on triggers and the continuum of better

Most days I think about my postpartum depression and anxiety maybe twice. Both of them usually in relation to this sweet baby and how I will not let myself go without help again if my depression flares up after he is born. They are fleeting thoughts, but they are thoughts I need to have to prepare myself. They are healthy thoughts.That is most days.Some days, it’s like I have taken 8 steps backwards. These are not just “bad motherhood days”, no, I have those too and my PPD/PPA will still only cross my mind a couple of times. No, there are days where every other 30 minutes I have to ask myself “is she back?” One of those days was yesterday.Yesterday was a fairly normal day, but I was the variable. Little things that OBaby would do on any given day (read: toddlerhood and testing the waters) had me all tied up in knots, even furious. I survived the day, keeping my frustration and illogical reactions mostly at bay (from the outside at least – in my head? They were prominent). Then, while I was cooking dinner, giving myself ample servings of negative self-talk, bemoaning how I am never going to be able to survive life with two children (RED FLAG! RED FLAG!), OBaby got a boo-boo. He had pinched some skin on the palm of his hand pretty good, and he was distraught.DanO took care of him, got him all kissed and band-aided up, but OBaby remained off-kilter for the rest of the evening. Anytime something – including dinner – touched his palm he sc.re.am.ed. screeeeeamed.The screaming did me in. I was already teetering on the edge of snapping, what with the self-talk and the short temper, but the screaming was my trigger. It always has been.The fear, irrational fear, of OBaby’s crying as an infant was what would petrify me. It was what caused anger and anxiety and irrationality to bubble up from my gut and come spilling over out of my thoughts, words and actions. It physically affected me.Like it did last night. I ran, as I always had, but this time not out of the house. Praise God, this time I did not feel the need to flee. This time I went simply to my bedroom and closed the door. The boys ate dinner alone and I looked for peace in the pattern of my sheets.As I laid there, I had to ask myself, “Am I actually better?” I mean, here I was, almost 1 year post diagnosis and starting treatment, acting like I did a year ago.BUT. I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all acting like I did a year ago. My decision to walk away before things got bad, my decision to simply go into my room and close the door (without slamming it!), my ability to recognize the screaming as my trigger in this situation, my state of mental self-awareness, my general rationality about the whole thing – these are tools I did not have a year ago. I could not have told you what was wrong or what was making me act ‘crazy’, let alone deal with it in an appropriate way a year ago. A year ago I kicked a hole in our wall and ran from our house in my slippers (in the snow).I can’t pretend to understand how much of last night was impacted by pregnancy hormones, nor can I make any predictions about what will happen postpartum this time, but I can tell you that I have so much hope. Weird, that a trigger and a flare up in my anxiety would leave that impression, but it has. It has left me knowing just how much better I am.O, friends. Better is better. Better may not be cured and better certainly isn’t perfect, but better – praise God – is so, so much better.