Santa Daygo

We've moved past the "see Diego" and now it's "You goin' to Santa Daygo?"

I can't win.

Six Weird Things Meme

Six Weird Things Meme
I was tagged for this meme by Dawn. THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the 6 weird things about you. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says you are tagged in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

1. I just started listening to Broadway musical soundtracks again after about 5 years. I quit because they made me depressed that I was never going to make it to Broadway. They still depress me, and I cry while singing along because I still don't think I'll ever make it, but I love to sing and the "broadway" style is a good fit for my voice (but not as good as opera). I'd like to say I'd be happy with doing local community theatre once Freyja/other babies are older and I'm thinner. I'm just not sure that would be enough.

2. I hold people at arm's length until I can feel reasonably sure they're trustworthy. I don't make friends easily. I'm socially inept.

3. I cry at everything. I'm emotional! I always have been. Hallmark commericals? Check. I bawled through the last 20 minutes of Lilo and Stitch the other night. I know THAT has to do with being a mom, but the rest is just me.

4. I LOVE knock-knock jokes, bad puns, and bad jokes that only make third graders laugh.

5. I love using "SAT" words to throw people off. I'm aware it makes me look pretentious and I don't care, it makes me giggle.

6. I used to be part of the "furry" fandom.

And I won't tag anybody, since I'm a snob and I don't really like memes much (but I like Dawn, Kat, and Genie (I keep finding more people who tagged me as I catch up this afternoon, and I really do like you all) so I did this one).

Finances

Finances are looking up around here. The bills continue to be paid on time. There continues to be more than a few cents left in my checking account when my next check direct deposits. I haven't overdrafted in four months (DH is another story, but we won't go there. There's a reason we keep separate checking accounts). Bad debt is being paid down. This last pay period we did not have to dip into the $50 I have direct deposited into my savings account whatsoever. I usually get in there for $20 once a pay period just to have some cash on hand, but I was able to take cash from my checking this time without nail-biting worry.

The best part is we're not waiting on tenterhooks for our tax return to pay bills.

No, we're waiting on tenterhooks for our tax return to buy a new-to-us car. We're going back to being a two-car household, and about damn time. Whoo hoo!

Diego and the Wonder Pets

Why is it that when I mention my trip to San Diego, Freyja looks at me and asks "You goin' uppa kye to Diego? You gonna see Diego, you gonna see Baby Jaguar? I wanna go wif you, me too in airpane, uppa kye wif you see Diego too?"

Thank you, Nick JR. Thank you, daycare. I know they don't watch that much TV there (the state limits them to 2 hours/day), and I don't really care that she watches TV - she plays and then watches a couple minutes and then wanders off, but DAMN are those shows annoying when daycare is closed and Mumma is stuck at home with her all day. No more Nick. I think I like Playhouse Disney programming better.

Has anybody else been subjected to the Wonder Pets? What's up with the duckling having a lisp?

All this drivel makes me long for the Electric Company and classic Sesame Street. Maybe even Pinwheel, the Polka Dot Door, and Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood.

I Want to Love You Madly

You crawled into our bed at 5am today. I heard "Daddy, I gotta go potty!" and then I dozed back off. I woke up a few minutes later to eskimo kisses and "I love you too, Mumma. You go back-a-seep, OK? I gonna cuddle wif you, OK?"

Little one, if you only knew what those little charming exchanges do for me. They give me fire in my belly, awaken the fierce and protecting mama who has to save and protect your innocent sweetness from the harsh, cruel world. They make me snuggle up to you, cuddle you close, tangle my fingers in your silky baby curls and pray, beg for the world to stop and hold still forever and let me keep you close to me just as you are. They don't last, those moments.

When I came back from the potty myself, you patted the quarter of my pillow you weren't occupying. "You yay down, wight heah. Wight heah, Mumma."

"Wight heah, Mumma."

My darling girl, I never want to be anywhere else.

Postpartum Abandonment

For January's Pulsate Olympics.

I suppose the feeling of abandonment started in the labor room, when Kerwin left me to go talk on the phone as the Stadol wore off. It continued as he slept soundly for eight hours, snoring away on the little cot in my postpartum room, as I attempted to cope with being sliced open from hip to hip and having a new little person to take care of besides. I couldn’t get up from the bed, and the nurses shook their fingers at me and said “Don’t you fall asleep with the baby in your bed!!!!” so I was up until 2 AM, hopped up on morphine with my beautiful new baby, who I couldn’t stop kissing and smelling and trying to get latched on properly, while I tried in vain to call to Kerwin to wake him up to put Freyja in her plastic bassinet, and the one response I got was, “Leave me alone, I’m sleeping. I was up early.”

Really? I was up at the same time, and I had major surgery plus 12 hours of labor today. But you sleep, honey. You just go for it.

I finally had to call the nurses to come and get Freyja at about 2 AM, said I needed a little sleep, but please bring her back when she woke so I could feed her. They came back at 4 AM with a little bottle of soy formula and one of those supplemental nursers, the one that you have to tape above your nipple. She told me, “Your milk hasn’t come in yet. Your baby is hungry. You have to give her this formula. You just fed her two hours ago and she’s hungry again, you’re not making enough milk.”

Everything, EVERYTHING in my brain was screaming that this was wrong, I wasn’t supposed to have milk yet, just colostrum. Breastfed babies need to eat about every 1 and a half to two hours, this is normal. However, my baby was crying louder than my brain could handle, so I let them tape the little tube to my breast and let her eat the nasty soy formula (never to this day do I understand why it was soy formula). They took her away again.

I was awoken again at 6 AM by the family practice doctor that was on call for Freyja’s doctor. He was nice and smiling, said I had a perfect baby and that her regular doctor would come to see her on Monday before we were discharged. I fell back asleep and the baby was back at 8 AM, with the young morning nurse who had GIVEN HER A BOTTLE OF FORMULA without my permission. I just nodded numbly, I didn’t even know what to say to that. Getting mad was no use, I had no backup from my snoring husband.

I had visitors intermittently the rest of the three days I spent in the hospital. Kerwin, however, went right back to work on Sunday morning. He came on Sunday night for a couple of hours, then went home to “clean”. He also worked Monday (when the hospital records woman came in and was beastly to me and caused me to cry profusely, refusing to believe that I was married because my last name was different from ‘the baby’s father’) and went his first day of college classes in the new semester on Monday night as well. Thankfully, his instructor told him to go be with his wife and new baby instead of spending 3 hours in class. I didn’t even get any flowers.

When we came home on Monday night, there were dishes and laundry everywhere.

Want to guess who ended up doing all those dishes and laundry 4 days after major abdominal surgery while trying to not become sleep deprived, shower every day, and take care of a newborn (who, thankfully, was VERY mellow)? Yeah. That’d be me, because he was right back to work (regular FT job plus being editor of the college newspaper which caused more than a few incredibly late nights) and college classes. I don’t know if it’s even fair to blame him for abandoning me. We were pretty broke and needed the money, but I also needed the support that I never got. All of my family lives within a 20 mile radius, and nobody called to offer to come and sit with Freyja so I could sleep, or help me with housework, or just come and visit to keep me from going batshit crazy. Nobody called at all, except my folks. Granted, my folks both work full time as well, and my mom took a week of vacation over my due date, which was two weeks too early.

The crazy thoughts started coming about two days after we got home. I kept telling myself that it was normal to want to put Freyja in her carseat, strap her in, and leave her out by the road for somebody else to come and take care of. After all, I was having no trouble sleeping, or sleeping too much, and that was the major harbinger of PPD according to the books, magazines, and websites. I didn’t have time to be crazy, I had too much to do being a new mom with an absentee husband. I was neurotic in checking on her to make sure she was still breathing, feeling incredibly guilty that I wished she just didn’t exist.

I tried to make up for the thoughts by cuddling her and singing to her, and loving on her all the time. I wanted so desperately to feel that “bonding” that all the books talked about. I really wanted to feel differently, and I knew what I was feeling wasn’t right, but I had no words to ask for help, nor did I feel that I would be worth my salt as a mother if I did. At least I had a husband who did what he could when he was home. Lots of single moms did all of this on their own, and no complaining. What right did I have to complain, or to ask for help, or to admit that I was really having a hard time?

Thankfully, my physical recovery from the caesarean birth was textbook. I took it easy as much as I could, I slept when Freyja slept except her morning nap, which I used to shower (to prove to myself I wasn’t crazy, I showered daily and was meticulous about my appearance and clothing) and hop online to get some form of socialization.

I still don’t know how I got through those first few months, much less the first six weeks. I lied on the PHQ at my six week postpartum appointment. I didn’t want to admit that I was weak. I didn’t want them to call CPS and have Freyja taken from me because of my horrible thoughts. I didn’t want to go to the psych ward. The fear of those interventions was crippling, and so I couldn’t admit my problems and concerns.

I am terrified to have another baby, because I hear that PPD gets worse. My words to Kerwin on the subject the other night were, “I’m scared to turn into Andrea Yates”.

I still think that I’m a terrible mother for thinking what I did when Freyja was so tiny. When people comment on how wonderful she is, or how smart, or how pretty, I feel guilty, because I couldn’t see how wonderful she was when she was a newborn because my brain doesn’t function properly. I hope that someday I can get past it.

Downcycling

I'm not even sure that's an appropriate word for me to use, since I've only been diagnosed with depression (minor episode, recurring, with aspects of Seasonal Affective Disorder), but I notice when things are worse. The depression diagnosis doesn't explain the occasional 2-3 week periods of being upbeat (I wouldn't call them manic, I don't lose control, I just feel...normal), periods I don't even notice until I start slipping back into the depressive state.

I put off rescheduling my therapy appointment for 2 weeks because I felt good. Then a friend remarked that I must be "so excited" since I'm heading to California in a few weeks for a conference, and I realized that no, I'm not really excited at all. I'm ambivialent. I'm going, I have to go, but I'm not looking forward to it nor am I dreading it.

That made me realized that I had started to feel bad again, so I called today to make an appointment. Obviously that is not the proper way to go about things. I don't even know how to approach this with my therapist. I don't want to look like that nutjob who diagnoses herself on the internet. There's got to be a better explanation than "minor depression, recurring" for the 2-3 weeks of upbeat moods and the 8-10 weeks of being so far down that I wish I would just not wake up in the morning, that life is not worth living, that i'm a terrible wife, a terrible mother, and that the husband and the spawn deserve so much better than me. I should probably find a way to admit to my therapist that yes, I do have thoughts of death and dying, but as scary as those thoughts are, they are not as scary as the prospect of being admitted to an inpatient treatment program. I am afraid that even if I refuse being admitted should it be suggested, they will petition and force me in. I spent two days in one before, and I have never felt more hopeless and frightened in my life.

I think I may need pharmacological therapy in addition to talk therapy. The SJW is just not cutting it any longer.

I'm Not Dead Yet

I've been feeling sort of blah, and so not blogging too much.

I'm still alive, though.

You're ON NOTICE!

The hubby sent this to me, and I just couldn't resist.

You can make your own here.

New Year, Old Goals, New Pants Size (hopefully)

Hey, it's 2007. Look at that!

I haven't made any resolutions. I don't really like resolutions all that much. I prefer to set goals, and since I'm still working on my goals from last year, I only made one new goal, which is:

To Just Calm The Fuck Down, In General

You heard it here first, I get worked up over the tiniest things. I fly off the handle very easily. My temper is short. My patience is thin. I freak out over little shit. If I come across as the endlessly calm mama on BabyCenter, it's only because I really want to be.

The rest of my goals, in no particular order (leftovers from last year):

1. Stand up for myself more at work

2. Keep going to therapy every 2 weeks, and actually get into my issues so I don't waste my money.

3. Join the gym and go every day (this one is on hold until we get the effing car situation figured out).

4. Eat properly and not beat myself up over little slip ups.

5. Keep up the house so it doesn't depress me and I don't work myself into a tizzy if people are coming over.

I'm wondering if I should add

6. Bug the hell out of doctor's office for samples of Vitamin Z.

And if said #6 would help with the rest of the goals. Ah well, I'll ask my therapist what her take is later this week.