It's officially the best time of year - fall! From those first crisp mornings when it's cool enough for long sleeves, to the changing colors of the leaves, to all things cozy; it is easily my favorite season. Yet, this year it's also brought up all sorts of feelings because I keep coming across one-year anniversaries of a lot of hard things from last year.
The day we got diagnosed with growth restriction and I had to go for steroid shots...
The day I got admitted to MFM for the weekend and got a second round of steroids...
The night I ruined Halloween for Abby because I had to go to the hospital for extra monitoring...
The day a regular office visit ended up sending us to the hospital for Ellie to be born...
There were beautiful moments in the midst of all of it, but gosh, those final 6 weeks of my pregnancy were rough. Then we went into 4 weeks in the NICU with Ellie where the stretch of I-40 between Canton and Asheville was well-worn. It's wild to look back and remember all we went through. Goodness, we were so resilient. And we continue to be resilient as life just keeps life-ing.
At the end of August, I got bit by a dog while out on the run and had to go through the rabies vaccine series. Abby had surgery to get ear tubes. And then, a month ago, the WNC mountains were absolutely decimated by Hurricane Helene. Given the devastation in Buncombe County, it feels hard to complain about the storm's impact for our family. We lost power, internet, and cell phones - as just about everyone did - but we didn't have damages to our home. And, because we were able to spend a week with Shane's parents in North Georgia, I was even able to save my freezer stash of breastmilk. It's been a wild couple months.
Yet, there have also been so many special moments along the way. Shane and I got to marry two sweet friends and dance the night away with the girls. Abby lived her best life at the Mountain State Fair, riding all the rides her 36" self could. This felt like the perfect age for her to enjoy the fair - all the rides and a snow cone was the recipe for a perfect day. We got to share that weekend with my parents too. We finally got an oven that works. We got to see the Northern Lights. Ellie took her first steps. We celebrated our birthdays and wedding anniversary. We have SO much to be grateful for.
AND, in addition to all of the highest highs and lowest lows recently, for the first time since the fall of 2013, I'm trialing being off my anxiety medication. For a little while, right after Ellie was born, I was on the highest dose allowed for my medicine. In fact, with the trauma of everything, I also added an antidepressant to the mix for awhile. While I was hesitant about trying that, I am so grateful I did because it felt like lifting my brain from a fog. It made a world of difference in those early postpartum months. I was able to stop taking the antidepressant in August and also weaned down the dosage on my anxiety medicine. Then, I finally reached out to my doctor about trying to come off it completely. I've been taking Zoloft since first being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder back in the fall of 2013. I've been on it for so long that I started to wonder what my body and brain would even feel like without it.
This hardly seems like the "right" time to try stopping my medication from the outside - the wake of a catastrophic hurricane, two little kids, and the one-year mark for a lot of trauma - but here we are. I think it's been almost 2 weeks that I've been off my Zoloft and I mostly just feel like a soft shell crab. I feel a little tender and cry easily, but in a way I'm really grateful for that. I love to stay in my head and analyze my emotions, and with the Wellbutrin and Zoloft, it felt really easy to do that. Now, it seems like I'm not stuck in my head thinking about how I feel - I'm actually feeling it. All of it.
I'm really proud to be at a point where I can do this. I can feel to guilt and the fear and the pain and the grief and the love and the joy and the anger and the overwhelm of everything we've been through the past year or so. The feelings are messy and complicated and come in waves sometimes, but I'm less afraid of them now. I still get teary when I think about Ellie's birthday because it feels like it carries the weight of everything we went through. Yet, even as the tears begin to sting my eyes and old pictures make my heart ache, I am so dang proud. I'm proud of all the work I've done this past year and my goodness I am so proud of Ellie and how far she's come. As the sign in her NICU bay said from the very start, "And though she be but little, she is fierce."
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