Situational adjustments

I have laughed and smiled more today than I have all month. When I had my horrible week back at work away from my son earlier this month, I vowed that I was not just going to take a pill to cope. I was going to do something to make myself happy. I started working from home for part of the week so I could type emails and participate in conference calls while a baby slept on my chest. It was supposed to make things better. I was supposed to feel better.

Except things didn't really get that much better. I was still sad and stressed and angry. I worried about getting things done. I obsessed about things people said or did. I didn't eat much. I still cried more that usual.

I came home late Thursday night after visiting my parents and realized we were on our last clean diapers and Ian didn't have any bottles prepped for the next day. As I prepared everything for morning, I stomped around the house and muttered pissy things to no one in particular. Rich had gone to bed earlier because he didn't feel so great, but I was just annoyed that he hadn't thought about what Ian needed. It was a classic case of my being annoyed that he didn't do something because I shouldn't have to remind him.

Friday I talked to my therapist Gary. I told him I was sad and mad and generally unhappy with life. I read all these pamphlets on postpartum depression but they didn't seem to fit. I don't think I'm a bad mother. I don't think about doing harm to myself or my baby. I don't even really cry all the time. I'm just pissed off and anxious.

Gary theorized that the hormones I'm dealing with are making me unable to handle my standard levels of anxiety and obsessive behavior. So while normally I'd be able to blow off something someone said or a minor inconvenience, I'm not letting it go. When I bitched about everything going on he asked what I wanted to make it better. I told him I wanted everyone who's doing things that piss me off to stop being that way, but that's impossible because they've been this way for years and won't quit any time soon. Changing every goddamn person on the planet seemed like a daunting task, so it just made me waffle between being sad and mad.

Jeremy's mom had a great saying of "if you have a problem with everyone in the world, maybe it's not everyone, maybe it's just you." I don't think she was talking about postpartum hormones when she told Jeremy this, but it seems fitting now too. I'm not able to change everything that upsets me, so I need help making it not upset me so much.

I ended up with a prescription for Zoloft after talking to a tiny little Filipino woman who reminded me of the Oracle from the Matrix. She diagnosed me with "situational adjustment with mixed emotions". Sounds pretty obvious, really. I'm not depressed. I'm just fretty and have an overactive sense of what's fair. In all my ranting to Gary I actually quoted Buddha that "life is suffering." That may be the case, but it doesn't mean we need to suffer through life.

Half a pill at bedtime and I woke up a new person. Well, actually, I woke up the same old person I used to be. I've missed me.

Living Out Loud volume 13: Drinkin' buddies

It's been a while and I assure you I'm still alive. This month has just been a little hectic. Last weekend was Ian's first plane trip to Boston and my mother came with us to watch him while Rich and I were doing our conference duties. In addition to being a great babysitter, it was a treat to have that much time to just chat with Mom. One thing I noted was several of her stories involved my grandparents and her friends' parents drinking. I think every single friend my mother had as a kid had at least one alcoholic parent. Apparently it was just the thing to do. Amazingly, my mother hardly drinks herself.

This brings me to our Living Out Loud theme for the month. Tell me about your relationship with alcohol. Are you a cheap date? Is your liver about to secede from your body in protest? Did you have a great experience the first time you got drunk? Do you even remember the first time you got drunk? Are you the perennial designated driver? Do you have a really great "no shit there we were" story?

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each issue above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, February 7th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

Mosey up to the bar and bear your soul to the bartender. It's just between us.

Addicted to love

I cried more in the last week than I think I have in years. Ian started day care on Monday. Monday was solidly okay. His "teachers" are very sweet, his day care is across the street from our office, I nurse him at lunch and he's still getting cloth diapers and plenty of tummy time. He's fine. Rich is fine. Work is fine. The very sweet Hispanic ladies watching my child are fine. I am definitely NOT FINE.

Every day from 4 to 5pm, I watched the clock waiting for when I could go get my son. I would scoop him up, drive him home, extract him from his car seat bucket and spend the entire evening sitting in the recliner with him, crying. I didn't care what we had for dinner. I didn't care what TV we watched. I would muster enough energy to pack his bottles and diapers and clothes for the next day but that was about it. I didn't wash my hair again after Monday morning because it didn't seem to matter.

Needless to say, this has been hard on Rich. He's desperately trying to be supportive and stay positive. He would say, "baby, you're holding him right now. He's fine." and I would look up at him incredulously and sob, "but in less than 12 hours I have to give him away again!" I would wake up in the middle of the night, look over at the clock and start crying because I'd only get to stay in bed with Ian for another three hours. I carry stress in my shoulders and by Wednesday I couldn't turn my head to the left anymore. It's still sort of hard to look down and to the right. My blood sugars have been high all week because I don't have all those happy baby chemicals to keep them in check like before.

By Wednesday night I was a mess. I cried all night in the recliner. I woke up Thursday crying. I cried the whole way to work. I cried while I dropped Ian off and drove over to work. I sat in Rich's office and cried. I sat in my office and cried. I called people and cried to them on the phone. I took my lunch and went over to feed my son and cried in the rocking chair while I held him and those nice Hispanic ladies handed me tissues. I left work early because I'd given myself a headache from all the crying.

In amongst all that crying I lamented to Rich that I just missed Ian so much it hurt. Trying to stay positive, he said, "you missed me when I lived in Richmond but you survived. You still see Ian at lunch. If we didn't work together you'd see our son more than you see me." I wanted to scream at him, "I MADE HIM! I MADE HIM AND HE'S NOT HERE WITH ME AND THERE'S A HOLE IN ME WHERE HE SHOULD BE!" but I just looked away and dripped tears on my keyboard.

It's not a logical thing. It feels like someone has taken my arms from me. My arms are very safe over at appendage day care. And I can go visit my arms at lunch. I just can't have my arms back until after 5pm. Meanwhile all I want to do is scream or sob because I'M MISSING PART OF ME AND THIS HURTS SO BAD! I know in my logical brain that he's fine, but the mammal part of me cannot get over that there may be a mountain lion across the street trying to eat my baby and I have to get to him now! And that mammal part is not something I can just turn off from 8am-5pm Monday through Friday.

Everyone says it gets better. Humans adapt to survive and I suppose I can't cry forever. But now I have a lot more sympathy for drug addicts. This cold turkey stuff is not going so well for me.