My name is Amy. I'm 41 years old, and have had MS for 17 years. When I first found out that I had MS, I was a nail technitian with a 1 year old daughter, and going thru a divorce.I was diagnosed in 1999, with Bladder and bowel incontinence, and foot drop. That first year, I knew something was wrong, because I had my daughter in 1998, and while in the hospital they told me that my Mumps, Measels, and Rubella shot that I had back before I had to go to school, was no good, so I had to get another one at the age of 24. I didn't think anything about it, so i said "ya sure, why not?" So the next day, We took our daughter home. I wasn't having any footdrop, tripping, or weakness, so I forgot anything felt out of the ordinary with me.We swadled her up in a pink blanket, and then put her in our car to go home. We were a nervous wreck. My mom offered to spend a few days with us to show us the basics. That gave me a little relief. That was my mom though. She was always there for me. When we arrived home, she told us she would stay up with her brand new grand baby, and get to know her while we rested.
The first few months of raising my daughter was really rough on me. My husband was working, and I was a stay at home mom, with nothing to do but raise our daughter. Which was fine with me, it was what I've always wanted, but something was off with me. I had always been proned to depression, I had it a lot growing up, but nothing was like this. My little girl and I were just not connecting , bonding as mother and daughter. I had thoughts running crazy in my mind that I couldn't believe what I was thinking. I kept thinking, "what have we done? We had created another human being who needs us for guideance, and to show her how to become a good person, and how to be successful in life! What if we mess it up? What if she grows up to hate us?" The list went on. and on. So I did what I always did when I needed answers. I Went to my mom, and dads. My daughter was their first grandchild, so they were so completely in love with her. So I asked my mom if she could keep her overnight every other Saturday night so we could go out and spend an evening alone together, and she said yes. I thought that having that time alone together was important for us to keep our marriage alive, to go out and have date night, to show each other why we were together in the first place.
After a few months went by, things were smooth sailing with my little family. One day, when my daughter was around 3 months old, and we have made leaps and bounds with our relationship together, through some councelling on my part, My mom had given me a gift certificate to get my nails done by a girl I graduated high school with. So at the beauty shop, getting my nails done, my girlfriend asked me if I wanted to do nails too? Since I was the one that everyone thought would do something in the cosmotology field, so I asked my mom to watch my daughter while I worked and she said yes, so I told my girfriend who does nails, Yes! Yes we would be teacher and student now. Also, we would workout at a place near the shop we worked at. We would workout some mornings on somedays, and evenings on other days. Training with my good friend, and then working out, was working out really well. It made me miss my daughter so much though. It was what we needed to balance out my depression. I needed to do something productive that I could be proud of, and spending quality time with my daughter, not quantity.
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