Hello,

Hello blog world.  I am a home educating mom of 3 who is dealing with depression.  This blog will be my diary of sorts.  It is primarily to help me with my depression.  If it helps someone else that is even better.
A bit of history about me.  I am married with 3 kids Girlie (F) 12, Red (M) 10 and Babes (M) 8. All 3 have been home educated their entire lives with the exception of Red who was in our LIU preschool program for 3 years because of a speech delay. I have dealt with undiagnosed Seasonal affective disorder for probably my entire life.  I have never liked the months of January and February, in school my grades always dropped at least a grade point during that marking period.  I started my journey into full blown depression probably with some post-partum after Red was born.  He is a December baby, so I was dealing with my post-partum, seasonal affective, sleep deprivation, and stress.  He was a fussy baby because he never quite learned how to nurse effectively and I was determined that I would nurse him just like his sister.  That didn't work and when he was 6 months old he was diagnosed a malnourished and placed on formula by the Dr.  After that he was a much happier baby.  Then about a month after that, I got pregnant with Babes.  He and Red are 17 months apart to the day.  He also didn't quite get the hang of nursing, but I was more accepting this time, so I pumped and gave him breast milk in a bottle.  So I have an almost 4 year old, a 17 month old and an infant, am pumping, neither of the other 2 nap any longer, my husband was working 11 hour days at the time and I was determined that I could "do it all".  This determination lasted until about 3 years ago when I accepted that I was depressed and needed to do something about it, that my will power and self determination were not enough.
I sought out non drug therapies, vitamins, etc.  They helped some, but not enough.  The following fall, i realized that if my seasonal affective dropped me as much that year as it had the year before, that I was going to be in trouble. 
I had heard as a child/teen from a pastor that I liked and admired that "those who seek treatment for depression are not truly trusting in God".  It took me realizing that I was hurting my kids with my refusal to seek treatment to make me realize that the pastor was wrong.  Depression is an illness, just like diabetes or cancer.  We can't always just "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps".  Sometimes our brain isn't working like it should.
More later. I have to take Girlie to the orthodontist to get her braces worked on.