Robin | Farewell Stranger

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Pregnancy

May 2, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Are you familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? The idea is that lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed, as represented by the graphic below. So humans’ basic needs – food, water, shelter, sleep, etc. – have to be taken care of before we can move on to security, love and belonging, confidence and achievement, and, ultimately, the ability to be creative, spontaneous, and to take the moral high ground.

This theory is meant to explain our motivations. Movement through these levels isn’t implied to be linear or even consecutive. We can bounce from one level to the other, and occupy different levels at the same time, especially when dealing with different issues.

And that’s pretty much all I remember from Psych 101.

In any case, I can totally see how this theory would apply to my own life. I was thinking about this as it relates to pregnancy and I think this situation really warrants its own very specific hierarchy of needs.

I figure it would look something like this:

I am maybe, sort of, almost pondering working my way into the purple layer. But honestly, most of the time I’m still stuck down in the orange. And I’m okay with that. Just don’t eat my Cheerios.

Filed Under: Pregnancy ·

Away

May 1, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

We (the collective we) do this all the time, don’t we? We say, “We should go away for the weekend.” Or, “I need a vacation.” We look wistfully at pictures of serene (or exciting) places and reminisce about the last time we had a proper vacation. And then we sigh and carry on.

I’m horrible about doing this. I work for an airline and the only time I used my flight benefits in the last four months was to go to Blissdom (which was handy, to be sure). People I work with go to Vegas for the weekend or to the next province for the afternoon. Or to Amsterdam for 3 days.

I’m not quite that ambitious, but we have talked about going to San Diego for a weekend. I’d like to go back home and see friends and family. I’d really like to book myself a tropical vacation but it might be a while before that happens. (Although… baby-moon? Maybe.)

As we were coming up to Easter I started to muse aloud about going away for the weekend. Just an hour from here, into the mountains. We needed a change of scenery.

So we went.

Frozen, but not for long.

As is typical, it was a last-minute decision. My mom had come to visit and my brother had gone to Australia (for two days – on flight benefits. See what I mean?) and my pregnant-with-twins sister-in-law was here on her own. So we decided to take them with us.

Somewhere in there, they're fly fishing under the coal bridge.

It took me a while to find a place that (a) had a vacancy and (b) would be able to sleep our odd assortment of family. But I found one, we shipped the dog to my mother-in-law’s and went.

We didn’t even do a lot – none of the adventurous things I had been pondering. We went for dinner. We went for lunch. We hid Easter eggs. And we walked.

A ha! O ho! Tracks in the snow. Whose are these tracks and where do they go?*

Out there in the silence, with occasional sounds of crunching snow, it’s easy to feel like a mere speck in the universe. Other things fade away and life’s most basic things are what feel important. Like sunshine and flowing water. Like tracks of animals who came before and who worry less about work-life balance and more about the balance of existence.

Every kid has to rattle a stick on a bridge once in his life.

And like the first time a small boy rattles a stick on a metal bridge.

Who was Daisy? And did she find peace in the mountains?

This environment suggests quiet and observation. It makes me stop and think. And it leaves me with a feeling I can’t describe.

No words necessary.

Which is fine, because sometimes no words are necessary.

*For bonus points, name that (very good) children’s book.

Filed Under: Happy things, Photos · Tagged With: family, favourite activities, living life, perspective, photos, weekends

10 Random and Irrational Wishes

April 29, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

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).

I wish the laundry would fold itself instead of sitting there mocking me with its increasing wrinkliness.
I wish I didn’t have to pee three times a night.
I wish my child would finally understand that jumping on me is a Very Bad Idea. Ditto poking me, hitting me and licking me.
I wish work weeks were only four days long. Or three. I could get a lot done in three days. Just try me.
I wish someone would make a really awesome pair of maternity underwear.
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.
I wish someone would develop a teleportation device already so I can go and visit my friends.
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.)
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.)
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: lists, rants

The Power of Truth

April 26, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

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.

Image credit: auro on Flickr

Filed Under: Happy things, Pregnancy · Tagged With: antenatal depression, anxiety, community, gratitude, perspective, we're not alone

No Joy

April 25, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

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.