Healing

Today I write as a different woman, a normal woman.

(My husband would never call me 'normal', but in all seriousness, that is what I now am.)

After each of my 4 pregnancies, I charted my fertility. My charting after my 4th pregnancy was strikingly different from the previous 3, which were all typical breast-feeding fertility charts. Not so this time, my chart showed 100% infertility.

I had been relying on a zoloft-relative to deal with my ppd. (They're called SSRI's.) What the drug did was mellow me out, take out the highs & lows, numb me. It was a much better state than life without it. (Just ask my husband. I tried to stop taking it twice.) Prompted by my fertility charts, however, I decided to contact the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, NE. I used to work at the Institute, and I was aware of Dr. Tom Hilgers' use of progesterone to treat ppd. Before long I got a package in the mail from a compounding pharmacy containing my "pio" - progesterone in oil - and 5 sets of syringes. After relying on it for 9 months, I quit taking the SSRI.

A nurse/friend taught my husband how to give me the shot in my derriere. I gave myself the second shot the next day. The third day was typically lousy. The morning of day 4, I woke up feeling as though I had come out of a coma. 3 more shots followed over the next week. That was 3 weeks ago, and I still feel healed. Signs of normal fertility have returned to my charting.

I feel normal, and blessed. "Normal" means I still get sleep-deprived when my baby is up all night with a cold, I still get frustrated when huge messes get made, I still get mad when I have a disagreement with my husband. But I am most certainly NOT depressed! Gone is that relentless desire to crawl into my bed all day long, and avoid other people. Gone is the incessant pain in my heart that weighed me down each day. And in place of the bad feelings, I am once again enjoying my children! I am exercising, reading for fun, getting my house back in order. My mind is more clear. I am reaching out to others. I feel whole again, and I want to tell the world about it. I think God has lifted this cross from me. I feel confident that my family & marriage can survive anything now!