All We are is Dust in the Wind

Maudlin title, yes. But I promise I'm not maudlin or morbid or even relatively depressed today. Although, truth be told, if I really put  my mind to it I could probably come up with a great case of anxiety.

One of my triggers (as I'm calling them, anyway) is the state of the kitchen. I don't care about crumbs or messy floors in there, but I care about the dishes situation. If it's a single day of dishes or just a couple things, it doesn't concern me. But if there are dishes on the counter, both sinks, and the stove I start to get a little frantic. My husband knows this, and he agreed to a schedule as to who is responsible to do dishes each day of the week.

He didn't do them yesterday.

I came upstairs this morning at the ripe old hour of 0400 because M decided that he wanted to be awake and demanded that I feed him. I turn into the kitchen after doing some creative footwork around the toys that O has left scattered (she's an expert at making a mess) and notice that the supper dishes are just piled into the sink and on the counter. I sigh. I feed M and relax on the couch, thinking that I can get some sleep in before O wakes up. No such luck, as T has his alarm set to what I like to call "trying to get the people two units over to wake up" volume, which wakes up O in the process. So O comes upstairs, and then proceeds to cry and whine because I told her that we're not going to the slide/park at 0545. I figure that because T is still home, if I take the kids downstairs to our room he can help me get them dressed and I can also get dressed. Again, no such luck. He says he has time to change O's diaper, but that's it. M decides this is a great time to start fussing.

So I'm frantically getting O dressed, who is not helping at all because she is 3 and also she really wanted to go to the park and wants daddy to take her, and getting myself dressed and T just kind of backs out of the room and goes upstairs to get his lunch ready for work. As M is starting to pick up volume and I'm digging around for clothes, T asks if I want him to warm up another bottle. I call up yes please, and figure he's going to put the bottle on and then leave.

Nope. We come upstairs and he faffs about for another 10 minutes or so. Seriously, husband? You're "running behind" so much that you can wander aimlessly for 10 minutes but can't help me get a toddler dressed while our infant is crying? Thanks.

Our morning did get better, in that I sat O down at the computer with some toast and a cup of water and M got another bottle. But M didn't nap in between the 0400 and 0630 feed, and so he was miserable. And then we went to Walmart to pick up some things before I dropped O off at daycare, so that was a nice adventure.

Anyway, back to the dishes.

I ran out of premade bottles (we make 6 at a time using the concentrated formula) around 1400, which meant that I needed to wash them. Which meant that I needed to clear the kitchen in order to do so. So I emptied and reloaded the dishwasher and washed the bottles. While technically today is my dishes day, I really should have only been doing the dishes that we used today.

This doesn't make me as frantic and concerned as it used to, like when I wasn't taking Zoloft. But I still don't like it. The entire drive to Walmart had me thinking about housework, which is where I was before meds.

As M has decided that his afternoon nap is going to be cut short, so will this post. Chat more later.

It Gets Easier

I find that every day that goes by, gets a little easier. Or maybe that's just the meds talking. Just kidding, there's no way that they can kick in that quickly. Or can they?

One thing I wasn't prepared for postpartum (and, I guess, a tiny little red flag towards my mental health) was just how much inexplicable rage I would be feeling. There would be moments of being around my husband that I just wanted to yell and scream at him for something he did or didn't do. The littlest thing would set me off, such as not cleaning up his cup off the table or not flushing the toilet. One especially bad morning, bottles hadn't been washed or made because he fell asleep and I had the baby screaming and the toddler following me around and I just lost it and punched the couch and kicked a bunch of things out of the way. My daughter decided that punching the couch looked like fun, so she did it too, but I was just SO INCREDIBLY ANGRY. I couldn't take it. And that wasn't the only moment I felt like that. I had a LOT of moments that I felt that mad. But I didn't tell my husband because it just felt wrong. I had realized that he wasn't actually in the wrong about these things, or that he wasn't THAT wrong in doing them, but I still couldn't get past the feeling that I was angry.

I've been feeling a lot more myself this week, since starting the anti-depressants. I don't know if things have ACTUALLY kicked in, or if it's all mental. I'm sure it's both. I'm thinking that the part of my brain that was freaking out and telling me that all these things were bad is now thinking "oh thank god, she's got something to help me".

I do still notice that I get really nitpicky with things, but I'm able to kind of just walk away from it now whereas before I was right up in there (like scrubbing a faucet with an old tooth brush) to get it all in order. In stressful situations - such as last night when both kids were crying as I was trying to cook supper (which turned out to be a disaster anyway, so them crying wasn't such a big deal) - I can step back and take a deep breath. As I sat on the toilet to pee and my baby was crying in the other room, I talked (out loud like a truly crazy person) to myself and said that it's okay that baby is crying. It's okay to leave him strapped into his chair for a minute so you don't pee your pants. It's okay that your daughter is crying because you wouldn't get her another cookie. All of that will still be there (oh god) when you're done your 2 minute pee break.

One downside I've found over the past four days, though, is that I get scatterbrained. For example, I was changing the sheets on my bed and came across an article of clothing from one of the kids. I went to put it into the laundry basket in my daughter's room, and ended up making her bed before I remembered that's what I was doing in my room. I have to almost remind myself as I'm doing something that that's what I'm doing. Or if there's an order I should be doing something - such as getting the baby's bottle, getting myself a glass of water, getting my daughter's snack as the bottle warms up - I have to say it out loud, almost like a mantra. "Bottle snack water. Bottle snack water". My daughter finds this awesome because then she'll say it too, but I'm hoping this is just a little bit of something that I can get past.

I'm hoping that every day gets a little easier, and I'm sure that it will as the kids get older. Granted, the first year of a child's life is just the pits anyway with all of the doctor's appointments and immunizations and growing and learning. But once I get into the swing of things, it'll get easier on my brain and easier on my body. I don't know how I'll be mentally after this, though. After knowing that there was something intrinsically wrong up in my noggin, I wonder if that will weigh on me and I'll need to work past that. I'm mentally aware that this isn't anything that I've done; rather, it's just the way that my body and hormones and brain are all interacting.

So to cap off today's post, I just want to say that so far today has been a good day. And yesterday and the day before were good days. Am I back to normal? Hell no. It's going to take me awhile to get back to my normal. But just so long as I have good days, I'll get there.

I'm Not Okay (Trust Me)

Ah the infamous song lyrics/song title from My Chemical Romance. When thinking about the lyrics, they don't actually pertain, aside from the chorus. But that's all that I had in my head yesterday.

Yesterday, I broke.

Started out normally and a good day, if I'm being honest. My son woke up at 6am which was fine, and he took his bottle no problem. By 845, I had both kids fed and had booked appointments for eye exams for me and my daughter, and for my son's first bout of immunizations. I was working on getting our weekly meal plan finalized so we could go grocery shopping when I started getting frantic. Today, I couldn't tell you WHY I felt so frantic, but it somehow got into my head that we had to be out the door by 10am.

So I took the kids downstairs, put the boy in the bassinet and let the girl run free because let's face it, trying to force a toddler to do something they don't want to is just futile. I stepped into the shower and for some reason, the first thought in my head was "It would be really easy to drown in here". Little man was crying his butt off in the bassinet, and I was starting to tear up in the shower.

"Get it together" I thought to myself, mentally slapping my cheeks and powering through the shower. Babies cry, that's just what they do. I got out of the shower and popped the soother in his mouth (fat lot that did) and then went on with my usual routine of toner, lotion, deodorant, etc. Except the baby wouldn't stop crying. And he was getting angrier. It didn't make sense, I thought, he had a fresh diaper and a full belly. He's started being fussy when he's tired, but that's why I put him in his bassinet. So he could get a nap in before we went to the grocery store.

All this time, toddler is running around being just a normal happy toddler. Which for some reason is just driving me nuts. And the crying increases and suddenly I'm the one crying. I'm trying to ask my baby why he's crying and why he can't just shut up for two seconds, and my toddler is asking me why the baby is crying and why mommy is crying.

And even more suddenly, I'm screaming at my newborn to shut up and I'm sobbing so hard that I can't breathe. I slammed my bedroom door closed so hard that the vent grate fell out of the ceiling and scared the living crap out of my baby. And I knew, in that instant, that I needed help. I needed someone else at home to deal with the kids because I just couldn't.

Please note that I never once picked up either of my kids during this. I left my son in the bassinet and left my toddler to her own running around.

I phone my husband at work, as I'm curled up in a naked ball on the floor in my son's room, bawling my eyes out. My husband says that he can't understand me because I'm crying too hard. I tell him I need him to come home, I can't handle it. I can't do it. He asks if me and the kids are physically okay, which I tell him that yes we're physically fine, but I need him home.

That 45 minutes waiting for him to come home was the hardest thing I've done. I laid down, still naked, in my bed, clutching my baby to me and trying to get him to settle down. My toddler laid beside me in the bed, her head on my shoulder saying "Mommy, don't cry. It's okay. Don't cry" which of course made me cry harder. My husband got home and my daughter runs up the stairs and says "hi daddy! Mommy's crying. Mommy's sad"

My husband comes into our bedroom and the first thing he says to me is "Call your doctor, get him to send a prescription to the pharmacy here. You need meds".

Were I in better shape, I would have fought him on the "need" for meds. But no, it was a need. It was an actual physical need to get SOMETHING to help balance out the hormones in my body. I called my doctor's office and even though he wasn't in yesterday, I made sure leave a message for the prescription to be sent. I told a couple friends about the trouble I was having, simply because I needed someone to know. I spent the rest of the day feeling wrung out and delicate, and forced myself to spend time with my family and my husband instead of hiding in our room and holing myself up.

Today, is a better day than yesterday. Today, I started Zoloft. Today, I hope, is the beginning of the path towards getting better. Today, I begin.

Getting Started

I figured that a little history into this would probably be ideal. Give a bit of a background as to where this all started, and hopefully I can tie things together in my noggin' and get on the track to feeling better. 

My first bout of depression started when I was in elementary school. Undiagnosed, and kind of unbeknownst to me at that time. I moved around a lot as a kid, not because I was bad but because of other extenuating circumstances. I went to one elementary school (the one right behind my house, actually) for kindergarten through half of grade 2, and then my stay-at-home-mom wanted to work outside of the house so I went to the same elementary school as my cousins. My grandmother was their caregiver, and she lived about 2 blocks away from us, so she would take me with her and we'd all go to school together. For grade 3, my dad's work transferred him to a town about 4 hours north of where we were currently living, so I went to school there for one year until he was transferred back to where we had just come from. Yay. 

It was at this new school that I went to where all the issues started. 

I don't know if it was because these kids had been together for the last 4 years, or if it was just a snotty east-side kid thing (we joke that there's a big divide between north-end kids, east-side kids, and west-side kids), but whatever it was this was when I first got teased for being a bigger kid. Which is ridiculous because most kids still have some baby fat on them at the age of 9. But whatever. 

This teasing went on for the rest of my elementary education, and even into high school. By the same people, of course. Why these people (typically the guys) felt the desire to make fun of someone's physique is beyond me, but that's kids for you. I guess I should have found solace that the guys made fun of me to my face whereas some of the girls would say things behind my back, but whatever. 

High school is, of course, a tumultous time for anyone regardless of how they feel about themselves. Add in several hundred more students that are the same age as you (as opposed to the, say, 50 you knew from elementary school) and things get dicey. The teasing did not relent, if anything it got more pointed and viscous. 

I was 14 the first time I thought about ending my life. I was miserable. Yes, I had friends, but in my warped mind I thought that they were faking it. Things got progressively worse the older I got, as I didn't have a single "boyfriend" until grade 12. My other girl friends had gone through a couple boyfriends by then, so I felt like there must be something wrong with me that I didn't have one. The first boyfriend I had was not a great guy, but I was so desperate to be liked (loved?) that I just went along with it. Thankfully I came to my senses and ended the relationship. Unfortunately, the next great adventure in my life was getting raped at 17 by a guy that ... well, if I'm being honest, I think we were possibly dating? But who can actually know this at 17. Regardless, I was not 100% on board with losing my virginity, but this guy didn't care. I ended things with him pretty much immediately after that, and told no one about what went on. I wasn't depressed or sad about that, I was mad. I was so angry that he took that from me and that I didn't have the choice. I'm still mad about it. 

After these guys, I finally met someone who was legitimately a nice guy. Sure, he was older than me (oh wait, so were the other two; 18 and 21 respectively) at the age of 19, and had his own place and didn't have a job and was a huge stoner. BUT... he didn't seem to care that I was still a little more hefty than most of the girls I was in school with. The first time we hung out, all we did was drive around talking for about 4 hours. And it was really nice. He was totally fine with watching movies and wearing sweatpants, just super chill. However, this relationship came with a price. My high school best friend made note that I wasn't hanging out with her at all since i started dating this guy, and everyone knows it's uteruses before duderuses (thank you Parks & Rec/Leslie Knope for that rhyme). So much to my extreme dismay, I broke up with this guy. And the night I did that, I legitimately tried to kill myself. 

I didn't get help in high school, but I feel like I should have. Actually, I KNOW that I should have. Maybe my parents should have pushed for it, maybe I should have admitted I needed help... Whatever it was, something should have been done. 

I got moderately better after I graduated, but I had a majorly skewed mentality about myself. My self worth was in the toilet, and i had no self-esteem. And what usually happens with that sort of combination? One tries to use physical affection as a way to create self-worth. Between graduating high school and meeting/starting to date my husband (3 years) I had one boyfriend that we actually labelled ourselves as boyfriend/girlfriend... and more where we didn't. This boyfriend and I were not meant to be, and our relationship was dicey at the best of times. I was more invested in it, more willing to give of myself than he was, and he was just not a nice person to me. I didn't see it at the time because I was just so relieved that there was someone legitimately interested in me, but looking back I just wonder why we even dated in the first place. 

Husband and I met when I was 20, and that's all she wrote on that remark. There were moments between then and before getting pregnant with my daughter where I was bummed out or sad, but I was able to snap out of those funks easily enough. 

Pregnancy with my daughter was a dream. Very easy, no complaints. Even though I had to have a c-section after being induced and in labour for 20 hours, it was fine. My recovery, while lengthy, was fine. I didn't develop any baby blues or anything like that, the only issue I had was a compulsion to pull out specific hairs (I'm blond, and for some reason I have these random black coarse weirdly wavy hairs in my head that I feel the need to pull out and examine). But I knew that wasn't a good thing to do, so I would force my hands to do other things - such as crochet - so that I wouldn't do it. End of story.

2.5 years later, I'm pregnant with our second child. This pregnancy was different in that I was incredibly nauseated in the first trimester to the point of requiring prescription anti-nausea drugs, that I ended up taking all throughout the pregnancy. With a toddler to take care of, I was more tired and more sore and yadda yadda. Our son was a stubborn kid, hiding for all ultrasounds and doppler readings for heart rate, and remained heads up in my ribs until the day he was born via scheduled c-section (we also tied my tubes that day - so done with kids!). My recovery from this surgery was so much better. I was up and moving sooner, feeling better. I did, however, get an infection in my incision at 5 days post-partum and required anti-biotics AND managed to get some sort of stomach issue at only 2 days post-partum where I didn't eat anything for about 2 weeks. I had to change a lot of my mentality because of these two issues, in that I didn't breastfeed like I was going to (was outputting more calories than I was taking in, plus I desperately needed to sleep off whatever infections I was fighting). I told my husband that if anything gave me post-partum depression, that would be it. 

Lo and behold, 4 weeks after that and I'm noticing little things about myself. I notice that I'm compulsively cleaning my house, but only specific rooms/areas. I can't just leave things alone or else I get really anxious. I'm snapping at my husband if I ask him to help out and he doesn't do it RIGHT THAT SECOND. I had one instance where my newborn son was crying and wouldn't stop and I was legitimately yelling at him, telling him to be quiet.

It was then that I knew I needed help. 

I started this blog to help me get out all the things I was feeling, in hopes that I can work through them without feeling the judgement from a face-to-face confession. Fingers crossed for me that it works. 

You Don't (Okay, Maybe You Do) Know What It's Like

PPD aka Post-Partum Depression is... hard. Some days, you're feeling great and just like your normal (whatever your normal is) self. Other days, you're suddenly riddled with inexplicable rage, followed by anxiety about that rage, followed by the tears and horrible feelings about why you were feeling that way to begin with. And then there are the days when you are just extremely low. Down in the dumps doesn't even begin to explain how poorly you're feeling, and every single thing that every person tries to do to help just makes you feel worse. 

Suddenly, every flaw that you may have thought about yourself is magnified and in the forefront of your thoughts. Every bad thought you've had about someone rises up to the surface, and you feel like a total asshole for thinking that. Every minor worry or concern is suddenly yelling at you to change or make it better. And you can't. You just simply can't. 

Join me on my journey of getting through this. Here's hoping I can make it through relatively unscathed.