10 Random and Irrational Wishes

April 29, 2012 by ·

So it’s Monday again. I don’t understand how this keeps happening.

Maybe it’s the hormones. Maybe it’s the 16 straight weeks of nausea and exhaustion. Maybe it’s that, just when I thought I might start feeling better, I’ve started throwing up. Whatever it is, I’ve had a list running in my head of things I wish but that are totally irrational and therefore unlikely to happen. But you never know, right? So here’s the list. Universe, do with this what you will (but please don’t smite me by making things worse).

  1. I wish the laundry would fold itself instead of sitting there mocking me with its increasing wrinkliness.ten
  2. I wish I didn’t have to pee three times a night.
  3. I wish my child would finally understand that jumping on me is a Very Bad Idea. Ditto poking me, hitting me and licking me.
  4. I wish work weeks were only four days long. Or three. I could get a lot done in three days. Just try me.
  5. I wish someone would make a really awesome pair of maternity underwear.
  6. I wish I didn’t have to wear maternity underwear. I didn’t last time, but this time my normal underwear seems to have it out for me.
  7. I wish someone would develop a teleportation device already so I can go and visit my friends.
  8. I wish SharePoint didn’t suck so utterly and completely. (But, hey, if I only had to work three days a week my SharePoint-itis would be significantly less intense.)
  9. I wish my dog would walk himself so I didn’t have to walk around my neighbourhood in my pyjamas. (I also wish he hadn’t peed on our duvet, but hesitate to actually add it to the list because 10 complaints seems like quite enough.)
  10. I wish I had better hair.

So that’s my list. (I didn’t lie – I am okay. Just tired.) Make me feel less like a sad sack and join me, won’t you? What are your irrational wishes?

Filed Under: Pregnancy, Randomness · Tagged With: ,

The Power of Truth

April 26, 2012 by ·

It’s been five days since the antenatal depression light clicked on. Five sleeps. Five sunrise-sunsets. Five turns of the Earth. And everything actually feels okay in my world.

No matter what the situation, I always feel better once I recognize it. An anxiety attack is less end-of-the-world when I realize it’s a momentary and not entirely logical reaction to something (even if I don’t know what that something is). The stones at what looks like the fast-approaching bottom fall away to reveal solid ground beneath me. And I stop feeling like I don’t know what I’m going to do next.

I don’t know if it was the recognizing of it or the saying of it or the writing of it. But that truth took away some of the power this illness has and gave it back to me.

There’s always power in truth. Whether you admit it to yourself or the whole world, saying it helps dissipate the darkness. I know this, and yet I have to learn the lesson every time.

I’m not saying everything is better or that this won’t still be a battle at times, but I am feeling better. And, for now at least, I’m sleeping in my bed instead of hiding in it.

Thank you for all the comments and words of love – both here and elsewhere.

xo

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Image credit: auro on Flickr

Filed Under: Happy things, Pregnancy · Tagged With: , , , , ,

No Joy

April 25, 2012 by ·

I kept waiting for my first trimester to be over so I’d stop feeling sick and start experiencing the euphoric energy I’d felt the first time.

That energy never came; I only became more and more fatigued as the pregnancy progressed. I started to develop insomnia so bad that I’d only sleep two or three hours a night. The lack of sleep started to get to me; my moods fluctuated wildly, and I had to quit my part-time editing job due to complete apathy towards the work.

These are not my words, and yet this is my story. I just didn’t know it until I read it.

You may have gathered from yesterday’s post that things are slightly less than peachy here. I’ve been struggling for a while, but I thought it was just the natural progression of having moved away from family and friends and settling (or not) into whatever’s next. It was a new job and a longer commute and wondering where certain things are after our move. It was a pregnancy and a reduction in my med dose and a subsequent bump back up when that didn’t work. It was a small boy who’s almost four and all the challenges that come with that.

Except that’s not all it is.

The excerpt above is from a post called Robbed of the Joy of Pregnancy by Alexis Lesa on Postpartum Progress. Something lurking at the back of my brain took me to the antenatal depression tag on that site over the weekend, where I read one post and then another. And then I came to that one.

I know this is an issue for me. I just didn’t know it. It was an issue during my pregnancy with Connor too. I even did a Google search for antenatal depression, thought “huh” and then moved on. And was surprised when I got postpartum depression. (It’s okay – you can roll your eyes.)

The only thing in the above quote that I’m not experiencing is insomnia. I’m having the usual pregnancy-related trouble sleeping, but for the last few weeks I could happily have slept all the time. And, to be frank, some days I did. Wanting to stay in bed all the time is usually a huge light bulb for me, but I put a blanket over that light bulb and went back to sleep.

The thing is, though, that once I read that post the light burned bright again. I confessed to the problem to my #PPDChat group and a very dear (real life) friend of mine started looking up resources for me in this new city. She found a counsellor and a women’s mental health clinic and that was really all I needed to get me back on the right path.

Could I have searched those things out myself?

Yes.

No.

Yes, I’m on a first-name basis with Google. No, when the ground is coming up at me I don’t have the resources to find resources.

But I do have people who will do that for me, as long as I can muster up the courage to ask.

tree-sunrise

Image credit: GregRob on Flickr

 

Filed Under: Hard things, Pregnancy · Tagged With: , , , , ,

On Just.Be.Enough – Pregnancy and Worthiness

April 8, 2012 by ·

Remember when I revealed this pregnancy and made reference to my unexpected reaction to it? I thought I’d write about it sooner but so much has been going on and, honestly, I wasn’t really ready to try and describe it. I’ve been thinking about it again lately though, and decided it was time to tell that story. So today on Just.Be.Enough I’m hosting the Be Enough Me link-up and telling you about how I felt unworthy of being given a chance to become a mom again.

Come and visit me over there!

Comments here closed.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression, Pregnancy · Tagged With: ,

Pregnancy is an Evolutionary Oops

April 1, 2012 by ·

Warning: This is a rant. And I wrote it before this happened, so I can’t even blame it on that. Apparently being pregnant just makes me cranky.

 

The whole concept of pregnancy was not well thought out.

There are so many things that make evolutionary sense. You know, like opposable thumbs and eyebrows and…stuff like that. And yes, pregnancy is a miracle and all that but why does this particular miracle have to be so freaking hard?!

When I was pregnant with Connor I was a little nauseated and more tired than usual, but I could deal with that by closing my office door if I needed to and coming home to lie peacefully on the couch. This time I’ve been so unbelievably sick I can barely stand it and exhaustion has hit like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I feel awful. And this time I have no office door to close and a new team and a 45-minute commute to and from work. Oh, and a three-year-old.

Did I mention I feel awful?

Maybe it’s just anxiety settling in and making itself at home, but I’m looking ahead to the next several months and thinking This is not going to be good. I hope I’ll feel better relatively soon (please God let me feel better soon) but then it’s just that lull before the wow-am-I-ever-uncomfortable stage that leads to poor sleep. I mean, seriously. Who designed this process?! Being tired right before having a baby? Really?!

(And don’t even get me started on how totally dependent human babies are. Not that I’d prefer we make like turtles and leave our young to figure it out themselves, but shouldn’t there be a middle ground? Like puppies. Puppies open their eyes, learn to nurse and then start stumbling around and falling over their own too-big paws. Yeah, the whole housebreaking thing is a total disaster, but if I’d been in charge of evolution I would have made human babies a little more like puppies in the dependency department.)

pregnant-woman-silhouette

Image credit: notsogoodphotography on Flickr

But back to being tired. We go from being tired and uncomfortable to being in pain and tired. Even if you have a relatively easy labour, it still takes time to recover and heal. If you have a C-section, however, you spend the first few days needing significant help taking care of your own baby and then the better part of six weeks healing from major abdominal surgery. And all this while having to take care of a baby and learn to nurse (if you choose or are able to do so), and don’t tell me that’s not painful and exhausting too.

Meanwhile, the male (or any other partner, in fact) has no pregnancy woes (aside from listening to his, ahem, whiny wife) and no part of his body is traumatized during the birth. He doesn’t have to deal with engorged breasts or stitches or bleeding. His hair doesn’t start falling out in clumps. He doesn’t have night sweats so bad he has to sleep on a towel for several months. No, all of this joy – pregnancy, birth, the postpartum period – is relegated to one person in the process and it happens to be the person who is also the one who tends to do a lot of the baby care in the early days.

Like I said, pregnancy was not well thought out.

12 weeks down, 28 to go.

 

Filed Under: Hard things, Pregnancy · Tagged With:
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