child Protective Services on me, please know that I never did anything to harm my children. In fact, these visions never even showed me doing these terrible, horrible, unforgiveable things to my sweet, innocent children. It was just happening all on its own. And I couldn't get the visions out of my head, no matter how hard I tried. I think that's about when I started "losing it."
In July, the girls had just turned three months, and my entire family got together to spend Independence Day in Idaho at my parent's cabin. I was so excited to finally have all of my sisters around me, plus my parents, plus my husband, plus my babies. In my mind, this was exactly what I needed to get better. I knew that if I could just get out of the middle of nowhere, Montana, and be around my best friends in the world, I would get past this and the cloud and visions would go away. I could not have been more wrong. I remember being so irritable and emotional, snapping at everyone in my family, crying for no reason, and being furious when people couldn't keep the girls on the schedule like I did. I honestly don't know how everyone put up with me. But that wasn't even the worst part.
The flight from Idaho Falls to Denver was a little rough. Big deal, right? Okay, I forgot to mention that I have this incredibly over the top, annoying, really irrational fear of flying. So when I say the flight was "a little rough", picture the rest of the passengers dealing with it by reading a magazine, and picture me hunched over in my seat, sobbing, my head in a paper sack trying to breathe normally, and holding my mom's hand so tight I'm lucky I didn't break her bones. Yep, that was me. Definitely one of my finer moments. But it gets worse. Our next flight was from Denver to Austin (I was going to Texas to spend some time with my family before heading back to Montana). I did NOT want to get on that plane. My mom, dad, and youngest sister all tried their hardest to calm me down, and explained to me that they would help me get through the flight, and reminded me that it was only two hours on a plane. I tried to calm down. We boarded the plane, and my mom was holding one baby while my sister held the other. The cabin door closed. I shot up out of my seat, told my family and babies goodbye, and headed for the front of the plane. My mom told me later that she watched me in disbelief, talking to the stewardesses, explaining that I had a family emergency and had to get off the plane. My parents and sister were saying to each other "No way... She'll come back. She wouldn't just leave her babies." Oh, but I did. I turned around and waved at my parents, sister, and children, and walked off the plane.
I guess you can say that at this point, I had hit rock bottom. My husband was so angry with me for getting off the plane that he wouldn't speak to me the rest of the day. My parents and little sister, who had all been so patient with me, were finally at their wit's end. I ended up renting a car and driving the sixteen hours to Austin instead of enduring the two hour flight. During my spontaneous roadtrip, my poor parents and sister had to take my screaming three month old twins and attempt to be their mothers for the next 24 hours. I was told later that my youngest sister started crying while giving the girls a bath that night. Normally, Ashton and Graysen are happy as clams in the bath, but they were apparently inconsolable, and my sister simply said, through tears, "This isn't how Ginnie does it. We're doing something wrong." To this day, I feel so awful that I literally dumped my problems on my family. They did not deserve that.
When I finally made it to Austin, I walked into my parent's house more scared than anytime I had broken curfew in high school. It was silent when I walked in the door, and as I made my way into my parent's bedroom, my heart was pounding. My dad was sitting in his bed, reading a book, and looked up briefly as I walked through his door. He didn't get up, didn't put the book down. He simply handed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it and said, "She's expecting your call tomorrow. You need help." Then he went right back to reading. I knew he was right.
Okay, so if this were a book, now would be a perfect time to start a new chapter. And since the next part of my story deserves a title all it's own, I'm going to wrap it up now and leave you hanging till I get time to sit again (I promise it won't be months). Please feel free to leave me comments. I would love to hear your stories too...
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Middle School Mentality
I want to start this entry by saying that I love my children more than anything in the world. That being said...
So it's been awhile since I had the time to sit down and write, but Hattie got her immunizations yesterday so she's drugged up on Tylenol... in other words, she's a napping fool today!
There's something I've noticed in the past few years about moms, young and old, brand new or seasoned. For some reason, there is this need to make everyone else out there believe that you experienced the perfect pregnancy, the least painful labor, have the best sleeping infant, and the most well behaved toddlers. That's as far as I've gotten since I don't have teenagers yet, but I'm sure this trend will continue.
Why can't we all just admit that pregnancy sucks, infants drive you crazy the majority of the time, and toddlers make you want a glass of wine at noon?
When I got pregnant with Ash and Gracie, it seemed like everyone around me was pregnant too, but they were all REALLY enjoying themselves. I felt like such an awful person because I HATED being pregnant. I was constantly nauseous, couldn't fit into any cute clothes, and wouldn't even DARE look at myself naked in the mirror for fear that the sight of the cellulite forming on my legs might make my morning sickness act up at 7:00pm. Plus, there was this little bitty part of me that was so worried I wouldn't love my babies. But why was I the only person feeling this way? I spent every day completely flooded with guilt, convinced that if I hated being pregnant, there was no way I would be a good mother.
Months feeling like years later, the crappy pregnancy was over. Now the fun should begin, right? I mean, if every other person around me was having such a wonderful time with their new baby, then I should be loving the fact that I had two, right? Again, wrong. I'm not going to get into all the craziness of infants because most people reading this already know that all they do is eat, sleep, and poop. But wait, mine weren't sleeping... and it was a lot easier said than done to get them to eat without puking half of it up. But oh, did they poop. Of all the skills at which they could be successful, this is the one talent they picked. The days were dragging by... I missed my family and wanted my babies to be the little bundles of joy that everyone said theirs were being. Before I knew it, I was wrapped up in my own little world of post-partum depression, and again, NOBODY else around me was going through it.
I'm not going to go into much detail right now about my PPD, because it's definitely worthy of its own entry. But for those of you reading this who have suffered or are suffering from post-partum depression, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!
Getting through the first year of Ash and Gracie's life was excruciating, but I survived. I didn't handle it with nearly as much grace as the other moms around me who always seemed to have clean houses and perfect hair, but I survived nonetheless. And I was on a wonderful medication called Lexapro to help me through my PPD. Life should start becoming easier now, right? I think you know the answer by now. Ashton and Graysen were STILL not sleeping through the night, naptime was a daily battle, and they were extremely picky eaters. I had done everything the doctors and other mothers had suggested I do to get them to eat healthy foods and sleep longer, but nothing was working! And to make things even worse, every mother I talked to would go on and on about how their precious little ones preferred carrots over applesauce and slept thirteen hours a night after a day filled with two three hour naps. What was wrong with my children? Again, I was living in a constant guilt filled world. My children were going to eat macaroni and cheese every night for the rest of their lives, and I was going to have to spend the next eighteen years of my life tiptoeing around the house at night to make sure I wouldn't wake them.
It was around this time that I really started getting into Facebook. As many of us have, I became obsessed with reading people's status updates, feeling like it was my connection with other moms and the outside world. But I would also become extremely depressed when I would read about other people's lives. All of these moms were telling the cutest stories about how easy and wonderful their pregnancies/infants/toddlers were while I was at home PRAYING that my two little terrors wouldn't wake up early from their nap and interrupt my Facebooking time.
It wasn't until I started online chatting with moms that I made my discovery. I would be reading these status updates about these women with their perfect lives, then five minutes later, I would be chatting with that SAME mom about how awful and frustrating children are. And this isn't one mom in particular. I'm talking about five to ten moms who were absolutely miserable!! Hmmm... maybe I wasn't alone after all. It was as if a light bulb turned on in my head, and I suddenly had flashbacks of Middle School, when these perfect, popular classmates would come to school dressed flawlessly in that season's latest fashions, with their perfect hair, holding hands with their popular boyfriends. Oh, to be so lucky to just have a conversation with someone from the cool crowd. They were all so perfect! Obviously, I was young and naive while believing these things, but as it turns out, this doesn't stop in Middle School. Now, all of us moms are the popular girls, trying so desperately to show everyone out there how wonderful our children are, and how perfect the lives are that we live. But WHY?
I am truly interested in receiving feedback from anyone and everyone reading this entry. Please, I'm dying to know, what are your thoughts??
So it's been awhile since I had the time to sit down and write, but Hattie got her immunizations yesterday so she's drugged up on Tylenol... in other words, she's a napping fool today!
There's something I've noticed in the past few years about moms, young and old, brand new or seasoned. For some reason, there is this need to make everyone else out there believe that you experienced the perfect pregnancy, the least painful labor, have the best sleeping infant, and the most well behaved toddlers. That's as far as I've gotten since I don't have teenagers yet, but I'm sure this trend will continue.
Why can't we all just admit that pregnancy sucks, infants drive you crazy the majority of the time, and toddlers make you want a glass of wine at noon?
When I got pregnant with Ash and Gracie, it seemed like everyone around me was pregnant too, but they were all REALLY enjoying themselves. I felt like such an awful person because I HATED being pregnant. I was constantly nauseous, couldn't fit into any cute clothes, and wouldn't even DARE look at myself naked in the mirror for fear that the sight of the cellulite forming on my legs might make my morning sickness act up at 7:00pm. Plus, there was this little bitty part of me that was so worried I wouldn't love my babies. But why was I the only person feeling this way? I spent every day completely flooded with guilt, convinced that if I hated being pregnant, there was no way I would be a good mother.
Months feeling like years later, the crappy pregnancy was over. Now the fun should begin, right? I mean, if every other person around me was having such a wonderful time with their new baby, then I should be loving the fact that I had two, right? Again, wrong. I'm not going to get into all the craziness of infants because most people reading this already know that all they do is eat, sleep, and poop. But wait, mine weren't sleeping... and it was a lot easier said than done to get them to eat without puking half of it up. But oh, did they poop. Of all the skills at which they could be successful, this is the one talent they picked. The days were dragging by... I missed my family and wanted my babies to be the little bundles of joy that everyone said theirs were being. Before I knew it, I was wrapped up in my own little world of post-partum depression, and again, NOBODY else around me was going through it.
I'm not going to go into much detail right now about my PPD, because it's definitely worthy of its own entry. But for those of you reading this who have suffered or are suffering from post-partum depression, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!
Getting through the first year of Ash and Gracie's life was excruciating, but I survived. I didn't handle it with nearly as much grace as the other moms around me who always seemed to have clean houses and perfect hair, but I survived nonetheless. And I was on a wonderful medication called Lexapro to help me through my PPD. Life should start becoming easier now, right? I think you know the answer by now. Ashton and Graysen were STILL not sleeping through the night, naptime was a daily battle, and they were extremely picky eaters. I had done everything the doctors and other mothers had suggested I do to get them to eat healthy foods and sleep longer, but nothing was working! And to make things even worse, every mother I talked to would go on and on about how their precious little ones preferred carrots over applesauce and slept thirteen hours a night after a day filled with two three hour naps. What was wrong with my children? Again, I was living in a constant guilt filled world. My children were going to eat macaroni and cheese every night for the rest of their lives, and I was going to have to spend the next eighteen years of my life tiptoeing around the house at night to make sure I wouldn't wake them.
It was around this time that I really started getting into Facebook. As many of us have, I became obsessed with reading people's status updates, feeling like it was my connection with other moms and the outside world. But I would also become extremely depressed when I would read about other people's lives. All of these moms were telling the cutest stories about how easy and wonderful their pregnancies/infants/toddlers were while I was at home PRAYING that my two little terrors wouldn't wake up early from their nap and interrupt my Facebooking time.
It wasn't until I started online chatting with moms that I made my discovery. I would be reading these status updates about these women with their perfect lives, then five minutes later, I would be chatting with that SAME mom about how awful and frustrating children are. And this isn't one mom in particular. I'm talking about five to ten moms who were absolutely miserable!! Hmmm... maybe I wasn't alone after all. It was as if a light bulb turned on in my head, and I suddenly had flashbacks of Middle School, when these perfect, popular classmates would come to school dressed flawlessly in that season's latest fashions, with their perfect hair, holding hands with their popular boyfriends. Oh, to be so lucky to just have a conversation with someone from the cool crowd. They were all so perfect! Obviously, I was young and naive while believing these things, but as it turns out, this doesn't stop in Middle School. Now, all of us moms are the popular girls, trying so desperately to show everyone out there how wonderful our children are, and how perfect the lives are that we live. But WHY?
I am truly interested in receiving feedback from anyone and everyone reading this entry. Please, I'm dying to know, what are your thoughts??
Friday, October 29, 2010
The best baby blanket ever
When Ash and Gracie were infants, I spent hours cleaning up spit up messes. I didn't know what to do to make this problem go away. We changed formulas, put Mylicon in their bottles, didn't move the girls at all for thirty minutes after a feeding, and so on. The word "inconvenient" doesn't even begin to describe this aggravating problem. Eventually though, I came to terms with the fact that we just had babies who were going to spit up a LOT. And I also realized that it was highly unlikely I was the only person with this problem.
It was around this time that I came up with the idea for our blanket. How cool would it be if a mom could just take the dirty portion of a blanket off and throw it in the hamper with the rest of her baby laundry, instead of having to wash an entire blanket for a mess the size of a quarter? Immediately, the benefits of this idea started pounding away in my head. Wow! I would save so much time at night not having to do two loads of just blankets. Wow! I wouldn't have to pick the girls up off the blanket and move them onto a new one. Wow! Justin will be so pumped if I actually save us some money on our water bill. Little did I know, the unknown benefits of this product would start revealing themselves once the blanket was actually created.
The process of inventing anything is slow and complicated. So imagine being in my situation, knowing exactly what you want to make, but having absolutely no idea how to make it. I'm embarrassed to say that before this process, I had never even picked up a needle and thread, let alone worked a sewing machine. My first batch of patches were laughable. I had fleece fabric with HUGE metal snaps put all over the edges. When you attempted to unsnap a patch from the blanket, not only was it a struggle, but most of the time you would tear the rest of the blanket up in the process. Not exactly the result that I was hoping for. So I thought, smaller snaps, thicker material. I got the thickest fleece I could find and the smallest metal snaps made, thinking to myself, "Okay, I've got it this time." Nope. Again, laughable. The snaps would pull right out of the fleece, and when you lay down on the blanket, you may as well have been napping on a bed of rocks. It was at this point that Justin suggested plastic snaps. Of course, I at first protested, simply because it wasn't my idea, but eventually I admitted that his idea was in fact better. Justin also came up with the idea of quilted cotton patches instead of fleece. Again (and you will not hear my say this often), Justin was right. With a cotton quilt, we could put as much batting into the blanket as we wanted, making it softer and more comfortable for a baby.
After many, MANY attempts (and one sewing class for Justin... shhhh, don't tell him I said that) I decided that we needed help. I had put together a detailed plan book, describing how to create these patches... we just couldn't do it ourselves. I sat down with a wonderful woman named Dana in Plano, who seemed skeptical of my idea at first, but eventually realized just how cool this product could be if made correctly. Dana told me to give her a week to make me a full blanket of patches. This was fine, considering it would have taken me at least a year. When I returned to her house a week later, I was absolutely blown away. Wow... this blanket was really as wonderful as I thought it would be! Dana had created twelve patches, exactly as I had seen them in my head. The plastic snaps were embedded into the edges of each patch in order to keep them hidden, and thick polyester batting was placed between the cotton material I had chosen for Dana to quilt together. It was everything I had ever wanted it to be!
I'm not going to bore you with the details of how we found a manufacturer to make our blankets, or the extremely long process in getting there. However, if you are starting your own business and need some tips, please let me know!! About two months after Dana made us a prototype, I found out I was pregnant with Hattie. To give you an idea of how long it takes a prototype to become a product, I got a phone call the morning that Hattie was born, and a trucker informed me that he had 1,000 blankets for me and was waiting at my house. Uh, yeah... like THAT was going to happen. I had waited almost a year for these blankets to be in my hands, and they had to pick the one day I couldn't be there to deliver them. It all got straightened out, and we had our blankets (we no longer had room in our garage to park our cars, but we had our blankets). Okay, so now that we had our blankets, they should just start flying off the shelves, er, the garage floor, right? Wrong. But we'll have a marketing lesson later :)
I was completely in love with this sweet new baby girl. Hattie was, and is still (knock on wood) the easiest baby I've ever known. She sleeps, she eats, she poops, and she lets you know when any of those needs aren't met. But I'm learning that even the best babies spit up. Yes, here we are again, with a baby who likes to puke up half her meal. Hmmmm.... if only there were a blanket that had patches and could save me from having to wash loads and loads of blankets every night. But there is!! Yes, I have been using the product I myself invented, and let me tell you, it WORKS. When Hattie was a newborn, we would place her on four patches instead of the standard nine that we have decided is a "full blanket". Why? Because she wasn't going anywhere! But she WAS spitting up. It was perfect. She would spit up, and I would have plenty of spare patches to change the dirty ones out with. Every time she spits up, I'm almost excited, simply because I see my hard work in action. And now Hattie is four months old, spitting up a little less, and I have the blanket expanded out to its full nine patch size, and also use the spare patches as burp rags occasionally. You're probably saying, "Wait a minute. Could it be that this already fantastic blanket is muli-functional?" Why, yes it is.
Not only is the Snap 'n Grow blanket great for barfing babies, it's also great for when your baby starts needing more room to move around. You just add more patches! Right now, we have a full blanket snapped together on our living room floor, and it's where Hattie spends 75% - 80% of here time. She is obsessed with rolling onto her tummy, and when she does, she stares with a certain intensity in her eyes at the cute animals on the patches (yes, there was one things I was able to do myself... and that was the artwork for the patches!). Okay... so it's good for spit up, expanding, AND tummy time? Yes it is. But here's the kicker...
As I played with Hattie on the blanket, I realized I hadn't heard Ash and Gracie talking in awhile. Silence is golden, but it's just plain scary with three year olds. I turned around and saw the two of them sitting directly behind me, each with patches in their hands. Gracie had taken one patch and had somehow snapped it together to make a really cute blanket for her baby doll to squeeze right into. Ashton was paying no attention to anything around her except the snaps on the four patches she had claimed. She snapped them all together, then unsnapped them, over and over again. The wheels started turning in my head. Could it be? Is it possible that this blanket could be fun for toddlers too? And the answer, once again, is yes.
We spend so much time trying to teach our children new things that we never take the time to realize what they're teaching us. Because of Ashton and Graysen, I now have an awesome invention that started out just for infants, and has now become just as fun and useful for a three year old. The snaps are a wonderful tool for developing their fine motor skills, and the girls love the idea of being able to make the blanket as big or small as they want. Plus, I never have to take it away from them! No crying children wondering when their blankie is coming out of the washing machine. You only have to take the patch away that's dirty! *Sidenote* I've even had one mom tell me she used the blanket on her toddler's bed while potty training, so she didn't have to take off the entire sheet that had been soiled, just the dirty patch. I wish I could pat myself on the back for figuring out all of the uses for this blanket, but it's been the people around me using it who have taught me. Thank you ALL.
Okay, I think that everyone reading this has probably had their fill of hearing about my blankets for the day. And besides, I've got a screaming baby and two very impatient three year olds who don't yet understand the world of blogging. If you would like to learn more about our blankets, or see what they actually look like, please visit our website at www.feistybambini.com. Keep in mind that I created the website and I'm still learning :)
So until next time... I hope you all have a wonderful day and get more sleep than I do tonight!
Ginnie
It was around this time that I came up with the idea for our blanket. How cool would it be if a mom could just take the dirty portion of a blanket off and throw it in the hamper with the rest of her baby laundry, instead of having to wash an entire blanket for a mess the size of a quarter? Immediately, the benefits of this idea started pounding away in my head. Wow! I would save so much time at night not having to do two loads of just blankets. Wow! I wouldn't have to pick the girls up off the blanket and move them onto a new one. Wow! Justin will be so pumped if I actually save us some money on our water bill. Little did I know, the unknown benefits of this product would start revealing themselves once the blanket was actually created.
The process of inventing anything is slow and complicated. So imagine being in my situation, knowing exactly what you want to make, but having absolutely no idea how to make it. I'm embarrassed to say that before this process, I had never even picked up a needle and thread, let alone worked a sewing machine. My first batch of patches were laughable. I had fleece fabric with HUGE metal snaps put all over the edges. When you attempted to unsnap a patch from the blanket, not only was it a struggle, but most of the time you would tear the rest of the blanket up in the process. Not exactly the result that I was hoping for. So I thought, smaller snaps, thicker material. I got the thickest fleece I could find and the smallest metal snaps made, thinking to myself, "Okay, I've got it this time." Nope. Again, laughable. The snaps would pull right out of the fleece, and when you lay down on the blanket, you may as well have been napping on a bed of rocks. It was at this point that Justin suggested plastic snaps. Of course, I at first protested, simply because it wasn't my idea, but eventually I admitted that his idea was in fact better. Justin also came up with the idea of quilted cotton patches instead of fleece. Again (and you will not hear my say this often), Justin was right. With a cotton quilt, we could put as much batting into the blanket as we wanted, making it softer and more comfortable for a baby.
After many, MANY attempts (and one sewing class for Justin... shhhh, don't tell him I said that) I decided that we needed help. I had put together a detailed plan book, describing how to create these patches... we just couldn't do it ourselves. I sat down with a wonderful woman named Dana in Plano, who seemed skeptical of my idea at first, but eventually realized just how cool this product could be if made correctly. Dana told me to give her a week to make me a full blanket of patches. This was fine, considering it would have taken me at least a year. When I returned to her house a week later, I was absolutely blown away. Wow... this blanket was really as wonderful as I thought it would be! Dana had created twelve patches, exactly as I had seen them in my head. The plastic snaps were embedded into the edges of each patch in order to keep them hidden, and thick polyester batting was placed between the cotton material I had chosen for Dana to quilt together. It was everything I had ever wanted it to be!
I'm not going to bore you with the details of how we found a manufacturer to make our blankets, or the extremely long process in getting there. However, if you are starting your own business and need some tips, please let me know!! About two months after Dana made us a prototype, I found out I was pregnant with Hattie. To give you an idea of how long it takes a prototype to become a product, I got a phone call the morning that Hattie was born, and a trucker informed me that he had 1,000 blankets for me and was waiting at my house. Uh, yeah... like THAT was going to happen. I had waited almost a year for these blankets to be in my hands, and they had to pick the one day I couldn't be there to deliver them. It all got straightened out, and we had our blankets (we no longer had room in our garage to park our cars, but we had our blankets). Okay, so now that we had our blankets, they should just start flying off the shelves, er, the garage floor, right? Wrong. But we'll have a marketing lesson later :)
I was completely in love with this sweet new baby girl. Hattie was, and is still (knock on wood) the easiest baby I've ever known. She sleeps, she eats, she poops, and she lets you know when any of those needs aren't met. But I'm learning that even the best babies spit up. Yes, here we are again, with a baby who likes to puke up half her meal. Hmmmm.... if only there were a blanket that had patches and could save me from having to wash loads and loads of blankets every night. But there is!! Yes, I have been using the product I myself invented, and let me tell you, it WORKS. When Hattie was a newborn, we would place her on four patches instead of the standard nine that we have decided is a "full blanket". Why? Because she wasn't going anywhere! But she WAS spitting up. It was perfect. She would spit up, and I would have plenty of spare patches to change the dirty ones out with. Every time she spits up, I'm almost excited, simply because I see my hard work in action. And now Hattie is four months old, spitting up a little less, and I have the blanket expanded out to its full nine patch size, and also use the spare patches as burp rags occasionally. You're probably saying, "Wait a minute. Could it be that this already fantastic blanket is muli-functional?" Why, yes it is.
Not only is the Snap 'n Grow blanket great for barfing babies, it's also great for when your baby starts needing more room to move around. You just add more patches! Right now, we have a full blanket snapped together on our living room floor, and it's where Hattie spends 75% - 80% of here time. She is obsessed with rolling onto her tummy, and when she does, she stares with a certain intensity in her eyes at the cute animals on the patches (yes, there was one things I was able to do myself... and that was the artwork for the patches!). Okay... so it's good for spit up, expanding, AND tummy time? Yes it is. But here's the kicker...
As I played with Hattie on the blanket, I realized I hadn't heard Ash and Gracie talking in awhile. Silence is golden, but it's just plain scary with three year olds. I turned around and saw the two of them sitting directly behind me, each with patches in their hands. Gracie had taken one patch and had somehow snapped it together to make a really cute blanket for her baby doll to squeeze right into. Ashton was paying no attention to anything around her except the snaps on the four patches she had claimed. She snapped them all together, then unsnapped them, over and over again. The wheels started turning in my head. Could it be? Is it possible that this blanket could be fun for toddlers too? And the answer, once again, is yes.
We spend so much time trying to teach our children new things that we never take the time to realize what they're teaching us. Because of Ashton and Graysen, I now have an awesome invention that started out just for infants, and has now become just as fun and useful for a three year old. The snaps are a wonderful tool for developing their fine motor skills, and the girls love the idea of being able to make the blanket as big or small as they want. Plus, I never have to take it away from them! No crying children wondering when their blankie is coming out of the washing machine. You only have to take the patch away that's dirty! *Sidenote* I've even had one mom tell me she used the blanket on her toddler's bed while potty training, so she didn't have to take off the entire sheet that had been soiled, just the dirty patch. I wish I could pat myself on the back for figuring out all of the uses for this blanket, but it's been the people around me using it who have taught me. Thank you ALL.
Okay, I think that everyone reading this has probably had their fill of hearing about my blankets for the day. And besides, I've got a screaming baby and two very impatient three year olds who don't yet understand the world of blogging. If you would like to learn more about our blankets, or see what they actually look like, please visit our website at www.feistybambini.com. Keep in mind that I created the website and I'm still learning :)
So until next time... I hope you all have a wonderful day and get more sleep than I do tonight!
Ginnie
Thursday, October 28, 2010
And so it begins...
According to the burnt out hippie I met at "Canton in the City" last weekend, websites are "so passe" and I need to start a blog about my baby business, as well as my life in general. So here we are. And I guess the only way to start my blog is to... well... start it!
My name is Ginnie. I am a thiry year old mother of three girls: Ashton and Graysen (3.5 year old identical twins), and Hattie Lane (4 months). But we'll get to them in a bit...
I was thinking last month when I turned thirty how different celebrating this milestone birthday was than celebrating my twentieth. When turning twenty, I stayed up a lot later, drank a lot more, and just had more energy in general. This year, I struggled to stay awake until midnight (as I have the past five New Year's Eves), and ate some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in celebration. When did I change?? Oh yeah, when I had kids! Now, I have traded in my halter tops and shot glasses for shirts that can't be pulled down by toddlers, and a closed water bottle that can't be spilled over by tiny hands. At first, when I became a mom, I had a really hard time handing over my independence to these screaming children who didn't even appreciate everything I had given up for them. My fake tan faded, and my hairstyle went from "cute and spunky" to "I don't care what you do to it as long as I can put it in a ponytail". Exercising became a distant memory, and I couldn't believe how going to the gym used to seem like a burden. Life as I knew it, was completely different. And to top it all off, I had these two itty bitty infants who needed me, and I had no idea what to do with them.
The first six months of Ashton and Graysen's life was hell. My husband, Justin (more about him later), and I were stuck in Great Falls, Montana, a town which after living there five years, we lovingly referred to as Mediocre Falls. Justin was in the Air Force, and this location was the base we were "lucky" enough to be stationed at. Before we moved there, people told us that there were two things one could do in Great Falls: become a fat drunk, or have babies. After practicing both, we decided to have babies. Justin and I had absolutely no problem getting pregnant; staying pregnant, however, was another story. We had one miscarriage at about eight weeks, and then a year later, we miscarried again at sixteen weeks. Needless to say, when we became pregnant the third time, it was difficult to get excited. But when I went to the doctor for my first ultrasound and he informed me I was having twins, all anxiety and morning sickness flew out the window and complete shock and excitement took over. Twins! How fun! Approximately 7 months later, we learned, as most any mom has, there was more to it than just fun...
I'm going to skip over all of the stories of my babies and the things they did to make me laugh and to drive me crazy... for now. What I really want to do is start talking about the reason why I decided to start this blog. I don't mean to brag (okay, maybe I do a little), but I have invented one of the coolest. most multi-functional and efficient baby items I have ever seen.
Almost all parents of infants (except for the lucky few) have struggled with their babies spitting up. And yes, we all know that this is just one of the "joys of parenthood", but it's still extremely annoying. For me, one of the most annoying things about my babies spitting up was when they would be on a blanket, they would spit up, and I would have to wash this huge quilt for a stinky mess the size of a quarter. When Ash and Gracie were infants, I was washing approximately two loads of JUST BLANKETS every night. Justin would get so mad at me, saying the water bill was too high, and why couldn't I just move the girls onto the other side of the blanket and avoid the dirty spot? Ha! Easier said than done. Not only is it impossible to keep a baby in one place while they're learning to move around, but the smell of the spit up alone was enough to make me long for the days of morning sickness instead of puking babies. Something had to be done!
Then one day, it hit me. What if there were a blanket made of patches, where you could remove just the one patch that had been spit up on, and throw it in your dirty clothes hamper instead of having to wash the entire blanket? The light bulb was bright and burning in my head, and thus, the Feisty Bambini "Snap 'n Grow" blanket was born.
If I were writing a novel, this is where I would begin Chapter 2. But since I'm blogging, I'm just going to end my first session by leaving you all hanging. However, if you absolutely have to see what this fantastic product is RIGHT NOW, please go ahead and check out our website: http://www.feistybambini.com/.
All of you other people are just going to have to wait for Hattie Lane to take another nap so I can sit down and write some more. Till then, I hope all of you moms and dads (and anyone else reading this) have a wonderful evening!
Ginnie
My name is Ginnie. I am a thiry year old mother of three girls: Ashton and Graysen (3.5 year old identical twins), and Hattie Lane (4 months). But we'll get to them in a bit...
I was thinking last month when I turned thirty how different celebrating this milestone birthday was than celebrating my twentieth. When turning twenty, I stayed up a lot later, drank a lot more, and just had more energy in general. This year, I struggled to stay awake until midnight (as I have the past five New Year's Eves), and ate some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in celebration. When did I change?? Oh yeah, when I had kids! Now, I have traded in my halter tops and shot glasses for shirts that can't be pulled down by toddlers, and a closed water bottle that can't be spilled over by tiny hands. At first, when I became a mom, I had a really hard time handing over my independence to these screaming children who didn't even appreciate everything I had given up for them. My fake tan faded, and my hairstyle went from "cute and spunky" to "I don't care what you do to it as long as I can put it in a ponytail". Exercising became a distant memory, and I couldn't believe how going to the gym used to seem like a burden. Life as I knew it, was completely different. And to top it all off, I had these two itty bitty infants who needed me, and I had no idea what to do with them.
The first six months of Ashton and Graysen's life was hell. My husband, Justin (more about him later), and I were stuck in Great Falls, Montana, a town which after living there five years, we lovingly referred to as Mediocre Falls. Justin was in the Air Force, and this location was the base we were "lucky" enough to be stationed at. Before we moved there, people told us that there were two things one could do in Great Falls: become a fat drunk, or have babies. After practicing both, we decided to have babies. Justin and I had absolutely no problem getting pregnant; staying pregnant, however, was another story. We had one miscarriage at about eight weeks, and then a year later, we miscarried again at sixteen weeks. Needless to say, when we became pregnant the third time, it was difficult to get excited. But when I went to the doctor for my first ultrasound and he informed me I was having twins, all anxiety and morning sickness flew out the window and complete shock and excitement took over. Twins! How fun! Approximately 7 months later, we learned, as most any mom has, there was more to it than just fun...
I'm going to skip over all of the stories of my babies and the things they did to make me laugh and to drive me crazy... for now. What I really want to do is start talking about the reason why I decided to start this blog. I don't mean to brag (okay, maybe I do a little), but I have invented one of the coolest. most multi-functional and efficient baby items I have ever seen.
Almost all parents of infants (except for the lucky few) have struggled with their babies spitting up. And yes, we all know that this is just one of the "joys of parenthood", but it's still extremely annoying. For me, one of the most annoying things about my babies spitting up was when they would be on a blanket, they would spit up, and I would have to wash this huge quilt for a stinky mess the size of a quarter. When Ash and Gracie were infants, I was washing approximately two loads of JUST BLANKETS every night. Justin would get so mad at me, saying the water bill was too high, and why couldn't I just move the girls onto the other side of the blanket and avoid the dirty spot? Ha! Easier said than done. Not only is it impossible to keep a baby in one place while they're learning to move around, but the smell of the spit up alone was enough to make me long for the days of morning sickness instead of puking babies. Something had to be done!
Then one day, it hit me. What if there were a blanket made of patches, where you could remove just the one patch that had been spit up on, and throw it in your dirty clothes hamper instead of having to wash the entire blanket? The light bulb was bright and burning in my head, and thus, the Feisty Bambini "Snap 'n Grow" blanket was born.
If I were writing a novel, this is where I would begin Chapter 2. But since I'm blogging, I'm just going to end my first session by leaving you all hanging. However, if you absolutely have to see what this fantastic product is RIGHT NOW, please go ahead and check out our website: http://www.feistybambini.com/.
All of you other people are just going to have to wait for Hattie Lane to take another nap so I can sit down and write some more. Till then, I hope all of you moms and dads (and anyone else reading this) have a wonderful evening!
Ginnie
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