Happy Mommy?

I'm not completely sure where to start with this one. I have been going over everything I want to say in my head, but forgot to think about how to start this. So I guess I'll start back in middle school. That's when I started getting sick. I was pretty athletic. I was playing all the sports I could (on the top teams) and even AAU basketball after school. Then in 8th grade things seemed to change somehow. At 5'8" I was about 4" taller than most of my friends and that in turn also seem to make them think I was fat, Well that and I was a but larger up top. It even got to the point where girls that I thought were my friends, stopped hanging out with me. All of a sudden I wasn't as popular anymore and spent most my time at the doctor.


I didn't get depressed, I was just confused. Girls that I thought were my friends, were starting to bully me somewhat. Then right before my freshman year of high school I found out I had some stomach problems. The doctor said that the best way to treat that was with an anti-depressant. Then I started gaining weight. That's when I really noticed that my "friends" weren't such good friends. They would tease me and talk about me, not only behind my back, but to my face. That did hurt, but I still don't think I was depressed. I stopped playing sports in high school to help with my grades and health. I was stopped in the hallway more than once and literally (yes I do mean literally) yelled at by the varsity basketball coach for not even trying out. Honestly though, the biggest reason for not playing basketball was because I was scared to death of running stairs in the main gym. My fear of hieghts was a lot stronger than my love of the game.


A few weeks before my junior year started, we moved to California. I got to start over with new friends, new school and new doctors. I had stopped taking the anti-depressant, but was still a little chubby. That didn't mean I didn't get to do anything. I was asked to prom and even went to some parties. About 9 months after moving there though, a modeling company called my house. No clue how they got my name, much less my home phone number. My mom didn't want me doing that though since I was still having some health issues that the cause was still unknown about. But it did feel pretty nice to know that a modeling company wanted me to work for them.


Fast forward to after high school. By this time all the weight was gone, a couple more modeling companies had called (I turned them down because by this time I knew I had MS) and I turned them down because of everything my doctors had told me about depression and MS. I was skinny (ish) and even thought I was pretty. I was working out at the college I was attending and even getting some really good muscle tone. Then I started to notice my triceps had really good tone. My dad even pointed it out once. I just brushed it off and thought it was from working out. But then I started to notice that my thighs were looking a little bruised when  they were wet and my hips kind of caught my pants at on odd angle.


Fast forward yet again to age 21. By this time I was even smaller and noticing that my thighs were lumpy, my hips had dents, my arms were odd looking and I had a small pouch like thing of fat around my belly button. All the areas I did my shot. I got into a car accident that year and that pretty much threw everything off. I stopped working out as much. By age 23 I got married and moved to the state I live in now. I was feeling fat, out of place and like I couldn't even try to make friends. My husband was really good at making sure I did my shot (for MS) and staying healthy, but I wasn't doing too good at making sure I wasn't getting depressed. So I started on an anti-anxiety pill. Enter even more weight gain like the pill I was on in high school did. We ended up moving near a college town where I really started to feel fat and everyone I was meeting, was meeting me as this fat lady. That went a little too far into my head.


Long story short and 2 and a half kids later, I'm still not where I want to be weight wise, but my oldest son come up to me every morning and asks, "Happy Mommy?" I usually reply with a, "Sure." and then he asks, "Cute?" I say, "You tell me buddy." "Yup, cute."
That really should stick in my head a lot more than it does, but I'm pregnant and my clothes aren't fitting as well as they could, so its hard. But with my oldest always asking me that and the other one being such a big mama's boy that he doesn't like to be more than 25 feet from me, and a very loving husband, its not too hard to keep myself from being depressed.

Heat and humidity...

Heat and humidity are two very different things to me. Not sure if it does the same to everyone else with MS, but for me, the two help and yet ruin things. I absolutely love warm weather. I also like humidity, it seems to keep me healthy and knowing when I'm overheating, I go inside with an a/c. Although, when it's hot I find it kind of hard to breathe, get really irritable, and take it out on other people verbally.

This morning, I needed to go to the store and buy a few things for breakfast, lunch, and snacking (snacking because I'm pregnant and can). I looked at the weather for today and what the temp was before I got dressed to see what I should and shouldn't wear. My app said it was 70 and a high of 91 (humidity was at 91% which should have said something to me). I thought that since I was just making a quick trip in an air conditioned car, jeans and a shirt would be fine. So I left looking like this (I'll tell you later I forgot deodorant). 

Pretty much just grabbed a shirt and jeans and got the boys ready to go. On the way, I thought, I could grab the boys a quick breakfast at a drive thru and eat at a park long before lunch and nap time. So that's what we did. While doing all this, I seemed to have forgotten how quickly the weather liked to warm up, and that chasing around two little boys at a park, even while hydrated, really makes me warm. 

So after an hour or so at the park, I start to notice I'm feeling warm and my jeans are kind of sticking to my legs. I told the boys, "Two more toys and then we were going to leave." We went to the store on the way home. Now, one thing about MS is that, while I know I'm over heated and hot, I don't really start to sweat until I've started to rest (I.e. sit down). So while driving to the store, we still haven't gone to yet, I start sweating and smell that I forgot deodorant. Once at the store, where we only needed 3 or 4 things, what else should happened, but I run into someone I know. Not just a friend, but a relative of my husband's. He didn't say anything, but I'm pretty sure everyone at the store could smell me. 

So long story short, while I might leave looking fine, I come home looking like this.  

I think I'm in labor

Ok I don't really think I'm on labor at 17 weeks pregnant, but I'll get to that later. First I'll start when I was 17 years old, newly diagnosed and meeting my new neurologist. The one that diagnosed me didn't have the best bedside manner (really none at all, I'll save that for a different post).

When I was 17 and it was my second or third time meeting with my neurologist, he was helping me understand what his part was in treating me and what all I needed to know might happen to me. One of the oddest things he told me though, was that when I got into a relationship and I thought it was getting serious enough, I was supposed to being them in with me for him to talk to them. Mostly so that I wouldn't have to explain MS and all the craziness for it. And that kind of shaped how I dated. 

I was a super shallow and somewhat picky person. I even wrote up a boyfriend check list. None of them ever got to see it (my husband did after we had been married a year though), but there were a couple things I never wrote down but always had in my mind when dating someone. Those were, job, degree and (the biggest one I thought) health insurance. Most of my relationships only lasted a couple weeks because I was get bored, they didn't measure up to my list, didn't care to listen to me about my MS, or I had better things to do. 

Enter the man I married. After dating guys that honestly didn't care... In some cases they thought MS wasn't a real thing. I was shocked when my future husband told me he looked it up and researched it. And we weren't even dating yet! So I played it cool, we were friends for a long time (mostly because I was on the west coast and he was about 2500 miles away). 

I'll go off course for a minute here and talk about something I talked to one of my sisters-in-law about and somewhat came up with because I never asked my doctor. It's that a person with MS might have an attack after giving birth. And the fastest way to combat that is to go on chemotherapy. First I didn't even know if I could have kids with all my health issues and chemo just doesn't sound fun. So it kind of ruled kids out in my mind anyways. 

So about 2 years after getting married, I had been around enough pregnant people that I finally asked my doctor if it was safe for me to have a baby. He said it should be fine since I hadn't had a major flare ups in years. 

I was probably the dumbest pregnant lady you will ever hear about. Instead of listening to all the doctors and nurses and even mothers that every pregnancy is different, I only listened to one person. I figured she had kids, she knew what she was talking about and I'd have the same things happen to me.

Oh my gosh was I wrong! First of all, that whole morning sickness thing (that really doesn't only happen in the morning) didn't stop until that baby was literally out of me. Second, contractions hurt a lot worse than just bad menstrual cramps (even more so with back labor, which I had). Third, labor can (and did) last a lot long than a couple hours. Fourth, I really did want that epidural, and it does help. By the 8th hour of labor, I stopped answering my phone because I felt like I had been lied to. 

Have you ever felt like everything you were saying wasn't coming out right and no one was understanding what exactly you're trying to say? Enter the anesthesiologist. I tried to tell him I was worried about having an attack after having the baby and the epidural masking it. He left for a couple hours and came back with some research on how epidural don't cause MS to do anything. I turned to my husband and my friend that was with us (who also has MS) to try and explain what I was trying to say. Long story short I happily got the epidural. 

Odd thing that I need to put in here though, is that when I had my second baby, the research did show that in some cases, an epidural can cause an MS attack.