In Search of Sleep

Here we go again

2010-02-11T09:38:00.006-05:00

Sick and tired of defending the illness to people who don't, won't or can't accept there is a separation between ME and the ILLNESS. I tried to explain this to some people over the past year, and... total misunderstanding. Anger, resentment, isolation, gone. I snapped out at the loss, probably not the smartest thing to do, but I'm sick of depression and anxiety being the illness that keeps on taking. It hasn't been ME that's been around lately folks, it's been ME with an illness. But you probably don't get that (you know who you are).

Ironic, I've been feeling better this year than I've been in the past 5 years.. and I was looking forward to rekindling my social life. I finally have a treatment plan that seems to be working. I'm sleeping, I'm eating, I'm not obsessing over every possible disaster. I'm not planning on having any more kids so no overblown hormonal recession into illness in my future. I'm also not so crabby, I'm not so self focussed. Losing weight, feeling good, happy, fun again. I can actually separate from the symptoms.

Then this new hitch. I guess my social life is about to go in a very different direction than I expected.

Post below from Etta's "depressionmarathon" blog from Sunday, August 17, 2008. I didn't write this, but it's so true.

*******************

"losing friends

Sometimes real people let us down. My blogging friend wrote a recent post about her disappointment with "no-return friends." No-return friends--the people with whom we were previously close, but who, for no apparent reason, no longer return our phone calls. Unfortunately, those of us with mental illness are all too familiar with this unique term. Those of us with mental illness likely have too many examples of friends who have fallen out of our lives. I know I do. This phenomena seems to be unique to mental illness. It is one of the many reasons I have found depression so isolating. No hallmark cards, no pancake breakfasts, no hotdish, and friends who disappear. Ouch. It hurts. It's painful. It sucks.

Unfortunately, it's reality. When I speak to the public about my illness, I acknowledge this loss as one of the most difficult in an illness full of painful losses. There are probably multiple reasons for this reality, but one suggested reason stirred controversy over on my friend's blog. Perhaps, it was suggested, we aren't much fun to be around. That is, when my symptoms are raging, perhaps I'm not the brightest, happiest, most positive person to hang out with! I can't argue with that. It's another cruel reality of my illness.Because the suggestion reflected one of my realities, I didn't find the comment controversial. Rather, having an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable loss of close friends relieves a bit of my pain. It's like acknowledging depression as an illness versus a character defect. The illness lets me off the hook.

When my depression takes over, I may appear lazy, anti-social, irritable, and sad, but that's not me. It's the illness. I am an active, relatively social, pleasant person.However, depression urges me to isolate. If I do get out, my illness makes socializing nearly impossible, especially if I can't separate myself from my symptoms. And when I am drowning in symptoms, I can't separate. Depression becomes me. I become depression. And I imagine, I'm not a whole lot of laughs to hang out with.

The following is an excerpt from the comment I left on my friend's blog post

....most people cannot handle anything other than “shiny happy people.” It is a reflection on THEIR character, NOT YOURS. It sucks.What worked for me when I lost friends...I shifted my focus to talking with people who could handle it–the professionals in my life. When that wasn’t enough, I connected with more professionals, the local NAMI organization, and did more writing.I’m not suggesting you do any of the above–rather, just letting you know how I dealt with the pain of “friends” falling out of my life. Those “friends” originally caused me much pain with their ignorance and absence. Over time, the pain lessened–though it still stings if I allow myself to dwell on it too much.This illness SUCKS. It steals everything we know and are comfortable with. It steals our soul. For me, once I accepted that fact and tried to focus on what I could do, and what I could control–vs. what I couldn’t do or control (i.e. other people)–my life got a little easier. Again, just letting you know what has worked for me–when I am able to do it!There are a select few people with whom I confide what is “really” going on in my life. If I am around others outside that select few, I try to look at it as a time of distraction–a time to just be in that moment and a distraction from my internal strife. But I can only do that when I am in a slightly better space than the deep hole you seem to be in right now. When I’m feeling like super-duper, mega crap–I can’t handle much of anyone or anything. Everything I interpret, I interpret in the worst possible light. It’s a shitty place to be, and I hate it.I am praying for you. ... Please, please take care of yourself. Be kind to you and to those around you, and hang on tight! ...

I hope this is helpful to others out their struggling with the cruel realities of depression and mental illness. I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences, too.To stay alive, I try to remember I have an illness. I have an illness which often sucks the life out of me, changes my character, and distorts my personality; but I don't have to let it define me. Keep fighting, folks. Don't let your illness define you."

*********

Thank you Etta!!!!!!!!

Its been a while...

2009-06-02T13:14:00.003-04:00

Have we all been *that* sick for *that* long?

Yes.. we have. At least I have. Been sick almost constantly since January. It's been tough.

At least the docs think they have found the problem - allergies! I guess everything gets all sticky and gummy.. and traps all kinds of viruses and bacteria.

Hopefully that can explain the 4 ear infections, the 2 cases of strep throat, the 'flu, the 3 colds and the eye infection that I've been sporting since January!

I don't have time to get into how much I'm mourning the last few months, precious months, time on mat leave with my son that I can't get back. I have 5 weeks to go and I'm going to make every last minute count.

life in the trenches

2009-02-03T19:42:00.001-05:00

OK.. so being a second time mom I thought I'd seen it all, but my LO has been sick for 2 weeks now and on Sunday he started wheezing and working a bit harder to breathe. He's been in relatively good spirits, no fever and still eating so I wasn't too worried, but because of the wheeze I brought him into the doctors. I've been battling some kind of respiratory virus the entire month of January that landed me in the doc's a few times for pneumonia (a round of azithromycin for that one) and a big fat double ear infection (a round of amoxycillin for that one). I still can't hear out of my right ear...

Anyhoo I took him to the doc on Sunday and there's no sounds of pneumonia (lung crackles and pops) thank GOD (I am petrified of my kids getting pneumonia because I've had it, once as a kid and it was very very serious). but he does have bronchiolitis - inflammation in the smallest tubes in the lungs.

Yesterday he was wheezing worse and struggling to breathe a bit more so I brought him to the kid's hospital (CHEO - Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario) and it was an absolute zoo. There was a line up at the triage desk - there's been a massive outbreak of respiratory and gastro. viruses.. it was awful. I got there at 2:00 and didn't leave until 8pm. It was horrendous.

Xavier's oxygen saturation was a bit low (96%) so they did all kinds of treatments, epinephrine masks (twice) ventolin, and prednisone to try and get rid of the inflammation. They also suctioned his nose with this tube thing that made him scream.. I had to look away and try to be in my happy place when he was being held to the bed and screaming his little baby scream...

Man.. that ER sounds like a house of horrors all the screaming kids in there. I must have cried five times myself listening to all the misery around me.

Anyhow the wheezing seemed to be gone by 8pm so they let us go home. Today it seems to be back despite following the doctor's orders for continued puffers (ventolin and steroid) and prednisone.. tonight he coughed so hard he puked and he even had a big fat diarrhea attack in the tub (while he was in the tub with my 3 year old - great time to have their first shared bath eh?) we took him out of the tub and he proceeds to power-diarrhea all over my husband..

PLEASE GOD do not let him have a gastro. virus on top of whatever is making him cough and wheeze... I dont think I could stand having that rip through my house when my hubby is away for the weekend.

Anyhow its been a real slice of he** in the motherhood trenches. My back is killing me from lifting my 23 lb son around the ER for 8 hours. I'm totally stressed and I"m so glad my mom is coming up for a few days to help me out (my hubby is going away for the weekend and there's no way in he** i can manage 2 kids, one sick, one recovering, BOTH kids on puffers, and me with one ear still clogged and exhausted from whatever respiratory virus is making its rounds this year).

I'm not impressed mostly because an attack of bronchiolitis in infancy often means that the child will develop asthma later in life, great, my daughter has it and now my son. I've even had to label their puffers/aerochambers.. but then again ALL of us in this house have puffers now.. we all seem to get asthma after we get sick :(

I CANT WAIT FOR SPRING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! virus season sucks...

Dear Lord...

2009-02-01T14:22:00.002-05:00

Can I talk to my Dad? Please? I miss him so much. I don't understand why he has to come and live with you now and not with us. We're not done with him. He never got to meet Xavier and he barely met Abby. He has two grandchildren who would so much love to see him and play with him and that's not going to happen.

I still don't understand why my dad had to go. I mean, you probably know, but that does little for me who has to walk around every day with a broken heart. It's been over three years but some days it feels like it was just yesterday. Like this afternoon. I'm terribly worried about Xavier's cough and wheezing and I just wish I could call my dad and ask him to tell me everything's going to be OK. I never was really good at soothing myself when serious things happened, and even if my dad had NO idea if things were going to be OK he'd tell me anyhow, and I felt better. Even if it didnt make any sense, hearing him say that made me feel better.

But I can't call him. I will never hear his voice again as long as I live. I am not ready to die yet, so I don't think I want to exercise that option in order to hear him.

I have heard that through You all things are possible. And since You decided it was my dad's time to go, and I had no choice in the matter, that I deserve a little help here.

Could You tell me things will be OK? How will I know when you're sending me that message?

I miss my dad so much Lord, I could use a little help here.

Please.

You know who I am

2009-01-30T18:51:00.003-05:00

So..

The insomnia got out of control in December. The depression and anxiety came back with a vengeance. I knew I had a problem when I went to my office Christmas party and spent more time in the bathroom crying than upstairs with my colleagues.

So I caved and started taking medication. Unfortunately I was self-medicating for awhile this fall with a few painkillers I had left over from an unfortunate burn accident. When those ran out I realized I had a serious problem.

I started medication under the supervision of a psychiatrist in mid December. Ciprolax in the morning, Seroquel and Imovane at night to sleep.

The anxiety seems to be in check now, which is good, but I still can't sleep without additional medication. But I can sleep with the night time medication and it's good.

I hate to admit that I have a mood disorder, but I do. Yep, I'm officially in the category of "mentally ill". I have had classic symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder since I was about 3. These symptoms have gradually gotten worse over my lifetime until they hit a crisis point after Abby's birth. I have been working awfully hard to keep these symptoms in check since I stopped taking medication before having Xavier.

Some of the things I can't do when I'm on this medication: Drink alcohol, stay up late, eat excessive amounts of junk food, and fly airplanes (yes I used to have a pilot's license).

I don't know how I will explain this to people the next time I'm out for dinner or at a party (not like that happens frequently, but it does on occasion). I just have to level with my friends I guess, and tell them the truth. That I have a health problem, I take medication, and I can't drink or stay up late. I rarely drank anyhow because of this problem so I might as well bite the bullet and tell them the truth.

I'm thankful for having my life back, though. It feels good to be normal. I've spent so much of my life wracked with phobias, insomnia, excessive worry, and an inability to relax. It feels good to finally unwind.

I just hate to admit I have an illness like this.

Things I hate...

2008-11-24T11:03:00.003-05:00

The third anniversary of my dad's death has come and gone. And my anxiety is worse than ever. I don't know if its related, but its possible. For most of last week, just as I tried to drift off to sleep, I awoke with a jolt and a big fat panic attack that took hours to resolve. And on those nights that I didn't have a scary attack, I was just too keyed up, my heart was racing too fast, my thoughts racing, and I just couldn't settle down. The fact that one or both of my kids get up at 5:00 am most mornings doesn't help when you can't get to sleep until well after midnight, or later. There's no such thing as sleeping in anymore.

Having a baby and a 3 year old is tough enough, however, without much sleep its impossible. I'd hoped that this year I'd be able to have Abby home with me some days, but I just don't know how I can do it, safely without sleep. I hate that my anxiety and depression has robbed me of my mat leave with her, and now it's robbing me of some time that I thought I'd be able to have with her, to get some of that "mommy time" back that I couldn't give her back then because I was too sick.

I hate that I have to rely on C so much just to cope these days. Lord knows he's got enough on his plate lately, training for a new job and an improved income so we don't go into debt with 2 kids in daycare next year. Lord also knows he's already had to go the extra mile a million times already since we've been married, due to my anxiety and depression. I hate that this is so hard on him.

I hate taking drugs to sleep, but that's what I've had to do for weeks now. I hate that my dad also had this issue, and he's now dead, and that leaves me to wonder if his fate (dead of a heart attack at 62) will also be mine. He had depression and anxiety, so do I. We both struggled to get enough restful sleep in order to function. I have been struggling for years on this, and I don't know what to do. I've taken every antidepressant known to mankind and found either they made me so dehydrated I couldn't get comfortable in bed (dry mouth, had to pee all night) or they gave me insomnia, which is the stupid problem I'm trying to fix in the first place.

At least now I realize I don't really have an insomnia problem, but really an anxiety problem. When the anxiety is not tearing me apart, I sleep quite well. But for most of my life, most days, have been a battle against the monster anxiety.

I hate that.

Building a Mystery

2008-09-22T20:27:00.004-04:00

This road I've chosen - marriage, home ownership, motherhood (of two!) is a struggle. I never realized how much harder it would be to go from one to two, but its really hard. Of course this reminds me of the fact that I never realized how hard it was to even have one.. but now I've got two. But I digress...

Last week was a hard one. Abby had a doctors and a dentist appointment in the same week. This meant that her little routine was messed up. She had to go late to preschool on Tuesday and miss it completley on Thursday. As a result, she acted out a LOT that week. On Thursday, I was so distracted by Abby's inappropriate behaviour (she was on a time out) and a crying baby that during dinner preparation, I grabbed a hot pan handle and wound up with excruciating 2nd degree burns all over my right hand. It hurt so bad and I yelled so loud I traumatized Abby. She started bawling. I wound up in the E.R. with an outrageously high blood pressure, and had to be shot up with morphine and a tetanus shot, as well as taking percocet/acetominophen, ibuprofen and of course, gravol to keep my guts intact after all the narcotics. Didnt stop me from wharfing out the car door on the way home though. It was good high though!

So.. you might ask.. what's with the title for this blog post? Tonight I'm forced to take a break from housework on account of my bummed hand. Instead I'm going through old CDs and transferring my favourite songs to my MP3 player. I'm on Sarah McLachlan's "Surfacing" - an old favourite.

Listening to songs I long forgot about is one of the very few ways I can hang onto a grasp of my "adult self" - the person that I used to be prior to having kids - throughout the day, especially when I"m here alone, or when I'm going for a walk with Xavier. It helps to drown out his screaming when he's settling down for a nap (he's one of those babies that disdains soothers, and cries himself to sleep almost EVERY time).

Around 1996 or so I saw Sarah in concert. It was an AMAZING night. During that time I was dating a guy in Montreal - a guy I eventually moved in with for 1998-2000. A relationship that I thought was going places, but it ended extremely badly. But during that time I got to do a LOT of stuff and got to know Montreal REALLY well. Its a fun city to live in thats for sure, but I felt it was never the kind of place to settle down in and raise kids, which was my ultimate goal.

During that time in my life I was so carefree, I had it sooo easy but I didnt realize it. I guess the fact that I didnt have a job or any kind of income might have clouded the fact that it was pretty easy living. Easy mostly, except for dealing with the guy that I was dating. I thought we were good friends and our relationship would stand the test of time, but it didn't. I dont know where or when it all went sour, or what exactly happened, but I went from an angel on a pedestal to the spawn of Satan in four short years. I was the same person, same values, same hopes and dreams. How it all came unravelled so quickly I dont know.

Why am I romanticizing the past - especially a ROTTEN time in my past - when now I finally have everything I've always wanted - a home, a husband who loves me, two great kids who also love me, and a good job that pays well? Does this mean I dont love my husband or my kids? Does this mean I made a mistake with my life? Sometimes I am so tired and so wrung out by this motherhood gig that I think I have made a BIG mistake. Its SOO much work to raise two kids and keep a house in semi-order. After putting the kids to bed, tidying up a bit and taking some "me" time there's little time for each other. And I"m not even a neatnik - I"m just after a house that's not overrun with dust and mould and dirt and rotting food. Some serious disarray and crayon marks on the walls are acceptable.

Why did I do this? I could be jetting off to Europe any time I like.. doing whatever I please. I could spend lazy Saturdays and Sundays in bed. But I can't. And I have no idea when I will be able to do that again, if ever. Why did I do this to myself?

I thought that I"d be less lonely with a family. But lately it feels like I'm MORE lonely. The evenings are filled with my husband and I each taking a child for the evening (its hard when the kids are at two very different stages). Yes there's company when I take my 3 year old to the park at night, but its not an adult conversation. There's no understanding, no comraderie (how do you spell that) and it's still being "on duty".

I hope there's more love and company in this life that I've chosen. I hope that the best is yet to come. Everyone tells me that this gets better, gets easier. I hope so. Right now its very very hard. It just feels like drudgery and I dont get a lot of fun.

Maybe there IS love here and I can't see it? I guess I've spent so many years chasing love, wanting love, hoping to find love that I have a hard time recognizing it. Even my husband tells me that I only listen to the bad stuff, and I have a hard time listening to the good stuff, the compliments, the kudos, the kisses.

I should listen to him more about stuff like that. Maybe its my clouded ears and my jaded attitude that's the problem, and not my life.

So every day, I guess I *am* building a mystery. Every day I get up at 5:30 am (give or take an hour) and get the baby, feed the baby, dress the baby, get breakfast on the table, help get Abby and Clancy out the door. All day long I dress the baby, feed the baby, burp the baby, take the baby for a walk, try to get the baby to nap, cook food, do a bit of housecleaning, pick up Abby, prepare dinner, pick a child, complete evening routine, prepare formula, arrange dishes, run a load of laundry, spend a bit of time on the computer and crash at 10pm (lather.. rinse.. repeat...).

I have no idea what our life will be like in 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. I dont know who my kids will become, what they will want to do, what their likes and dislikes will be. I don't even really have much of an insight into my baby son's personality yet.

I dont know when I'll be able to return to having some of my interests returned into my life. I dont know when I'll feel less guilty taking time for myself, I have NO idea when I'll be confident enough to stay home with 2 kids alone for any length of time...

But right now, every day I work.. HARD. I guess I'm building.. but I don't know what I am building. I'm building my own mystery, a day at a time.

I hope this mystery has a good ending.

"Wishing You Were Here"

2008-09-03T22:18:00.003-04:00

Is the name of the song I've been listening to for the past few hours. My hubby left me with his MP3 player today to help mask the sounds of the baby crying when he hits "critical mass". It really helped. I've been a Chicago addict all day. Poor babe though choked on his spit and blew snot out of his nose he was crying so hard at one point today.. I had to put him down for 5 minutes and he got so upset.. but I swear I was going to freak out so I had to put him down. Sorry Xavier. I"m sure you wont be scarred by this when you're 16. I might be, however.

Today has been a big ball of emotions. I had a serious panic attack last night at 1opm and couldn't fall asleep until 1:30 am. I even had the "Night off" and yet I couldn't sleep. I hate this, I feel like such a useless tool, but I had to admit last night that I have an anxiety problem and I need help. The weight of my new responsibilities as a parent of 2 is weighing me down.

My anxiety is causing me to avoid doing things that I know I should, like even trying to sleep. Here it is 10:20, I should have been in bed hours ago, but I'm avoiding it. Just sitting here at the computer, typing away, listening to old Chicago tunes.

"And I'd like to change my life and you know I would, just to be with you tonight baby if I could, but I've got my job to do, and I do it well.. so I guess that's how it is"...

This line from Wishing You Were Here really hits home - how I'd love to spend a night in my husband's arms, relaxing, doing the things that we used to do before we got married, or just taking a drive by myself for a few hours, playing soccer with my friends, going on a trip, ANYTHING but another day of drudgery with a baby. Don't get me wrong, I love my son. I love my daughter. I love my house. I did want a family. But I'm feeling so isolated, so housebound, so tied down, so FUCKING TIRED.... so bored of the monotony.. another breastfeed/supplement, another burp session, another diaper, another load of laundry... "lather, rinse, repeat" (thanks Ange for that line!) . The grief from the loss of one's freedom is so devastating, for those of you who don't have kids, its the equivalent to a death it hits you that hard. Yes, as parents we DO love our kids and we DO love our families but this is so hard to deal with. Also the massive changes in lifestyle for the mat leave year are also hard do cope with. Good thing I've been through this before and I know how hard it is. This time at least I"m not seriously incapacitated by depression. Some moderate to strong anxiety, yes. Extreme fatigue due to insomnia and other disturbances, yes. Depressed, not so much.

One thing that's tough is that I'm an extrovert and get all charged up and energized being with people, and I'm home all day with someone who doesn't even know how hold his head up yet, let alone speak a word. The isolation on Mat Leave gives me too much time to think. What is running through my mind is that its just so complicated and so intense to have a new baby, AND a three year old to deal with. I didn't realize we had it so good with only one child. I am so scared that we have completely lost all our "alone" time forever and ever.. Dammit its so easy to lose perspective when you're this tired and this scared and this overwhelmed. I dont konw what I've lost and what I've gained. I dont know if I'm coming or going.

One song on this collection that brings tears to my eyes is the song Hard Habit to Break. A kind of wistful song to begin with, but it really brings me back to 1985, I was 15 years old, I was so happy with my friends and my soccer playing and everything that year. It really was the perfect year.

I never thought that my life would get more complicated when I left home. God back then I never thought I'd LEAVE home. I thought that I'd probably live with my mom and dad and brother in Brockville forever. I never thought that things would change so much. I never thought these changes would be so difficult.

One thing that is also on my mind is the similarity between my last postpartum year experience and this one. The same time of year, the same hospital, the same recovery room, even my kids look similar at birth/early months. The same sick, excruciating feelings in your bones, joints and organs as you struggle to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, the same groin and bladder and back pains to suck up and cope with, the same shooting pains from my nipples as I try to breastfeed (with problems) yet again, the same back and neck strain from lifting a 13 lb baby a zillion times per day.

I'm also starting to think about losing my Dad a lot. So many triggers, no wonder all of this is coming back to me so strongly. Frankly I"m surprised at the intensity of the pain.

Wishing You Were Here indeed.

I definitely will need a LOT of support come November.

Dad, I miss you like crazy today. I came to accept you not being here for awhile, and to even accept that you not being here actually freed us from the craziness that you put us through. That we were actually free from your depression, from your addiction, your crazy and over-the-top dramatic/abusive behaviour. I was ok with that for the past year or so. I was even getting a bit calloused agains the pain the past few months of my pregnancy. But now that you have another grandchild on this planet that you will never see grow up, that you won't ever be around to give me a few words of encouragement (when you could that is), I am starting to miss you again. I miss those "good times" - when times were good for us, they were REALLY good. And I miss that, to the very core of my being. I feel so lost without you some days, its not funny. I wish you could send me a sign that you're still around, that you see me sitting here crying over you, that you could be right beside me and LET ME KNOW from the next dimension that everything will be ok. But you can't.

I miss you Daddy. I need a hug and for you to tell me everything's going ot be ok. For some reason, whenever you said that, whether you meant it or not, I felt better about everything. And you'll never be here again to tell me that.

What am I going to do now? PLEASE COME BACK DADDY I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU.

How do I ever get over you? How do I ever get used to this? Its been 3 years and I'm still levelled to my knees every so often when I realize that you're gone.

Forever.

You're a Hard Habit to Break.

Mother of two.. and losing perspective

2008-08-13T19:50:00.002-04:00

He's here. Xavier James is here. He's a month old on Friday even. After the fastest birth on record (well ok i'm sure there were faster, but this was fast) and a whirwind first month, and a fairly good postpartum recovery, he's here.

And I'm now a mom of two. Holy *&(&.

Xavier is in the middle of the dreaded "first three month gassies" and its horrible. I swear he didnt sleep from 10pm last night until 2pm this afternoon. He fussed, cried, whined, burped, farted, pooped, etc.

I spent all of dinner time tonight either crying to myself or feeling sick to my stomach knowing my mom was leaving for home today.. for who knows how long. I know she could come right back in an emergency and that's good, but part of me wants to see if I can pull this off, another part of me wants my mom to move in permanently, and yet another part of me wants to run screaming from this family I helped create and never come back....

I'm so nervous about this whole motherhood thing all of a sudden. The whole time I was pregnant with Xavier I never realized how nerve wracking being a mom of two would be. Its so overwhelming I literally feel my heart in my throat right now.

I lost perspective today among the gassy whines, the spit ups, the pinched nipples (breastfeeding is still hit and miss) and wondered why I wanted another child. It was so clear to me last year that this was what I wanted, and part of me IS happy that he's here, but its so easy to forget that babies WILL turn into fun loving two and three year olds down the road.

It took a naked run through the dining room from Abby around 6:30 pm to remind me why I wanted Xavier in my life. Kids are good people, and they make parents even better people.

It would all be so much easier though if I could get some more sleep.

The random pee pee episodes

2008-06-13T12:26:00.005-04:00

My daughter is amazing. Really. She wants to be so grown up its not funny.

However, she's doing some funny things related to going pee. I dont know if she' s fully in control of her bladder or for some reason, the bladder monster takes over.

Often she feels the urge, runs for the toilet, and just doesnt make it. We've had more pee on the landing, the bathroom doorway and right in front of the toilet than we can count. Yesterday she busted a bladder while trying to pull her pants down and get on the toilet. She cried, took her pee pee pants off, and put them in the laundry, and got another pair of shorts. She went commando after that (of course, she usually has no use for underwear these days).

Not 30 minutes later the same thing happened, except, she KNEW she was going to not make it, and she asked "daddy can I pee on the floor right here" (carpet outside the bathroom door). Daddy said "no go on the toilet!" (of course) and she didnt even try to make it. She pulled one shorts leg over, and let the pee fly right out of one side of her shorts. Grr.. another session of wiping and dabbing.

After going to bed, she woke up and ran downstairs pants-less, saying something about a full diaper and that it was hurting. My brother was babysitting so he got her another overnight pullup and put her back to bed.

This morning another pants-less episode. She got up, took off her pull up, put it in the garbage, proceeds to sit on the couch and pee. Then went up and got another pull up and when we woke up we found a huge pee stain on the couch and a kid in a dry pull up.

I'm so confused. Does she have a bladder control problem? Is it just a phase? Maybe a bladder infection? Who knows.

I'm getting a bit tired of stepping or sitting in pee puddles and trying to track down used pull ups.

housebound with itchy eyes and coughing...

2008-06-10T15:19:00.002-04:00

Ugh, now that i'm home all the time I'm focussing big time on all the things in my house that bug me.

We've had the a/c on for 2 days and all of us are feeling a bit off. Abby was coughing badly and had green "eye cheese" in her little eyes the past 2 mornings. I seriously have itchy eyes right now. And hubby woke up feeling crappy.

I wish I knew where the cooling coils and all the other parts were that needed cleaning. I wish I could do it myself. Our a/c unit is a billion years old (probably needs to be in a museum) and I dont want to put any more $$ in it, even to clean it, but a new unit will run about $3500. Unless we can split that over 30 months (payments) then we definitely can't afford it.

I was going to wait until the fall or later for us to get a new one, as I really wanted a new diswasher too. But this may be a higher priority if the air quality in our house is making us sick... let alone the cost to run that puppy!!!

Funny Abby-isms

2008-06-07T10:03:00.002-04:00

I have a hilarious kid. Point blank, I think she's the funniest kid on the planet. Of course all other parents think their kids are the funniest, but ok, we're all biased!

Abby has an amazing capacity for language and communications for an almost 3 year old. She's been able to speak in clear words since about six months old, when she had a vocabulary of about 6 words. Now she can say things in the clearest, most unbelievable way, and she's not even 3!

Unfortunately she's also entering the dreaded "potty humour" stage. Ugh. Everything is poopy, stinky, peepee, etc. Its hard to keep it in check. Its really hard not to laugh.

Last week she was calling people "stinky". I told her it wasn't nice to say that people are stinky. She looked up at me wtih innocent eyes and said "but mommy, your toots are stinky".

Well... yes, yes they are.

How can you argue with that direct logic?

***********

Other recent Abby-isms, so I dont forget them:

- The word "spaghetti" has officially changed in Abby-speak from "gobbely" to "pasgetti"
- Vanilla is currently being pronounced as "malilla"
- Daddy has a volcano for a belly button, while Mommy has a "flatty". Abby thinks that the baby is going to be born through mommy's belly button.
- Abby's getting excited about being a big sister. She can't wait to change the baby's diaper and then "give him a time out" (ha! I laughed so hard at that one!)
- Abby occasionally pretends she has a baby in her belly too. If its a girl its name is Lindsay. If its a boy its name is Christopher.
- Abby officially is addicted to yogurt. Mallila (vanilla) is her hands down favourite. If there's no "malilla" then strawberry or blueberry will do.

back at the blogging

2008-06-07T09:43:00.002-04:00

I'm officially work-free for 13 months. Well office work that is. I'll soon be a mom of TWO kids and I'm sure it will be the hardest work I've ever done. I'm very nervous about the workload, especially under extreme sleep deprivation circumstances!

I'm hating being pregnant again. I know this is the LAST time I'll ever be pregnant, and I should be enjoying it, but I hate it. I have a condition known as "symphysis pubis dysfunction" basically what that means is the hormone "relaxin" that's in my system that makes it easier for my bones to come apart to give birth, is making my pelvic bones stretch apart a little too much. The tendons between the bones are all inflamed and I'm in excruciating pain. I feel like someone kicked me right in the crotch and just above my butt crack. I can't walk very well, I cant get up out of a car, out of bed without wishing someone would just kill me. The pain is so bad. The only place I'm pain free is sitting in a comfy chair (look out when I get up though!) and laying on my side, curled up in bed.

My belly is also just big enough that even standing at the cupboard to try and prepare some food is difficult. Frankly, I can barely reach the cupboard without hunching over, and that starts to hurt about 30 seconds after I start doing something. I pretty much have to use my arms to hold up a lot of my upper body weight.

Funny though, I've not put on as much weight as the last pregnancy, but I feel just the same. I thought that keeping my weight down this time would help, but no.

I really hate being pregnant. I can't do much. I miss doing the things that I like to do. I miss playing in the park, I miss running, I miss biking, I miss being able to cook something without feeling like my back is about to explode. I miss having a clean house - my hubby is doing a hero's job of trying to take care of everything, but with one child in the house and mom mostly out of commission its more than he can handle. I wish we could afford the maids again, but we had to dump them on account of lack of money.

I mostly hate the fact that I will be trapped in this huge body for most of the summer. Summers are so precious in Canada, they are so short and our winters are so long. I hate the fact that I"ll be heading back to work when everyone else is heading off on vacation. But you can't plan these important things in life. You get what you get when you get it.

Anyhow I hope next summer and the one after are a lot easier.

Ok.. finally back!!

2008-05-20T21:23:00.002-04:00

My computer seems to be feeling a lot better, and so am I. These past few months have been incredibly difficult - lack of sleep and a lot of viruses.
I"m down to 8 weeks left to go before I have my second child, and I wish I could say I was totally at peace with it. But I'm not.

My stupid "symphysis pubis dysfunction" has also been back for the past few months. Who needs groin muscles? Apparently I dont. Or maybe I just need to feel them in EXCRUCIATING detail for months at a time so I dont forget I have groin muscles.

I had such a difficult birth with my last baby, traumatic birth, postpartum depression, hemmorrhage, inadequate pain relief, I'm petrified this time around. I dont know what I can do to help this fear. I"m talking to people - hiring a doula, meeting with my postpartum depression counsellor. Its helping, but its still scaring me to death.

I'm also starting to worry about money. Who has $2000 per month to spend on daycare? I dont. I hope we dont go into too much debt, or if we do, that it doesn't destroy our family.

i'm a blog delinquent...

2008-04-29T09:57:00.000-04:00

Cant post on here much anymore - blogs blocked at work, virus attacked computer at home. Sorry folks.

I'm still alive, still pregnant, still here.

I'm finally sleeping....

2008-02-28T12:54:00.002-05:00

But I'm sick again. And my wonderful child wakes me up at 5:30 am by kicking in my door and yelling "LETS PLAY PUZZLES MOMMY!!!"

GACK!!!!!!

This whole working motherhood while pregnant and sick routine is getting impossible. I give up. I'm still on antibiotics from my last cold gone awry... and I've got a new one!!!!!!!!!!!

Sleep has not been my friend lately...

2008-02-24T21:31:00.005-05:00

A difficult month. A difficult winter in fact. My daughter has had one cold after another, getting sick of waking up in the middle of the night to tend to her crying, coughing, feverish colds. I guess that's what you get when you move her to a formal preschool with tons of new kids, and new germs.

I"m now officially 20 weeks pregnant. Just found out this week we're having a BOY. I"m not so sure how I feel about that. Definitely more work in the wardrobe department. I"ll have to let go of all those cute girly outfits that fit babies and young toddlers. Too bad - so much $ invested in boots, coats, snowsuits, dresses, hats, etc. I hope I can get something for it at the consignment shop.

Just got back from a business trip to Tokyo. Yes, Tokyo! Was interesting, but I'm still a tad jetlagged. I still tend to get more awake as the evening wears on, and my midnight I am really hungry (lunch in Japan!). I got SO sick just before the trip and by the time I got there, and especially on the way home (lovely 12 and 14 hour flights!!!!!) I had a bad strep infection. I even had "hemmorragic conjunctivitis" on the way home. Gross.

It was a scary trip but I forced myself to "feel the fear and do it anyway". I get so wrapped up in fear of disaster, fears of accidents, and fear of whatever, that I figured, what the hell, let's go to Japan while pregnant. Who cares if we can't read any ingredients on whatever you're eating, who cares if everything the restaurants are serving up look like toxic blowfish eyeballs? Who cares if you can't read the can contents and accidentally quaff down a vodka-and-grapefruit juice while pregnant?? (this did happen.. unfortunately. On the up side, I only had half a can before I realized what I was drinking...)

My Asian illnesses all stemmed from a bout with the "Coxsackie" virus that blew through our house the past few weeks. Abby was sick for about 2 weeks with it, me - one week. H hubby was down with it on Monday-Tuesday. He was in rough shape.

Am hopeful I"ll start to sleep again soon, but so much on my mind. The impending birth, incorporating the fact that I"ll have TWO children, and one of them a boy.. is just spinning my head. I feel overwhelmed now, why did I think this was such a good idea? I just hope I can get more sleep soon. I can pull off this whole working motherhood thing if I coudl just manage to get more sleep. Damn pregnancy hormones.

At least so far our Son looks healthy. This pregnancy is a bit unnerving as I have a "anterior placenta" which means even if he decides to audition for a part in "Stomp" I cant' feel much kicking. I can feel some squirming, and the odd tap on my hip bones, but he's so well padded in the front, I cant feel much at all. At least I saw him on ultrasound last wednesday and he looked great. A bit more laid back than our high-energy daughter, which would be welcome news.

Today was a tough day in the motherhood front. Are all two and a half year olds such jerks? My daughter is SO cute but lately she's been so difficult. I swear she's skipped childhood and turned right into a sassy, smart assed 16 year old.

Wish me luck in the sleep department this week. I"m going to need it.

At least I have no more international trips. I'm almost too big to fit into an airplane washroom.

my child is hilarious

2008-02-04T15:03:00.000-05:00

Two emails from my hubby that I received last week when I was away on a business trip:

Wednesday January 30

The Bubbs was standing in front of the mirror today jumping up and down singing (screaming more like it)...

Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells
All da WAYYYYYYY!

Cinderella
Cinderella
Cinderella
Cinderella
Cinderella
Cinderella
Cinderella
All da WAYYYYYYY!

If it wasn't so funny, it would have scared me.

Thursday, January 31

She did something else that was funny today. She saw me pour soy milk from my glass into my oatmeal this morning at breakfast. So she grabbed her glass and poured it in her oatmeal, only her glass had apple juice. She took a spoonful and, thinking she would say "I like that!" she surprised me she by saying "dat strange". Funny kid.

a lot of snow, and some surreal moments

2008-01-04T11:37:00.000-05:00

For those of you in Ottawa, you're well aware that this winter we've received an insane amount of snow. I dont remember ever seeing this much snow before. It's been coming down pretty steady since early November, and personally I'm getting sick of it.

I saw two things yesterday that confimred that I'm probably not the only one who's sick of the snow.

Coming back from doing errands on my lunch hour, I saw two sidewalk plows (which I affectionately call "dinky plows") drag racing. One was on the sidewalk, the other one was on the road. The drivers were staring at each other with maniacal grins. I hope there were no pedestrians in the way as they were definitely not looking where they were going.

About 2 minutes later, I saw a big plow STUCK in a snowbank. Probably a snowbank that it had just made. The wheels were spinning and the plow was up but there was no way that plow was going anywhere. I bet the driver of that plow is sick of the snow!

Too funny.

Ever the optimist

2008-01-03T10:34:00.001-05:00

My daughter cracks me up. Last night she was paddling through the kitchen wearing some cute jeans, a cute top, and ONE sock on.

I said to her "Hey! What's going on? You've got one sock off!"

She replies: "But I have one sock ON!"

Ever the optimist. I guess I have some things to learn from her.

Where have I been?

2008-01-02T10:27:00.000-05:00

In case anyone out there is still reading this blog, and wondering where the heck I've been.. well I've been sleeping. A lot.

Why?

Because I'm finally pregnant!

Baby #2 due in July!!

Last pregnancy was fraught with so much stress and difficulty. The postpartum period was even worse. We'll keep our fingers crossed that this one will be less difficult.

We had our first scan on Monday December 31. All was well. Baby was laid back, resting. Flipped around a bit, but not nearly as active as my daughter during BOTH her ultrasounds. I hope this is a sign of things to come. Abby is a VERY active and intense child. I hope the little one is more laid back and takes things as they come.

Crunchy my friend

2007-12-14T10:33:00.000-05:00

Safe to say, I have one of the funniest kids on the planet. The other day, we were having breakfast, listening to Abby's running commentary on everything.

She was sitting at the table and in the middle of eating, she said "Crunchy"! Thinking she was referring to her food, I asked her "What's crunchy, your cereal"?

Abby replies: "No. Crunchy my friend!"

We busted a gut laughing.

So did she.

Second set of tests

2007-12-05T09:52:00.001-05:00

Came back also negative. Despite two sets of tests, I'm finding it hard to believe these results because apparently the majority of this stuff IS contaminated (although not all of it is) and it is possible to have false negatives.

What will it take for me to relax about this? I just really want to sell this house and start fresh somewhere else.

Asbestos update

2007-11-28T08:39:00.000-05:00

Ok. Next steps: We're going to hire a professional asbestos abatement company to remove the open bag in the fuse box and clean up the area around the bag. Cost: $500. We'll have that analyzed to see what was in it. Cost for the analysis: $900.

We're also going to get some bulk samples done from the attic in the back of the house. Cost: $900.

Total costs so far: $3200. Money we don't have, but money we have to spend.

We'll decide what to do after we get the results.

Keep your fingers crossed for good results.

Living in Asbestos hell

2007-11-27T08:45:00.000-05:00

Ok..

Last week I finally got around to testing some old, cracked floor tiles from our basement. Our house is circa 1966 so I was a bit concerned about potential asbestos in these tiles. Apparently some linoleum and other substances from that era contain asbestos. In reading up on this, I came across an article on asbestos in vermiculite based attic insulation. And then I recalled seeing some come floating down around my husband when he poked his head up into the attic one day last winter when we were having a leak in our ceiling. I looked up more information on this stuff, and lo and behold, confirmed - we have this stuff in our attic. Apparently there is a layer of the vermiculite underneath a second layer of blown-in rockwool or cellulose fibre insulation. Here's the dirt on the substance: (from the Health Canada website)

Vermiculite is a mica-like mineral mined around the world and used in a variety of commercial and consumer products because it is fire-resistant and has good insulation qualities. Of concern is vermiculite ore produced by the Libby Mine in Montana from the 1920's to 1990. It was sold as Zonolite® Attic Insulation and possibly other brands in Canada during that time. Vermiculite from the Libby Mine may contain amphibole asbestos. The Libby Mine supplied the majority of the world market in vermiculite-based insulation. Products made from vermiculite ore produced by the Libby Mine were not widely used after the mid-1980's and have not been on the market in Canada since 1990. Not all vermiculite produced before 1990 contains amphibole asbestos fibres. However, to be safe and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that if your building has older vermiculite-based insulation, it may contain some amphibole asbestos.

Although the overall percentages of amphibole asbestos in bulk vermiculite are very low, the airborne percentages can increase if the material is disturbed. Asbestos poses health risks only when fibres are present in the air that people breathe. If asbestos fibres are enclosed or tightly bound in a product, for example in asbestos siding or asbestos floor tiles, there are no significant health risks. How exposure to asbestos can affect you depends on:

The concentration of asbestos fibres in the air;
How long the exposure lasted;
How often you were exposed;
The size of the asbestos fibres inhaled; and
The amount of time since the initial exposure.

When inhaled in significant quantities, asbestos fibres can cause asbestosis (a scarring of the lungs which makes breathing difficult), mesothelioma (a rare cancer of the lining of the chest or abdominal cavity) and lung cancer. The link between exposure to asbestos and other types of cancers is less clear.

The best way to minimize your risk of amphibole asbestos exposure is to avoid disturbing vermiculite-based insulation in any way. If vermiculite-based insulation is contained and not exposed to the home or interior environment, it poses very little risk.

OK - although scary, if its enclosed in our attic, it doesn't sound too bad, right? EXCEPT for two things:

a) we recently found an open bag of the stuff in an open wall cavity containing the fuse box. If you open the door to the fuse box you can see the ripped open bag of the stuff dripping down in front of your face.

AND

b) we had significant disturbance of attic insulation last spring when we had a second light and a ceiling exhaust fan installed in our ensuite bathroom.

SO

We proceeded to get some samples taken from the front part of our attic. The samples were tested for asbestos, and fortunately, they were negative. According to all experts, based on the shape, size and colour of the vermiculite, and the fact that there was no asbestos detected, we should not worry.

However, I continue to worry. My logic is currently going like this:

1. How do we know that the composition of the vermiculite is consistent across the entire attic installation? How do we know that the composotion of the bagged vermiculite is the same as the stuff tested?

2. I have read an article that there sometimes no asbestos is detected in the vermiculite, but there can be very high levels of the fibres in the air surrounding the vermiculite if there is a disturbance.

The solution?

Not sure. I'm stuck in worry land again. I'm barely sleeping. I'd LOVE to have this stuff completely sucked out of the house, have air and dust samples taken for months afterward, and then maybe I'd be satisfied that my house was safe. But that would probably cost $30,000. That kind of money I dont have.

What to do.

Funniest thing I've seen Abby do...

2007-11-06T13:16:00.000-05:00

Pretty much hands down, the funniest thing I saw her EVER do happened this weekend. We were eating dinner on Sunday night, Clancy, Abby, Nene and myself.. Abby was being very silly, singing silly songs, making funny faces, being her usual silly self. At one point, she struck a disco-hand pose (one hand pointing up and one hand pointing almost down, a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever) and she proceeds to..

***FART LOUDLY***

And then she smiled, and said "TOOT"!!!!!!

Nene turned away so as not to "encourage" further behavoiur of this type. I busted a gut and went into the kitchen to a) remove myself from Abby's line of vision as I laughed my ass off and b) to hold myself so as not to pee my pants. Clancy just sat there with mouth agape..

Oh my that was the funniest thing. Chris, you missed a good one. Doots would have loved this one for sure.

BUT REMEMBER we still are trying to discourage farting at the table!!!!!!!

Petition against the female reproductive system - too funny!

2007-11-01T14:24:00.001-04:00

A Letter To the Female Reproductive System (herein referred to as “That Unpredictable, Untrustworthy, and Generally Unattractive Mess of Leaky Pipes”):

Friends, Citizens, Countrywomen, it is time to make a stand. For millennia, we have allowed you to control our every thought, action, and pore with your necessary hormones and discriminatory behavior (white pants deserve the same respect as black or brown!).

But now, as we try to use you for your ultimate purpose, we seem to be heading down a dangerous and divisive path.At such a time of hope and fear, you give us nothing concrete. As we meticulously log every twinge and pang, you secretly gloat at our uncertainty, and set out to confuse us even more with vague cramps, loose stools, and bloated bellies that resemble someone in their second trimester, though we just ovulated thirteen days ago.

We hereby protest against the 2 week wait between ovulation and finding out if we're pregnant!

We protest at the contortions, poking, and peeing that you put us through twice a month! We are outraged and ashamed that our bodies would keep secrets and cause us to rely on strips, saliva, and your tricky little sidekick, Cervical Mucus. We call for you to abide by both the spirit and the good intentions we have displayed since the day you first made yourself known to us as The Harbinger of the Witch. We have cared for you, cleaned up after you, and defended you against the devils on our shoulders whispering not to trust a thing you say, do, or secrete.

Our demands are simple:

1) Notification at least three days prior, but no less than one day prior to ovulation, allowing us to stock the necessary decongestants, lubrications, and Viagra if necessary.
2) Clear and unmistakable signs of fertilization. Note: as we are in the 21st century, emails and/or instant or text messages are preferred.
3) A separate notification of implantation. Our bellybuttons serve no use as is, perhaps you can work something out with them for this one.

We do not think this is too much to ask. We receive such cooperation from other organ systems. (Please consult with Urinary Tract with any questions you may have).

Sincerely, The Undersigned

******
I'd sign onto this one!!!!!!!

Almost two years...

2007-10-29T12:07:00.001-04:00

As the weather gets colder and the days turn greyer.. I can't stop thinking of my Dad. On November 15 it will be 2 years since he died. In fact, tomorrow is the anniversary of the last time I ever saw him alive.

Its been so hard dealing with this, carrying this weight with me all the time. For those people who have never lost someone its definitely a life changing event, similar in magnitude to having a new baby. Nothing will ever be the same. The world has changed, you have to redefine yourself in a new way.

Death is also something that you dont just "get over". It's always there. You never truly move on, but instead, you learn to live with it. The load gets less uncomfortable but on occasion it slips and it pokes you somewhere tender and then you have to sit, readjust, cry a bit, and put it back on your back. And walk on.

My dad was such a huge part of my life. Of all of our lives. He was a dominant, self-centred person most of the time. It defintely affected how we saw ourselves, how we acted, what we did, what we thought, and what we did.

I feel so lost without him around. This is not to say that I always agreed with his positions or views on things, nor that I really relied on him for a lot of things. In fact, I had to rely on others for the ability to deal with him a lot of the time. He was not an easy person to have in one's life.

But that's not to say I didnt love him. When things were good, things were REALLY good. I was star-struck with him sometimes.

And that relationship is the one I"m missing right now.

********

This is the way you left me
I'm not pretending
no hope no love no glory
no happy ending.

This is the way that we lived
like it was forever
I live the rest of my life
not together

Wake up in the morning
stumble on my life
can't get love
without big sacrifice

Now that it's happened
do you wish me well?
Free from your pain is a little bit of heaven
and a little bit of hell

This is the hardest Story
that I have ever told
no hope or love or glory
our happy ending is gone forevermore

This is the way you left me, I'm not pretending
no hope no love no glory, no happy ending
this is the way that we lived, like it was forever
I'll live the rest of my life, but not together

2 o clock in the morning, something's on my mind
Can't get no rest, keep walking around
if I pretend that nothing ever went wrong
Can I get to sleep if I pretend that we just carried on?

This is the hardest Story I have ever told
no hope no love no glory no happy ending
This was the way that we lived,
like it was forever
I'll live the rest of my life
but not together...

Can barely manage one blog, let alone two

2007-10-11T12:08:00.000-04:00

In the name of reducing stress... I just can't manage two blogs. My (ha!) loyal readers might just miss something on one or the other blog.

So, here are the posts from : "Cake Makes Me Happy" - for posterity. I'll probably not be posting on there much anymore. Not to worry, I will definitely try to post the HAPPIER things on this blog as well as just my crises, trials and tribulations.

********

Church lifts the spirit
Psalm 27:14: Wait for the LORD;Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.
Posted by Patty at 7:44 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Even funnier from a 2 year old
Saying grace at our household.. we tend to "free form" it. We say "what do you want to thank God for" and sometimes Abby will reply with some highlights of her life such as "noodles, sunny days, clouds, mommy, daddy, nene, uncle Chris".The other day, it was grace time before dinner and we said yet again "what do you want to thank God for?"Abby replies "umm... the blue stuff on my hands?" (marker stains on her hands)We all burst out laughing.Too funny.
Posted by Patty at 5:54 AM 1 comments
Monday, September 24, 2007

Funny two year olds
My favourite dialogues-with-a-two-year-old in the past few weeks:Clancy: “Abby! Did you know your full name is Abigail H.?”Abby: “No - my name is Abigail B.”Clancy: “Why are you Abigail B?”Abby: “Jacob B” (name of another little boy at daycare)Clancy: “Oh are you married to Jacob B?”Abby: “Yes. I hit him."Patty: BWAAHAAAHAA!!!*****Abby: “I love Church”.Patty: “you love Church? That’s great honey!”Abby: “I love Jesus!”Patty: “That’s great! I love Jesus too! Jesus is a great person!”Abby: “HAAHAAA Jesus is a funny guy! He has a big beard!”*********Abby: “I’m married."Patty: “You’re married?”Abby “yes”Patty: “to who?”Abby: “Jesus”Patty: “Oh if you’re married to Jesus, I guess that means you’re a Nun!”Abby: DADDY! I’m um .. um.. a Nun! Nun! Nun! Nun!”
Posted by Patty at 12:03 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Indian Summer makes me happy
It's late September. And its 27 degrees out there.Isn't that something?Summer-like days, and crisp nights with the smell of wood smoke in the air makes me happy.
Posted by Patty at 10:07 AM 2 comments
Friday, September 14, 2007

Hockey makes me happy
I played hockey last night for the first time in 2 years.I can still play!I was worried that I'd have forgotten everything I learned, however, after the skills session was over, I realized that I was as good as I was three years ago - with one tiny exception. Stick handling was a bit off. At first it felt awkward and foreign, but as time went on it felt a bit better. Not quite as good as I used to be, but close. However, as hockey-style stick handling was never my forte, I'm ok with it. I'm sure I'll pick it up again. Its amazing how the body remembers how to do things after years of non-use.It was amazing to feel so free, to remember a part of my life that I'd long forgotten. And despite all my intense baby-yearnings lately, last night I was pretty glad that I wasn't pregnant. I felt free, and I felt energized, and I was flying around the ice.Now I feel a LOT more "free" to get pregnant again. I won't have that "oh its been so long since I've played, I bet I forget how to play" intimidation on me. This will definitely unlock that tiny bit of resistance and resentment about getting pregnant again that's been there in the back of my brain these last 2 months of attempted conception. I know that even if I'm off for another 2 years with a pregnancy and a young infant, that hockey will still be there for me when I'm ready to come back.I feel so free with that now.Getting ready for the game, I felt a bit shaky, as it was the first time out there since so many things happened in my life - losing my father, my abdominal surgery, a new job (twice) and recovery from postpartum depression. The last time I tried to play was 3 months after my daughter was born, and I was so exhausted and out of shape I barely lasted 30 minutes. Getting dressed last night I had the shakes so bad, I had a lump in my throat, I was so nervous. What would happen if everything in the past was just so difficult and I'd never be able to play again? What if my body had changed so much that hockey was just not going to be possible anymore?However, 10 minutes on the ice, I knew I was going to be fine. I felt like I was in much better shape than I was 2 years ago. It was one more victory I've reclaimed back since all of my pain and strife. One more giant step towards getting back to who I used to be. And that makes me insanely happy.A pretty good feeling.I love team sports - I get so enthralled into them I forget about everything else. Minutes and hours pass and I dont even realize it. I dont hear the people in the stands, I forget about work, about my troubles, all the things that have been on my mind, my babylust, my worries, and I just follow the play, skate, challenge, challenge..protect my net..get into position..woops they're on a breakaway..get going..get going.....*gasping for breath*....speed wobble.....laughing..laughing.....high on adrenaline....a huge feeling of accomplishment for us old gals as we try to hoof our butts around the arena.....socializing in the dressing room after the game with other fellow hockey-princess-warriors...I forgot how fun that was.
Posted by Patty at 5:30 AM 4 comments
Thursday, September 13, 2007

Why Cake?
Cake. Yes cake. I always get happy about cake. I dont know why. Maybe its the warm smell as it bakes in the oven.. the fun of spreading creamy icing or dusting of icing sugar, cocoa, or other topping... mmmmmm......Its one of the first happy smells to enter into my brain as a young child.Maybe its the fact that cake is associated with the happier things in life - a wedding, a baby, a birthday, a new job.Maybe its the fact that my daughter is fascinated with "Happy to you cakes" and makes numerous cake replicas out of sand on a daily basis. Complete with a leaf or a stick as a "candle".Maybe its the fact that I just love cake. Its sticky, sweet goodness.Its almost my 3rd wedding anniversary.. I'm thinking of ordering a mini-replica of our wedding cake to celebrate. It was an awesome cake - marble chocolate/vanilla with bavarian cream filling, and butter cream icing, from the Orleans Bakery in east end Ottawa.It was tasty.Just thinking of that cake makes me happy.
Posted by Patty at 8:23 AM 1 comments

First cakepost!
This is my second blog on here.My first blog - in search of sleep - really focussed a lot on the difficulties I've had to go through in the past few years. Postpartum depression. The death of my father. Surgery. Marital problems.I know that one's moods are really affected by things that you think about.I need happier things in my life.This blog is dedicated to things that make me happy.Enjoy!
Posted by Patty at 8:17 AM 1 comments

Waiting on the Lord

2007-10-10T10:21:00.000-04:00

Last night I needed some peace so I went to church at 6:30 pm. This was the theme. How appropriate.

Since I really do think that babies are a gift from God, I think this is particularly appropriate.

**************
One of the important exhortations of Christian faith is the call to “wait on the Lord.” Even though God promises special blessing for waiting, waiting is one of the most difficult exhortations of Scripture. Why is it so hard? Because, as a part of fallen humanity, we are so prone to take matters into our own hands, to follow our own schemes. Yet, over and over again we are told in Scripture “Wait on the Lord.”

We don’t like to wait and when we think of waiting we are apt to respond with the pun, “Wait? That’s what made the bridge collapse!” Of course, that’s weight, not wait. But then these two words, weight and wait are not always unrelated because one of our needs in waiting on the Lord is the need to cast the weighty burdens of life on Him.

The comment about the bridge expresses our normal dislike for waiting, especially in our “I want it now!” society. Ours is a society that has grown accustomed to immediate gratification. Due to modern technology and all our conveniences—telephones, refrigerators, freezers, microwaves, fast foods, airplanes, etc.—we have many things immediately at our fingertips. Just think of the speed of the latest computer technology in comparison with the computers of only a few years ago.

Even in our modern age of conveniences, waiting is still a big part of life. When we think of waiting, what comes to mind? We might conjure up visions of an airport terminal, a doctor’s waiting room, the line at the supermarket, or being stuck in rush hour traffic. The facts are, most of us are waiting for something most of the time:

- Maybe you are in a job situation that’s really tough to endure and you are waiting and hoping that conditions will change for the better.
- Maybe you are without a job and waiting for news on an application.
- Maybe you are ill (or have a loved one who is) and waiting for health to improve.
- Maybe you are on a diet and waiting for your weight to drop a few pounds.
- A single person may be waiting for Mr. or Miss Right.
- You want a(nother) child but God has other plans for you right now

The simple fact is, in spite of our modern age and our dislike for waiting, life is full of waiting. And one of the most challenging exhortations of Scripture is “Wait.” But waiting, despite our impatience and our dislike for it, is a vital element in life. Indeed, waiting has a number of benefits. Because the Lord tells us to wait, and since it has some wonderful benefits, we need to know what it means to wait and how that is to be done.

How do we truly learn to wait for and on the Lord and experience the promised blessing of God?

Waiting Necessitates the Passage of Time

In our "now" generation we must understand and accept the fact that waiting on the Lord always involves the passage of time just as it does when we are waiting for the news, a special TV program, for a plane to arrive, for retirement. Waiting on the Lord inevitably means enduring the passage of time, but it means more, much more.

Waiting Means Confident Expectation

Waiting involves an expectation of something special. Waiting means anticipation, expectation, confident hope in something that will take place. Ultimately, waiting on the Lord is like waiting on the sun to rise—waiting expectantly for the Lord’s answers to human needs as the sun brings the warmth of the day.

Waiting Involves an Expectation Based on Knowledge and Trust

Without knowledge and trust, we simply won’t wait—at least not without a great deal of anxiety—and usually not without taking matters into our own hands. The ability to wait on God's blessings comes from being confident and focussed on who God is and what God is doing. It means confidence in God's person, confidence in His wisdom, love, timing, understanding of our situation and of the world. To wait on the Lord means learning to be content and patient as we cling to God in a fallen world and rest in His love and wisdom. Key to this is knowing that someday we will be in a perfect world that is everything this world is not.

2 Corinthians 4: 16-18: Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

On the one hand, being content and patient means learning to be independent of the things we think we need for our significance, security, or satisfaction in life.

Phillipians: 4: 11-13 Not that I speak from want; for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

On the other hand, it means learning to cling to the Lord in the midst of a fallen world. It means resting in His goodness and being committed to His purposes and glory no matter how things seem.

Another month, another heartbreak

2007-10-09T09:24:00.000-04:00

Cycle #3 come and gone.. and no baby. Caught me by surprise - 3 days early. Was not a fun experience. Was at the home of my in-laws and just as we're leaving for church, AF shows up. I was emotionally raw already, and then arrived at Church - the same place we went to church as kids. I spent a bit of time looking over at the pew (front right, 3 or 4 from the front) where my family used to sit.. strong emotions.

The second or third song they played was "Here I am Lord" - which was one of my dad's faves, I can still hear his voice when that song is played. It was also the entrance hymn to my dad's funeral. Walking into the church behind my dad's coffin, stunned, shocked, not even feelign my own legs, feeling like I was floating.. I know that song was playing, but its only now, 2 years later, when I'm actually having flashbacks and tangible memories of that day.

The arrival of AF, signalling no baby this month, being at that Church, as well as the song just pushed me over the edge. I burst out crying and walked out of the Church. It took a long time to get myself some composure.

I'm still crying off and on even today.

my relationship with the BIG GUY

2007-10-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

Yes.. GOD, the Big Guy, Yahweh, Great Spirit, Jehovah, or whatever you want to call him. My relationship with him is suffering today.

I am struggling so badly during this "trying to conceive baby #2" period in my life, I found myself cursing God out this morning. And badly. I was awful. I called HIM every name in the book. I probably deserve a lightning strike to the head for that.

Whether or not baby #2 comes along is largely in HIS hands, and I'm not happy with that. I wish he'd give up some control to me, or deliver the answer to my prayers (which I THINK is another baby). but you never know. Sometimes God has other plans that are better for you than what you'd arrange for yourself. But little old non-trusting me, I dont trust that my best interests are in God's hands. I dont know why trust is so hard for me, but it is.

Maybe becuase there have been too many "acts of God" that have been painful for me lately. Especially the surprise death of my dad. Only God calls us home, decides when its time to stop being alive and to come home to HIM. Yes, I have tried to look at my dad's sudden death in this way, and try to be happy for my dad, but what about us? God took my dad home, which has been so painful for those of us who are left. If it's a God decision, why the hell is it so hard for us who are left to grieve? Why can't God make it easier for us to accept His will? Why is it so painful sometimes? And on that note, I'm struggling with that. Struggling to accept that God's will is always in our best interest.

Back to the wondering when/if we'll have another baby. I *know* I should take the lessons that I've learned in all my religious and spiritual education and be HAPPY with what I have (job, house, car, one child, husband, friends, etc) and not angry about what I don't. And I should stop comparing myself to others, becuase I can always find a reason to feel inadequate.

But today I just can't.

I'm in another insomnia phase which is probably not helping. I'm trying to track my insomnia phases, and have noticed the following trends:

I can't sleep when the following is going on:

Early in the week - feeling like I have so much on my plate and I'm overwhelmed with the whole week to come.

Mid-cycle - who knows why - hormones?

Full moon - this one stumps me. I rarely sleep well for the 3-4 days approaching the full moon, and then the next day, BAM a good night of sleep for a day or two.

Pre-and-post "auntie flo" - hormones again?

Pre-vacation, holiday and travel - disruption in my "routine" (such as it is for an insomniac!)

Too much on my plate - trying to remember everything I need to get done around the house and also at work. All the little thoughts keep dancing in my head, causing anxiety.

God please just give me some peace on all of this. Please.

An older mom's lament

2007-09-28T13:26:00.000-04:00

My H and I have been ttc baby #2 for a few months. Last week I even went to talk to my doctor and then a therapist about my fears and anxieties about being an "older mom". I'll be 38 in January and there is a lot of information out there on the fact that fertility does decline with age. After reading all of this stuff (which I knew already from reading it before TTC baby #1 back in 2004) I have been in an extreme stress-out situation.

My doctor was a real pro in his discussions and indicated to me that there is a *slight* reduction in fertility as we age, but he didnt make a big deal about it. He assured me there's still a really good chance, but it could take a little longer (maybe even a year longer) than I'd hoped. He did indicate that overall, couples only have a 60% chance of conceiving after 1 year of trying.. that blew me away.

Shocking words for someone like me who concieved her first without even trying - first month, at age 34 (apparently since I delivered at age 35 technically I was a 35 year old first time mother!). The chances of that happening are less than 10%!

Anyhow, despite the stats, I figured with my previous experience I must be some kind of fertility goddess or something, and this time around it would be just as easy, but no...

I'm noticing that the scarier stats for mothers 35+ are usually on the websites of assisted reproduction companies. Part of me is wondering if that is part of their advertising. I know one thing that's for sure, fertility or infertility, we DON'T have the money for either extremely invasive techniques, or adoption, that's for sure. Unless some benevolent financial donor comes our way, whatever nature hands us or doesn't, that's going to have to be where it ends for us as far as family size.

The pain of being at the end of my reproductive life and just beginning in my relationship and my ability to have kids is getting unbearable. I feel so stuck. So trapped. So hopeless. Why was I able to have a baby when I was 13 or 14 for chrissake? I was not even in HIGH SCHOOL yet! And in my prime in my early 20's? I wasn't even done university. I didnt have a real, steady, guaranteed paycheck until I turned 30 1/2.. how is it at that point I was already facing fertility decline? But that's the way human reproduction is at this point. Until science can stop a girl from becoming fertile until she turns 25, and adds another decade onto our reproductive life in our 40's and early 50's this is what we're stuck with.

This world doesn't make sense to me.

I knew about these stats from a fairly early age (late 20's). I never wanted to be in this situation, and I tried REALLY hard to not be here. I tried to stick through relationships in my 2o's that were not the best for me, in fear that I'd not find anyone better before it was too late. Despite it all, those relationships blew up in my face.

I swear the day my boyfriend broke up with me in January 2000 I saw the faces of my yet unborn children (one girl and one boy) disappear before my face, and it was the saddest sight I have ever seen. Iit was not until I was 34 when I got married and 35 when I had my first child. The girl is here.. where's the boy?

Many people tell me to just "be happy" with what I have. I am very happy with what I have. I love my husband and little girl so much. I can't believe what an utterly amazing child I have. But this ongoing babylust to complete my family does NOT mean I dont appreciate what I do have. Its just something beyond logic, beyond comprehension that is sitting in my heart, tugging at my soul, reaching out into the great beyond.

It was always in my mind's eye to be a mom of 2 kids. Probably because I grew up with one sibling, and its familiar and comfortable to me. The pain of looking across my dining room table and seeing one empty chair is really difficult for me.

And now with a few cycles of non-success, those old fears are again creeping up on me. I feel I'm rapidly and desperately running out of time.

I hope I can stay sane as I let mother nature and God work this all out. There's not much else that I can do to help this out, any more than I'm already doing that is.

I hope that God listens to my prayers. I've been saying a lot of them lately.

I miss my dad

2007-09-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

A hard day today. I miss my dad insanely.

Despite wishing I was, I am not close to my Dad's family. Nobody really seems to get along in that family. It makes me ache inside that the only ties that I have to my dad are so inacessible.

A few days ago I looked at a photo of my cousin Dan who I've probably not seen in 20 years.

His hair freaked me out. Exactly like my Dad's.

For some reason that photo has caused a lot of emotion in me. When I remember the little things that made my dad human - what he looked like, his hair, his hands, his feet, the way he cleared his throat, the way he walked, etc, THAT's when I have a hard time. I"m starting to forget all the little things and quirks he had that made him human.

I miss him.

Today I miss him Insanely.

Don't forget to check out happy cake!

2007-09-14T09:10:00.000-04:00

I've got a new 'twin' blog to this one. see:

www.cakemakesmehappy.blogspot.com

Dedicated to things that make me happy. I need to change my outlook on life. Posts to this site may be a bit fewer and far between.

But drop in to my new place... say hello and have some cake!

Singing the baby blues again

2007-09-12T08:12:00.000-04:00

Another month goes by... and I'm still not pregnant.

3am this morning, I got up to pee... and it was obvious, I was definitely not pregnant. I spent the next 2 hours crying. I'm still weepy now 3 hours later.

I know that 2 months is not that long to be trying.. but we conceived Abby the first month we tried. So this time, 2 months seems like forever.

This is such a bind.. on one hand, as I'm already a mom of one, I'm terrified to have another baby. I KNOW pregnancy, childbirth and the early months and years are no picnic. Working full time while pregnant, is not a cakewalk. Its exhausting, emotional, stressful - overall a difficult haul. And with a little one underfoot, I'm not sure how I'd do it. And now that I have a new job to learn, especially one that includes international travel, the prospect of having to work pregnancy around all of that is especially unpleasant.

However, despite all of that, today I'm just plain insanely sad to not be pregnant. What's not helping is that I feel time is passing me by - I'll be 38 in January. There is no time to waste. But this is not something I can just put my mind to and have it work out. Careers and education - my worries of past decades - I know now are much easier to be in control of. Matters related to life and love seem to be all luck, chance and circumstance.

I have so many worries. I'm worried that as Abby gets older and more independent, I'll lose my nerve. That if this waiting game goes on too long that I'll just not want to try anymore. Also, this rollercoaster of "am I or am I not" is really difficult to handle.

What's more stressful is that even if I get pregnant I know there's no guarantees. At my age there's about a 30% chance of miscarriage. I know a lot of people who have had one - or more. I remember the anxiety and terror of the first trimester with Abby... I bled off and on for the entire three months. The anxiety of wondering if she was ok, if she'd be healthy was so difficult to handle. Each doctor's appointment, each screening test, each ultrasound was so terrifying. By the time she was born I was beside myself with worry. Yet another contributing factor to the PPD.

How do I continue to let this go? I admitted to myself last week that I was "ok with whatever happened" but that was when I had an inkling that I might have been pregnant. I was pretty mixed up last week - on one hand, the pregnancy tests were both negative. After the first one on Sunday I cried my eyes out for hours. But despite it all, I was still trying to hang onto a bit of hope. But 2 negative pregnancy tests later, and now "Aunt Flo" is here. So its definite that I'm not pregnant. For someone who was "OK" with whatever happened - baby wise - I'm surprised at the strength of the grief and sadness that's pouring out of me this morning.

At 3am this morning I was so upset that I sought out the company of my husband. I woke him up to talk. God bless him - he woke up and talked with me until it was time to get up at 6:30. Sorry honey - I know you'll be exhausted today. I dont do that very often, because I dont want to wake him up. But I just couldnt help it today.

One thing we talked about in the dark was how we KNEW that God was working in our lives when we got married, and when Abby came along. That feeling that God is watching over your shoulder, and you have that wonderful glow of warmth and a strong God-presence was obvious to us both. Our wedding day was sunny, happy and bright. A perfect day. Our honeymoon was bright and glorious. And Abby came along 9 months later. All was perfect...

Except there have been so many hard things since then. The difficult pregnancy. The traumatic birth. The postpartum depression. The death of my father. My illnesses and surgery. My husband's "case". Losing my job. Our marriage has been was mired in the pain and helplessness or our our own individual painful circumstances. I have felt so far away from that warmth and radiance of God's love most days. A total opposite of how I felt on my wedding day and honeymoon. Lately the only praying I do is kind of an helpless, desperate with a bit of bitterness. Not at all like the joyous or warm prayers I felt leading up to our wedding, and the birth of our daughter.

Mind you I did get a bit of a reprieve.. I prayed on hands and knees a few weeks ago to get me out of my old job, away from that situation that was causing me such pain. 4 hours later I had a job offer.

But I still feel a million miles away with regards to God's guidance on having another baby......

Not much new....

2007-09-10T14:43:00.002-04:00

New job is good. I'm sleeping better.

No news on the trying to get pregnant front. Not sure if no news is good news or bad news.. just no news.

Goodbyes and hellos

2007-08-31T09:57:00.000-04:00

On Sept 4 I start a new job. It's not a huge change as I already know half the people in my new group. The subject matter is completely new though, and I'm a bit intimidated. There will be some travel, international travel, and I'm a bit scared about that. With the crises going on in the Middle East, I'm a little nervous about travelling to Egypt, in particular. I hope that aspect of the job has wrapped up for now and I'll be able to restrict my travelling to North America and Europe. For the next 12 months it appears thats where I'll be focussing.

I've just been up to my new office, setting up my cube. I'm pretty excited about the change I'm finding. I'm happy, there's a spring in my step. Looking forward to new challenges, intellectual discussions, and challenging my egg-headed-cranium. I hope I dont get too petrified about the travel.

I'm saying goodbye to a file and a job that has been nothing but misery for 14 months. I've tried to make it work, but it's been too much of a challenge. I was put in an acting managerial position but not given the opportunity to be fully staffed. When the remaining staff left, I was on my own. When I indicated to my boss that I was leaving, then suddenly the crisis became a crisis.. because it was now HIS crisis. Why was this not a crisis when it was MY crisis?

I'm tired of working in an environment in which I'm not given an opportunity to speak, provide input, have open discussions, and criticized for everything I do. I'm tired of having a boss who has an anger management problem. I'm used to being able to become a real expert in a particular subject, being recognized for it, and being able to provide advice and recommendations. I certainly don't expect management to take every recommendation and run with it, but the opposite extreme, where I have to be mute and servile, just doesn't work for me.

I hope that changes.

On to new things.

Goodbyes.. and she doesnt even know what it means.

2007-08-27T19:54:00.000-04:00

In 48 hours, our across-the-street neighbours are moving away. They are transplanted Newfies who have managed to find a way back to The Rock. I wish them well. Having visited NFLD only once I can totally understand why people from there would want to move back.

When my hubby and I moved into our house, one of the boys across the street was just over 12 months old, and the other one was not quite born. Now they are two wild and crazy boys, one is 3 and the other one is 4. My daughter has been going to daycare with them for 14 months. She just loves them. And I do too.

What's she going to do without them? Or is the question really, what am I going to do without them? Or is this issue really not about them, but about me? And all about this tapping into my previous experiences of loss? And my own fears about not having Cynthia to ask for advice on everything from daycare to managing grief?

When I was 10 years old my parents moved from Belleville to Brockville. It was an awful age to move. I had so many good friends that I'd been with since kindergarten. I missed them all so terribly. Its only been through luck and facebook that I've been able to track some of them down again. I dont think I've ever gotten over that move. I had visions at that time of my little friends and I being together always. And alas, it was not meant to be.

Since living here in Ottawa and having my daughter, and my horrible experiences over the past two years since my daughter was born, I really relied on the advice and experience of my neighbours, most of whom also have small children, for advice on everything from dealing with a newborn, up to daycare issues. I was so grateful to have that common bond, especially with the folks across the street. It took a load off my mind to know that we had one common daycare provider. It gave me a bit more "experience" to draw upon, experience with something I had absolutely no idea how to manage.

Good luck Cynthia, Luke, Aidan and Steven. I'll miss you.

I slept for TWENTY MINUTES last night

2007-08-23T21:06:00.001-04:00

I'm freekin exhausted. 20 minutes? How am I managing to still be alive? This after only sleeping 3 hours the night before...

This has to be a new record for me.

Please pray for sleep for me... throw sheep at me, knock me out with a brick.. something!!!

Let go and let God...

2007-08-20T12:46:00.000-04:00

I'm still twisting over not being pregnant this month. And being 37 years old. And petrified of the "risks" of an "older pregnancy", the increased risks of infertility despite having a wonderful child already....

I have to learn to let this go. Otherwise I'm afraid it will destroy me and everything that I love. I have to find a way to remember how I felt back in 2000 - in a time when despite having NOTHING, I was really really happy.

I tend to get so complacent sometimes, and overestimate my influence on my own life. I start to think that all that I have is my own doing, and I forget that so many life outcomes, the REALLY important ones anyhow, whether they be life, death, birth, marriage, a new job, fortune or poverty - so many things happen in our life that are out of our control.

We have *some* control over the minor ones - such as whether or not one becomes a nurse, a truck driver, or some other profession, but even then, there still are things that happen that are out of our control. Whether our chosen profession has a financial downturn, whether our company goes out of business, whether we get transferred to a work unit that's being led by an angry, abusive control freak, or whether we are the victim of some other kind of workplace restructuring, who knows. These things are out of our control.

For most of my life I worked really hard to try and control things. TOO hard. For years I tried to "drive" the process of finding a relationship, of developing a career, of making friends, etc. All with little success.

In the relationship arena, for about 15 years, I met guys that were not right for me, and stuck with them for years. I tried to "make it work" when it was plain to see to everyone but my blind self that the situation I was in wasn't good for me. And I was miserable. But I tried and tried, busted my butt.... and at despite trying SO hard, at age 31 everything fell apart. I was over 30, single, jobless, homeless and hopeless.

That situation was so painful for me that I had no choice but to turn that situation over to God, and accept that what might happen in my life was not necessarily what I (thought I) wanted. I had to accept that there was a very real chance that I might not meet anyone, or if I did, by the time it happened, I'd be too old to have the family that I always dreamed of. Once I accepted that maybe God had a different plan for me than I thought I did... and maybe I should stop fighting it... it ALL happened exactly the way I wanted it to. Things became very easy. I met the man I eventually married, I found an amazing house the first day we looked, I got pregnant the first time I tried.

I thought I had the secret of life figured out and now I was on a roll.

And then came the birth of my daughter, the physical and emotional fall out of that, and subsequently, the sudden death of my father. After a string of good luck, some really painful things again. The one thing that I'd spent so much of my life waiting to have - a family - was cruelly, the one thing that was making my life extremely unbearable. I was suffering severely from postpartum depression, and then I suffered a second major blow of losing my father. And a third blow upon my return to work a year later - being transferred from a unit I really liked to one that was severely dysfunctional and crippling to my self esteem.

My lessons to learn now? I'm still figuring them out. While I do believe that God did have a hand in the happy AND painful life events, maybe sometimes God's hand doesn't always deliver good things. Perhaps the faith I'd developed years before helped me to bridge those difficult life transitions..

Perhaps God wanted all of us affected by these major changes to take a path we never would have if my daughter had not been born and my father had not died...

Who knows. The reasons for these recent painful "hand of God" actions are not yet revealed.

But... as I start to twist and stress over a second pregnancy, I am definitely forgetting the lessons that all of this experience has taught me. Back in 2000, I was so destitute, that "turning it over to God"... was all I could do. I had NOTHING at that point in my life. No job, no home, no relationship - I was living out of a few boxes and an IKEA wardrobe-on-wheels in my brother's living room, sleeping on his living room futon. But at that point in my life, I really learned to be happy. Despite having nothing, I was happier with myself and my life than I'd been, I think EVER.

And it was when I finally became HAPPY, that everything I said I wanted just started to appear. Maybe I was destined to have the things that I wanted.... but God had to reassert Himself in my life as a strong reminder that these things are NOT of my own doing, but of HIS.

Now that some time has passed, I'm making the mistake of again trying to CONTROL everything. Whether or not I manage to get pregnant and have another baby is just dominating my mind. I'm tormented over it. I'm not sleeping. I'm obsessing. I'm having a hard time thinking of anything else. I've definitely forgotten the lessons I learned back in the time when I had nothing. I have so much more than I did back then, yet I'm not very happy. How could I have forgotten all that I learned?

In hindsight, since 2000, everything that has happened to me has definitely had the hand of God in it.

Meeting my best childhood friend, who I eventually married, by the checkout aisle in a grocery store after not seeing him for 20 odd years? Hand of God.

Finding a great house the first day we were looking? Hand of God.

Getting pregnant on our wedding night and having an amazing daughter in my life? Hand of God.

Losing my dad suddenly and shockingly? Not pleasant, but still, the Hand of God.

Not all of God's interventions in my life lately have been pleasant, but I know God meant me to go through them in order to get closer to Him. And right now, I'm foolishly pushing God away. I'm stupidly trying to be the big guy.. trying to play God.

I'm now twisting in agony, trying to figure out the "right window" for getting pregnant...
I'm reading waay too much online information about "pregnancy over 35"..
I'm reading up on the right kind of ovulation predictor kits..
I'm reading copious quantities of literature on the "fertility risks" of being over 35...
I'm twisting up with worry that my new job will send me halfway around the world during one of my last few precious opportunities to get pregnant before the age-door slams shut on my ovaries...
I'm insanely and insecurely bugging everyone I know for that "reassurance" that I'll get pregnant, have a healthy second child and everything will be okay..
But who knows? Who really knows?

And again, I'm not sleeping. Despite all the wonderful things that God HAS delivered to me. Here I am, worrying about things that may or may not happen, trying to direct everything. Getting all twisted up again, to the point of not sleeping and not enjoying my life. Life is truly the biggest gift that God has given me. Who the h*(&) do I think I am to not appreciate this gift?

My dear, you have to stop trying to BE God... let go.. and let God!

Wishing on someone else's star

2007-08-15T08:52:00.000-04:00

I guess I must be wishin on someone else's star
It seems like someone else keeps getting what I'm wishin for
Why can't I be as lucky as those other people are?
I guess I must be wishin on someone else's star,
Why can't I be as lucky as those other people are?
Oh I guess I must be wishin on someone else's star...

Ok I dont know who wrote this song originally but its pretty relevant today.

I'm not pregnant. I thought I was. I was sure I was.

We conceived Abby the first time we tried. Not so this time.

All the old fears of being "too old" are now flaring up, I'm having a hard time not crying today. Many of my younger friends had no problems concieving first time they tried, for ALL their kids. Being younger, they also have the luxury of not feeling like they have a biological gun to their heads if it doesnt work out for a few months. Me? Not so much luxury.

What's coming to mind today is the pain I felt when I was dumped 2 days after my 30th birthday. I tried so hard to hold onto that relationship, to make it work. I know he was NOT the right person.. why the hell did I stick around so long? Why did I think that was going to work? Why did I waste precious time?

Don't get me wrong. I dont want to paint a picture of NOT being grateful for wha I have. I am extremely lucky that things worked out the way they did for now... and I'm EXTREMELY grateful for having a great husband and one amazing child in my life. But I can't help thinking, because of circumstances, and my age, that I may not ever have the family I dreamed of. The day I was dumped back in 2000, I saw the faces of my little boy and a little girl in my mind, and that day, they disappeared. It was the saddest vision I'd seen in my whole life. I managed to "save" the little girl, but what about her brother?

I'm going to be 38 in January. Many people will say "you're not too old" but all medical information states that there's a significant drop in female fertility at age 37.

Again, I know i'm not too old, but the chance that baby #2 may not come along is definitely higher than for a younger woman.

I hope it all works. I guess God will deliver what is meant to be.

But Today I can't help feeling really sad.

I'm FREE!!!!

2007-08-10T08:25:00.000-04:00

I had a discussion with my potential new employer... it appears their travel budget has been cut so there is not as much international travel. They have to be a lot more choosy about where they go and how often.

In addition, they have a good idea of the travel requirements and work schedule for the next 12 months. And luckily, many of the upcoming meetings are going to be in Canada (WOO HOO!! Montreal!!)

I'm looking at 1-3 international trips (2-4 days to Mexico - recommended but not mandatory), Viet Nam (1 week - optional) and Germany (10 days - mandatory) in 12 months. There will also likely be 2 domestic trips (Toronto? Vancouver?) and 3 to Montreal.

Sounds good to me!

My other concern was overtime. I know that sometimes these trade jobs can be really tedious and demanding. However, with respect to overtime, my manager said that he doesnt' work much if any overtime. He also stated that the current staff component and "vibe" is a lot more laid back than it's been in years, and also they all work as a team. The big boss is pretty laid back and doesn't get too uptight if someone can't work overtime or go on a particular trip. The manager indicated that everyone really gets along and they have the capacity to cover for each other in times of overload.

So on that note, in my mind yesterday I said YES! And I notified the manager this morning!

And last night, I had the best sleep I've had in MONTHS!!!! WOOO!!!

I'm so happy!!!!!!

Torn...

2007-08-09T07:58:00.002-04:00

Ok.. as many of my friends and family know, I'm in the search for a new job. I've been really frustrated with my current position, and all the nonsense that's happened to it over the past 14 months. I've been searching for a new position, and yesterday I got an offer. Great file, great subject, interesting work, nice people, but there's one drawback. I don't know if I'm up for all the travel demands that this job could pose. Especially as my husband and I are trying to have another baby. Work while pregnant is hard. Travelling while pregnant is brutal. And excessive international travel to Asia and South America may just be impossible. And risky.

What to do?

The little one is lost

2007-08-09T07:58:00.001-04:00

The little one gave up on her fight for life... 5 days after her birth.

I'm so sad.

The little one is doing better...

2007-07-22T14:57:00.000-04:00

Or so I hear.... apparently her oxygen-induced-brain-damage is not as bad as originally thought. They think she just might make it. Still keep your fingers crossed.

On vacation for 2 weeks.. probably won't post much. On an up note - I"m sleeping! On vacation & sleeping... coincidence?

I think not.

Light a candle for a little one...

2007-07-18T11:50:00.000-04:00

I heard some bad news about an acquaintance today. The caregiver for the toddler of a good friend of mine had a c-section at 30 weeks pregnancy. The baby had blocked kidneys, resulting in very low amniotic fluid. The low fluid caused compression of the umbilical cord, restricting the oxygen supply to the infant.

The baby apparently has significant brain damage and cannot function off life support. The family may decide in a few days to take the baby off life support. The baby will probably not make it.

********

I know these are things that affect someone else, but ever since I've become a mother, it's like I've become the mother to the whole wide world. Things that affect moms, children and babies can bring me to tears quicker than anything, especially if they affect someone I know, or have even met.

So anyone who reads this, light a candle for the soul of this little one, and for his mom's broken heart.

Still searching.. and exhausted

2007-07-16T09:27:00.000-04:00

Ok, that one night of good sleep was just that - one night.

Ironically, it came the night I found out that one place that I was hoping to go work no longer had any openings.

I am definitely torn right now.

My H and I want another baby, and being five months from turning 38, we dont have the luxury of time to wait until things are "right" in our lives. We'd like to try and time it so that the baby is again born in June - so my mom will be available to come up and help. This means pregnancy in August or September.

Pretty soon!

Seeing as I'm the one with the uterus, it will definitely be me that will have to take one for the team with respect to morning sickness, exhaustion, and "the pregnancy stupids" while still trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism. It was really really difficult last time.

But for the sake of my mental health, I also really need to find a new job. I'm not looking forward to the possibility of being pregnant and learning a new job at the same time. Its hard to impress a new employer while you are scarfing down crackers all day long and trying to avoid wharfing on the boardroom table during a staff meeting or a senior management briefing session.

Also, mat leave in this country generally means 12 months away from the office. While that sounds great, having this happen shortly after going to a new team does not sit well with me. The last time I was on mat leave I left a group and a file I really really liked. I got reassigned upon return from leave to a file I hated, and subsequently, that file got transferred to a group in which I definitely don't belong. I'm still trying to figure out a way out of this mess.

This transfer has affected a lot of things about my career, and my self esteem with respect to work - and not in a good way. I don't want to have that happen again. I want to find a file I really like and stay there for a few years.

But all bets are off if you go away on leave.

It would be easier to go on mat leave from the current job I have - I would not have a learning curve to address while trying not to puke on my computer or my coworkers. I also would not have any guilt about going on leave.

I'm so torn, and I sit up at night trying to wrestle this issue through.

My friends say to me "don't look for trouble" - meaning that things may all work out for the best, or that I'll be able to manage my way through, no matter what happens. But with the unbearable events of the last pregnancy phase of my life still fresh in my mind (health problems, difficult delivery, postpartum depression, surgery, losing my dad, losing my position at work and being transferred) its hard not to worry.

I suppose I should keep reminding myself that this time may not be the same as last time, and I should take it as it comes. Life does not always present itself in nice, neat and orderly packages.

Sleep at last.. and then some gas...

2007-07-11T08:44:00.001-04:00

I swear I must release something the moment I start writing on this place. I managed 7 hours of uninterrupted zzzz's last night. From 9:30 am until 34:30 am. I woke up pretty early but I'm fairly rested. Amazing.

Job hunt is still frustrating, a place that I had hoped would come through just called me at the end of yesterday to tell me they had no positions after all. Summer is a bad time to look for work, that's for sure.

What's most disturbing about my work these days is the semi-regular instances of "gaslighting" that have been happening. A few months ago my position and my file (as well as a few others) were transferred from one branch of our department to another. The rationale behind the move was not well planned or thought out, despite the "powers that be" believing otherwise. There was no discussion on the move before it happened, and a lot of misconceptions about our work and our role. Since that time, its been a frustrating experience not only trying to deal with the staffing freezes, but also to establish/re-establish our purpose. I inherited the acting manager's position along with the transfer, which was also a new experience for me. I inherited a big mess that's for sure.

Because of the misconceptions and misperceptions, and a history of just not sitting down and talking things through face to face, there's been a LOT of friction within our new branch and between the old one and the new one. Whether certain people have realized they have made mistakes, or maybe due to their own insecurity, or their own lack of knowledge and unwillingness to sit down and learn, there has been a lot of "gaslighting" going on after the fact.

I used to be a very confident person at work. My old work unit (from2002-2005) gave me a lot of autonomy, a lot of empowerment, and they really listened to me. They took my advice, told me when they were able to use it, and if something came up that was not going to be easy to handle, they talked to me like an adult about it. Things have been very different since coming back from mat leave.

Now about the gaslighting. What is it you may ask? Why am I starting to doubt myself? Why do I feel like I'm going crazy? Well here's the definition of gaslighting:

From Wikipedia:

What's gaslighting? Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse. It uses persistent denials of fact which, as they build up over time, make the victim progressively anxious, confused, and unable to trust his or her own memory and perception.

A variation of gaslighting, used as a form of harassment, is to subtly alter aspects of a victim's environment, thereby upsetting his or her peace of mind, sense of security, etc., such as was used by the Manson Family during their "creepy crawler" burglaries during which nothing was stolen, but furniture in the house was rearranged.

The term was coined from the 1940 film Gaslight and its 1944 remake in which changes in gas light levels are experienced several times by the main character. The classic example in the film is the character Gregory using the gas lamps in the attic, causing the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly; when Paula comments on the lights' dimming, she is told she is imagining things. Paula believes herself alone in the house when the dimming occurs, unaware that Gregory has entered the attic from the house next door, and is searching for jewels he believes to be hidden there. The sinister interpretation of the change in light levels is part of a larger pattern of deception to which the character Paula is subjected.

I'd like to believe that all the stupidity that's happening right now is just that. Stupidity. And that there's no sinister "conspiracy theory" in place. But of course, I start to worry. In the past few months I've been criticized and blamed for a LOT of things. Somehow, so many things all wind up as MY fault. Misconceptions, poor decisions, they all have an element of "Blame Patty" in it. And I'm sick of it. I've done nothing wrong, except be at the wrong place at the wrong time.. oh and not document everything to the exact letter to cover my butt.

The way things seem to happen in my line of work these days, executives are all powerful and all knowing, and those of us who don't have that "authority" are ignored. We don't have any opportunity air grievances, to right wrongs, to set the record straight, to protect our reputations. And it's happened too much lately for me to feel totally comfortable in where I am.

Another reason to seek a change, or at least to be a moving target for awhile.

2007-07-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

Title: Sleep is a bastard (I cant post the title on my blog today for some reason)

I've been in an insomniac phase for a week now. I hate this.

I've got so much on my mind, it just races and races. Hours after trying to get to sleep I'm crumpled in a crying, sobbing, frustrated heap on my mattress. I sleep for maybe, at best, two hours and then I'm up again. Other times I fall "asleep" but when the morning comes, I dont feel like I slept at all, my sleep is so shallow and broken.

I'm so tired right now I can't sit up straight. It takes too much energy. The pain of slouching is killing me. My back hurts so much I think I'm going to die. Typing at the keyboard is strenuous. And walking down the hall? Forget it. I'm trying my best to avoid people so I dont forget what I was saying or burst into crying mid-conversation.

My dad was a serious insomniac. I must have inherited it from him. I've not slept well since I was about 18. I am prone to periodic bouts of poor sleep during times of stress. But for the past 20 years my life has been one chronic "period of stress".

Right now I know I need to find a new job. The current situation I'm in is not suiting me well. I got transferred to a file and now a position I didn't choose after I returned from Maternity leave last year. I certainly would never have applied to this place/position. It's not a good fit, and I I have to go. In addition to the "not the best fit", I've spent 90% of my time this past year working on HR plans and trying to hire people only to have the doors continually slammed in my face. As a result, not much gets done, and my job satisfaction and enthusiasm is completely sapped. I have to get out of here before I become completely cynical and unproductive.

Due to a variety of decisions-beyond-my-control, as of early August I will be completely without staff, but will still be responsible for at least 3-4 workloads. I dont have any extra time or energy to spend on working overtime - I have a young child to care for who doesn't really care that "Mommy had a last minute policy development meeting and left me at the babysitter until 7pm". Even if I COULD work overtime, my daughter only has ONE childhood and I'll be damned if I miss too much of it because of stupid HR decisions beyond-my-control.

I have to get the hell out of here before or shortly after I'm completely de-staffed. I've been calling people, sending CV's, etc. A few nibbles, but so far nothing firm. It's summer, not much happens in any workplace. So I'm sitting on pins and needles, wondering what is going to happen, petrified and helpless. In so many ways I feel like the proverbial woman tied to the train track with the locomotive bearing down on me. Its now 100 m away and the ropes are not budging.

I've also *really* had it with run ins with people in positions of authority who are arrogant, cynical, angry, aggressive liars and manipulators who ignore those of us who are "lesser beings". What's amazing is those that exhibit the worst traits keep on getting promoted. I must be too good at being a human being to get promoted.

My husband and I are not getting along right now. What possesses him to stay up until 3 am every night playing online poker or watching TV instead of spending time with me and coming to bed and getting sleep is beyond me. It's driving me mad. We have so many positive and productive things that we could be doing but NOOOO! I can't stand it anymore. I hope something breaks on that scene, and soon.

I also want another baby, but I'm terrified. I'd love to wait until all this life "turmoil" dies down but we dont have the luxury of time. Every year that passes by after age 35 marks a significant jump in the risk of genetic problems and a significant reduction in fertility. I wish I didnt have this biological gun to my head. I'm under enough stress as it is. I don't want to be starting a new job and pregnant, it will be difficult, let alone the guilt I'll have when I have to explain to my new employers "thanks for the training period but I'll be taking a year off now". Pregnancy and maternity leave is really not good for your career. I'm grateful that we have a 1 year mat leave policy here in Canada but it really is not good for one's career development. I hate the fact that I'm the one who's the major bread winner and also the one who owns the uterus.

And I wonder why I'm not sleeping.

******

A disclaimer - I'm sure this post will elicit a lot of advice from well meaning people. But believe me, I've been in treatment for insomnia for two decades now. I've taken enough medication to choke a horse. I've removed caffeine from my diet. I refuse to watch upsetting or emotionally wrenching TV or movies. I've drastically cut down on junk foods and sugary foods. I've tried to balance my life. I exercise almost daily. I try to do a few yoga moves daily and go to a regular class 2x per month. I've consulted with literally hundreds of professionals: psychotherapists, massage therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, hypnotherapists, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, nutritionists, doctors, self help groups, group therapy, couples' therapy, books, you name it, I've tried it.

And I'm still not sleeping.

So please don't feel offended if I don't take your advice!

Conflicting emotions

2007-07-05T11:55:00.000-04:00

Its been 20 months since my dad died. Enough time has passed that I'm not locked in chronic, exhausting, painful grief. I feel that I'm definitely through the acute grief, but there are still so many issues left unresolved.

My dad was a difficult person. But also a passionate and caring person. He could be a lot of fun, but he was also very very high maintenance.

As the months roll by since his death, in one way I'm starting to feel a lot more peaceful and a lot less stressed out, as there's a definite reduction in "drama" in my life. My dad approached life in an extreme sort of way. Things were perfect, or horrible. People were amazing, or complete idiots. There were few shades of gray in my dad's world.

My dad was also extreme about himself. He had a penchant for self abuse, manifested by addictions to cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription/over the counter medications. I don't doubt that the sudden and shocking heart attack he suffered was due to a long term abuse of some pretty heavy duty tranquilizer medications. I worried for years about his lungs (his mother died of lung cancer and emphysema - she was a long term smoker) about his liver (he drank way too much), about his brain (he had drug tolerance/withdrawal seizures for years). I worried about him getting into an "impaired" accident, having such a strong dependency and a lot of use of a variety of substances. Ironically, I never worried about his heart. And it was a heart attack that killed him. On the downstairs couch, no less. What could be a safer place?

I hate to admit, but my dad's death has created a feeling of peace and relief with respect to his self destructive and dramatic side. I don't have to worry if he's going to fall off the wagon, and hold the rest of the family as emotional hostages. I don't have to put up with his sudden rage-moods, where he'd rant and rave at us, using us as his emotional "venting" receptacles. I don't have to hear about his subtle and not so subtle threats about him hurting himself, or worse. I don't have to hear him rant and rage at me, call me names, insult me (and others) or other painful experiences. That part of my life is over. Forever. And for that I'm grateful.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my dad, despite all his faults.

He had another side. He had a fun side which was equal in intensity to his dark side. He could laugh like nobody else, he had a bizarre, eccentric and "outside the box" sense of humour which was totally and completely in sync with mine. We had a lot of good times, a lot of big laughs. When things were good in our family, they were outstanding. I am often reminded in little ways about the fun things we did - our years as a family in the Air Cadet program, family trips and outings, fun meals and holidays.

I was thinking the other day about the fact that 20 months HAVE passed since his death, and how many new things have happened, that if he was to come back tomorrow he'd not really be up on everything that's happened in our lives. He wouldnt recognize my daughter, he wouldn't know that we have a new Prime Minister (he might be happy not to know about that one). He wouldn't know about my brother's new job (the fact that my brother finally got a job after years of joblessness). So many things he wouldn't know about. I wish I could just give him a call and an update, to hear his stupidly ridiculous and funny comments on life.

The pain of that part of the loss still takes my breath away. I'm still deeply sad, and can still break into sobs at the drop of a hat, to know that part of my relationship with my dad is over. Forever.

But you never knew which side was going to come through. And if some unforeseen event in my dad's world would set his mood off from the fun loving Peter to the destructive and angry and scared one. We lived, holding our breaths, for decades.

Time to breathe.

Holidays and sick babies

2007-06-28T13:01:00.001-04:00

So it's the eve of the second of four holiday weekends that we get to celebrate in our home and native land, and my daughter has come down with a bad fever. We were looking forward to just a simple family "play it by ear" weekend, going outside to play, going swimming, going to the park, and now we have a sick toddler on our hands.

She was up and down all last night, very very hot fever. We finally got her settled at about 11pm with some tylenol. She slept through till 6:30 am. She woke up hot. More advil and she finally perked up about 8am.

Her dad stayed home with her today and apparently she was crying inconsolably when she awoke from her nap this morning.

I am here at work, and worried sick. Why is it that we moms just aren't happy when our kids aren't? I've got an event tonight that could be a positive one with respect to networking (I'm looking for a new job) and I just don't want to go. I'm supposed to be doing some "networking" within my department on some other possible positions. But I dont want to call anyone up because I'm so preoccupied with my daughter's health. I don't want to be here. I really just want to be at home, holding and soothing my baby.

I wish we could put the weekend on hold until Abby got over her cold.

Happy.. and sad....

2007-06-22T08:15:00.000-04:00

Today is my daughter's second birthday. I can hardly believe it. Two whole years we've survived being new parents, dealing with a lot of really amazing AND difficult milestones. First steps, first bumps on the head, first colds, first teeth, first fevers, first words, many tears, many giggles, many good times too.

I can't believe that things have turned around for me so much, considering everything I've been through since my pregnancy in 2004-05.

I had a very very difficult pregnancy. I gained a TON of weight, and she was a big baby to boot, so I had a very big problem with mobility. Basically everything in my body HURT. I had head cold after head cold at the end of my pregnancy, and I had broken my big toe when I was about 6 1/2 months pregnant. My back and sciatic nerve was chronically pinched, resulting in extreme pain down my back to my tailbone, excruciating groin pain, and itchy, burning feet. I had to go on sick leave for six weeks before her birth as I could no longer sit at a desk without being in extreme agony. The only thing I could do to feel better was to curl up on my side on the couch or in bed. I spent a lot of my pregnancy that way. I'm a pretty active and enthusiastic person, and to be that debilitated did a number on my psychological well being. I felt so trapped and so burdened, it was awful.

Although a day to be happy and celebrate my daughter, as the one who was pregnant and gave birth to her, I can't help thinking about what I was going through two years ago yesterday (Abby was born just after midnight so most of my labour with her was on June 21). It was a difficult, excruciating labour and delivery that left me with a bad case of post traumatic stress disorder and postpartum depression. I won't go into the gory details, but she was a big baby, and needed a lot of time, and a lot of effort for her to get out. It was an "assisted" birth (vacuum) which means her progress out into the world was slow and we needed help.

Because she was so big, she didn't rotate quite right inside me and came out half-sideways, which was extremely painful. I was stuck in the transition stage of labour, which is the most excruciating, for many, many hours, without any pain relief. I remember thinking that I just wanted to die, that I hoped a big nuclear bomb would drop out of the sky and end it for us all. For hours, I struggled with the pain, not knowing that it actually was hours that were passing. I remember struggling with the pain for 3 hours (this part of labour, the "experts" say, should last about 20-40 minutes.. for me, not so lucky - all total it was 7 hours) and then freaking out, and going into a pain-filled haze around 3pm, and finally getting an epidural, and looking up at the clock and it was 7pm. What happened during those those last 4 hours, I will never remember. I felt guilty for a LONG time about wishing that we would die at that time. I have been able to put some distance between that event and I can now understand and have compassion with myself for thinking that. I didnt really want us to die, I simply had long passed my pain capacity.

With the epidural in, relief came immediately. I got to relax for a bit before the marathon 4 hours of pushing started. Nobody in prenatal class ever warns you just how hard the pushing stage is. During that part of labour, I strained my right rotator cuff, which took about a year to heal. I may have also herniated a disc in my back - at some point either during pregnancy or labour I herniated one of my lowermost discs in my back and had painful/numb tailbone, legs and feet that I still suffer from today.

When the birth was over, after going to my hospital room (without my daughter - she had to spend the first night in the NICU on account of being extremely exhausted and running a high temperature) I started having my first "postpartum depression visions" - which were horrible, extremely intense visions of awful, painful injuries and deaths of infants. And in those visions, it was ME who was doing the maiming and killing. I would try and lay down and these visions would flood my mind. I'd be so shocked I'd wake up, sit right up in bed (despite being awake for about 72 hours straight and having just delivered a baby) and my heart would be racing. I'd try to lay down again and just as I was drifting off, BOOM I'd be hit with another vision. It got to the point where I was petrified to go to sleep, and to be alone with her. I pretty much dozed off and on in 20-40 minute increments.

Once I got home, the combination of the postpartum hormone mess, the fatigue and the intensification of the visions resulted in me becoming agoraphobic. I could not leave the house unattended. When I was alone, I could not go outside, I stayed inside all day long with the doors locked. I was petrified to put my daughter in her stroller, or her car seat and take her in the car, or to even hold her (I thought I'd drop her or hurt her). It was all I could do to get through the day.

My parents came up a lot during the summer, I didnt have to be alone too much. The PPD symptoms really were at bay when I was not alone. I actually felt that I just might be able to pull off this whole motherhood thing. But when September came, my mom had to go back to work, and I was really on my own. I remember one morning, literally hanging onto my husbands feet, crying and pleading with him NOT to leave the house, not to leave me alone with the baby, to stay home from work just one more day. He didnt understand my extremely bizarre behaviour, and had to get out, and left me laying on the floor, sobbing.

Fortunately my husband had a sympathetic boss who gave him 2 weeks of extra paid leave, and we had a vacation coming up, so he was able to stay with me the entire month of September. I dreaded the thought of him going back to work in October.

At that point I knew I'd really benefit from some decent sleep. I had a few extra sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet from years ago, At least at night, I could get some relief as the medication choked off the anxiety for several hours at a time to enable me to sleep. Unfortunately this prevented me from getting up with Abby at night to feed her. I hate to admit but my husband was more of a "mom" to Abby than I was. I still feel guilt and shame to this day that I could not function as a "real mom" would, being up at night to tend to her offspring. But I just physically and emotionally couldn't cope with any more sleep deprivation.

During that time, I also had fantasies of getting in my car, and driving as far away from Ottawa as I could. I figured I could be in Toronto by the end of the day, Northern Ontario by the next day, and Calgary by the end of the week. I wanted to just keep driving until I hit the Pacific Ocean. I believed that my family would have been much better off without me, that I had made a huge mistake, and that I was just not capable of being a wife and mother.

Little did I know at the time that these were all the classic symptoms of postpartum depression.

The desire to run away, the visions, the anxiety and and the complete collapse of confidence, some experts say, is a subconscious brain-stem reaction to a difficult birth. The visions are apparently the "fight" response from one's rudimentary brain trying to subconsciously strike-back at the object that it thinks caused the body pain - the baby. The desire to run away is the other side of the classic "flight or fight" reaction - the flight.

These reactions are subconcious - they are generated completely out of the conscious part of the brain. When they enter the realm of the conscious and rational part of the brain, they are extremely disturbing (to put it mildly).

PPD was a difficult experience indeed, but it was a piece of cake compared to what happened later on - the loss of my father, the excruciating episodes of gallstones, surgery.... on the work front, the transfer of my position to a new branch and massive change in my work life was not even on the horizon - I'm still dealing with the emotional aftermath of that one. I loved the job that I had when I left on mat leave, and I can't do it anymore. Those of us who were transferred were shunned by the rest of the group (probably under the illogical assumption of "If it can happen to them, it can happen to us, right?") as well, there's been a lot of ridiculous made-up horse-trading of responsibilities that have removed the more interesting work from our mandate, and replaced it with tedious and uninteresting administrative work.

I know, I know I should be thinking about my daughter today, and how great she is. And she is. She's amazing. She's the best thing that ever happened to me. This morning we woke up and we sang Happy Birthday to you and she danced around the kitchen. And asked for us to sing "AGAIN!!" and "AGAIN!!" while grinning like a fool. I think she's the funniest kid on the planet and I'm so happy that she came into my life. I wish her entry into this world had been a bit easier, but you take what you get.

Today I have so many mixed feelings. Gratefulness, appreciation, relief, happiness, but I still can't shake the wiggly wobblies I'm feeling about how hard things were last year at this time. And how much worse things were to come. I'm glad I don't have the ability to see the future. Had I seen that whole storm coming, I don't know what I'd have done.

One thing I've learned from this experience is that the saying "at least you have your health" is really true. There's little worse in the world then being incapacitated, sick (mentally or otherwise). I'm so happy to be re-finding myself after years of illness and grief. What's been prseented to me (my family and my life) is so amazing, I seem to be learning day by day to appreciate the moments, and not take anything for granted. Losing my father four months after Abby's birth really hit home how short our lives are, and to appreciate, it, for someday, for ALL of us, our souls will have to leave the planet. Our childhoods, young adulthoods, middle age, and old age (if we are lucky enough to get to all of those stages) are full of amazing experiences that we should all be open enough to experience and enjoy. Life is linear - you don't get a chance to do those things that you have the opportunity to do NOW.

Happy second birthday baby. Mommy's here. And despite it all, I'm happier than ever!

And.. it will soon be CAKE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOOPEEEEEEEE! Happy to you CAAAAKE!!

Jinx :(

2007-06-20T13:19:00.001-04:00

I was awake from 1am till 5am.... am supremely tired again.

Blast it all. I should not have focussed any attention on it.

Grr.

Psst! don't tell anyone!

2007-06-19T16:04:00.001-04:00

I've slept 7 to 8 hours STRAIGHT THROUGH the past two nights!!

Don't tell anyone.. you might jinx it!

Happy Father's day... wherever you are...

2007-06-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Father's Day. The second Father's Day I've experienced since my dad died in 2005. I had a hard time with it. Not quite as bad as last year's Father's Day, but it was pretty hard nonetheless.

Sunday started out wonderfully, I was at my in-laws, there were 3 fathers in the room, and the happiness and warmth of the family atmosphere was great. Of course I thought a lot about my own father, because my in-laws live just down the street from the house that my family owned during most of the 1970's. That neighbourhood and that street hold a lot of memories. The deck and shed that my dad built is still in the backyard of our old house. I have a hard time being on that street, in that neighbourhood without breaking down.

Just after my dad died, I managed to peek in our old backyard, and walk the old routes in the neighbourhood. I am glad I walked it alone as I broke down at one point and sobbed and sobbed on my old front lawn one night during a huge rainstorm. the next day, I went to the mall where my dad owned two stores, and sat in front of what was our old store (Living Lighting) and shook and cried.

Back to yesterday. On the way back home from Belleville, we had to stop several times to change my daughter. She had a really upset stomach and had to "poopy" several times. During one of the change stops, I sat in the car while my husband changed my daughter's poopy diaper on a picnic table. I flicked on the radio to hear the end of the song "Dust in the Wind" on the radio. Of course that song reminds everyone of major life changes, loss, and that our life on this planet is only so long. Following that song, was "Wild Eyes" by the Stampeders. That one REALLY threw me for a loop. Most 70's songs, but especially Stampeders songs REALLY bring back my childhood. A time when my brother and I would roam freely around the backseat of our 1970's Dodge Dart while my dad blasted down the 401, wind flying in the window, cigarette ashes blowing everywhere (who knew about health and safety issues for kids then??).

My dad was definitely a free spirit. He was a great looking guy with a lot of charisma and energy. In the 1970's I only looked at him with stars in my eyes, he was the coolest dad on the planet, and I was so proud to have been his little "Boomer". The cracks in his personality and mental health had not quite opened up into the years of painful addiction, anxiety and depression that were to come. In my world, in the mid 1970's, all was well. All was perfect.

Happy Father's Day Doots.. wherever you are.

I'm still a strange sleeper

2007-06-12T19:57:00.000-04:00

I've recently taken to falling asleep upstairs in the master suite and then going downstairs to sleep later on. I feel really anxious when I fall asleep upstairs, I dont fall asleep deeply or for long. I still live in fear of being woken up, by either my husband (mister restless sleeper and snorer extrordinaire) or by my child.

When Abby was first born, I had a hard time getting used to dealing with a crying baby. I will totally admit that. It always seemed that I was just settling down to sleep when BOOM she'd be up, crying for food. I was so tired it was torture. I'm still getting over that. Despite the fact that I really want another baby, that whole lack of sleep thing is the number one thing that's scaring us from trying for baby number two.

The thought of Abby waking me up in the middle of the night still fills me with horror. I'm such a light sleeper, once I've been woken up, I'm up. Even if it's 3am. That's it, thats all. I'm done for the night. Ok well maybe I'm done until 7am, when its time to get up. Since I"m now back at work, so an afternoon nap is out of the question, unless I can find a way to build myself a bed under my desk a la George Costanza.

I have phoned in sick on many an occasion to just stay home and sleep. But that generally messes up my circadian rhythym even more, and I sleep even crappier the next night.

I should be proud of myself that at least I'm sleeping now, medication free. But I've still got to tackle that last step, moving upstairs permanently. I stil have such sleep-performance-anxiety, its awful. I put so much pressure on myself to sleep, it's bizarre. I wish I could figure out how to stop doing that to myself.

This insomnia routine is like a big heavy weight on my shoulders, holding me down. I've struggled with insomnia and parasomnia for two decades now. Its the bane of my existence. This level of ongoing, crushing fatigue saps my creativity, crushes my mood, and destroys my sense of initiative.

I'm so exhausted most days, I swear I could fall asleep in front of any TV show, music blaring, but put me in a quiet, dark bedroom, and ZZZZZTT!! my head is spinning, anxiety ruling the day.

I've been to so many doctors, clinics, tried this diet and that, avoided caffeine, sugar, wheat, carbs, tried this and that medication, and nothing really seems to work for long.

Strange sleep indeed.

Giant moth and other things to poke at

2007-06-12T12:07:00.001-04:00

This morning a giant enormous moth was on our front step. This sucker was the size of the back of my hand. It was black and white and mottly, and was the shape of a Vulcan Bomber aircraft (really cool aircraft from my childhood). If anyone knows the species, let me know. I've been looking off and on all morning and can't find a good identification.

We let Abby out to see the moth and she was excited to see it, then proceeded to poke it REALLY hard. Its wings went from a delta shape to more of a wide triangle. It was obviously annoyed. I figured she'd probably want to crush it so I moved it onto a shrub for its own safety. When we left for work/daycare half an hour later it was gone.

Abby's really into smashing and crushing things lately. Yesterday at the grocery store I bought some tomatoes - she said "oooh! Tomatoes!! SMUSH THEM!!"

Nice......

So much for sugar and spice! My daughter is anything but a little lady (most of the time). She cracks me up.

My kid is hilarious

2007-06-09T06:44:00.000-04:00

My almost two year old daughter is simply.. hilarious.

She has a totally unique and wacky view of life.. and is not afraid or shy to let you know.

She is big enough now to be able to see out the car window as we are driving. She loves seeing things and making editorial comment on just about everything we drive by.

Like many other little kids, construction sites and heavy equipment are totally thrilling. And dirt is definitely her element of choice.

We were driving by a construction site, with a front end loader (she calls them "diggers") and a pile of dirt. She yells out:

"Digger!! Dirt pile!! OOOOO!! CHOCOLATE dirt pile! Bye digger! Bye Chocolate dirt pile!"

My husband and I were laughing so hard, he could barely drive.

And the other day, while driving home we also heard this little one:

"Daddy is... Claccy... Mummy is... Patty"

How did she know our names?? Not only is my kid hilarious, she's so smart. She seems to retain just about everything that she hears. Its fun, but also insanely scary. The way I have to watch everything I do now is pretty intense sometimes. I've never been that out of control, but sometimes I had a propensity to curse like a sailor. So far, no slips. Wheew. I'm sure that will change someday, but so far, we're doing well.

So much to think about. When Abby was first born, I simply could not handle it. I was too physically and mentally exhausted from my difficult pregnancy, and the strains my life was under at the time. I was also insanely sick from gall bladder disease (surgery several months later). When my dad died four months later, I could barely cope. I had no idea how i would manage.

Now I am so excited to see my daughter, to play with her, to hear her witty commentary on everything. I was so afraid of the "terrible twos" - but other than an extremely strong willed streak that can still be managed by "diversion", and some exceptional crustiness around dinner time (hungry and tired = not a good situation for toddlers) she's pretty good. She has redeemed my faith in toddlerdom.

And she's about to wake up. She's the cutest little pod when she gets up. All curly hair, bleary eyes.

Woot. She's up.

"ByeSeeyasoon!" (another Abby-ism)

Churcheesus

2007-05-28T13:42:00.001-04:00

My daughter's new favourite word is:

Churcheesus.

We were on our way to a party at the home of a family that runs the Church nursery last night, and we were telling her all about the party, that these people are from Church, the nursery people.... "Abby? Remember little Joey at Church? Well we're going to Joey's house!"

On the way to "Joey's house" she came out with the word:

"Churcheesus".

Abby loves Church, Abby loves Jesus, so I guess in her stage of learning language, she decided to combine the two, just as she did for her other new word "basu-shan" (short for Basil-Parmesan - a wonderful new salad dressing from President's Choice).

Now before you think that my daughter is a super spiritual two year old, remember Church also has a nursery full of kids and toys to play with. And when you actually ask my daughter "do you like Church"? She responds:

Yes!

Toys!

Jesus!

Its refreshing to see that for a two year old, Church and faith is not about discipline, or ethical dilemmas, as my faith had been for me since I entered my teenage years. I stopped going to Church once I left home in the 1980's as I just couldn't see how it could possibly relate to my life. I had so many issues and concerns I felt like a hypocrite attending Mass. I started going again when I turned 30, as my life had hit an all time low. I had just broken up with my live-in boyfriend of 5 years, had no job, no income and nowhere to live. I moved in with my brother and lived on his couch for 7 months as I tried to sort out my life. At that time, I started going to the Church that I still attend - Blessed Sacrament. Since that time, faith has been all about finding a way to wrestle with crushing loss and pain. It's not been easy, but it's really been a life saver for me. I'm glad my parents pushed me to go to church and to Catholic school. Without that, I'm sure I'd be completely lost today.

However, for my two year old child, Church is just about the toys. And the kids. And the cool picture of Jesus on the wall of the playroom.

But maybe she's on to something. God does speak to us through our children. Shouldn't our faith just really be about bringing us joy?

And despite my overwhelming pain and difficulties these past few years, I have had moments of joy brought to me by faith. Knowing that our time here on earth is just a blip and we WILL be reunited with our lost loved ones someday. That our pain and our struggle here on earth WILL end someday. And also that being here on earth really is a gift - a temporary gift of exploring all that is beautiful and wonderful on this planet. And there really are some amazing things here.

I hate language training

2007-05-13T20:43:00.000-04:00

Out of commission recently, spending my time pratiquer la langue francaise....

J'ai mon examen orale demain matin. Bonne chance a moi!!!!!!!!

Yoga rocks!

2007-04-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

Went to Yoga on Weds. night. My brother came over to baby sit. Other than a few leaky diapers (she had one again this morning too and I put that one on!) he did very well.

The night out sans toddler to do some yoga was just what the doctor ordered. I've felt relaxed, refreshed (a bit sore though) and a lot calmer since I did that. I hope we can make Wednesday night yoga a more regular event.

I'm not doing so well

2007-04-18T08:43:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to get really exhausted again. Things in my life piling up, requiring more energy than I've got. I have a new staff member, although a smart person, has no file or subject experience. Its a lot of work to get a new person up to speed on things. And he's only here temporarily. By the time I get him up to speed on the file, and a general awareness of the work, he'll be gone. My only other permanent staff remaining from my old group dislocated her shoulder and won't be back to work for awhile. I can't hire anyone new, despite the fact that I have three vacant positions. The government in its wisdom considers people who are away on leave, whether it be education leave, on assignment to another gorup, or maternity leave, to be "on strength" and therefore, unreplaceable during their absence. Of course this does not reduce management's expectations that the work is still going to get done, because "on paper" we have five people. But in reality, we have one new person who's here temporarily, and one person on sick leave, and one person about to go away on french training. And that's it.

Please help me, I'm drowning.

I've got to go away starting Monday for 3 weeks for language training. Although it sounds like fun, it will be a lot of work. Language training is exhausting and draining. I'll be at it, 8 hours per day, every day, for several weeks. Every time I've done language training I've felt like I've been hit by a truck, its so mentally taxing.

My husband and I are still not getting along. I need him to make some changes in his lifestyle that he's not willing to make. I really can't handle making dinner almost every weeknight anymore, as well as carrying the load for baby pick ups, especially when he doesn't come home until close to 6pm. I can't keep trying to manage a majorly understaffed work unit, cook dinners most nights, as well as keeping my daughter entertained at the same time as cooking. Its just not possible. I'm starting to suffer serious anxiety issues again - jitteriness, forgetfulness, insomnia, body pain. I'm so stiff and sore from being so anxious that I can barely move.

I really have to make some major changes in my life, but I dont know where to start. Even a job change itself can be stressful - who knows if I'd be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

I wish I didnt have to carry the major financial load for this family. It would give me a few more options than staying in the public service. Yes, it pays well, but its a really stressful situation, as there's waay too many stupid policies that hinder our abilities to do our jobs. I feel like I"m "golden handcuffed" to this place, and I dont like that feeling.

Abby-isms

2007-04-12T08:52:00.000-04:00

My daughter is a very talkative almost-two-year old. And she comes up with the funniest words.

Some of her funniest lately include:

"pay-picks" and "surps" (pancakes and syrup)

"cake, keem and peachies" - her list of dessert favourites, in descending order of preference

"pawk" and "sachak" (park, and "snack shack") - she loves to go to the park and play in this little house there, she pretends she's serving food from the windows, so we've labelled the house "Abby's Snack Shack")

"amick" - triceratops dinosaur bath toys

"debby debby" and "debby debby uh-oh" - two brontosaurus bath toys. Debby debby uh-oh used to just be called "debby debby" but it got its third name after losing the top of it's noggin. Abby bit part of the first debby debby's head off several months ago. She seemed so shocked and upset to see debby debby with only part of a head, so we bought her another one. Now she holds them both up together and goes "debby debby" and "debby debby uh-oh", and scratches her head.

She's also got this funny game going with her father, all about eating noses and whiskers and the like. She pretends to pick off Clancy's whiskers or nose, and eat them. Then when Clancy fake-cries that she ate his nose or whiskers, she laughs her butt off and goes "buahahah! Crying"! I hope that she means that she thinks that his fake-laughing is funny, as the only other explanation is that my beautiful child is a budding psychopath. Nah, I doubt that, she has always expressed serious concern every time she saw or heard someone in pain or crying. Maybe its just my husband's goofy ways.

Did I mention how smart my daughter is? She is 21 months old, knows most of her letters, can count to twelve, and can spell some simple words (like "pat"). She scares me she's so smart.

another insomnia phase for a week now, and a rambling post

2007-04-12T08:17:00.000-04:00

Glargh. I'm not sleeping again. I thought it was the antidepressants so I tapered down on the dosage, but still struggling to sleep. I'm so exhausted, I'm becoming such a bitch it's not funny. I've not got any more sleeping medication and I'm at a total loss on how to break this stalemate I have with Mr. Sandman.

I'm so tired and it affects everything I do. I just don't want to do anything, my insane fatigue has completely destroyed my initiative to do anything. I am becoming such a crab - I swear I don't intend to, but as soon as I open my mouth to talk to my husband, something well intentioned comes out harsher than the sound of nails on a chalkboard. I see him cringe and roll his eyes when I start to talk, and I don't blame him. I just feel so crappy. I sound so crappy. I'm becoming a crappy spouse.

My daughter has been sick lately, which has been an additional stress, on top of my already stressful working-mom life. Abby had a really bad chest cold which wound up as bacterial bronchitis. She had to stay home from daycare and I had to tend to her sick-toddler ways for a few days last week. I finally brought her into the doctor's 2 weeks ago and she was put on antibiotics for 10 days. No sooner was she finished the antibiotics she had a stomach bug. Poor little bean was barfing her guts out all over the living room on Monday night.

Last night I fell asleep halfway through the hockey game (I actually got my butt of the couch and went to bed instead of sleeping on the couch at least) and woke up at 1am, and have not been back to sleep since. I feel so crappy its not funny. I've got a chronic back problem (herniated disc during pregnancy) that is not well served by the lack of sleep that I'm suffering. Everything in my body aches and I've got no energy. So I'm sitting here, writing this post.

Some good news - both babies that I was worried about last week came through just fine. One was born healthy and happy last week, a much bigger baby than the experts thought. The other baby, the one that had to endure surgery, came through OK. She had to have an ovary and a fallopian tube removed, but the good news was the lump in her abdomen was not a tumour after all, but rather an ovarian cyst that went haywire and twisted up an ovary and a tube. The tube filled up with blood creating a giant mass in her abdomen. Its sad to know this little baby only has one tube and one ovary, but the experts say she'll be fine with one. Mother nature is amazing and she's built in duplication in many animals for a reason (two eyes, two ears, two lungs, two kidneys...)

I've been thinking a lot about my dad lately.. having very vivid dreams about him and then waking up to remember "oh yeah, he's gone" and feeling that sick, slow, painful grief-burn take over my body. That awful, horrible, crushing feeling that I got so familiar with the weeks and months immediately after his death. The pain of knowing that this was one situation that we could never, ever get out of. So then, in this phase when I've been thinking of him a lot, something weird happened yesterday - I got a letter in the mail to confirm a gift subscription to a magazine. My mom took out the subscription, but for some reason the gift card was signed "a gift subscription from Mr. P.W. Story". Maybe the credit card she used for the subscription was in my dad's name? I'm not sure. I'll have to ask her. My dad's been dead for sixteen months now, and to see his name on the card like he was somehow still alive, was shocking. My eyes welled up with tears and my throat choked up.

Most of the time I still can't believe he's gone. I still keep thinking that someday soon the tough period will be over and we'll all go back to "normal" and resume our former life. That this is just a "tough period" and once we get through it, everything will be fine. But everything with regards to my parents is not fine. It will never BE fine ever again. But my brain still thinks that I'll be able to call home and hear him pick up the phone and answer "one horse" to my question "how's it going?" (don't ask, my dad had some weird, strange, funny inside jokes, funny only to himself sometimes!) Its so hard to keep remembering that part of my life is over. Forever. We can't go back.

I still feel so lost.

The one thing that keeps me anchored though, is my little girl. She's difficult, and hilarious.

Some difficult times: she's definitely becoming a terrible two year old. Last night she was queen of "NO!", and was the master of crumpling her little body into a loose, wobbly heap whenever I tried to steer her into doing something she didnt want to do. She protested at every turn - she didnt want to come in from playing in the backyard after supper, she didnt want to get her clothes off for her bath, she didnt want to get into the bathtub... I had to pick her up so many times, yet another reason my back is vibrating in pain this morning.

Some fun times: This morning she discovered a single serving yogurt carton in the fridge that had its top peeled off (she has discovered how to do this and loves to go into the fridge and take all the tops off the yogurts). She pulled the carton out of the fridge, and then started eating it by "drinking" the yogurt out of the carton. I looked at her and she smiled (with a face full of blueberry yogurt) and said "drink! 'gurt!"

I offered her a spoon and she sat right down on the floor to eat the rest of the yogurt. The scene was even funnier as her sleeper snaps on the inside of her legs had popped open and she was pretty much sitting there wearing the top of her sleepers, bare legs, her diaper, and blueberry yogurt all over her face, hands and the kitchen floor. Her diaper was pretty full (morning diaper!) and it was barely hanging on to her little hips.

Prior to discovering the yogurt, she had been playing with a set of plastic tongs and they were right beside her on the floor. She let loose with one of her hilarious, expressive "ooooOOO!!!!" sounds and picked up the tongs, and shoved them into the yogurt. She managed to stick the tips of the tongs in the yogurt, pull them out, and lick the yogurt off. At one point she pulled out one teeny blueberry between the tongs, picked it off with her fingers, and put it in her mouth with a satisfied "yum". After a little while she looked up at me and smiled her yogurty smile, and said with serious gusto: "gurt... tongs... yummm!"

Man, what a mess. And first thing in the morning after an insomnia night. I didn't feel too good bending over to wipe up the mess off the floor. It was pretty funny though. Instead of getting mad at her for making such a mess, I admired her for using such an ingenious and creative way to eat yogurt. And of course I took photos.

Does this make me a bad mom?

Things that don't really matter

2007-04-04T14:06:00.000-04:00

- Work
- Careers
- Money
- An expensive car
- A stylish, expensive house

Things that do really matter:

- The health of your family
- Happiness and harmony at home
- Your health
- Having food to eat

This morning my friend's 2 month old daughter went into CHEO for major abdominal surgery. Just before she was born the doctors found a lump in her abdomen, that has since been diagnosed as a "Teratoma" - which is the most common form of cancer found in infants. I hope that the lump is still precancerous, and it has not started to press into other parts of her abdomen. If its free and clear of her abdominal organs, it should be a fairly routine procedure, much like my gall bladder surgery last year.

Two days ago a coworker of mine, who's due to have a baby on Saturday, went to the doctor for her last prenatal checkup. They found her blood pressure elevated again, and proceeded to give her an ultrasound. They found the baby to be really small (5th percentile) and referred her to see a specialist within a few days. We've not heard from her since, and we're worried.

Yesterday my husband and I got into a big fight, and it got REALLY ugly. It got so ugly that about an hour later, for several hours on, he was cold and calculating in his demeanor, as he calmly told me he wanted a divorce and I'd given him no choice. This went on the whole day, him telling me that he wanted a divorce, yet refusing to come home and talk to me about it. I was so upset I left work, went home, threw up, cried all day long, and wondered what was going to happen. I stayed in a hotel last night.

As previously mentioned:

Things that matter:

Health and happiness.

I spent so much time last year struggling against the tide with regards to my health. Now that I've got that back, now I'm struggling with the happiness factor.

Do all couples get this crazy? Why are relationships so hard? So competitive? So scary?

I'm sick of my belly

2007-03-13T14:39:00.000-04:00

I miss my old body. The one I had before I had my baby. I gained SIXTY pounds in my pregnancy and so far, in two years, I have only lost forty. The first 30 were easy to lose. And the next 10, not really that hard. But now I'm stuck on the last twenty. Actually more like they're stuck on me. Around my belly mostly. The lack of skin tone around that area since having a 9lb+ baby is not helping to keep that fat under control either. It kind of hangs and jiggles all day long, making clothes fit REALLY weird. I've also got a lot of body fat on my upper body. Its weird. I look kind of like a linebacker with skinny legs.

I"m really sick of the excess fat on my tummy. I'm having back problems because of it. I actually had back problems during pregnancy but they've not gone away on account of the belly fat I still have. I have ugly clothes because nothing really fits properly. I'm kind of normal across teh shoulders, and from my feet up to about my crotch level, but in between there are a few too many rolls.

Having this weight definitely makes me less happy to be who I am. I'm really ashamed of the way I look. I gained about 30 lbs in my 2o's and I amazingly lost it back in 2001. I looked REALLY good and was REALLY happy with my appearance. I put some back on in the early 2000's and then lost most of it before my wedding. Before pregnancy. Before my life as I knew it smashed apart.

Now I dont look much thinner than 7 years ago, when I absolutely HATED myself. I'm not so happy in my own skin right now either. Major health problems and a feeling of incapacitation during my pregnancy started me down the road to postpartum depression. But considering everything I've been through, diet and weight loss was just not in the cards for me this past year. Whether it be the antidepressants I was on (I'm sure they messed up my metabolism), my gallstones, dealing with my dad's death, or just the ongoing stress of being a newly minted, stay at home mom with easy access to a freezer full of food, I didnt lose the weight I wanted to in my first postpartum year.

So why can't I be easier on myself? I went through a lot. I am lucky that I'm up and around and mentally ok considering everything.

Why is weight loss always so diffcult for me? I used to be so happy with my appearance. Never had a weight issue. But since my mid 20's its been a battle over the last "thirty" pounds over and over again. Is it purely metabolism? Aging? Or am I really eating more crap and exercising less than I used to?

I know a lot of this has to do with anxiety. Sure I could join weightwatchers again but last time, my stress level went through the roof. Seeing as I"m just getting through a major postpartum anxiety disorder, do I really want to go back there again right now? Not really.

On that note, how do I beat this? Why does anxiety manifest itself in me as hunger pangs? Why do I robotically, unthinkingly, reach for whatever snack is in front of me?

Blah!!

I keep thinking that things will "return to normal"...

2007-03-05T09:56:00.000-05:00

This morning coming into work I was thinking of years past, what kinds of things I'd do on a weekend. I've been living very close to my parents (within 1 hour drive) so for many years I often went to see them on weekends.

Even though I'm heading into the big 4-0 soon (3 years) things hadn't seemed to change much - the usual "fab four" (my immediate family of origin) was still doing things together on weekends. I got married late in life (34) so many weekends up until recently, I'd go to see my parents and we'd hang out just like old times. So many of the things were so usual and so familiar. Grocery shopping on weekends, doing errands together, going for drives, going out for dinner, etc. All of it was so familiar. The sound of my dad's booming voice permeating everything that we would do.

This past weekend was tough for me. A massive spring snowstorm caused a fairly major roof leak in our kitchen which freaked us both out. Water was pouring through a wet spot in the ceiling of our kitchen when we all woke up from our naps on Saturday afternoon. My dad always knew what to do in situations like this, especially in this situation, as the roof on my parents house always seemed to leak in one particular spot.

In a panic, my H and I flailed around the kitchen for awhile, trying to figure out what to do. We went to ask advice from friends and neighbours. Usually in a situation like this I'd dial "daddy 911" and he'd be up to our house in a jiffy.

But the reality of my dad's death really hit me in this situation. My father in law, although a kind and gentle soul, is really not handy. In fact, he's anti-handy. We can't really rely on him for home improvement advice. My husband never had a chance to "apprentice" under his dad to learn how to care for a home. My dad was very handy, but he's gone now. And when situations like this arise, I tend to really panic. We don't know what to do.

We are new to the world of home ownership, and having a house built in 1966, we defintely have our share of fixer-upper situations that keep presenting themselves to us.

After poking a few holes in the ceiling to let the water drain (and then watching parts of the saturated ceiling drywall fall down in goopy splatters) we talked to a few friends and neighbours for advice. We decided that on Sunday morning, My H would peek into the attic to assess the damage, and then go to the Home Depot to ask for advice. (Funny anecdote: my 20 month old daughter calls Home Depot "Home Pee-poh" (Home People)).

As we were leaving to go to the "Depot", the song "Sweet City Woman" by the Stampeders came on the radio. That song really reminds me of times when I was not much older than my own daughter, dancing with my dad around the kitchen (I really remember my dad's smelly when he was dancing with me to that song, for some funny reason. He used to wear some gnarly smelling brown dress socks.. )

Anyhow, in one moment through the banjo-inflected notes of that song I was reminded that I was no longer the child, that I was now the parent, and I now was the owner of the leaky-roofed house, AND my dad was no longer alive. It really hit me like a ton of bricks.

The magnitude in which my life has changed in such a short time still takes my breath away. In Spring 2004, I was still living on my own. 18 months later, I'm a wife, a mother, and I've buried my father.

It's been such a long road, such a difficult journey. Every other difficult journey I've been on had a logical start and end point. Eventually I graduated from High School. And University. I started and ended relationships and jobs. And every time I ended one of these difficult journeys, I had my parents and their house to go "home" to for some familiarity, some carefree "down time" and some breathing room. But that "home" is no longer there.

Sure the house is still there, my mom still lives there, the furniture, dishes, pictures, most stuff is pretty much still the same as they were before my dad died. But the "home" - the things my parents used to do, the good old reliable old-people behaviour, the quirks, the patterns, the habits they exhibited with us and with each other, is gone.

Gone forever.

Yes some of that behaviour was irritating, and downright maddening at times, but it was FAMILIAR. The things they used to spend their time doing was so regular and so reliable. And that's all changed. There's no break from the fact that my father is dead. Going "home" to that house makes it all the more real and more painful sometimes. There's nowhere I can go to get a break.

I'm learning to make my "new home" my HOME. And my husband and my family are my "new" family. Its going to take awhile to get used to that, to them. To have a "regular" family life again. To take on the role of "mother" and "parent" instead of the baby of the family. To adapt to the massive amount of work it takes to be a co-homeowner, working mother and wife.

No wonder I take naps on weekends.

Oh and on an up note, my sleep is improving. I even fell asleep on the couch in front of the Sens game on Friday night. I think the reduction in the antidepressants is helping. Go figure, antidepressants that CAUSE insomnia, prescribed to relieve a case of depression that has its number one symptom - you guessed it - insomnia. How stupid and circular is that? But that's for another ranty-post on depression, anxiety and the mental health system.

I fell asleep in front of the Sens game. For an hour.

Do you realize how much of a major breakthrough that is??

I'm baaa-AACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I'm sixty-four

2007-02-26T13:34:00.000-05:00

My dad would have turned sixty-four on Saturday, Feb 24/07. This song has been running through my head ever since.

Happy Birthday, Doots.

**********

When I get older losing my hair
many years from now
will you still be sending me a valentine
birthday greeting, bottle of wine
If I'd been out till quarter to three
would you lock the door
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four

You'll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you

I could be handy mending a fuse
when your light have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings, go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four

Every summer we can rent a cottage on the
Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck, and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
stating point of view
indicate precisely what you mean to say
yours sincerely wasting away
Give me your answer fill in a form
mine forever more
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four

Thank you for....

2007-02-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

Last night, we asked Abigail (aged 20 months) to say grace before dinner. We asked if she was grateful for Margaret (her daycare provider) and she said "yes". We asked if she was grateful for food and she said "yes. Eat!" And we asked if there was anything she wanted to thank God for...

And then she said, all on her own...

"wice" (rice).

Yes. Thank God for Rice.

Thinking of Doots

2007-01-31T10:03:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot more about my Dad. Some times of the year are easier than others to handle. Right now its the 1 year anniversary of my surgery. It was a highly emotional time for me and it made me think a lot more about my dad, as he had the same surgery several years earlier.

This time last year I was still a stay at home mom, recovering from PPD, grieving like crazy, and battling a lot of really difficult physical illnesses. It was awful. It was hard to get through the day sometimes. I cried all the time.

There was a song that came out last year by James Blunt and it was about him losing his girlfriend. I cry like a baby every time I hear it because I imagine my mom saying this to my dad.

I've adapted it for my own purposes. Again, sorry James for ripping and modifying this. All in the name of healing I guess.

*********

Goodbye my Father

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
I knew I'd see your end, but before I'd begun?
For so long we were blinded, and nobody won.

I took what's mine by eternal right.
You took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am still here for you, please send your care.

You formed my heart you formed my soul
You made my life, shaped all my goals.
Loving you was blind, and I knew then,
My heart was blinded by you.

Goodbye my father.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
I know it's Abby's dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be

I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.
I've even watched you sleeping for a while.
You were my father, I'm your child.
I spent my lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.

We've had our doubts, we were never fine,
But I love you, I swear that's true.
I don't think I can live without you.

Goodbye my father,
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
I'm so hollow, daddy, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.

What will never be lives in my dreams

2007-01-23T08:36:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a powerful dream. I woke up at 4am and couldnt get back to sleep, so I went upstairs for some juice and toast. Upon returning to bed, I fell asleep and had the most amazing movie-dream.

The dream involved reconnecting with an old friend. Someone I've not seen in a decade. Someone I wish I could talk to again. But I can't, because he's gone forever.

The first death of someone I knew well happened in 1998. It was a tragic flying accident. Footage of the crash and my friend being wheeled from the scene on a stretcher were splashed across the CBC news network for days. I knew exactly who it was by his floppy blonde hair on the footage.

Witnessing that news was horrific. It severely affected me psychologically for about six months to a year.

My friend was killed as a result of a midair collision of a plane he was flying. I had learned to fly with him on the Air Cadet gliding program we wound up on together. We spent a lot of time sitting on the side of runways and talking, chasing gliders up and down the 10,000 foot runway, and cutting up in ground school class.

I reconnected with him in 1987 in North Bay for our Power flying scholarship program. Both of us did very well, in fact, we both were candidates for "best pilot". I got a Christmas card from my friend the following year, but that was about the last contact I had with him until about 1995 or 1996, when he called me out of the blue at my desk at work. He had seen a posting I'd made on an air cadet website and called my parents house, then got my work number, and called me. I guess the weather was bad and he was not flying that day, and was kind of bored. So he called.

He was really eager to fly out to Ottawa, to take me out to dinner, it was all kind of strange. To hear his adult voice was strange. We last talked in our teens. To think that we'd not seen each other in about a decade, and here he was calling me out of the blue. I declined his request for dinner, but in hindsight, knowing he'd be dead a few years later, I wish I'd gone. I was going out with someone seriously at that time in my life and the concept of going out to dinner with another guy, even if a friend, was kind of, well, uncomfortable for me. Also due to health issues I'd gained some weight and was not impressed with my looks. I was not in a happy point in my life and I really didnt want anyone I knew from the past to see me. Rotten excuse, I know.

As my friend was stationed out west, we resumed our friendship through frequent emails. In addition to talking about flying, we spent a lot of time talking about relationships, finding love and how hard it was for him to find it out in a male-dominated military base. He was feeling really odd as he was the only single guy left that he knew, and he REALLY wanted to settle down.

Shortly therafter, I'd seen the news that he'd been accepted to the Snowbirds to fly as their Inner Right Wing - #2 - for the next two years. It was really neat to talk to him as an "insider" as a member of one of Canada's most prestigious icons. He also told me that he'd met a woman that he was ecstatic about, and I was SO happy for him. He seemed so overjoyed at the positive turn in his personal life.

We didnt talk much throughout the 1997-1998 season, as travelling with the team was a big time commitment. I got the odd email though.

The last time we "talked" - I got an email saying that he had a whole four days off between seasons, he was going on a cruise with his girlfriend and something big was going to happen.

I found out through the news reports of his accident that he was engaged. I guess that was the big news. I was devastated for his friends and family, and especially for his fiancee. Having just been proposed to and married several years ago, I can't imagine the emotional roller coaster she had to experience.

******

My dream last night involved "what might have been" - years before my friend met his girlfriend, when he was calling me, wanting to come and see me. What did he want? Did he just want to catch up, or was he interested in seeing if I was "available"? Was he interested in a relationship? Would it have led to something serious? If he had pursued me, would I have been interested, and left the person that I was involved with?

Would I have left Ontario and joined him in Saskatchewan? And would I have been the one on national television bravely holding back tears as I held his officer's hat and walked behind his coffin as his bereaved fiancee or widow?

The dream last night was about that possibility. And throughout the dream, things seemed perfect. As the relationship was building, however, every time we went out somewhere, we started seeing planes falling out of the sky. At one point in the dream I turned to him and said "what happened to you"? "Didn't you die"? "How is it that you are even here"?

I dont understand why this dream. Why now?

Maybe the weather - its just like the time of the year when he died (December). Maybe its the heartwrenching discussions I've had with my husband lately about our relationship. Maybe its my subconscious thinking reminding me that despite the pain I've been through with my own choices and own life paths, there could have been serious heartache somewhere else. Maybe its because of my dinnertime breakdown yesterday remembering my dad who was also a pilot and so much a part of my Air Cadet aviation experience.

Who knows. All I know is that I just feel like I want to cry, and keep on crying.

"Boog man" - I miss you. Enough time has now passed that a lot of things have happened since you left. Next year it will be a whole decade since you were taken from this earth. I wish we could get together, talk about the old, fun times, and do some hangar talkin'.

I thought for sure we'd be friends until we were old farts, too old to see let alone even fly. I thought we'd exchange photos of our weddings, our kids and our retirements. I thought someday I'd reconnect with you and you could take me flying, as I've had to put my aviation pursuits on the backburner for a long time now due to health issues. I thought you'd pop up in my life from time to time to remind me of a time in my life when everything was wonderful, everything was perfect.

But none of this was meant to be.

So all I can do now is thank you for the advice to be happy. To find something that makes me smile. To never forget the person that I was when I was younger. To strive to be happy, and to not forget the challenges that I readily accepted, took on, and conquered with passion and flair.

Thanks for reminding me that passionate girl is still alive inside.

Moving forward

2007-01-22T10:52:00.000-05:00

Its been awhile since I posted on here. Maybe thats a good thing, considering the topic of this website - recovery from PPD and extreme grief.

Maybe its a bad thing, because I still need to journal my experiences, but I'm super busy, and have been super-sick for awhile (cold after cold!)

Things are starting to feel a bit more normal in my stressed-out ol' body. Good thing as I move towards my 37th birthday on Thursday. I'm down to half of my antidepressants - I'm finally starting to sleep a lot better, less sleep medication as I've always found that antidepressants give me insomnia (go figure - one of my major depressive symptoms is also insomnia!).

I'm doing this reduction in medication against medical advice, which makes me nervous. But despite my doctors' advice, I'm the expert on my own body, and have to admit that I do feel better physically with this reduction in meds. I can sleep better, I feel a lot less jittery. But I do notice that my emotions are sticking around a bit longer - good ones and bad ones. And I feel my embarassment, my anger, my fear, a lot more strongly.

I've got to be mindful of normal reactions to things - that its OK to just "move on" to the next thing and not spend too much time beating myself up over stupid things. That its NOT okay to vent at anyone despite my strong feelings about anything. That being stuck on any one thing, and ruminating, and over-thinking is NOT normal behaviour. It wont help me get any more resolution on a particular issue, and probably will just wear me out.

My H was really good last night, allowing me to sit and think about my feelings about something really difficult in our relationship. Its hard to open up to him, to be really honest with him and myself about things. I'm not used to it. I tried for years with my dad and with other previous partners - to tell them the difficult things, to tell them how I felt, but none of them really cared. Or maybe they couldnt get out of their own issues long enough to really listen. But C is really making an effort to help in this regard, and for that I'm grateful.

Maybe we've really come a long way, a lot longer than I really have given us credit for.

P

She doesn't know him

2007-01-08T09:42:00.000-05:00

My daughter is moving into the "word explosion" phase of her development (or so the experts say). Its obvious that her brain development is now allowing her to put thoughts together, to understand the passage of time (today, tomorrow, yesterday). She's also really good at understanding who's important in her life and that certain people are not there.

Abigail frequently runs through her list of "people" when she's with some of us, or at daycare (so I've been told). Her list goes "Mum", "Dad", "Naynay" (her name for my mom) and "Kiss" (her name for my brother Chris). But she never says "Wobah" (the name she invented for my dad just before he died).

At my mom's house on the weekend, there's a photo of my dad at my wedding perched on his old dresser. Abby loves to look at photos around my mom's house, rhyming off her people "Mom, Dad, NayNay, Kiss"... but when she got to a photo of my dad, she just looked at it. After awhile she went "Kiss" because my brother looks an awful lot like my dad. But we had to tell her that it was "Wobah" - her grandfather, who has left this earth to live with Jesus.

Its so strange that a man who dominated my life from my birth until last year will not be a known entity to my daughter. That we'll only have stories to tell her about and she'll not be able to experience the real thing.

My relationship with my dad required careful management, and it was a source of pain and frustration on many an occasion. I don't know how it would have affected my relationship with my daughter. I guess I dont have to figure that out now.

Everything in my life is now so different. I'm in totally uncharted territory. Having a relationship with someone such as my dad who was so dominant has really left me with shaky legs, not totally confident in my own judgement and my own abilities. I really grew up not totally trusting myself, as he often dove in to "DO" things for us. I'm sure his intentions were noble, but it often didnt leave the rest of us in the family feeilng overly confident. Abigail's birth and his death has really sent me for a loop in that department, challenging my abilities, my confidence.

Why have I always been like that - when I look at the things I've done in my life I've not only usually succeeded, I've exceeded many expectations, and done amazingly well. But I always think I could be better, do more, that I'm not good enough. And that has robbed a lot of joy out of things, out of accomplishments, out of every day life. And that's a shame, becuase I've been given a lot of blessings. I really need to make a point to enjoy them a lot more.

For Erin

2006-12-18T10:16:00.000-05:00

I am a survivor of postpartum depression.

I stand for the enlightenment of a society that hides from mental illness, a society that hides from those who struggle to recover. I am unwilling for my perseverance to be in vain. I am unwilling for our brave friend who suffered the dark night of the soul to have lived and died in shame.

In a world blinded by the pursuit of pleasure, I am here to say that many mothers are in pain. In a world rushing to get ahead, I am here to say that many mothers are being left behind. In a world obsessed with the value of the market, I am here to speak for the value of our lives.

Innocence

2006-12-14T08:38:00.000-05:00

I heard a song this morning that made me cry.

Some of you might remember this song:

“Old lang syne” by Dan Fogelberg?? You can hear it at:

http://www.geocities.com/bjaes.geo/lyrics/syne.htm

This song has always gotten to me. Even when I was too young to understand it. When this song came out I was in elementary school, I knew that I didn’t understand it at the time but someday I would.

And now I do.

What happens to all those innocent times? The times before death, divorces, suicides, depressions, kids, major responsibilities, layoffs, disasters, terrorist attacks....

Man. I realize how much time has passed since that song came out. And how much I've grown up. And how hard that has been. My head is spinning. There's so many experiences I'm so grateful for, but so many that I wish I didn't have to experience: breakups, homelessness, joblessness, loneliness, depressions, illnesses, surgery, traumatic childbirth, deaths of friends and loved ones.

My H is flying out tonight to attend the funeral of his friend Erin, who killed herself on Sunday. She has suffered from bipolar depression for a few years now or so we heard, and I guess she just couldnt handle it anymore and took her own life on the weekend. My husband was ok when he first heard the news, but he’s getting more and more upset as time goes on. I hope he is able to handle this ok. He’s not doing so well right now, and neither am I. I wish I could go to, but I didn’t really know Erin very well, I only met her twice. Once in Toronto for a baby shower, and once at our wedding. Besides, I think he needs to go off and do this himself. And I also have to stay and take care of our daughter, and the cost of both of us flying to Toronto for an overnight stay would be pretty high.

I realized last night that THREE people who were on our guest list for our wedding are now dead. Two attended the wedding, one committed suicide before the wedding. Yes - we now have TWO friends who have wives who killed themselves. The other person who is now dead is my own father.

Back to my husband. His friend that died was part of my husband's close circle of friends in Toronto before he moved here. Although I don’t like anyone to be upset, its good to see the emotions in him rising to the surface. He’s spent so much time stuffing his feelings inside, and that has led to some pretty weird behaviour on his part.

I’m ok with him crying, being upset. He thinks he’s a big softy but I really like when people (men OR women) are able to cry and express their feelings. Makes them seem more human, and makes me feel less wacky. I’m a big cryer.. I cry at everything. I was labelled crybaby at a young age, and I still earn the rights for that nickname. Except now I proudly wear the label, and when I was young I hated that people teased me about that.

Gotta go put some cold washcloths on my eyes. They're all puffy.

For Erin, Peter and Carole

2006-12-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

Capture My Soul, for it Serves Me Naught

Amidst the thunderous waves of despair
The siren with song
Comes through as Seventeen Pearls
Still in their shell,
Waving you at whim and random
On an unseen strand of hair
Between Heaven and Hell.

As the vessel of your journey
Thrashed relentlessly on
Malevolent waves-
The Pearls
Once your only goal,
Dissolve and chill
Your lives once warm.

I too, like you all
Through endless storms
My hands outstretched hold the shell
Waiting for God's tears from Heaven
To offer me once again,
Pearls of Seventeen
And release me,
For a time -
From Hell.

Tis the season....

2006-12-12T09:44:00.000-05:00

To be bummed out.

Christmas bums me out so much. Everything bad happens at Christmas. I just found out at noon today that a friend of my husband's killed herself last week. She too was suffering PPD after her daughter was born. I guess hers went on a long time (since 2003) and she eventually succumbed. People dont realize how lethal an illness depression can be. I wish I'd called them. I wish I'd had more energy in my own PPD recovery to reach out to someone else. I didnt know them that well, so I didnt feel comfortable doing so, but you can be sure that right now I'm beating myself up for not trying at least.

I feel awful right now. I'm shaking, I have a headache, I'm choking back tears, and I feel nauseated. I know that the only difference between me and her was that I got help, the right help, and she obviously didn't. Now there's one more little child, her daughter, without a mother. Another child like me who will grow up thinking her parent (in my case it was my father) didn't even care enough about me to want to be alive. My dad, fortuntely, was never successful in any of his suicide attempts, but the effects of them were the same. A feeling of worthlessness due to complete lack of validation by a parent.

My home life growing up was ANYTHING but jolly and bright. My dad had so many "issues" that they coloured everything. Christmas for me was full of anxiety, anger, walking on eggshells, listening to my dad vent and rage, and watch him so clearly uncomfortable around us, trying too hard, wobbling between extreme, over the top, slightly "put on" joy, while the rest of us wanted to go off to our rooms and hide. Sure, there were some good times. But we never knew how long they were going to last. Until dad had another "episode" I guess.

One year was all about my dad NOT dealing with his mental problems and his addictions and watching him fall so far off the wagon that he was arrested for DUI and his car impounded. Merry friggin Christmas to us. I think it was the day before Christmas Eve that my mom and I had to drive up to the police station in another town nearby to bail out his car. What was worse (as if that wasn't bad enough) he was so mad at himself and so feeilng sorry for himself that he pretty much sat in the basement the whole Christmas and barely talked to any of us. When he did, he screamed and yelled and vented. Great. Ho Ho friggin Ho.

All kinds of rotten things have usually happened at Christmas. My grandfather's death. My dad's arrest for DUI. Finding out my uncle had an affair with my aunt. A friend of mine was killed in a plane crash. I fell down some stairs and severely injured my pelvis. My cat was diagnosed with terminal cancer. No wonder I just want to bury my head under my pillow and wake up in January.

Also this is my last full week working in a group that I REALLY liked working in. I joined my current work team in 2002 and really enjoyed it. A few months ago I was told, with no ifs, ands or buts about it, that I and my small team of 5 (some are on leave right now though) will be transferred to another branch as of January 2007. I'm still really upset about it. No consideration was given of how this might affect us, our work, the files, anything. And I was given no offer to stay on here and choose another file. I can understand possibly the file going, but why me? The people involved in the transfer did not even talk to me about ANYTHING, they dont know me from a hole in the ground, but they had their minds made up that this was the best move for "everyone concerned" - whatever that means?

Today there were people in here, scoping out the building. I guess we're all moving -but to where? We were told there's no space in the main building and we're to stay here for the time being. We're also told that there's new people coming in who don't know about those of us who have to stay. This is getting ridiculous!

My work environment is definitely bumming me out. Besides the transfer and possible move (which we were not expecting until march) there are people deliberately going against our recommendations on things. Now we don't just recommend things, we interpret mandatory government obligations on certain topics. I SWEAR people deliberately go out of their way to thwart us. We didnt make this stuff up.. this is declared obligatory by the Federal Government. We're just the follow-through people. Are we adults or are we five year olds here?

I'm still just getting my head around last month too. The 1 year anniversary of my dad's death. Its still so weird to start my Christmas shopping list, and have one usual row blank. I always used to start my list with Mom, Dad, Chris.. and yep.. the line for Dad is so obvious by its omission.

I also had a spat with my husband this morning. I swear sometimes we argue just for arguing sake. Sometimes he just deliberately goes out of his way to NOT do what I suggest, because I'm sure he sees me as some authority figure. I'm NOT. I do have some knowledge and opinions just as any other adult human being out there, and I do hope that I am a bit more important to him than almost any other person out there, and perhaps that might make him take my suggestions with a bit more weight. But it doesn't. It often contaminates my intentions, it, like somehow I'm just out there to CONTROL him, to push him around, and by God he'll NOT take that from anyone let alone his wife! Its so demoralizing. Kind of like my work situation. Very dehumanizing and frustrating.

Also my daughter is sick again with a bad head/chest cold. She gets croupy coughs at night that keep her awake. Poor baby. I hate when she gets sick. She doesn't sleep well and it keeps us all up. I also worry so much - she's so tiny and that cough sounds awful coming from that itty bitty baby body. I hope she gets well soon.

And I crashed my car last week and its still in the shop. I hope it gets fixed soon. So far the repairs are estimated to cost $250.00. I hope the bent rim and the massive alignment problem is all that they find. It's a pain in the butt to go back to only one car.

Merry Christmas and Bah Humbug. I hope I feel better after I get some work deadlines done at least. If my books and computer don't get packed up and moved when I'm not looking.

Toddler Wrasslin'

2006-12-04T11:25:00.000-05:00

Today I am exhausted and sore. I brought my daughter - solo - to a children’s birthday party (for 2 year old). Big mistake. Next time I’m bringing a relief pilot if my husband's not available.

Instead of enjoying a relaxing afternoon with friends, as I used to do before I became a mother instead I spent 3 hours wrestling with my 32 pound, extremely busy, strong and strong-willed daughter.

The event included:

Following my daughter the whole time to prevent her from falling down the stairs. People kept leaving the safety-gate to the basement open to a very long flight of stairs. I did have to catch her at one point, but even me watching her did not stop her from falling down the 2 steps in the front foyer and landing smack on her head on a hard tile floor.

Me pulling her off their Christmas tree and their breakables at least 10 times. How people with 3 kids can put fragile ornaments and other breakables out is beyond me! In my house, I've got everything within her range-of-destruction packed away, taped down or gated off.

At one point I was too exhausted to follow her and 5 minutes later I found her jumping on the bed of the 9 year old (while he was on it) laughing her nutty head off, and another time I found her running around the bedroom of the 5 year old.. jumping on his inflatable soccer-ball-chair.

She sprayed apple juice from an open juice box on the hosts' Christmas figurines. Since there were lots of kids there, there were lots of open juice boxes to grab, chew on and spray all over the place. Everywhere she seemed to go people were mopping up after her. I had to take off after her after each spray and leave the carnage to someone else.

She grabbed a Christmas figurine from under the tree (a large polar bear on skis) and tried to take his ski poles off, they were firmly attached to the figurine. She then tipped the figurine over. The bear was soft/stuffed but the hat, skis and poles were made of plastic. She was just about to give him the WWF-patented-atomic-elbow-drop-crush-tackle until I grabbed her just in time.

She opened cupboard doors, tried to take out dishes and cookware, she opened the bathroom vanity, tried to grab toilet paper, soap, etc.

She tried to serve herself her OWN piece of birthday cake. The older kids were served first, presumably because they could actually sing Happy Birthday and sit at the table unassisted. She saw the cake being eaten by the older kids.. said firmly to me “YUMMY!” and then “ABBY’S” and set off towards the table, with the intent of grabbing some cake of her own. She was rerouted only by the piece of cake coming our way being served by the hostess, otherwise certain disaster would have ensued.

She sat on the birthday boy’s toys thinking they were good benches, flattened the boxes, then proceeded to carry some of his gifts down the hall into his parents’ bedroom.

Why do other peoples kids seem to sit and play together while mine strikes out on her own, investigating every nook and cranny? Why did even the babies at this party seem low maintenance?

Every muscle in my body is sore. I started out the day with a pinched nerve in my neck (you know those where you turn your head to one direction and it burns) and now I can barely move. I’m sitting on a chair with a heating pad in it.

I’m going to a massage at 12:30. Some people may call it a luxury, but I can barely move.

I call it a medical necessity.

Baby Milestones

2006-11-29T10:09:00.000-05:00

Three major milestones yesterday in my daughter's transition from toddlerhood to preschooler.

1. She hit me. She wanted to be picked up and I said "not right now I'm cooking dinner". Her frustration grew instantly and she screamed "NO!" and then smacked me on the leg with her hand. I let her know, sternly, that hitting is not good and you dont hit mommy. She burst out crying. I picked her up a few minutes later when dinner was in the oven, and we had a "chat" about not hitting, that its not nice, and we don't hit in our house. She seemed to understand. At least she could see that I still loved her and could be tender and loving towards her despite her unacceptable behaviour.

2. She finally has her bottom molars poking through her gums. Finally at 17 months she's almost able to chew food, and not resort to either trying to swallow chunks whole (she chokes frequently) or for us to cut things up into such tiny pieces it's not fun for her to eat. She does try to mash things up with her front teeth, but she's not always successful.

3. She cursed. Now before this sounds too awful, toddlers are prone to making up a lot of nonsense words and not knowing what they mean. Her favourites lately are mostly two syllable ones such as "ag-doh" and "da-bee". She's also been heard saying "la-vash, ba-doh, da-bah, ba-gah, ba-deesh, za-bah". She also occasionally comes out with "a-go-doh" which has something to do with her crate of soft-blocks. I haven't figured this one out yet. She does have a few nonsense words that actually mean something.. her own little language. She uses the word "ahm-ee" for lemon, and "ack" for eyeglasses or sunglasses.

But last night, amid the usual nonsense words, came something that sounded like "sh*t". My husband looked at me, I looked at him, our eyes met, they grew wide, and then I burst out laughing. I had to leave the table so as not to encourage her from saying it over and over (as toddlers love to do when they find something that makes adults laugh). It sounded SO funny in her little baby voice, her saying something that sounded a lot like a curse word.

I know curse words are vulgar, and improper, and probably a sin in some people's books, but I have often found cursing funny. Particularly when I'm extremely stressed, and/or it comes from people who dont seem like the cursing type: proper, formal, uptight people, sweet elderly grandmothers, and toddlers who dont really know what they're saying yet.

Aaaah. Parenthood is waay too funny sometimes.

Putting blame where blame is due...

2006-11-28T08:44:00.000-05:00

... or is it really a matter of responsibility? Blame sounds so harsh, taking personal responsibility is more like it.

Why do I seem to attract those who need to shift their helplessness onto me and project it to the point where it seems to be MY problem? My fault? Why am I a punching bag for the insecure? And why does it hurt me so bad? Maybe because I've lost a lot in my life due to that kind of faulty thinking. I've lost time, energy, self esteem, relationships... I've suffered abuse, broken hearts, and a lot of crap that's taken a lot of energy and good health from me. Or maybe my recent string of bad luck is just too tempting a target....

Why can't people take responsibility for themselves and stop hurting others? How can people not feel bad about putting others down in order to make them feel better about themselves? Why is this a theme I see over and over - in love, work, life...

Why are healthy boundaries so hard to draw for so many people? Why do people struggle with responsibility/over-responsibility/under-responsibility? Is our society so screwed up that we can't define these places very well?

And how do I get myself back on track after this most recent heart-splitting attack?

Give it up....

2006-11-21T13:51:00.000-05:00

... to God. I've been so freaked out about things lately and a coworker of mine just said that to me. I forget sometimes, to let things go, and I sit and worry and clamp onto things that I really have no control over. Like whether or not my husband comes around to decide to have a second child. Whether or not I'll be even able to have a second child. Whether or not I'll have a job in five, ten, fifteen years.. what this move to a new division will mean, whether or not this or that will happen....

For so long, most of my teens, twenties I've tried to "drive" things in my life and it's always been so painful. I had a strong drive to achieve at school, to get the perfect relationship at the right time to have kids at the right age.. etc. etc.
It was always so painful and exhausting. And everything blew up anyhow. So by now, at my age, and with my recent hard training in the School of Life, I should know better than to not heed the signs that I'm trying to warp myself out of shape about something I can't control. For awhile now, in the wake of my PPD, my father's death and my health issues, I've been able to let things go, to trust, to just accept whatever comes along. To accept that God really is in charge, and that things happen on HIS time, not on ours. But recently, I've had a hard time doing that.

I have not been to Church in several months for a variety of reasons (mostly because my husband is taking a class on Sunday mornings and I don't like the thought of bringing my 17 month old toddler to Church alone - I wouldn't get much out of it). Not going to Church that often, I forget the magnitude of God's presence in my life, in everyone's life, and that not much of what we go through is really in our control. Due to so many painful and harsh realities that have been thrown in my face recently I've had to learn that, or go absolutely stark raving crazy. Or actually, I did go stark raving crazy, THEN I learned that I really have very little control over most things in my life.

I gotta keep remembering this. And waiting for the BIG signs. Maybe I've just not had the right sign yet. And maybe God wants me to wait right now. To learn obedience, to learn patience.

Stay Strong
Be Brave
Wait for the Signs

P

One year and one day....

2006-11-16T14:29:00.000-05:00

...since my dad died. Actually it could be one year and two days, since he died alone, overnight, we dont know exactly what day he died. but likely it was in the wee hours of the morning, on Tuesday, November 15, 2005.

I've been having a hard time this week. Its been pretty stressful. First my daughter was sick and had to go to the ER on Saturday night. Sitting there with her, waiting as the medication kicked in to help ease her difficult breathing, I was thinking that this was the exact building that they brought my father's lifeless body into almost a year before. I wondered where his body went - what door it entered, where it was kept, etc. I couldn't squeeze that image out of my head. I was not there when my dad died, and by the time I got to my parents house, his body was gone. But I still replay what it might have looked like - what my mom saw when she discovered him, the ambulance attendants bringing his body up from the rec. room. My mom did call me when she was trying to do CPR on him, that moment is frozen in my nervous system somewhere. Every once in awhile I remember that call, her distant, floaty, disoriented voice saying that she thought he'd passed away, and he wasn't responding to CPR... the emotional ice-bath that hit me as I was trying to sit there and process the news.

I sometimes cant get that thought out of my head and when I go to my mom's house (its so weird to not call it my parents' house anymore) I have to literally squeeze my temples and pinch myself to stop thinking about what the scene might have looked like. I try not to spend too much time thinking about that, or if he suffered, or if he knew what was happening to him. I hope that God made it quick and painless, that my dad didn't even know it was happening. I hope he wasn't in pain, or scared. He was scared of so many things. I hope that Jesus was there to meet him, or someone he knew, maybe my grandmothers, so he wasn't scared.

For the one year memorial, I placed an ad in the local paper with the following in memoriam notice:

No farewell words were spoken,
No time to say goodbye,
You were gone before we knew it,
And only God can tell us why.
It broke our hearts to lose you,
But you didn't go alone,
Part of us went with you,
The day God called you home.
Peacefully sleeping, resting at last,
His weary trials and troubles past,
In silence he suffered, in patience he bore,
Till God called him home to suffer no more

Yesterday, for the anniversary, I took the day off and went to the cemetery along with my husband, my brother, and my mom. We cried buckets. I'm so exhausted today.

I need to sleep, but I have to go to work, and my daughter and my husband are both sick, and I feel like I'm coming down with yet another cold. I was not feeling well early this week and I thought I was done it, but who knows. I could just be in acute re-grief again. Grief feels like a cold that's for sure.

So many painful memories this week, and no rest for this weary Mama.

Fifty-one weeks

2006-11-07T14:21:00.000-05:00

Since the death of my father.
My dad died.
My father is dead.
Oh my God.
Its so final.
How could this happen? I just talked to him on the phone one day
And the next he was gone.
All over.
Where did you go?
Where are you?
Please don't go.

The finality of this is just hitting me so hard. I cant stop crying this week. Today is the worst day of all.

Pictures and memories
are all I have of you now
no family dinners
or other celebrations

but what really would have been there
another twisted sad event
as so many of them before
when would we have had you
the REAL you to be with
or your distressed,
self destructive, evil twin?

Why did fate
deal us such a final decision
let us trust God
that all is right, all is correct, all is well

Memories of a curly little girl in the 70's
crazy about her dark haired daddy
running through my mind
those days over forever

They really were over before
I'm grown up now
But now its so real, so final
Memories of the past
Bringing not happiness, but pain

When will the sharpness
of the grief
fade into something more mellow
no anxiety to greet me
as I remember the past

maybe never, anxiety was always there
fear, uncertainty, instability
A girl, never confident in the world
can't sleep, can't get any peace

I can only buffer
the sadness, insecurity, anger
for my own little girl
to fall in love with her own daddy
but she has to learn feminine grace and dignity
from a Mom so hollow and scared and insecure

One foot in front of the other
self parenting in full bloom
You can do it
You are doing it
You are fine
All is well
Breathe
Breathe

Grieve the loss
then live is what you once said
I'm still grieving
I'm trying to live
I now realize, both will happen at the same time
its not a two step process.

its about incorporating
this new reality
in every activity, every thought, every moment.
its now reality that we carry
its hard
we're getting better at it
but we still carry it
every single day.

I miss you Doots, and I love you. I know you sometimes doubted it
But I always did.
I was so mad becuase I saw you being so awful to yourself
And I figured you always deserved so much more.

I just wish I could hear your voice right now.
Listen to your floppy slippers on the floor
the clinking of ice in your glass
the clearing of your throat

the sounds of every day life
we take for granted
until they're gone.
then we'd give anything, everything we have
to hear it again.
Such is the life of a survivor.

Surviving what?
I think the dead are the lucky ones.
No grief for them, no pain, no loss, no heartbreak.

Changes and feeling like I dont belong

2006-11-02T11:53:00.000-05:00

Changes in my work life are bumming me out. I thought it was just me and I needed to just "tough it out" until I came across this.

Enjoy.

**********************************

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN RESEARCH: Sense of belonging helps people suffering depression, by Colleen Newvine.

Having a sense of belonging with family, friends and co-workers can help relieve symptoms of depression, according to U-M research.

Reg Williams, professor of nursing and psychiatry and co-author of a paper in the current issue of the Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, says people who feel connected to the world around them feel better.

"You can have lots of social support, but unless you feel you fit in, it doesn't help," Williams says. He teamed up for the research with graduate student Chanokruthai Choenarom and long-time collaborator Bonnie Hagerty, associate professor of nursing.

The researchers studied 90 people, and separated them into two groups—one diagnosed with depressive symptoms and the other without. They looked at perceived stress, sense of belonging, social support and spousal support for one year, taking data every three months.

Notably, spousal support did not help with depression. In fact, it sometimes had a negative effect. "The things a spouse thinks might be supportive aren't necessarily helpful," Williams says. For example, some spouses might think they're giving cheerful pep talks, but they might be received as nagging or minimizing their mate's suffering.

The higher that subjects rated their social support and a sense of belonging, the lower they rated their depressive symptoms. Williams says there are implications for this research both for clinicians and for those suffering from depression.

"When I first see a patient who is suffering depression, I ask them to reach out to friends, family members and co-workers and get re-connected to their support network," he says. "It really works."

"When a person is depressed, the natural tendency is to want to withdraw from the very people they need. That's what's so wicked about this illness," he adds. The depressed person might have a support network of concerned people who love him or her, but the depression will make the person unlikely to return phone calls or go out to social events. Eventually, those in the support network might feel rejected and stop trying.

Hagerty and Williams recently received funding from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation to do a two-year study of adherence to antidepressant medications when prescribed by primary care physicians.

Williams says one of the problems with treating depression is that when the patient begins to feel better, the person might stop treatment. To keep depression at bay, the patient needs to continue treatment, as quitting will cause a backslide.

A death begets a thousand smaller ones

2006-10-30T10:50:00.000-05:00

Say a prayer for my mom today. She's trading in my dad's car (Camry) for a new one for her (Toyota Yaris) this evening. It's another one of a thousand little deaths that we've still got to cope with in the aftermath of my dad's fatal heart attack last November.

My dad's car was a big symbol of who he was. It was HIS car. HIS place. Part of HIS little empire. I always associated it with HIM - every time I see the same car driving around, I strain my eyes, peering through the windshield to see who's driving it. Anyone other than him behind the wheel just looks weird.

Up until today it still was full of all his stuff - his sunglasses, his thermos, his coffee cup, his gum, his snacks, his electronic gadgets, his back support cushion. We barely touched it since he died. It was preserved as if he'd just been in there yesterday. Now my Mom has to go into that inner sanctum, that sacred personal space, and clean it all out. I'm sure it will be heart wrenching. She was talking about it a few weeks ago and could barely talk about it without breaking down.

I now know there's not just one death that survivors have to deal with after we lose a loved one. I'm starting to see that the rest of my life will be a journey of surviving a thousand little deaths from now until our own passing. Or at least until our lives have journeyed on to fill in the gaps with new things that my dad was not a part of. Even a year later, I'm still discovering all the ways his existence affected our lives. From what we did for fun, how we celebrated holidays and major milestones, to what we ate to what we talked about and what we could do, and that there just still so many holes in my life.

I think the initial shock of losing someone protects you from all the heartbreaking details that come down the road. And that's good. But now that my "heart anaesthetic" is wearing off, I can see that my dad's death will be affecting me and my family for a long time. Certainly a lot longer than a year - which was the milestone that I was looking towards to "just survive". I was looking forward to completion of this year, as a means to feeling more assured that things were now looking up, but now I see that this pain will likely continue on for some time to come. I'm tired of feeling this pain.

All of this didnt hit me all at once, and its still so hard. It's such a long, difficult road. I don’t know how my mom has it in her to be so strong. I don’t know if I could cope with widowhood with as much strength and dignity that she's showing.

I love you mom, and I'm so proud of you. You've been a shining example on how to retain my dignity as a woman in spite of heartbreaking loss, and to go on bravely, be your own person, and still find the beauty of life and show me that there are a million reasons to want to keep living.

And God, please dont take my Mom from me any time soon. I dont know how I'd cope with that amount of heartbreak all at once.

4:30 am and I'm still awake...

2006-10-27T04:35:00.000-04:00

Ok.. I'm still awake from 1:30 that is. My baby has been up off and on all night and I'm exhausted. I dont know if it's her teeth, or what, but she's been up and down every few hours.

I had a hard time going to sleep on account of a lot of work troubles, and now this. I am afraid to go to sleep because it will be so hard to get up. I dont know if I'll be more tired if I get 3 more hours of sleep or if I just push myself through and not sleep at all.

Over the past few days at work, I've come to learn that I'm going to be relocated to another work group. Its been decided that the files that I've been working on are better suited to another group's responsibility, however, this group is not one in which I would have sought work. And the nature of the larger group in which I now report is not an area in which I feel I have a particular expertise or any knowledge. Basically, it doesn't look like a good job fit. And the leader of group that I now have to leave is not offering me an opportunity to stay.

How do I look at this and not take it personally? I have been with that group for 4 years. Recently its come under new direction (while I was away on maternity leave). I came back after leave and was asked to take over a different set of files in the interim, while the person who was working on them went away on education leave. However, now the fact that I'm working on these "interim files" are the reason I'm being pushed out of the door. It has absolutely nothing to do with my skills or past experience.

I really liked working at this place. It had an excellent staff, interesting work, great location, supportive of work-life balance. I really liked the nature of the work (everything except the extreme "RUSH" nature of it). I have a lot of friends there. I didn't really want to leave. I got into the group through the independent competition process, completely legitimately. But now I have been told I have to leave. I have no choice. And this group that I'm leaving is still doing some "hiring" to fill in some vacancies, however it doesnt appear that I'd be given any option to fill one of those positions.

I've done nothing wrong here but go away on leave and happen to come back to the wrong files. I've got more to offer to the group than what I'm doing, and what I'm being offered, but apparently there's no recourse for this. I'm definitely not being seen as a person with a history and a wide variety of skills. Our senior management (higher than the people that have made this decision) has indicated that there is a shortage of people in the branch with skills that I possess. I dont understand. It hurts me so deeply that this has happened TO me, without my knowledge or consent.

And its keeping me up at night.

The person that made this decison wouldnt know me from anyone else on the street. There's no way they actually know my skills, experience and education. But I'm still taking this very personally.. despite the fact that there's no way this could be personal, considering the decision makers don't know me.

How do I deal with this?

Mousecapades, part deux

2006-10-20T09:30:00.000-04:00

This morning we awoke to hear the pitter, patter, "ting" of another mouse caught in our live traps.

He was released a short time later in the same location as the first mouse. I hope they have reunited and yesterday's mouse has introduced today's mouse to all his new friends.

Good luck on your new adventures mice!

Pain in the neck

2006-10-19T15:30:00.000-04:00

We've all heard that saying.. This is a pain in the neck. I now know where it came from.

Part of my work these days involves getting a mandatory reporting document finished, approved, translated, printed and presented. It's been a real challenge all the way through. I picked the file up this fall and its been challenging before I got it, and its been REALLY challenging since it's been my responsibility.

We're now trying to get it approved. In the past two days I've recieved no less than NINETEEN email comments on various views and questions regarding the routing for approvals, and the timeline that it's on, despite direct instructions from senior management. And it's still not in approvals yet.

The document is due in November, and this stuff is still going on. I'm about to put myself through the paper shredder.

If this doesn't get done, I don't want to be the person that delivers the nasty little package from the Crown lawyers to the Boss' office. I tried hard to get this done. I really did. I busted my butt, all the way through.

However, this whole project, however has felt like one of those dreams where you're being chased by a bad guy and you can't move.

And my neck REALLY hurts.

Mouse witness relocation program

2006-10-19T11:04:00.000-04:00

Set a live trap... and catch a live mouse. And then release it back into nature, where it belongs.

I did that this morning.

A few weeks ago my husband noticed some strange gnawing noises in a cupboard above our stove, where we keep our spices and other stuff. I thought he was a bit paranoid and said "I think its just the sound of the fridge, dear". I love my husband, but sometimes he can be a bit over-reactive about things. I am also very much that way, which is why we set each other off. We're the panic twins, trying to run a household and raise a family, with very little experience, under some very trying circumstances.

One day a few weeks ago, after the mysterious munching sounds, a mysterious splatter of brown liquid fell onto the top of the stove. We didnt think much of it as there had been a storm that night and we thought that perhaps some water came in from the ductwork that connected our range-hood fan to the outdoors. The brown liquid didnt smell bad or anything so we figured it was just greasy, dirty water being blown in the ductwork.

Then on Monday, I was looking for some spices in the cupboard and noticed a lot of tiny little plastic bits. Then some tiny bits of tinfoil from an old package of Hershey's kisses. I pulled out a well-chewed plastic bottle of liquid vanilla extract. Aha! The mysterious brown liquid. It had on it the tell-tale gnaws of a hungry mouse. I moved a few things around and saw a mouse-hole, exactly the shape of of mouse-holes in cartoons, drilled into the back wall of the cupboard. I also found an empty bag of pine nuts, with a gnaw-hole in the side, as well as a lot of little black "presents" littered around the cupboard. MMM.. mouse poop. I guess those little brown specks weren't remnants of the Hersheys kisses after all.

As I'm cleaning up the mess (very carefully I might add) my husband was FREAKING, running in and out of the kitchen, lobbing verbal fear-bombs at me. "Don't put that there. Throw that out. Oh my God. Mice are so dirty. Oh my God. Our house is falling apart. First the mouldy bathroom. Now, mice. We can't even keep up with this house. Oh my God".

It wasn't a pleasant experience.

So yours truly not only had to clean up the mess, but I had to do it while listening to the freaked out backseat cleaner.

Overall the mess wasn't too bad and I got a chance to dump all my old spices and buy new ones, so that's good. I've lived in houses with mice in them before, so I'm well aware of how to safely clean up mouse poop. We also brought in an eco-friendly pest control person yesterday to help us seal off the mousy entry points and set live traps to catch-and-release the mice. I feel really good about going that route. With my work and education in ecology and agriculture, I have doubts about using chemicals and more "modern" pest control techniques. We've come a long way since the "old time home remedies" and I've been learning when it comes to sustainable environmental solutions, those old time remedies are the best.

So anyhow, last night around 11:30 pm we heard a "clink" in our mouse-containment cupboard, and then some tiny tapping noises. Success.

Despite me trying to be all tough about it, I'll admit I had a hard time sleeping last night, knowing there was a real live, wild rodent in my kitchen. There was a time when seeing any wildlife, whether it be rural or urban would not have bothered me. As a kid I used to dig up worms and play with them. I used to let bunches of tent caterpillars crawl all over my arms and hands. I'd pick up giant moths, huge beetles, pretty much anything that crawled.

But something has happened in my old age, and now I find myself really scared of bugs, mice, etc.

So we waited until this morning to open the trap. Upon peering in the cupboard, we saw a big fat deer mouse, hiding in its trap. Normally deer mice are tiny, but this bad mamma was either really fat, from all the chocolate it ate from my cupboard, or pregnant.

It now has a new home. It looked pretty happy as it dashed off into the long grass beside a corn field. I hope it has made new friends already.

I'll be sure to release any other mice from my house into the same location so as to maximize the chance of reuniting a family.

Unitalkers

2006-10-13T09:53:00.000-04:00

...has someone taken your faith?
Its real, the pain you feel
The life, the love
You die to heal
The hope that starts
The broken hearts
You trust, you must
Confess...

- from "The best of you" by the Foo Fighters

In my life I've had more than my share of experiences with Unitalkers. You know the type. People who just move on in and take over any situation, conversation or interaction with excessive talking, usually about themselves, with little regard to what was going on before they showed up. There's people like this all over the place. You meet them on planes, buses and stores. They're also part of every extended family. There's usually one Uncle, Aunt or Grandparent at every family function that will talk someone into a corner.. and won't even notice they're stressing that person out by doing so.

However, for the most part, these people are usually harmless, and you know that as soon as the situation changes, they'll be gone. They'll soon be relegated to fodder for smalltalk with friends, family and coworkers. But what about those of us who have intense unitalkers who are in a much closer circle?

I dont want anyone to get the wrong impression about what I'm going to say. I loved my Dad with all my heart. He could be fun, boisterous, and I know he loved me and my family dearly. However, my dad, bless his heart, happened to be a unitalker. A very loud, intense one. A lot of time spent with him was spent listening to him talk about his problems, his knowledge, his experiences - such as who cut him off in traffic, who cheezed him off here and there, etc. He was also often very "politically incorrect" and/or would say things that were really inappropriate in certain situations. And he'd say it LOUDLY. Man - his voice could carry across ANY space. He even would talk about things that I knew a LOT about due to my education or work experience, in an authoritarian way, and many times he wasn't even correct. THAT one baffled me. He also used to cut me off in mid sentence in order to talk to my mom. I found that really disrespectful and downright painful. What kind of message did that send me?

In any case, there often was little space for my brother and me (and even my Mom) to talk about our thoughts, wishes, hopes, dreams, fears, experiences and knowledge. I know he meant well, but it was very difficult for us to have our own space in his giant presence.

In the past year, not only am I coming to grips with my dad's death and the major adjustments necessary to become a mother, but I also had the added burden of recovering from postpartum depression, with a strong obsessive-compulsive component. There are many factors that contributed to my PPD/OCD - definitely the subject of another post altogether. As part of my recovery I participated in a support group for moms with PPD. I met some brilliant and wonderful women who are all walking similar roads as myself. We all have different stories, but they are all fraught with incredible challenges, heartbreaking losses, and extremely difficult relationships with our closest family members. These women are my heroes. And yes, most of us have or have had unitalkers in our lives.

Motherhood is a time of extreme transition. We have to go from being the "subordinate child" to being a leader. A parent. One of the heads of a household. Its a major mental shift. It was very hard to do as I had never ever felt THAT important before. I didnt have the self confidence to feel that I could rely on my own self enough to BE the parent that I suddenly needed to be. Growing up with a unitalker really didn't do a lot to help me in this regard (that's an understatement for sure!)

In my PPD recovery before my dad passed away I was struggling with the issue of how to deal with the difficulties and challenges of my relationship with him. I knew deep in my heart that I would have to confront the more painful aspects of his "unitalkingness". The fact that I had a lot of knowledge and experience as an adult in my own right, that I too was important, that I deserved mental space. And that I was DYING inside ever since I was a little girl, for him to see me, to listen to me, to recognize me and to take interest in MY life too. I wanted to feel important, to be recognized, validated and supported by him. That's SO important in a relationship and absolutely CRITICAL in a parent-child one (especially when the child is young). The dynamics of my relationship with my dad were not often that way.

I've had past episodes of depression and each time, I reached the breaking point, I knew that I had to make some changes in a few key relationships in my life, and that one in particular. The last few times I've had to do that, were extremely difficult and painful. I was NOT looking forward to getting into this again.

However, not more than a few days after I came to the realization I had to go there again, my dad was gone.

I'm now left with so many conflicting emotions. Extreme sadness that he's gone and I'll never see him again, and that my daughter will never know him. A broken heart that only the daughter who's lost her father can feel. I feel fear about the future, that he as a "safety blanket" is now gone. Forever. But I'm not particularly upset that I won't have to confront my dad about the nature of our relationship.

Maybe in time, I would have been able to put his behaviour down in the "odd personality quirks" column and not let it get to me so much. Maybe I'd have had the confidence to explain to Abby why sometimes we had to leave Grandpa and Grandma's house early despite having said we'd stay the whole weekend. Maybe I'd have been able to stand by her and explain why Grandpa talked so much and so loudly about things that made her feel uncomfortable. Maybe I'd have been able to stand up to him and define a boundary of appropriate behaviour with respect to her. Maybe he and I would have come a long way to working out our areas of discomfort. Maybe I'd have become a more compassionate towards him - a lot better at recognizing that his "unitalkingness" was really a means for him to control his own inner anxiety and keep his mind occupied away from his own troubles.

Who knows. Or maybe it was never going to be that way, and God stepped in. I dont know. Now I'll never know, and I'm not sure if that's okay.

Motherhood = Scared ****less....

2006-10-04T08:44:00.000-04:00

Is motherhood supposed to be this stressful? After a totally stressful day at work, running here and there, trying to get a mandatory Major reporting document that's due in December back on track, I have to dash off to pick up the baby early because her daycare provider has to go to the Doctor. I was looking forward to a nice quiet evening as I was already frazzled from work. I was so happy that I had little to do after the baby's asleep at 7:30 (after my usual gruelling 13 hour day).

Unfortunately, my evening peace was shattered because the baby woke up at 8:00, SCREAMING her head off.. sounding like she's choking. She couldnt, WOULDNT settle down, coughing, crying, fussing, pushing away from us, and screaming this terrible quiet, muffled scream. Her little eyes all puffed up, her breathing and sobbing jagged and scary. Its so scary when they can't talk and they get like this, you have no idea what's wrong. My anxiety levels hit the ROOF. Was she truly choking? Did she have some kind of serious illness all of a sudden? She was fine not an hour earlier.. why did she wake up? What's wrong?

We dosed her up with some baby-Motrin and tried to distract her for about 45 minutes, thinking it was her teeth (she is 15 months old and still no molars). But she kept waking up and screaming. Her times betweens scream-fits started to lengthen, and then by 9:30.. glorious silence. Of course my mind was racing "is she okay? Is she still breathing? Etc. etc..." Its awful the things that used to run through my mind as a mom with postpartum depression. When you're mired in PPD, the preoccupation with the safety of your child becomes crippling, so much so that you won't leave the house most days, leading to reinforcing the horrendous isolation that new mothers often feel. Its so hard to convince myself that everything's going to be okay after that experience, as well as the shocking sudden loss of my father (He died laying on the couch no less! What could be more safe than that?)

I've become so preoccupied with the safety of my remaining loved ones that its crippling sometimes. I still feel it wake me up in the middle of the night, snatch me out of an almost-asleep state and render me in tears. I feel so much anxiety so often as I fear so much another major loss at this time in my life. I wasn't ready to lose my dad at age 35.. I'm certainly not ready to lose anyone else anytime soon.

Last night I finally calmed down enough (with the use of a tiny bit of medication) to get to bed by 11:30 (2 hours well after my usual bed time) and woke up at 4am, anxious as hell. I managed to fall back asleep from 6-7 and I've had the shakes (my husband calls them the "piggly wigglies") ever since. I teetered and tottered around this morning, getting the baby ready for daycare, and headed out into the foggy morning.

Its now 8:45 and I'm already exhausted. I've got two big meetings today and a yoga class tonight. Wish me luck.

P

Into the dark

2006-09-14T10:52:00.000-04:00

Into The Dark

Father of mine, one day you did die
But we’ll someday be behind
to follow you into the dark

Were your hands clasped tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark?
Was there blinding light?
And a tunnel to gates of white?

You and we have seen everything to see
From Charlottetown to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down

The time for sleep is now
It's something we cry about
But we'll see each other soon in the whitest of rooms

In Catholic school
As vicious as Roman rule
you got your knuckles bruised by a father in black
I’m sure you didn’t hold your tongue as he said
"Son fear is the heart of love"
And I know you had a hard time going back

But we know heaven will decide
That its rules are satisfied
We’ll all be together when we finish our last ride

What was there to greet you
When your soul embarked?
Someday we’ll know
As we follow you into the dark
You’ll show us our own way through the dark

Apologies to the band "Death Cab for Cutie" - for I ripped these lyrics off from you and edited them for my own purposes. Sorry, but its all in the name of healing.

scared of the challenge

2006-09-07T09:26:00.000-04:00

Now that my daughter is 14 months old, I'm starting to feel that its time to prepare for another child. But at this time, I don't think I'm totally ready. I'd like to be able to have a period of non-decision for awhile, and even have the luxury of spacing my children wide apart (4 years or more), but I dont feel I have time on my side. I'm 36 turning 37 in January, and I dont feel I have THAT much time to wait. I hate this battle between my own common sense and knowing my own limits, and ye-olde biological clock, not just ticking loudly but SCREAMING its bloody head off in my ear.

Despite some women having children in their 40's, I have decided to put a limit on my childbearing years (of course I could always change my mind, right?). I dont want to put myself through the worry of having a baby in my 40's, with all those scary risk-of-genetic-problem statistics staring me in the face. Having my first baby at 35 was scary enough for that reason, and the stats were not as scary as they are right now. They will only get worse as I approach 38-39. I also dont want to hear the comments of unsupportive and tactless people who were lucky enough to have been able to have kids in their 20's saying "aren't you too old for a baby"?

The other day, I realized that I'll be just about at retirement age when my daughter graduates from high school. I'm still trying to figure out if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Will I miss out on a chance to further my career without having to be a day-to-day parent again, or will I be ready to retire and focus on myself all of a sudden?

But none of this really was in my hands to manage. For a variety of reasons, I didn't find anyone I wanted to start a family with until I was 31. We didn't marry until 34. I got pregnant on my wedding night so I didnt delay anything there. Part of me regrets that decision as I don't think we'll get a chance to celebrate our wedding anniversaries alone as a couple for the next 15 years. However, I dont regret for a minute the child we wound up creating.

Our daughter is the most amazing, beautiful child I've ever known. I'm so lucky and so blessed to have such an incredible little girl living in my house. She's a total ray of sunshine, every single day. I've not seen a bad mood in that child yet - even when she's sick or teething she still manages to push a smile and a giggle through her tears. She's pure joy, pure happiness, pure self-confidence. I thank God every day that He chose us to be her parents. So on that note.. I start to dream... I can't help wondering if a second one would be just as beautiful and fulfilling, not to mention the fact that we'd be giving our wonderful daughter a sibling....

....and then I snap back to reality.

I am also very aware now, as a parent of a young child, how much work it is to be a parent. And how tired I get dashing to work, dashing to daycare, dashing to get supper on the table, dashing to get Abby to her bath and bed, and then starting the cleanup and laundry until well into the night. Its exhausting. Not to mention the constant worries I have about her safety as she toddles and careens around the house, tripping, falling, crashing, jumping, running.... I wouldnt be as able to watch two kids as closely, I certainly would not have as much time to myself as I do now (with one child and a full time career "me time" is definitely at a premium).

However, this doesnt even compare to the work of her newborn days - when day blurred into night, when she cried and ate round the clock, when I would get habitualized to wake so many times that hallucinated her cries when I was in the shower, and my sleep patterns were so disturbed that I stopped being able to sleep at ALL. Do I really want to go through that again?

Caring for a newborn is hard enough.. but for me, it was harder than most. I suffered a brutal, difficult, gruelling 36 hour, complicated delivery. I severely strained my right rotator cuff, created bleeding "butt fissures" (use your imagination) that lasted for months, and I even cracked a tooth that needed repair shortly afterwards. I hemmorrhaged quite badly afterwards, and our baby was exhausted and had to spend the first night outside the womb in the NICU. I needed lots of help just for myself. I was so overwhelmed, sore and sick by the time I went home with my baby. In addition to everything else I had, I had a nasty urinary tract infection, a bad case of anemia and a burgeoning gallstone problem that had not yet reared its ugly head.

After 8 weeks of this, the pressure became all to great and I had a nervous breakdown and wound up in intensive treatment for postpartum depression. It was all I could do to convince myself I could get through the day alone with a baby, and here I go wanting another one?

I wish I could discuss this more with my husband, but he's admitted he's still so nervous with our daughter that he's not even sure how he's going to make it through the end of today with her, let alone PONDER another one. And I have to admit, that I feel that way too a good part of the time.

However, some days I look at how far I've come as a mother, a grieving daughter, and also as a patient. The capacity for the human mind and body to heal is truly amazing. On these days, I wonder, if the anxiety we're feeling now will come back to bite us in the butt with the deep sting of regret should we choose to cave into our anxieties and not have another baby.

I'm already seeing the paybacks of our early parenting months and years in the absolute JOY that my daughter has within her. Each smile, each giggle, each hug just puts me on a high that I'm sure NO drug could ever match. The warmth of us sitting around the table, having dinner, or heading outside as a family, to the park to play is so incredible.

With everything that happened during the birth and afterwards, I think its natural for us to be scared. But I have to believe that the second time around would be different. I hope I've learned some valuable lessons on my limits and what can happen if I continue to push myself way beyond them, and when and HOW to ask for help that I might need in the future. Maybe we'll have less down time, thats a given for the first year of a baby's life anyhow. Should we try for another one, we'll definitely have to be more creative. If we expand our network of babysitters and caregivers, better schedule our "me" and "us" time, and pray that things will work out for the best, how can we go wrong?

Fighting for a week

2006-09-05T10:25:00.000-04:00

My husband and I have been FIGHTING almost constantly for seven days. And man am I tired.

My H and I have been through a lot, raised in environments where we've never felt free to be ourselves, to be masters of our own destiny. We've always had to cater to the controlling whims of adults (my father and his mother) who couldn't let us be US. And we're battling it out between ourselves now. Unfortunately, we're too old for this crap now. We have our own child to focus on, someone who needs us to be mature and responsible and able to be there for her. Our fighting just seems stupid and juvenile, some of the things we fight over I can't even believe that we are doing so.

I'm not sure where reality ends and begins and the power struggle begins. I'm so tired and I have other things I would like to focus my energy on, but I can't seem to get to them. I'm either recovering from yet another illness or infection (this time the female "triple crown - digestive, yeast and bladder - all at the same time) and I'm not up to it, or I'm so stressed that I'm not sleeping (and therefore too tired to do anything to improve myself) or just plain old overwhelmed with this fighting, and the demands of work and home.

I am not always the easiest person to get along with, that I know. I have high standards for people. I demand and expect people to continue to grow, to challenge themselves, and only to rest when they're really in need of a rest, and not to sit back on their laurels and coast, but to continually work to improve themselves and the lives of others around them.

Some people have thanked me for it, such as my mother who I really pushed to finish those last few courses so she could graduate from her B.A. in 2001. Others have really been angry with me for it, like those ex-boyfriends who thought I was an unloving, dissatisfied woman. I think my husband is not sure which camp I belong in. Lately I'm sure he's seeing me in the latter. But I'm not sure if its because I really am that way, or if he's too afraid to take the steps he wants to take in order to follow along the path of self improvement, and I'm catching the flak for that anxiety. I'd like to believe that scenario, rather than the one that puts me in the role of a controlling monster.

Am I an energetic optimist, someone who thinks that life can be better if we all put in a little more effort, and am always ready and eager to feel that sense of accomplishment? Or am I really someone who's never satisfied, always demanding, never relenting?

Great Gifts

2006-08-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Ok. Upon reading my blog so far, it really focuses on all the pain and strife I've experienced in the past year or so. And that's kind of the purpose of this site. To work through these things on the bumpy ol' road to healing (or better health, or whatever it is down the road).

But I dont think I'd be able to deal with all of this stuff without humour. Sometimes at the blackest times and on the blackest subjects I've had the most bizarre and funny thoughts. Most times I dont say what's on my mind, but with the right company, I feel free to say it. The weird, black humour is a trait I've inherited from both my parents I think. They both have/had the ability to be a bit weird and creative in their view of the world. They did make a great team in that regard. Its horrendously sad to see that team broken up by death. These same types of thoughts seem to come from nowhere inside of me and come spilling forth. One example last Thursday:

I was at my mom's house and I saw a letter addressed to my deceased father (it sounds weird to call that house my mom's house when it used to be "my parents' house" and before that "home"). It was a letter stating that he was being called for jury duty. I looked at the letter and said to my mom "don't you think they need to get their records updated? It *is* the provincial government that issues birth and death notices, right?".

We weren't sure, so we proceeded to look through the letter, and noted there were several scenarios that could get one out of jury duty. One of them was having a "medical condition". Another one was a "severe disability". My mom and I got this dumb smirk on our faces and said "oh, Dad would LOOOOOVE this one.. we should TOTALLY toy with this...". I then went on to say "in his memory, I DARE you to call them and say:

"Bah.. Mr. Story is just not going to come. You don't really want him to attend".

.....Wait for a bureaucratic reaction......

Typical reaction expected (snotty tone bureaucrat): "Um.... Um... I"m sorry, this is a mandatory request and he must be there. There are serious penalties for not adhering to this request."

Our response back: "Oh, I dont think they'd be that serious".

Expected reaction: "Yes they are very serious. Mr. Story could be charged with an offence".

Our response: "ok then, there really is a very serious reason that he can't be there".

Expected bureaucratic response: "The situations in which someone is exempt from jury duty are duly outlined in the letter that is attached to to the summons. Please have Mr. Story read this and be aware of these situations".

Our response: "Well we noted that two of these situations include a serious medical condition, or a serious disability, right?"

Expected bureaucratic response (typically getting more angry and condescending as the conversation progresses) "yes, do either one of these situations apply to Mr. Story???"

Our response: "um, Yes. He's got a very bad disability/medical condition. He's been dead since November 2005".

Bureaucratic response: "umm...."

We HOWLED with laughter over that scenario. If you'd known my dad when he was alive, you'd know why that's funny. He loved toying with "rules and protocol" - always trying to look at things outside the box, pulling apart and analyzing incoherent and illogical rigid arguments. I loved that part of him, and its something that I've inherited as well. When posed with something that really doesn't make sense, instead of grumbling or feeling trapped or oppressed, Our minds would spin.... WHY do we have to do this? Can this be changed? Why are we adhering to this rule when its really stupid? Who made this up? What's the history, the context, the rationale? Can't we do something about it? Can't we make this world a better place?

Another thing thats funny about that scenario - those of us who are grieving see weird sides of people and society when it comes to death. Especially the major discomfort that people have when discussing it. People are quick to give you a hug or a word of support in the early days, when someone has just died, but over the long term, they just seem to stop talking about the death, and move on. And they are LOATHE to actually use the term "dead". Its almost shocking to say it out loud, but those of us who are grieving have been encouraged to use it, rather than some of the fluffier euphemisms such as "passed away" or "passed on". We're told that using the real word, DEAD, helps us accept the reality and not pave over the hard cold reality that someone's gone forever. So my mom, brother and I make a point of actually using the real word, no matter the discomfort of others.

We are the ones who have to accept his death the most. We bear the daily pain of missing him, of seeing his empty chair at the table, of seeing his shoes in the closet, of wondering what to do with his books and papers, of putting to rest his lifetime of hopes, dreams, love, pain, failures and successes, and integrating it into our lives so we can move forward without him.

On that note, Dad, thanks for your gifts of humour and idealism. They serve me well every single day. I love you, and I miss you like crazy.

Its definitely fall now...

2006-08-22T08:36:00.000-04:00

Ok, not officially, but in this northern land of ours, fall comes early. The high temperatures struggle to reach over 25'c and the nights are downright chilly. I even saw some red tinged maple leaves on the drive home from my annual girls summer cottage weekend.

I'm feeling a lot of weird, strong feelings right now. And for the most part, they're not very pleasant. A lot of significant things have happened in September. In September 1988, I moved out of my parents house - a naiive, anxious 18 year old ready to take on the world (ok that was an exaggeration - I didnt adapt well to living on my own for a long time - now part of me misses it like crazy!!!).

On Sept 11 (2001 no less), my husband and I had our first date. On September 6, 2004, we got engaged. On September 25, 2004, we got married. In September 2005, my postpartum depression hit critical mass and I was almost hospitalized. I also started to distance myself from my father, because our volatile relationship was very emotionally threatening to me at the time. Unfortunately, he died suddenly very shortly thereafter. That's a horrible pain that still haunts me. I think about how I was feeling last year at this time, mired in pain, but had no idea things were going to go from bad to worse (to even worse).

How blind I was to the pain that was right around the corner, to the loss of my father, to the illnesses and pain and surgery I was about to experience, and to the relationship turmoil that was about to get much, much worse as my husband confronted a major demon and prosecuted someone who hurt him very badly.

Returning to work after a year off has also resulted in a lot of changes on that front. I'd love to say things are wonderful and my work environment is as supportive and stimulating as it was several years ago, but I don't like to lie. Its very hard to be a working mother, to have to hold up two major roles in life, when one of them, although rewarding, is very draining by its nature (motherhood) and the other one, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of support.

I can't be drained like this in two major aspects of my life at the same time. I've spent a lot of time and a huge amount of effort digging me out of mental illness after the birth of my daughter and the death of my father, and I'm terrified of going back there. I feel this drain on my soul, my spirit and my energy every day I'm here.

One of my inspirations to start this blog (other than my H and my desire to heal from my current emotional pain) is a new friend of mine, part of a wacky group of girlfriends that I've met in recent years. I think they're a major part of why I have stayed sane during all the pain and upheaval in my life. She's been through a lot of crap the past few years and she's still going.... if she's still going, then so can I. She's got a very inspirational blog that really lit a fire under me to write my own.

Awhile back, on her blog "write soon" she posted:

"I don’t believe that a person can ever lose all hope. They may not realize that they still have the ability within and sometimes, they give up before finding it. But I think we all have within us the ability to hope and the need to trust in it. Sometimes, it takes our loved ones to find it for us.... and sometimes, it takes a whole heck of a lot of messy, terrible, bad things in our lives before we can get quiet enough to hear that ever-glowing whisper within us. But that tiny whisper can build mountains. All we have to do is have faith in it. It will do the rest."

I'm hoping you're right Kimmy, because I'm really, really scared right now.

Feels like fall, and my heart's breaking

2006-08-14T09:27:00.000-04:00

This week its gotten quite chilly in comparison to the weather we've had since May. Its been outrageously hot and humid for months and all of a sudden its dry and chilly. Hot in the day indeed but it cools off overnight and the mornings are downright chilly. Sweater weather until noon some days!

With the change in the weather, its definitely starting to feel like fall. I usually love fall with all the same intensity of a giddy schoolgirl, but this year, I'm not looking forward to it.

Last year at this time I was entering the hardest period of my life. And I've had hard times before. But this year was a doozy.

Hard times gone by include those years when my dad was really ill, or in a really bad addiction phase, or even the year I broke up with my first boyfriend and moved back in with my parents, was an unemployed university graduate and suffered my first depressive episode. But this year marks the 1 year anniversary of two really difficult experiences.

First - I had a baby girl last summer. She's now the love and joy of my life, but last year marked such a difficult transition to motherhood. I had a very very difficult and traumatic birth experience, one that left me exhausted and freaked out with PTSD. It was so hard to get up and care for the baby with all the pain and exhaustion and anxiety I was feeling. I pushed myself so far over the limits of what I or any human could probably handle, and suffered a serious breakdown as a result. Breastfeeding wasn't going well, so I decided to pump and bottle feed, which was like feedign twins (I had to wake myself up when the baby was sleeping to pump). That, combined with the stress and strain of being a new parent, and the extreme sleep deprivation, I suffered with depression, anxiety, obsessive thinking, serious delusions and extreme insomnia for months. I had to come to terms with a lot of pain that I'd brought with me from my past, major insecurities and blows to my confidence. It took a lot of work to get through that. I also had some major health issues that weren't helping much. I had a very resistant kidney infection, strep throat, many colds, three cases of the stomach 'flu, and even a series of extremely painful gallstone attacks that required surgery in January 2006.

Just as I was starting to think that maybe things would be okay psychologically, I got the terrible news of my dad's death. That experience just knocked me back, further back than I think I had been even before the baby.

Now that the weather is turning a bit colder, I'm starting to remember the pain of late last summer and early fall. I do feel much happier this year, much more healthy, much more healed, but I know this fall is going to be painful. I had an anxiety attack in the middle of my soccer game yesterday thinking about it. Remembering all the difficult times last fall, how depressed I was (I really thought about suicide a lot) and the fact that my dad is still gone and how much has happened that he's not been a part of over the past year.

I'm not sure how to manage it, if I should just go with the feeilngs, let them come and hit me wherever and whenever, or if I should try to talk myself through it - to tell myself that these are just anniversary anxieties, and to tell myself to look at how far I've come and that I should feel proud of myself for all that I've accomplished.

I'm not sure the best approach. I have to feel these feelings, not stuff them inside, otherwise the repressed anxiety will no doubt do funny things to me. But I am not looking forward to the feelings of helplessness that come when something totally unexpected and really painful happens to you.

Its funny - as humans we are creatures that have highly developed brains and emotions. We think we have developed some "mastery" over our environment and our world. We have developed highly complex systems and institutions that help to keep us sane and develop a feeling of safety. Yet despite all of our trappings, we still live in a world where we still cannot control major life altering experiences and painful changes. Its like we delude ourselves into a false sense of security that's really not there at all.

Are we really doing ourselves a favour by pretending we have some control over all of this, when really we have no control over much at all?

Missing Pieces and Midnight Visits

2006-08-08T20:58:00.000-04:00

My brother and mom are in the air right now, flying back from a trip out west. I wish I could have gone with them, but I'm here, with "responsibilities" (a daughter). I hope my mom found the trip helpful and healing, as its the first time she's travelled out there since my dad died in November 2005. I lost my dad nine months ago, and I'm so afraid of losing my mom now. I guess its normal to be that way after you suddenly, shockingly lose one parent in the prime of their life (late prime, but still prime nonetheless).

I wonder what my mom's going to do with her life now, almost at retirement, no kids at home and no husband... what will she spend her time doing? What will she find rewarding to fill that hole that my dad left in her life, in all of our lives? How will all of our lives change after his passing?

Me, well I'm still shaking. Literally. I'm like a child taking her first steps, or someone teetering on a balance beam for the first time. I feel so lost, and wobbly. My dad had such a huge presence, a loud booming voice, he was anything but subtle and quiet. I feel like the edges of the hole he left in our lives is softening just a bit, the pain is not all consuming and raw all the time, but the giant hole is still there, and the pain is still very much just under the surface.

I had a dream about my dad the other night. My mom and brother were staying in my house, and they had just had a "run in" with my dad. See, my dad was a good guy at heart, but he had a lot of hangups - issues with addictions, anxiety, depression that were never treated well. A lot of it was the product of his times - there wasn't much for depressed men to do in the 1970's except self-medicate with alcohol, so thats what he did. He lost his parents young, and I'm sure that left a giant hole in his heart. I now know what it feels like to be a young person grieving a parent.

My dad had a difficult relationship with his father and his siblings that he never really seemed to resolve. He didnt have any higher education, in fact, I think he was a high school dropout, and he just had to get along by the seat of his pants. Which was difficult for him, but he did quite well actually. He was truly the smartest person I know - intelligence anyhow, sometimes he was not so smart when it came to relating to others, and to himself.

I really believe my dad and I had some kind of psychic connection. Something deep and dark and ancient and Celtic. I always knew when something was wrong with him, even before someone told me. The night he died I was up all night, feeling really cold, and I even went to sit in Abby's room and just sit there. I was sitting up at 3 am, shivering, feeling all kinds of weird rushes in my body and soul. I feel like he was just an extension of my soul, the other side of a coin. I stubbed my toe and his foot hurt, he had a headache and I took an aspirin, that kind of thing. We had the same silly rashes and allergies, the same sort of itchy feet and funny skin. We also are the only ones in the family to share dark dark hair and dark dark eyes. Even my own daughter is a caramel-blonde blue-eyed girl. When my dad was self-destructing six years ago, I instinctively knew something was wrong just from the fact that he didnt call me back one night. He always called me back. The next day I didnt hear from him and I hopped in my car and drove an hour to see if he was okay, only to have to take him to the hospital. He wasn't all right, and I knew it.

Anyhow in my dream, my dad was going through one of his self destructive episodes, where he was ranting and raving and freaking out and taking all kinds of substances. My mom and brother were really freaked, saying they didnt want him back alive bad enough for him to put them through that stuff again.

I panicked, and I ran out of my house and went to my parents place (in my dream of course) and picked him up in my car, and we drove to this forested, happy looking place. There were small, moving organisms running around us, in a playground type setting. I'm pretty sure it symbolized playing with Abby at a playground, but all the kids were these funny kinds of cartoon blocks, but they were playing and running just like kids. My dad was getting a kick out of all the action. He watched Abby slide down a slide and he was so impressed.

I've had similar dreams before when people I know have died. They generally follow a pattern - first the person is in the dream, they're back and we're talking together. Then they start to "cut out" - they're here and then they disappear, then they're back and gone again. The next series of dreams they are further away from me, walking far away, on the horizon, across a field, just out of contact. Then the dreams shift to those of us left behind, we're sitting and talking about the deceased person, but the person's no longer there.

My first dreams about my dad when he first passed away was him sitting with us, looking really sheepish and apologizing all over the place for dying and putting us through such pain. He's looking down at the table and feeling really bad. The next series of dreams, he's walking among us, but I'm saying to him "you know you're dead, right" and he says "Oh, yeah thats right" and then he disappears. Or we're spending time in a usual, family way (hanging out, watching TV, driving somewhere) and he's there, then he's not and he "cuts in and out" like an intermittent tv signal. I've not had any dreams at all lately though, this is the first one I've had in a long time. And this is the first one where I really feel like I'm communicating with him still.

I know that some people will say that this is just my subconscious, working out the loss. Maybe it is. But I'm grateful for the dreams that I have, because I really believe that its him, talking to me from the next life, travelling to see me on our spiritual, psychic connection. When I wake up from a dream like this, I really feel good and I really feel like I've actually seen him and spent time with him.

I hope he and I we can spend some time together some night soon. Come over sometime Doots, I miss you. I've got so much to tell you and so much to ask you.

Best intentions

2006-08-03T10:45:00.000-04:00

My mind and my family exists to spite me. I'm sure. I've not caught up on my sleep since last Friday, and I've been trying to go to bed earlier, only to toss and turn and wake up exhausted. I even played soccer last night against my better judgement (heel pain still bad) so I could really exhaust myself, and wound up with a migraine instead that kept me up until at least 2am. How's that for justice?

So I was tossing and turning until 2am, and I got up and sent an email into my office to say I'd not be in today. I also left three notes for my husband to NOT wake me up (I was sleeping in the spare room downstairs) and he goes down and wakes me up at 6am anyhow. Didnt even check the notes. Now I can't get back to sleep - its not being helped by him yelling at me from upstairs over what to get for lunch, or where the car keys are.

I'm home becuase I"m not feeling well. I need to sleep. But I can't. Either someone wakes me up or keeps me awake (hence my frequent sleeping in the spare room), or my mind is racing about all the things in my life that are uncertain. The sleeplessness twists and contorts things so that I"m even more anxious, and we're off - the house seems worse than I've ever seen it, my relationship with my husband is as bad as I've ever seen it, and my job is the worst thing in the world. Thats what sleep deprivation does to me. Makes everything look so much worse.

Its been such a joy to have had some sleep lately, over a long period of time, but this past 7 days its been a chore to get sleep. Even with the medication, its just not happening.

I may be getting into a tolerance-withdrawal type situation with my medication, I'm not sure. But I'm not going to take any more, and in fact, I'm trying to cut down. I saw what addiction to these drugs did to my dad six years ago, and I'm not going there. Even now I'm not sure how I'm going to get off them without some kind of medically supported (even hospitalized) approach.

And none of this is helping my self confidence any. I didnt ask for the events of the past year (or years) to come along, and I'm really doing the best I can. I'm a good person, a nice person, a smart person, a dedicated, excellent employee, a great wife and mother, but I think that all of this personal crap is making me look really bad. I think I've paid a great personal price, primarily in the confidence and optimism department for all these things that have always been out of my control.

Work is bothering me a great deal at the moment. I think my professional image started to tank when I was pregnant as I didnt have a very good pregnancy. It didnt help that two others in my office were also pregnant at the same time and seemed to manage the demands of pregnancy and the demands of work with flying colours. I wasn't so lucky. I was so tired, and so stressed about previous pains and abuses and losses in my life and it was culminating in a really strained relationship with my parents and husband at that time, that everything became too much. I also had a lot of pregnancy complications, was very tired, and gained a lot of weight, which didnt help me in the mobility department. I was in a lot of pain a lot of the time. So, as a result, I dont think I portrayed a very professional image, and for that I'm very sad, becuase anyone who knew me prior to the pregnancy who could vouch for my skills and commitment and experience has moved on to another position elsewhere, and I have no idea where the group is headed at the current time. Most people there share the same sentiment about feeling lost and excluded, and the enviroment feels more the proverbial "rats deserting a sinking ship" than the collegial, supportive, invigorating environment that it was when I joined the group in 2002. I think I'm going to have to make a change in that part of my life.

None of what happened to me - to us even (my husband and I that is) - that has made our life difficult was our fault. He didnt ask to be victimized as a child, I didn't ask to be born into an abusive, mental-illness-addiction-ridden household. I didnt ask for my dad to be suicidal, I didnt ask for him to be an addict, I didnt ask for him to have a severe anger problem that he took out on his wife and kids, and I certainly didnt ask for my mom to find him suddenly dead on the couch one morning last November.

But here we are. And it happened. And we're doing the best we can. But most of the time, I think all of us stuck in this spiral of pain - my mom, my brother and my husband, we think that we're not good enough, because we compare ourselves to others who seem to be just able to handle so much more. Others I know seem to manage a family of wonderful children, magnificent careers, a giant house thats always being renovated or decorated in the latest styles, two or three beautiful vehicles (always clean of course), going on fantastic vacations, so many things, when we feel we can barely get through the day most days. Even those in my life who are having troubles of their own seem to be shining in one area of their life - doing well on the career front, or taking time off to care for their child or children full time. Right now I feel like a major incompetent overweight nobody who can't do anything well at all.

So I compare myself, and find yet another thing to feel bad about - this time self-imposed. Or maybe my survival instincts that push me to do that. I think I learned not to expect much from myself and my environment in order to just put up with long-term difficult situations. A kind of "learned helplessness" so to speak. Its a shame that survivors learn to survive by putting ourselves down, when in reality, we all deserve a hero-medal just for being here.

And I wonder why I can't sleep at night.