Friday

March 7, 2011 by ·

Monday morning. At work.

“How was Friday?” asked my friend and colleague.

Friday…Friday…

“I can’t remember Friday.”

“You had an appointment in the afternoon.”

Oh. Right. Friday.

How could I have forgotten Friday?

It was supposed to be a normal enough day. Meetings and work to do in the morning, time to eat lunch, zip out to my doctor’s office to talk about weaning off meds. Then something significant happened at work, meetings got interrupted and I barely had time to eat lunch before hightailing it to my doctor’s office, where, after getting stuck in traffic, I arrived 10 minutes late – a fact that was curtly pointed out by the receptionist before she stuck me in a room and left me to wait another 10 for the doctor who was apparently not so anxious to get her last appointment finished after all.

Friday was supposed to be about how I can do this. How I’m feeling all right and I’m ready and I’m going to break up with those stupid green pills. Except I’m not. And I knew that would be the case even before I got there.

When I booked the appointment – after procrastinating for over a week to make the call – I wanted the advice to be along these lines: “Yep, sure! Here’s how you do it and here’s what you can expect. Now go next door to the friendly pharmacist – the one who told you, when you went to pick it up the first time, that this medication can cause sexual side effects, isn’t he helpful? – and get a lower dose. Taper slowly and you’ll be fine!”

That’s not what she said, of course. She asked all kinds of questions about how I’m doing and what I’ve done to address my issues and what kind of support I have and all the usual things that constitute proper care. And then she suggested it’s probably too early.

It’s a question of math, apparently. However long you had symptoms is how long you should be on meds before trying to wean, and it hasn’t been that long for me. It actually doesn’t matter, because I’m not ready to come off and I know it.

I didn’t actually tell her that – I was determined to get through one appointment with a health professional without breaking down in floods of tears (and I did! Gee, I’m so proud.). Instead, after a long discussion about timing and considerations and implications, we decided it might be wise for me to come back in April and have the discussion again and start weaning at that time.

I appreciated the support, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen. Between a family issue and a couple of other life issues last week, my view of the world is starting to feel a little bit like this:

It’s a lovely view, but that cliff is feeling awfully close and I have no idea what’s around that corner.

On Saturday, all I could see was that cliff. And I thought I was going to fall off of it.

On Sunday, I spent the day totally mad at myself for finding myself back in this place after thinking I was out of it.

Today, at work, I spent the morning trying not to hyperventilate. I looked at my office door and wanted so badly to close it, but I knew if I did I would sit in front of my computer and cry and the road would crumble and the cliff would be real.

Now, after some time spent thinking about other things and a few deep breaths and a tiny little voice at the back of my head saying, “You don’t have to let this happen,” I’m feeling…okay. Just okay. (Scared shitless, actually, but same difference.)

But that’s okay. I don’t know where I am on the path, but I’m still on the path. The cliff is there, but this time it’s not the only thing I can see.

And, at least for right now, I’m still packin’ Prozac. And it’s going to be that way for a while, so I may as well enjoy the view.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: , ,

Black & White

February 1, 2011 by ·

“I can’t do this.”

“I’m not cut out for this.”

“Yes, I do think moms who stay at home by choice are lucky. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.”

“I’m not as good a mom as [insert name here].”

“My husband is totally a better mom than I am.”

“I CAN’T DO THIS!!”

This is my internal dialogue. It’s what I tell myself. Heck, it’s what I tell other people. But I got called on it today.

It’s not the first time. People have been telling me, all along, that I’m a good mom. That, “you are, too, good at this. Shut up.” That he loves me and I love him and I care for him and meet his needs and feed him broccoli and all this is what being a mom is about.

But my head tells me I’m not. I’m just not. The experience of being a mom is not what I thought it would be, and I don’t act the way I thought I would, and therefore I’m not good at it.

It’s all hooey, of course.

I’m going to say that again, because I need to start to believe it: It’s all hooey, of course.

Last week I wrote about the last Sunday. My husband has changed his working day to Saturdays (ah, the freedom of freelance) because we think that might work better for me. So last weekend was the first Saturday I was on solo-mom duty. It went all right. Better. Except I think I managed to distort my expectations such that I thought it would be perfect. Perfect! Or at least totally fine. I even put the beginnings of a post in draft on Friday night (oh, the arrogance). A post that was going to be all about how well I managed and how from here on things were going to be different. (Perfect!) But they weren’t, and I’m still thinking about it, so I didn’t finish that post.

But in reality it was actually totally fine. The short version is that Connor was out of sorts in the morning so he and dad didn’t go to gymnastics. I slept in and when I got up they were hangin’ on the couch. Rich left for work, Connor and I hung out and played some more and pretty soon he was standing before me saying, “Mama, I’m ready to go in my bed.”

All righty, then!

Up we went. Milk, stories, all tucked in. And then meltdown.

“I don’t want to sleep! I’M DONE!” (Have I mentioned this is my favourite phrase? Really, it makes my heart sing with anger and frustration joy.)

I tried a few things and then gave up, because that’s not a battle I choose to fight. We hung out downstairs some more and I managed to get him to eat something finally, but it quickly became clear he wasn’t feeling well. At a certain point I decided he really needed to try a nap. Went back upstairs, told him he could sleep in my bed. MELTDOWN.

[We interrupt this post to acknowledge that this isn’t the short version after all. Sorry about that.]

Anyway… He cried and cried. And cried. I picked him up and held on to him and told him I would sit with him and read a book, hoping that would calm him down. He cried some more. “I don’t want to sleep!”

Finally said he just wanted a cuddle. Two minutes of that and he wanted to lie down. Two more minutes and he was asleep.(“Ha! I knew you were tired…”)

He only slept for 40 minutes and woke up right as I was (finally) stepping out of the shower. And he cried and cried in the way little boys do when they aren’t feeling well and they just want their mama. So we went downstairs and sat on the couch and he fell asleep again. On me. This hot, sweaty little boy slept on me for half an hour and it was lovely. It’s times like that where I really feel like a mom. That is something I can do for him. In those moments, I can make him feel better and I catch a glimpse of the part of me that is the mom I always pictured myself being.

However, this meant our plans for the afternoon got thrown out the window. Dog didn’t get walked, husband had to bring home groceries. But we managed. And I didn’t lose it.

When I told my counsellor about this today she said, “What is it about that where you didn’t do well?”

“I had moments where I hated it and thought, ‘I can’t do this!'” I said.

“But what about that couldn’t you do? What could you possibly have done differently?”

All right, I see where she’s going with this.

My experience of being a mom is not having everything planned and having all those plans go perfectly. (No one’s is, though I’m just going to put it out there: some people’s experiences are a lot closer to this than mine.)

My experience of being a mom is as someone who tends to be a bit on the sensitive side. I have less patience than my husband. So he copes with these things better than I do.

Upon having this pointed out to me part of me thinks, “Please, no.” Tell me this isn’t my reality now. I’m waiting for it to get to be what I expected. I’m waiting for it to feel easy. But it’s not going to. Right? It’s not, is it? This is what being a mom is, isn’t it? At least for me.

And maybe all of this – this and this and this (and yes, this!) – is what my experience is.

Maybe “good” is relative.

Maybe the definition of a “good” mom doesn’t come in black and white.

 

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

Loud

January 26, 2011 by ·

He’s screaming in the car seat again. This kid has lungs, there’s no doubt about it. How can a three-month-old scream so loud?? It’s a trigger for me – the screaming, the noise – and I can’t take it any more.

———

It’s been a day much like any other. We went to a play date with my moms’ group (which is less a play date and more a breastfeeding-fest, but whatever. We all need to get out of the house whether it screws with the nap schedule or not).

In my mind, my son is always loud. He’s loud when he wakes up. He’s loud when he wants to eat. He’s loud when he’s fussy for some reason that, try as I might, I cannot identify. In my mind, our play dates involve a bunch of snuggly or sleeping babies (the others) and one fussy one (mine). So we bounce. Or we walk. But usually we bounce. Whatever we do, it generally doesn’t involve me sitting on the couch with a sleeping baby on my lap.

Sanity-saving “play date” over, we went home for a nap. Except my kid doesn’t like to nap. It doesn’t matter if I rock him, nurse him to sleep, swaddle him. It doesn’t matter if I put on white noise, music or nothing. Nothing helps. As soon as his head hits that crib, he screams.

No “me” time, then.

I find a way to eat lunch with a baby who likes to be bounced. Or maybe I don’t – I can’t remember. Some days I’d rather prevent the screaming than eat.

Time ticks on. I’d give anything to be able to put this kid down in another room so I can just be by myself for a few minutes, but he’s having none of it. So we bounce some more.

In the afternoon, it’s time to give the dog his daily exercise. “A ha!” I think. We can go to the dog park and then I can hit Starbucks on the way home. It will be a little treat for me.

But the dog park is a 15-minute drive and and the kid hates the car seat…

I decide I can deal with it. I need to get out of the house (again) so off we go to the dog park.

I manage to get there without going crazy. Manage to get him strapped into the Ergo without dropping him on the concrete. The laps of the dog park in the cool, fall air are good for me, but I’m painfully aware of one overwhelming thought: how badly I wish to be out here without a baby attached to my chest. Not a mom, just a woman with her dog.

The laps are done and the dog is panting. Back to the car we go, with Starbucks only a few blocks away.

Once in the car seat, the screaming begins again.

———

Why? Why does he do this?!

“Connor, what’s wrong, buddy? Mama’s right here. We’re going to go to Starbucks and then go home and we can bounce some more. You just have to hold on a little longer.”

Screaming.

“Connor, please calm down. I’m right here, love. Just hang in there. No more screaming, little one. Shhh.”

I just want a few minutes where I’m not tending to someone else’s needs, even if it’s in the car with a cup of hot chocolate. I can taste it – warm and chocolate-y and mine.

“Connor, please. Be quiet, little one.”

Screaming.

I can’t take it anymore.

“CONNOR! Shut up! Mama wants to go to Starbucks!”

A brief silence. I’ve scared him. And then I know what loud really sounds like.

Starbucks isn’t gonna happen.

Instead we pull into the parking lot of Canadian Tire and I take him out. Bounce him. Try to calm him down without being overly concerned that there are people walking calmly into the store and coming calmly back out with hoses and windshield scrapers and things while my baby screams because he has the worst mother ever.

I just wanted a hot chocolate.

———–

This post is part of Writing Wednesday, which is part of For the Love…of Blogging. Katie and Miranda have asked us to write today, and write well. This is my exploding moment.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: ,

Not So Fast

January 17, 2011 by ·

I got through yesterday but then 1 a.m. came and the kid was awake.  I got him calmed down and tucked in again, but he wanted me to sit in the rocking chair while he fell asleep and last night I couldn’t do it.

He wiggled. Turned over. Turned over again. Looked up to see if I was still there.

He wasn’t asleep.

At moments like this I can feel my patience leaving me, as though it’s a physical sensation. First it’s just a tightness in my chest, then I feel my patience start to flow like a stream. It begins in my shoulders and goes down my arms. By the time it gets to my fingertips it’s too late to grasp on. (At times, when I’m hanging on by a thread, I find myself opening and closing my hands as if to keep what patience I have from slipping away entirely. That’s when the little voice in my brain pipes up. “You’re acting crazy,” it says.)

Last night I felt the irrational side of my brain start to take over, and I let it. “I can’t sit here until he falls asleep every time he wakes up in the middle of the night,” it asserted. And furthermore, “I don’t want to.”

Plus, I had to pee.

He had been quiet for a couple of minutes so I got up, knowing full well he’d look up to find me gone and start wailing. And he did.

I went back in but it was too late. He had lost it and I was losing it. “I’m DONE!” he yelled. Wouldn’t calm down, wouldn’t lie down. Wanted to sleep with me.

And I couldn’t do it.

“Lie down so I can tuck you back in or I’m going back to bed,” I said. “Last chance.”

He didn’t. So I did.

The shrieks of “MAMA! MAMA! MAMA!” brought my husband from the next room. He, less tired than I, was willing to have a roommate for the night. They left and I stayed in our guest room – my sanctuary – and wondered how it’s possible that in no time at all I can go from coping to NOT AT ALL.

Is it a mommy fail? Or do we all have moments like this?

Filed Under: Uncategorized · Tagged With: , ,

What If

January 14, 2011 by ·

Of course that would happen. The night I write about my thoughts about postpartum depression as a mental illness (or not) I mistakenly tweet the post from my “professional” account instead of my mom/PPD account. That figures. Really, it does. That’s just the way my life tends to work.

I knew that would happen eventually. I guess that’s the problem with tweeting when I’m tired – I don’t pay attention to which picture of me is associated with which account. And out it goes.

I didn’t realize I’d done that until this morning when I got an @-reply from someone I work with who commented on it. Got that full-on, heart-stopping panic again. Tried to push it down, but the Oh.My.God took over. But, to give myself some credit, I had a good freak out and then I realized there wasn’t much I could do about it if people had seen it. (Okay, before coming to that logical realization I deleted the tweet. I’m not that courageous yet.)

A good friend and colleague – who was already in the know and who was the lucky audience for my freak-out – always says the right sort of calming things, and he came through again. In addition to walking me through the “So what? Some people might know now” process, he did what he always does. He cracked jokes.

“Social media sucks.”

Cue laughter. Yes, it does sometimes.

“Don’t you hate it when the real you breaks through the person you pretend to be?”

Ha ha. Also funny. And also true.

But then he asked the provocative question.

“What if the good thing about this is that you don’t have to pretend anymore? What if that mask can come off now?”

What if.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »