Search This Blog

Sunday 3 January 2010

A Little Background

Lets start at the beginning. Well, the beginning of us anyway.

I was born in New Jersey, but I never admit that to New Yorkers. My father was a pastor who 'planted' churches. We moved constantly. I had four sisters and two brothers, and all of us were homeschooled by my Mom.
We moved West the year I turned 11, to Montana. A few years later, one of my younger sisters, Hannah, got sick. She and my Mom moved to Seattle, to the Children's Hospital there. They were back and forth for several years.
Shortly after they moved back for good, my parents divorced.
I met my now-husband online when I was 14 and he was 27. When I turned 18, I moved to the UK on a Fiance Visa, and 6 months later, we were married.

Andrew is the youngest of four, his parents divorced when he was 13. He attended an all-boys school and was bullied. A lot. He was always 'different', never had friends or dated, only went out to work and then straight back home again. He lived with his mum until we were married (he was 31 at the time).

We had our first child, Caleb, on the 12th of January 2005. The 17th was our first wedding anniversary.

I suffered some pretty severe post natal depression after Caleb was born. He had what we thought was colic and cried. All the time. Our second year together was probably our worst ever, possibly barring this past year (2009). I knew no one, Andrew worked full-time and I stayed at home. Until I got pregnant, I was working, too, but due to some early complications in the pregnancy, the Doctor put me off work.
We moved out of our 1-bedroom flat into a 2-bedroom house, but I felt even more cut-off there.

Finally, when Caleb was about 9 months old, we discovered Cornerstone Church and started getting to know some people.

When Caleb was 3, I fell pregnant with our daughter, Natalie. I was terrified of having another baby because of my experience of PND with Caleb, but as it happened it was completely different! She rarely cried and our church family got involved from the start, offering support and practical help. One woman in particular, Amanda, has been a lifesaver more times than I can count.

That's a pretty basic outline, but just gives some history of who we are and where we came from.

No comments:

Post a Comment