Category — Me Me Me

The start of a new year always gets me thinking about resolutions and other nonsense.

This year, 2012, — the final year of our planet’s existence, as everyone well knows — I’m determined to make a good one. I was on autopilot last year. I’ve been on autopilot for some years now, actually. But there’s something awakening within me. I’m caring about my life and the meaning of it. I’m caring about the impact I make on the world, however small that impact may be. Lately, I feel like I’m being guided toward a new path.

Yup, I’m getting all transcendental on your asses.

For many years, I was really into yoga and meditation. I read about Buddha, meditated over crystals, wrote esoteric phrases in little black notebooks. I observed a lot. Things meant something to me. Colors were more vivid, people were more alive. I was more alive.

I may also have been taking a lot of acid or other hallucinogens at the time. But that’s really not the point.

THE POINT, my friends, is that I’ve lost myself somewhere along the way. I stopped feeling compassion, stopped feeling joy. I’ve been sucked into a cycle of self-imposed self-punishment. I’ve spent a long time believing I’m meant to suffer, to pay, to wither inside. I’m not allowed to feel good. I used to punish myself in physical ways; now, it’s emotional, mental — which can be, in ways, more powerful. To live in self-punishment in one’s own head, over and over, day in and day out.

This has translated into a great degree of emptiness, anger, agitation, frustration, sorrow, self-loathing. I don’t feel good-ness anymore. I only feel the pinpoints of rage and the longing of something, anything else to fulfill me.

Although I’ve known for a long time that I have “issues,” the revelation of me punishing myself (for whatever reason — it doesn’t matter) and the subsequent manifestation of that punishment into an overall shitty attitude is a new thought for me. It’s not that I’m a bad mom, a lousy wife, and a crappy friend; it’s that I am flogging myself inside, and I’m so angry and hurt and empty that I have nothing to give to anyone else.

Our feelings are reflected in our behaviors. When we feel good, we do good. When we feel bad, we do anger, rage, frustration, sadness.

So, what to do? I’m not sure. That’s what I’m starting to explore. What I do know is that I’m not talking about suppressing feelings or tricking myself into feeling something different. I’m not talking about not feeling bad things. But I do think there’s something underlying those emotions that, if I can learn to just observe rather than retain, I could clear up the grayness that has taken over me.

Sigh. I don’t think I’m even making sense at this point.

Just trust me when I say I’m going through some serious touched-by-an-angel shit over here and there’s going to be some positivity up in this mo fo, by golly!

Throughout the years, I’ve documented my ups and downs with bipolar/depression here. (I always feel the need to temper the word “bipolar” with the word “depression” because the former generally invokes visions of a manic person staying awake for a week while they paint the corners of their closets and then cry for three days. [Or maybe that's crystal meth?] I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar II, a milder form of bipolar disorder that consists of euphoric highs cycled with very deep, dark lows.) Unfortunately, it’s a constant part of my life. I don’t deal with it well. It’s uncomfortable. And perhaps the worst part is that I can feel it coming on.

When I’m in my euphoria, life is AWESOME. I’m happy, bubbly, expressive, fun, maybe a little wild (okay, maybe pretty wild. I try to blur out most of my teens years and 20′s because some of the stuff I did makes me cringe.). I convince myself that everything is okay and that my depressive bouts must be a distant memory — that this time, things will be different.

It never is. It never, ever is.

Since having Amaia, I’ve been mostly stable. Even as recent as a few weeks ago, I felt pretty great. Life was fulfilling and I had a positive and generally even-tempered outlook on things. The regular exercise must be helping, I told myself. Having a break while the girls are in school is really doing wonders, I thought.

But I kept looking over my shoulder, feeling that the next depressive low was just around the corner. Like I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Of course, the shoe dropped. It’s dropping now. I’m not doing well. Again. It’s not as bad as it was when it hit after the twins, but it’s not good. Every day, every hour, feels harder than the last. I’m holding onto my sanity by ever-thinning threads. I feel like some days are getting too much for me to handle. I need more help than I can possibly bring myself to ask for — because of course, asking for help makes me a fucking HORRIBLE mother, which intensifies the feelings of worthlessness, failure, guilt, and anxiety.

Interestingly, I noticed that the downward turn coincides with the return of my period — just as it did last time when my period came back after the twins. The hormones probably have a big impact and it makes me wonder how things will look after I finish nursing.

And speaking of nursing, the onset of a depressive episode reminds me of how long this rollercoaster has been going on — the pregnant-nursing-weaning-woops-pregnant-again-nursing-again-need-to-wean-soon rollercoaster, that is. I had only weaned the twins because I needed to get back on my medication (Lamictal), only to immediately get pregnant with Amaia as soon as I weaned.

I do NOT want to stop breastfeeding because of this FUCKING disorder. BUT. I can’t go on like this. I’m not a good mom like this. I am NOT a good mom like this.

I know there’s more to me than what I feel now. I know that I can love and feel good again. I know because I’ve felt it.

So I will eventually wean Amaia because I love her that much. I love all my kids that much.

The baby is now 9.5 months old and I’m getting close to being able to do that. I just need to hang in there for a few more months.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been having some serious shit going on with my hormones. My hair finally stopped falling out in clumps since having Amaia (EIGHT MONTHS ago), but then I started breaking out like a teenager in  heat. And not in silly little whiteheads. No, I’m talking gigantic, flaming-red balls of yellow-filled pustules. My face is oilier than a frying pan. It’s totally disgusting.

Then, the scale started creeping up.

Then, I started wanting to eat everything in the refrigerator.

Then, I got a familiar pain in my uterus.

I just realized all that made it sound like I was pregnant again. I’m not.

I’m freaking ovulating again and I’m going to get my first post-partum period. Dammit. I got off period-free for eight months this time. It was 9 1/2 months with the twins.

But that’s not all. I’ve written before about how I get some extremely intense ovulation pain (called mittelschmerz), so I know exactly when it happens and which side the egg comes from.

Well, this time, I ovulated from both ovaries.

Yes, there are two eggs floating around my fallopians as we speak. Chris has been ordered to keep his penis as far away from me as possible for the next few days because if I so much as look at Mr. Happy Pants, I’ll end up pregnant with twins again.

I used to be smart.

No, really. I think I used to be smart. That’s what my professors used to tell me, anyhow. And my grades. I used to get A’s and say thoughtful things and read complicated books. I graduated with honors and got into a Smart Person Honor Society (not even the kind that publishes that fake book that you pay to get into) and got a full ride to grad school and everything.

Now, as a full-time stay-at-home mom, I struggle to access even a fraction of that knowledge. My brain just doesn’t work the same. I’m reading a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel right now. Pulitzer Prize winning! The very alliteration of it makes you sit up straight. Every few pages, I engage in some critical thinking: “This passage appears to be about the male psyche’s struggle to disassociate – nay, circumcise itself from the specter of the father at the same time that it cannot possibly extricate itself from same.”

But then, I completely lose track of the words, my brain engulfed by a ceaseless soundtrack of preschool show theme songs (“There’s a party in my tummy! SO YUMMY, SO YUMMY!!!”).

When I left my job two years ago to stay at home with my kids, I vowed I wouldn’t lose my sense of curiosity and individuality. I would nurture my brain. I would remain true to myself. In my supercilious, pre-SAHM mind, I swore I would not, under any circumstances, become one of “those” moms.

Mm-hmm. You mean this mom? Because she, I have become.

I have a case of Mommy Brain in a most pointed sense. It’s not simply that I’ve become scatterbrained or chronically tardy; it’s that I feel I have lost my very sense of intelligence. There’s no way in hell I could keep up with my old college cronies because I genuinely do not even understand what they’re saying anymore. The depth of the problem hit a serious low when I Googled myself recently and discovered that my master’s thesis was no longer on page one of the results; now, it’s some idiotic comment I made on the Facebook page for Duke’s Mayonnaise.

YES. MAYONNAISE. (Note to self: Become more concerned with one’s digital identity.)

It bothers me. I feel stupid and unworthy and irrelevant and uninteresting.

I suppose, then, that it means I was never really smart to begin with. I just practiced a certain language a lot, got decent at it, and lost my fluency when I was no longer immersed and I stopped using it. It wasn’t innate intelligence – it was an impermanent skill, like tap dancing or getting really good at Tetris.

And that bothers me even more, feeling that, not only am I no longer smart – I’m now just a mom. My life is one long playdate, a series of diaper changes, a daily battle with juice stains and toddler tantrums and lactating breasts and OH MY GOD MY TWO-AND-A-HALF-YEAR-OLDS AREN’T POTTY TRAINED I’M A FAILURE AS A MOTHER. My career will forever be in the shitter. I’ll end up in some job interview five years from now and won’t get hired when I instinctively tell them to stop asking Mommy so many questions.

But then I think about it more and I get defensive. What’s so demeaning about being a stay-at-home mom? How is my work now less valuable than any paid position I’ve ever held? My value as a human, as a woman, as a mother at work, is not quantifiable. It is not defined by me bringing in a paycheck. I’m raising the next generation of contributing members of society. This is important work. Like, for reals.

Oooh, the valve-less sippy cups I ordered just got here!

Sorry, I got distracted.

So. Mommies? Daddies? How do you deal with these feelings? Am I alone here? Does anyone even know what the hell I’m talking about? Answer me or I’ll put you in a time out!

For Mother’s Day, most mothers do something cute and fun with their kids and families.

I, on the other hand, requested to be left the hell alone.

Does that make me a bad mom? I don’t think it does. I’m freaking exhausted, people.

My darling husband let me lock myself in our bedroom yesterday, interrupted only to nurse the baby. Know what I did? I watched episode after episode of “Kitchen Nightmares” until my eyes burned. That’s it. I didn’t respond to emails. I didn’t look at Facebook. I didn’t cook, clean, bathe, or put on makeup. Honestly, I didn’t even think. It was the most mindless, purposeless, vacuous day I think I’ve ever had.

It was AWESOME.

I also got some wrinkle cream, a couple of beautiful cards, and a gift card. To top it all off, I hit my pre-Amaia weight this morning.

Not a bad Mother’s Day. Fuckin’ A.

How was your Mother’s Day? Hope it was a happy one.

Did you know that there’s such a thing as a repeat root canal? As in, the first one didn’t take so they stick needles in your jaw and rip things out of your face all over again while you stay perfectly conscious and white-knuckle it because this time you skipped the Xanax?

Well, it happens — apparently often enough to warrant a brochure and everything.

A couple of weeks ago, I was minding my own business, eating my dinner and dessert. Somewhere between the feta-stuffed chicken breast and the chocolate brownie, the crown on my lower rear molar broke in half. No crack, no crunch, no uncomfortable swallow. It just broke — less than two years after getting it.

Now, if you read anything about my previous issues with this tooth, you won’t be surprised to know that I went to a completely different dentist for treatment. I’m pretty sure that, unlike my previous dentist, this one did not blow his way through dental school. He seemed pretty legit when he referred me for a repeat root canal with a different endodontist.

Because I had to throw out all of my thrush-laden frozen breastmilk, and because I couldn’t realistically have anyone watch all three kids for an entire day so I could pass out while high on sedatives, I decided to brave a root canal with only Novocaine.

Hell, I gave natural childbirth. I can surely survive a root canal without a hammer to the head, right?

Well, the technical answer to that question is yes. Yes, I did survive. But honestly, don’t EVER ask what a root canal consists of , and don’t EVER be a candidate for a second one. And whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK IT UP ON WIKIPEDIA. Because either way, it involves drills that smell like tire fires and the violent wrenching of tender gum tissues and something that looks like this.

Now, I await my replacement crown, which has put us squarely back into credit card debt but will probably actually fit the first time, rather than taking four fittings and three months like my last one.

If there’s a next time, though, fuck bravery. I’ll take an IV of Xanax in my freaking EYE, thank you very much.

Amaia turned six weeks old on Wednesday. I think it’s generally accepted that the first six weeks of a newborn’s life are the roughest (followed by the subsequent, oh, 27 years or so) and it’s certainly been true for us.

I don’t want to say Amaia’s an unhappy baby, but it certainly feels that as long as she’s awake, she’s crying. She cries after she eats, she cries in her car seat, she cries during car rides, she cries in the stroller. She cries if you hold her to the left. She cries if you hold her to the right. She cries in the bouncy seat, the swing, the Boppy. You get the idea. She’s hard to please and it’s been rough. I find myself really agitated sometimes when she’s especially fussy. My patience gets short.

I remember feeling this way with Althea and Elise too, but that may have been because there were two of them so chances were that someone would be crying at any given time. And as the weeks went by, things got better and better. I’m hoping that’s happening with Amaia, too. We’ve had a few decent nights of sleep the past few nights. She’s sometimes awake without crying.

She still screams in the car seat, though, and that’s incredibly aggravating, not to mention stressful and almost dangerous. There’s really nothing I can do except drive and hope I don’t hit something. I tried dangling some toys from the carry handle, but she’s not especially impressed so far. I got some of those pads for the shoulder strap in case the belts are hurting her neck, but they interfere with the correct positioning of the harness so I can’t use them. I’m out of ideas. Help?

I think I’m noticing a still-unreliable but vague pattern to her feeding and sleeping. My closest estimation:

8:30am – Wake and eat

10:30am – Eat, fall asleep shortly after

12:30pm – Wake and eat

1pm – Sleep

3pm – Wake and eat

4pm – Sleep

6pm – Wake and eat

7:30pm – Eat

9pm – Eat and sleep

1am – Eat, sleep

5am – Eat, sleep

I also had my six-week post-partum checkup this week. Everything is where it’s supposed to be, with the exception of, um, my butt. I don’t want to talk about it.

Okay, I’ll talk about it. (TMI Alert! TMI Alert!) Things are kind of falling out. It’s not pleasant. Turns out that the ligaments and stuff that hold a woman’s junk all together are estrogen sensitive. The doctor said that for some women who have had multiple deliveries and who are nursing, the suppression of estrogen due to breastfeeding inhibits the repair of the ligaments and muscles of the, um, nether region. So stuff can kind of . . . prolapse. As you wean or your period resumes (and thus the production of estrogen resumes), those things will naturally repair. So in the meantime, I guess I’ll just keep peeing when I run and crapping myself, thanks.

On to other subjects.

Speaking of breastfeeding, it’s going mostly better. Amaia still loses suction at times, but it’s less frequent and I definitely don’t think it’s a tongue tie anymore. Thanks to everyone’s suggestions, I did some reading and I think it’s partly an intense amount of milk for her, and partly just her. She’s gaining weight, she has plenty of wet and dirty diapers, she eats well and has become quite an efficient and thorough nurser.  So I’m just chalking it up to being her nursing idiosyncrasy unless something else becomes cause for concern.

Today, we gave Amaia her first bottle. Next week is my birthday and I wanted to go out for booze with some girlfriends. I’m happy to report that she took the bottle with no problem.

Bacardi, I am looking forward to being reacquainted in the near future.

And how am I doing? Well, I have good days and bad days. Good days tend to follow good sleep. I’m hoping for fewer bad days ahead. I have discovered the frozen foods aisle and can report that Bertolli makes some mean frozen meals. The bathrooms have been cleaned exactly once in the past six weeks and I’m not sure I give a shit. I cannot see the kitchen counters, but I can see most of the floor and that’s good enough for me.

I started working out again this week and I’m aiming to exercise every other day, even if it’s just 20 minutes and even if I can’t get around to showering for many hours afterwards. Considering Amaia tends to nap at the same time that Elise and Althea do in the afternoon, I think I might be able to pull it off sometimes.

Meanwhile, Althea and Elise are very much two year olds and provide plenty of challenges throughout the day. They are defiant and opinionated. They throw tantrums. They kick and protest. They run away when you come after them.

They are also awesome, amazing, intelligent, entertaining, creative, hilarious and beautiful.

Overall, I’m still happy to be a mom, and that’s what matters.

There is no time for creative post titles when your definition of “evening wear” has devolved to this:

Things right now are in a state of controlled chaos. With my mom still here helping, we’re able to get out of the house most days with everyone in tow. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and laundry is done on a pretty regular basis.

But around the house, there’s evidence of the underlying bedlam. The bathrooms haven’t been cleaned in a month. There are raisins and remnants of Goldfish crackers smashed into the carpet. All of my wearable clothes are covered, to some degree, in breastmilk. There are burp cloths, wash cloths, receiving blankets and hand towels stuffed into every corner of the house — all also covered in breastmilk.

I do not, as they say, “have it together.”

Speaking of which, breastfeeding is going . . . well, just okay, to be honest. I think Amaia has a bit of a tongue tie. She loses suction during feedings, sometimes frequently. She also chokes on the stream of milk during letdown and pops off, shrieking and crying. She doesn’t always empty my breast either, which may have contributed to the nasty case of mastitis I got earlier this week (104.5 fever = 3 pound weight loss FTW!).

According to my unofficial weighing method (step on scale with baby, step on scale without baby, subtract difference), she’s gaining weight just fine and her diaper output rivals that of a grown man on a high-fiber diet, so I’m not super worried about it. I read that some tongue ties are outgrown in the first year as the frenulum stretches. I’m hoping that’s the case here. But in the meantime, it’s annoying, frustrating and makes for some very messy feeding sessions. We’re working on it. Ideas/thoughts welcome.

Sleep is another subject altogether. With the twins, I started pretty early with scheduled feedings and a set bedtime. A natural and reliable pattern emerged by about 12 weeks and viola, there was our schedule. But with a singleton and two older children, it’s on-demand feeding and haphazard sleep schedules as we work around toddler routines and a house guest. The one thing I am determined to work on first is the afternoon nap because, come hell or high water, everyone is going to be napping at 2 p.m. Ideas/thoughts also welcome here.

Elise and Althea are getting used to Amaia’s presence. They now include her in their roll call of objects and people they see in the room. Once in a while, they’ll hold a small toy in the crook of their arm and say “Amaia” or start singing a Yo Gabba Gabba song about babies. Though it was unplanned, I’m glad we had another child while the girls are still younger — I think that emotional issues would have been much more complicated had Chris and I waited as planned to have a third.

Other than that, everything is just freaking great! Here are some photos. Admittedly, we’ve been pretty lame about taking photos lately. As soon as I can stop walking around the house with breastmilk soaking the front of my shirt, I’ll get to work on that too.

I’m pretty realistic about New Year’s resolutions. I dislike the idea of choosing to change something in your life based on a particular date rather than the actual, willful, personal drive at any other time of year. I end up going easy on myself for any resolutions I do make because I figure I probably won’t achieve them anyhow, so why set my sights too high?

I know. The ambition is staggering, isn’t it?

But still, like millions of others, I usually make a mental note of something I’d like to accomplish in the new year.

This year, I have a few things I want to do:

1) Get a rein on my Starbucks addiction. It became a serious problem during the pregnancy, especially toward the end. I kept telling myself “You won’t be able to continue this caloric intake after the baby’s here. Might as well take advantage.” When I found myself at that cursed drive-thru for the fourth time in nearly as many days — amounting to nearly $20 in icy, caffeine-infused deliciousness gone straight to my ass in less than a week — I realized I’d crossed a dangerous line.

So, Starbucks no more than once a month. Promise.

2) Start working out again by three months post-partum. I almost laugh to say this because I tried with every good intention to do this after having the girls. It is freaking close to impossible, I’m telling you. But it’s part of my mental and physical health and, with three kids, I need every semblance of sanity I can get.

I figure I’ll have to be pretty flexible with my definition of “working out.” It’s not going to be my old hour-and-a-half jaunts to the gym or doing a DVD at home. It’ll probably be more like 20 minutes a few times a week, as I make the time. I’ll have to learn to be okay with that.

3) Get back into my pre-Amaia clothes, if not my pre-Elise-and-Althea clothes. I gained 28 pounds with Amaia and have lost 18 of it. Losing that will still have me at 10-ish pounds over where I was before the twins, though, making for a total of 20 pounds to lose. I’ll be ecstatic if I get rid of 15 of it.

The problem I  had during the first year after the twins were born was that I discovered I’m NOT one of the lucky ladies that loses tons of weight by breastfeeding. My body hoards every calorie I give it, and I had a VERY difficult time losing more than five pounds during that first year post-partum. Once I was down to breastfeeding only two or three times a day, the weight finally started coming off. So I have to be realistic about that, too.

Mentally, I’m already antsy to get back into the workout and weight loss swing of things. But physically, I’m not there. I’m still very much freshly post-partum, as evidence by the 80000 maxi pads I go through every day and the ravenous appetite of the early days of nursing. (Hey, you going to eat that?)

4) Go easy on myself with all of the above. Really, I mostly want to get a grip of running the house again and getting out and about with three little ones. I’ll be happy if I manage to get everyone dressed and fed every day.

Notice I didn’t say that everyone has to have clean, matching clothes. Notice I didn’t say anything about being fed healthy foods. I just said that there would be clothes and food involved on a daily basis. And, in general, the clothes and food will not be confused, a la Lady Gaga’s meat dress.

Baby steps, people. Little, tiny, underachieving baby steps.