I hid my drinking from my maternity nurse.

After we had our second baby, I hired a maternity nurse. Living abroad, far from family, with a husband clocking 14-hour days at the office, and a two-year-old at home, I needed help.

We had interviewed a few different people, but because Carter was born so early, we had a fill-in until the one we had picked was available. I will never forget when this woman took charge of my house and started telling me when I should be sleeping and what I should and shouldn't be eating and drinking in the most abrasive and overbearing way. I didn't like her from the start, but I felt like I had no choice. Postpartum had set in, I was recovering from an emergency c-section and was desperate.

The nurse told me wine was strictly off the menu, and I was pissed off. She kept telling me how bad alcohol was for the baby thru breastmilk, but I didn't care. I was planning on swapping to formula as soon as I could. This woman was not going to take the one thing that was getting me through the day away from me, even though she was right. The wine wasn't helping my baby or me.

So I hid the wine in my closet. And when I would go to "nap," I would drink wine as my downtime. Then, one afternoon, the nurse came to wake me up because someone was at the front door, and she asked me point blank, "have you been drinking?" I said, "no!" and she replied, "Well, your teeth are purple."

I was mortified, but I continued to sneak the drinks anyways.

Looking back at my belief that wine was helping me relax and unwind during that time, I now know how wrong I was. It was actually making me more tired and more depressed. But instead of feeling embarrassed or ashamed about hiding my wine from the maternity nurse, I can now look back at 2012 Christy with compassion because I was doing the best with the tools I had at that time.