Bloody noses and such.

Ahh…it’s been a good week. Dawson has another freaking ear infection, but hopefully the antibiotics and drops clear him up and we won’t end up back at the ENT. Secondly, we had to deal with our very first (of many, I’m certain) nose bleed last night. I’ve made it almost 17 months having never seen my child bleed and I was dreading this moment. I didn’t know how I’d react as blood generally creeps me out and makes me feeling all lightheaded and tingly and weak in the knees. Everyone’s blood except for mine and my child’s, apparently. I handled it VERY well. No panic, cleaned him up, gave him a popsicle and all was right in the world again.

Can anyone tell me what happened to my baby b/c I’m looking at a growing little boy and have almost lost all traces of the baby I gave birth to!! They grow up SO fast.

I still have severe baby fever and I’m really looking forward to trying again next summer, being pregnant, and feeling all the excitement that comes along with that.

I have tons of new pictures that I need to share, but I have no USB cable with me today. I meant to grab it last night, but forgot with the bloody nose and what not.

We made the decision to go ahead with daycare instead of the private sitter we’ve used since D was 8 weeks old. It was a very tough decision and finally I just asked our sitter what she thought we should do. She thought and prayed on it for a few days and said she really felt like it was time for D to be with other children and now that he was older she felt like he would be fine. She’s wonderful and loves him very much so I know she really thought about it and that this was a very difficult decision for her as well. We start on 6/1. I’m nervous. VERY nervous about it. I think the daycare will be wonderful, but this is my heart we’re talking about. My life will be in the hands of strangers and that’s difficult to swallow sometimes.

As for me, I’m feeling normal again for a few consecutive weeks! YAY for me! I think I was at an all time low and really needed to pull myself up, put on my big girl britches and ask for the help I needed. Do I have some sort of mental disorder going on? I don’t know. I’m going to go back to therapy and talk it out, but I really don’t know now. I know my hormones were all out of whack and definitely needed some medication to help regulate that. As for the “am I bipolar” question, I have no idea. I do think it’s possible, but I also don’t fit a lot of the symptoms as my “mild mania” episodes rarely last more than a couple of hours (i.e cleaning the house in a hurry at 10PM at night or running around like a mad woman doing errands at 8 in the morning.) So who knows. I’ll explore it, but I do feel good mentally and physically and I’m really looking forward to the summer!

4th Anniversary

My 4th wedding anniversary is Thursday. 4 years married, going on 8 together. That’s a lot of time to spend with someone. While I can say that my husband has many many many flaws (as do I and 99% of people I know) he really and truly is a great man. He has a compassion for people in general that I envy. I guess my career in healthcare has made me slightly less than sympathetic 95% of the time. I’ve just been burned so often for my sympathy wasted on someone who was full of it and seeking drugs or free something. I know longer have to deal with these types of people and now I work behind the scenes reading very sad cases of very sick children and very happy cases of used to be very sick , but now 100% better children. My compassion for children is different than my lack of compassion for drug addicts. Children deserve all we as adults have to give. We are responsible for teaching children to be adults….hard working, loving, caring, responsible, healthy adults. Anyway, this isn’t about that. This is about my marriage. The day I married my husband was a TERRIBLE day. I handle stress very well, unless it involves me being the center of attention. I don’t really enjoy being in the spotlight and it makes me a nervous wreck. So I was irritated, stressed to the max, and grump ALL. DAY. LONG. And I didn’t make the experience that great for anyone else involved. I’m pretty sure Daniel and I weren’t even speaking to each other during our first dance. And we can’t even talk about the cake experience….(I only asked him one thing and that was to NOT spread cake all over my perfect makeup…asshole didn’t listen  ) We can laugh about it now, not so much then. So yeah, that was the wedding. The honeymoon was good, but next year on our fifth wedding anniversary (or somewhere around that) I want to take a hell of a vacation just the two of us to somewhere I’ve never been and will probably never go again. Lots of sun and alcohol. (Maybe, this might be around the time we will be working on baby # 2.) So yeah, in 4 years we’ve almost divorced twice. I was VERY difficult to live with for about 2 years….so probably my fault. We’ve had the most amazing gift given to us ever, Dawson of course. And we truly enjoy each other’s company these days. In the midst of my on and off depression for the last year we’ve had our downs when I was down, but we’ve also had some ups. We’ve struggled due to the lack of sleep. But now that’s improving and we’re improving too.


Anyway back to Daniel. He’s passionate about his career. I mean LOVES it. Which is a good thing b/c it certainly isn’t the highest paying job in the world, so he better love it. He loves life. Sometimes I watch him leave the drive way on his Harley and I can just see the love on his face. The wide open road with the wind on his skin really flatters him. He really does love it. He’s always loved motorcycles, but he bought the Harley the day after we found out I was pregnant with Dawson. So I haven’t had a chance to ride much, but I’m starting to really love it too. I’d like to take a Harley trip to Charleston this summer. Just a weekend one, but it would be fun.

He loves me. I mean he really loves me. Trust me, I’m FLAWED. I’ve been dealing with and will probably always deal with some mental instability (I’m honestly doing a ton of research on bipolar 2 disorder b/c I can distinctly point out my depressive episodes from my teenage years and my manic episodes too…and my normal episodes. I’m going to discuss this with my family doc when I go back next week. I also have a ton of issues from my less than perfect but not as bad as some childhood that I’ve probably never really dealt with. I skimmed it with my therapist last November but I really need to dive into it. I guess I’ll schedule therapy into my already very overloaded schedule.

I love him. He’s an amazing man. Even though sometimes I don’t like him. That doesn’t last long and I think that’s just part of being married.

He’s got the BEST relationship with his family. Family is so important to him so I know he’ll be wonderful and has already been wonderful in raising our family.

He’s really just an amazing person and the last 4 years have been very up and down, but overall marrying him was the best decision I’ve made so far.

Happy Mother's day to all those that are, have been, and hope to be. Let us rejoice in the miracle(s) we have today and everyday.

Fresh air

I haven’t updated in several days, on purpose. I’ve been enjoying life. Truly and really enjoying it! I feel great! Dawson is sleeping a little bit better, but not great, but still enough where I’m functioning well and not walking around like a zombie. That’s good news! One day he really will sleep well all the time, but right now I’m just enjoying the sleep we do get. Clearly my medicine is helping as I feel normal, happy, and healthy right now. Daniel and I were able to really spend some quality time together the last two weeks so that has helped too. AND I even find myself bitten by the baby bug again. I’m in severe baby fever mode. Of course the plan has always been to wait till D will be 3 before another, so Daniel and I won’t discuss it till next summer, but it feels good to actually want another baby again. There for a while, I was so low on the emotional rollercoaster that I didn’t even want to think about it. Right now, currently, it’s all I can think about. Baby this, baby that, baby names, baby clothes, baby everything. It probably doesn’t help that several real life and online friends are pregnant and one girl at work just had a baby on 5/1/10. I went shopping this weekend for clothes that actually fit since I’ve lost 20lbs and it felt good to be one size away from prepregnancy. I’d like to lose 10-15 more lbs, but I’m actually okay where I’m at for now. Shockingly. That’s all for now, work to do. I hate Mondays.

The weekend.

Thursday night we tried CIO. I was super serious about it, and didn’t even have much stress going into it b/c I knew it needed to be done. Well, 15 minutes into it I’m sitting in the living room with ear plugs in, TV on and video monitor set up…I look at the video monitor screen and I see D’s leg go over the side of the crib…I rush in. Lesson learned: Dawson can climb out of his crib if he really wants to, oh, and he threw up. Great. Abandon CIO for the night, try again Friday night when Daniel is home.

Friday night, okay, we’ll try it one more time. Again, D can climb out of the crib if he wants to. So I sit with him, in the rocking chair. I don’t talk to him and I don’t take him out of the crib. When he stands up, I lay him back down. Within 30 minutes he was asleep, slept for 3 hours, woke up. I go and do the same thing from 1:30AM-6AM, Dawson screamed. I had to get ready at 6 for the March of Dimes walk, so I get him out of the crib.

Abandon all hopes of CIO working for our child. It’s not going to work with me in the room and I can’t leave him alone in the crib due to his being able to climb out. So Saturday we turn the crib into the toddler bed and Saturday night I lay down with him til he falls asleep. He does. This is a plus b/c normally I have to rock him. He wakes up at 1:30 and I go lay down with him again. Again he falls asleep, about an hour later. Up at 8:20 for the day. I feel well rested!

Sunday, the in laws offered to keep D for the day and normally I wouldn’t leave him all day, but I knew that Daniel and I desperately needed some time away. So we took off to Helen, GA for the day and had a great time. Dawson went to sleep pretty well. Woke up about 30 minutes after going down, drenched in sweat. I get him back to sleep and he sleeps again til about 1:30. I get him back to sleep and at 4:30 he practically jumps out of bed, runs to the fridge and wants milk. He asks for milk, and I give it to him after trying water first (he threw the water at me) and he sleeps again, til I had to wake him to leave for the day.

Overall, Saturday and Sunday night were MUCH better in comparison to the last few weeks. He’s still not STTN, but his wakes up are getting less and lasting less time. I think we’ll stay on this pace for a few days and then slowly try to work out me actually having to lay down with him in the bed, but being able to be near the bed instead.

My medicine must be starting to work, I feel normal again!

i never really talked about the PPD

Shortly after Dawson was born I felt the first twinges of super scary anxiety. Not new mom anxiety, definitely and obviously PPD anxiety. That and the lack of sleep and I was in the throws of a mild PPD. Luckily I'm skilled in recognizing when I'm spiraling, but usually I'm so ashamed to say much. No this current battle isn't the first. Or the second. I distinctly remember a similar spiral back in my 15th year summer. And maybe a tiny one my 2nd semester of my freshman year of college. Then after D was born and now. The first two I just got over. I didn't tell anyone how I was feeling, never discussed it and just went on about my days like everything was great. In the meantime I was self sabotaging my friendships and relationships and my school work suffered some. I want from an A student with the occasional B to an A B student who was scattered brain. Maybe that's just college...anyway, after D was born I knew I had more than baby blues, and I worked up the nerve to call my ob office and make an appointment that I never went to. Instead one of the neurologists I worked for gave me a prescription for cymbalta and life picked up again. In November of 2009 I was off the cymbalta (had been for a couple of months) doing great and asked for a referral to a psychologist to make sure I could continue to do well. Dawson started sleeping great in November. Went to the psychologist he was super weird but helpful. When I left that day, the office was having computer trouble and asked me to call on Monday to make a follow up appointment. I never called. You see I thought my first appointment was so effective and that since I was doing so well that I didn't really need to see him. Then the ear infections, the no sleep again, and here we are now. I never should have skipped making that follow up. Oh, and I figured out my MIL issues. When I was 26 weeks pregnant we were just casually talking and I said something about PPD. She said she didn't believe that PPD was real and that it was a copout for women who didn't want to parent. So when I realized I was indeed suffering PPD I never said a word to anyone except for my friend Heather and the few online friends that knew. I didn't even tell Daniel. To this day he knows nothing of these struggles. This is something I have to work on. I have to be honest and upfront. And not ashamed and embarrassed. And yes I'm up at 3 in the morning bc the cymbalta gave me insomnia tonight and currently dawson is rolling around very restless. Oh and I tried cio for about 15 minutes tonight. It was going okay until he threw up and tried to climb out of his crib all in the same few motions. So tomorrow night when daniel is home we're going to make a solid gameplan about what to do and just get it done. With d able to climb out when he really wants to, some modifications may have to happen first though. Thanks for everyones support. I truly appreciate all the kind words, emails, texts (thanks Becca) and phone number offerings. You are amazing women and I'm lucky to have the encouragement from all of you. Please forgive any grammatical errors...its.3 in the morning and I'm on my blackberry.

The doctor's appointment.

Phew…that was kinda rough. I have never been as nervous for an appointment as I was for this one. I went in thinking that I could really explain how I was feeling rationally and easily, and as soon as I opened my mouth, the tears started flowing. I had no idea that was going to happen. My doctor asked me what was going on and I opened my mouth and choked back my tears and just told him I wasn’t functioning. We talked a while. It did help. Here’s our game plan. Dawson has to sleep. There are no longer any reasons to wait it out. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to get him to sleeping. Period. So, my doctor put me on an anti depressant, but also gave me a prescription for Ambien. His instructions are, take the ambien on a night when your husband is home and trust me, you won’t hear Dawson crying. Let him cry, even if it takes hours and days, let him cry. He has to sleep. Logically I already know all of this, and I don’t know how I feel about taking the Ambien, but I do have the prescription if it’s something that we want to try. I’m going at lunch time to fill the anti depressant prescription. At this point, we both feel like I really need it. Hopefully I won’t be on it too long and it’ll definitely help me to be able to make the changes that I need to make to function properly. He also says I’ve got to get out of the office. He says that just like walking, talking, sleeping, etc are learned things, that so is having fun. I used to have fun. I used to go out and I’ve got to retrain my mind to do those things again. I have instructions to go out Friday night with my husband sans baby. I have instructions to do this occasionally and sooner or later, I’ll enjoy it again.


I’m looking forward to feeling normal again, but it’s going to be a bit of a process and I’m sure I’ll have bad days and good days alike.

I also really opened up to Daniel. He had no idea I was feeling that way that I was feeling. He and I have a game plan too, but first things first, Dawson must sleep.

So an organized recap:

Start Cymbalta ASAP
Try CIO again and refuse to give in. Much reassurance that I'm not ruining my child and that if I don't do this, I'm not going to be mentally healthy. If I'm not mentally healthy, then I'm not my best. If I'm not my best, I'm not giving Dawson and my husband the best that I can give. Use the ambien if I can't take the crying, on nights when Daniel is home to be able to go to Dawson if really needed.
More date/girl nights even when I really don't want to.

I'll let you know how all of the above goes.