tag, i'm it... very late in the game...

ok. better late than never. thanks to nicole for tagging me. i hope i know how to insert the right codes for this. i'll of course tag people who visit me often. sorry if you've been tagged already. i guess you don't have to do this twice!

well ok. i realize what the problem is. I am using safari on a mac so i will have to just list the website addresses as they don't seem to give me options for making links within this post. sorry.

INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1)Baby Moxie
2)Kicking You From The Inside
3)Third Time Lucky?
4) Just Crazy Enough To Try
5) bipolar notes from underground (off meds)

Next select five people to tag: (if you haven’t done it already) i have to just list the web address as i am not capable of linking directly. sorry
1) This Side of Reason; http://mydisplaced.blogspot.com/
2) Coming out of the Dark; http://bipolarmadness.blogspot.com/
3) Bipolar in the CIty; http://bipolarinthecity.blogspot.com/
4) Kill the Goat; http://saintvodkaofthemartini.blogspot.com/
5) The Wife of a Schizophrenic; http://the-wife-of-a-schizophrenic.blogspot.com/

What were you doing ten years ago?
may of 1997. i was probably dealing with a depressive episode and avoiding getting involved with anyone romanticwise...

What were you doing one year ago?
may of 2006. dealing with having just gone off meds to get pregnant. i was about two months into no meds and having a lot of sex. probably also worrying about my dog as he had diarrhea a lot around that time and needed special medications... maybe i had already started this blog. can't remember. dealing with anxiety for sure...

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. ice cream, ice cream, and more ice cream, often with peanut butter
2. potato chips, (the ruffles kind, salt and vinegar, the expensive kind with exotic flavors) with whipped chive cream cheese on them
3. really creamy hummous on rice cakes or pita
4. chocolate, dark or white, preferably with peanut butter
5. pickles of course...

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. when i'm 64, the beatles
2. denzel's special song for our unborn baby all about her name
3. jingle bells
4. michelle ma belle, the beatles
5. other beatles songs too numerous to list
(basically i'm terrible at singing and have a bad memory but the beatles were part of my childhood.)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. get a huge new place, like a brownstone or building in our current neighborhood with a great baby room, lots of storage, a studio for me that's ideal, a great studio/workroom/music room for denzel, an outdoor space for doggie and us and a wonderful roof top and great basement!!!
2. pay off all my debts immediately and invest some of the money wisely...
3. plan a wonderful trip (maybe a short two week one for now before baby last minute and one for when she is around 8 months old to take her with us) and find the perfect caretaker for elvis who will take extra good care of him and have a lot of vet knowledge while we are away to housesit as well in the above mentioned mansion!
the trip would probably include a visit to japan
4. help out some starving artist friends with money, not purely a gift, but as an investment in their projects to help them get the projects off the ground...
5. buy land and build a really cool country house that denzel would design!

Five bad habits:
1. laziness, procrastination and disorganization, they all go together for me
2. eating too much ice cream and unbalanced diet, even and especially while pregnant
3. not putting things away, general slobbiness
4. self hatred
5. complaining and worrying

Five things you like doing:
1. being with my dog
2. drawing and painting
3. nothing (literally, i like sitting and doing nothing, staring into space and not moving)
4. camping with denzel
5. watching the food network channel

nightmare during sleep and stress during awake...

hi again and thanks for everyone's wonderful support. i plan to catch up on all your blogs after doing this post.

i'm doing better since last post but the past few days have been still difficult and my mood is still shaky. yesterday was quite stressful for various reasons. and we did not sleep much last night, denzel and i. we were supposed to go to the country with elvis to visit a friend but this morning we we're too tired and stressed out from yesterday. yesterday was difficult but good for our relationship as i was able to be there for denzel dealing with some difficult issues with people in his life.

anyway last night was not good for sleep and i had a horrible dream about having the baby and the surgery. the baby did not appear in the dream but it was leading up to getting the c section. i won't describe the dream but it was not restful sleep.

then when i woke up early and took little elvis out i noticed he was walking strangely. we had taken him out at about 4am when we were not sleeping and he had been fine. he seemed to be limping by a few hours later. then we decided not to go away anyway and i got very anxious about whether to take elvis on an emergency appontment to the vet or wait and see how he was doing. i called two of his vet offices and talked to a nurse at one. from what she said it did not sound terrible to wait and see how he is in the next few days. he is eating normally and just as excited to go out on his walks. he doesn't make any noise of any kind of pain and his front leg that seems to be limping does not seem abnormal or swollen. he puts weight on it when walking and peeing. he's been resting most of the day and doing his usual stuff so i decided not to panic and stress him out by rushing to the vet and having to pay an extra 100$ plus the visit as they had no regular appointments left.

i just took him out again and he was happy to be out. he even will run a little on some of his walks depending whether he has just got up from a nap or not. so i'm hoping he just pulled a muscle or something like that. right now he is sitting reclining near my chair totally relaxed so i'm trying not to worry too much. i made an appointment with his regular vet for tues. morning so i might take him in then if he is still walking strangely...

the irony is that we ended up bringing him to the vet yesterday to have the technician put the flea and tick liquid on him as i was too neurotic to do it myself and was worried about the chemicals being pregnant. i also did not want to put it on wrong and have a bad effect on him. i never take him to the country these days so i had thought i needed to get him a collar but it turns out the vets all recommend this liquid stuff that goes into the skin as being more effective. it lasts for a month so i guess it's good he has it in case we go somewhere another time. but he was fine yesterday when i took him for that. they were very nice and did not charge anything to do that for him...

needless to say today i was too stressed out and sort of depressed to do much. i'm still feeling the mood but i'm trying to relax and not worry about catching up on any of the things i need to do. after all everyone else is vacationing and doing nothing and we would have been in the country. i admit i'm relieved we did not end up going as taking elvis would have been stressful for me, worrying about him being ok on the trip and in a strange environment.

he's my real baby. i think i must have been a dog in another life. these days when i walk around outside and see people with a stroller and a dog, my maternal instincts go out to the dog. looking at the baby in the stroller does not bring out any desire to hold the baby or coo over him or her. in fact i'm kind of scared of babies and toddlers these days. but dogs just make me smile.

i hope to do a comic strip soon as this blog was supposed to be mostly comic strip form but my mood and mixed state have made it hard to get to it...

not getting better

more of the same. not getting better. feeling bad for denzel and elvis having to live with me like this. soon i'll have another person in the house to feel guilty about having to be around me and my illness. sometimes i feel like i should have moved somewhere away from everyone i know and just deal with it without infecting other people.

more anxiety...

just read too much on the internet about pregnancy, well specifically about delivery, actually about c sections as i decided quite a while ago to have an elective c section. there are some truly "crazy" judgmental people out there, i can't imagine that is good for their children. to tell people you do not know things like "you spread your legs to get pregnant, you should spread your legs to have the baby". this from a woman. it actually seems that the people with the most opinions about c sections are women, and the most intolerant and judgmental stuff comes from people who have had their child in whatever way they think is better. i just don't understand how people can complain about being given more choices.
who am i hurting by having a c section. one person actually made a mean comment about mothers choosing c sections as being selfish and not caring about their babies.

i can't say i'm completely comfortable with my decision but not because i might want to deliver the "natural" way, but because i'm not comfortable with getting the baby out either way. i wish honestly that i could just burp and she'd pop out. i'm scared totally of all of it, so the c section does not remove the fear. if i could be knocked out completely and wake up feeling ok with the baby there, i'd honestly choose that. i don't think that makes me a less fit mother. the things that could make me a shitty mother do not have much to do with getting the baby out. but it amazes me that there are women out there who think that way.

one of the reasons i chose the c section option besides the cowardly fear of labor aspect is the bipolar issues. i think the worst scenario would be long labor no sleep and then emergency c section because of complications, what could be more stressful, plus the huge stress leading up to labor of anxiety about it. i'm the type who carries stress around and then has an episode from all the collected stress, just like what happened this week. and lack of sleep for a prolonged period of time makes me manic. so i think choosing the c section option is actually also for the baby, so i can be more likely to be able to handle the first moments of motherhood without already being crazy and anxious and manic.

but at this point if i had to have the baby tomorrow i'd be frightened out of my wits. one of the reasons i never wanted to have a child until recently was that i really thought i could not handle the zero hour of getting the baby out of my body. i still feel that way.

it sure would have been nice to go on the internet and read some reassuring comments from other women. there was one reassuring comment from someone who said it was great and she had little pain and recovered quickly. and two friends of mine had no problem with the surgery. i guess i should focus on the real people i know and not the crazy comments from random things on the internet. plus i was born by c section myself and my mother said the experience was great. if i'm this freaked out now i can only imagine how i'll feel when it's time to deal with the reality...

of course i wonder why am i freaking myself out now. i could be just relaxing and trying to find that elusive bliss the media makes you think you're supposed to be feeling while pregnant. or i could be making a fun comic strip for this blog instead of another anxious rant... maybe soon, i hope.

mixed state, hello old friend...

thanks to everyone for the supportive comments on last post. it was the beginning of an "episode", what i think of now as a mixed state. i had my first mixed state about 9 years ago; up until then i had mostly had either manic or depressive episodes. anyway it took me some time to learn to recognize them on my own but i can say i have gotten pretty good at it. it only took until tuesday for it to really dawn on me that my mood and mind and thoughts and chemistry were not about hormones and pregnancy but that i was experiencing a bipolar episode, a mixed state of depression, anxiety, psychotic thinking and so on. not much mania in there that i could recognize at all to sweeten things up, although there may have been a little hypomania on fri. and sat. before my depressive sunday.

anyway i won't get into the "psychotic" thinking that i experienced as i need a break from it, but i was proud of myself for the most part as tues. when i truly realized this is what's going on, i called boyfriend, psychiatrist and therapist and took pretty good care of myself. since then it's been moments of calm followed by more thoughts and weird scary imagery, destructive stuff i have not acted upon, as well as regular depression and so on. i've just been coping with it by trying not to increase anxiety about it, accept it and go on with my day doing my regular things and work and walking doggie etc. trying to avoid too much stress.

a lot of the stuff of the last post continues to plague me. the only physical thing that's a real pain in the ass, is that i learned in the first trimester that big meals are really uncomfortable and lead to indigestion and all kinds of yucky sensations, but every time i go out to a restaurant for dinner, i end up eating too much and feeling truly horrible, wishing i could throw up. i did that tonight and it's really annoying me that i could not monitor myself and eat less knowing full well this would happen. and it coincides with an easing up of some of the worst mental episode stuff. so i'm annoyed with myself that i am feeling so uncomfortable when i have a lull in the "sickness" of bipolar stuff.

anyway i'm not at the point to take any meds. i'm just riding things out and tolerating the brain chemistry storm... i will try to look at some blogs and comment again soon. at the moment i have no mental energy for anything much. it is soothing to know that i'm still walking and feeding and taking care of elvis. even while feeling like a failure as a mother, i can comfort myself with the knowledge that i'm able to take care of my dog while dealing with bipolar illness, a big accomplishment for me. and denzel has been really a wonderful caring and supportive partner and i know it's not easy for him.

a very anti-maternal mother's day...

i feel like this would be best expressed in a comic strip but i'm too depressed and lazy to invent something that expresses it.
leading up to mother's day i've been extra into the baby, the baby moving, being pregnant, all that good stuff. i wore the red dress to the wedding and enjoyed being the pregnant woman and talking about the baby's upcoming arrival. i even enjoyed making faces and smiling at the cute 11 month old boy at the wedding.
by the end of the evening i had eaten too much, could feel all the acid reflux making me wish i could vomit all the food up and a small part of me was almost fantasizing about vomiting up the "baby" too. i felt dumpy and uncomfortable and could feel my belly stretching and was envying the non pregnant women there. but that was by the end of the evening.

it all got more prominent and obvious today when i woke up depressed and did some work work for my job and got in touch with the part of me that likes my job and likes my non pregnant former life. i enjoyed working on mother's day and felt resentful of being pregnant. beyond resentful. i've been feeling today like i don't want to have the baby and don't want to be a mother. i know it's all part of the process and maybe hormones or bipolar moodswings or whatever. i've also got in touch with understanding that when i deeply miss my meds it's more symbolic of missing my former identity as a non mother individual.

i don't remember if i have said it on this blog, but the missing my meds is now this: i used to miss the meds during the past year and a few months that i've been mostly "off" them, i used to miss them when i felt i needed them and wanted relief from moodswings, bipolar stuff. that made sense. now it's quite interesting and strange. if i hear or read about someone talking about their seroquel, for example, i'll feel myself feeling sad and missing seroquel, not out of needing it at the moment, but missing it like it was an old friend or family member. same with wellbutrin. for some reason i dont get those feelings about depakote which is also interesting. i don't miss the ol' fundamental mood stabilizer. but depakote was also the main reason for my abortion in 2005 so that may contribute to it, plus i never noticed anything adding to my life or relieving me while taking it. it was the thing to take to avoid problems with bipolar, whereas wellbutrin was there as my friend helping with depression and obsession and seroquel was there to help me avoid the hospital, calm me down and help me feel safe...

so now i'm clarifying for myself that this sadness and missing the meds is kind of like the body obsession stuff and feeling fat and gross at times. it's deeper than the surface meaning. it's really an anger at changing into a mother, losing my "single" individual identity and autonomy and fear of being swallowed up by motherhood and losing my sense of Self.

enjoying my work and other self expression right now feels like a general's last stand in a battle s/he knows will be lost. like a final swan song before i get posessed by the identity of mother that i'll never be able to get rid of, that will be part of me for the rest of my life.

i know it's supposed to feel like a marvelous addition and expansion to my life but i guess i'm fighting it. i've always been the baby of my family and soon i will have to be a mother and adult and responsible and all that that entails.

until then i will allow myself to whine and complain and make my last stand in this battle that my old self is losing, meant to lose and will lose.

red dress and the drawing i posted...

hi everyone! thanks for all your words of support. i've been sitting here catching up on your blogs and eating a lot of peanut butter and honey on rice cakes. the best is if you have bananas to put slices on the peanut butter and honey. i remember once reading that a movie star ate a lot of peanut butter when she had to get fat for a role. i ate it all the time when i wasn't pregnant and it didn't make me fat. at this point, i've given in to just trying to be ok with the body stuff. i'm going to a wedding on saturday (i'll get to be not just the pregnant lady guest but the pregnant lady with her boyfriend living in sin and having a baby out of wedlock! fun.) and i just might wear the tight red dress i met my boyfriend in years ago. i tried it on last night and he recognized it right away and said all the good boyfriend pregnant daddy stuff like how hot i looked in it. then i neurotically tried to find out if i looked that different, like i wanted him to say "it's the same you just with bigger boobs and a belly." he then said he was only going to give me a few comments every time i put on clothing and bug him about my looks, which was probably a good idea. anyway the point is i think i'll try to go to the party in a clingy red dress and just flaunt my big belly and pregnant body, more for myself to feel good. it's a fun nontraditional wedding so it's the place to wear a red dress!

anyway about the drawing i posted. i was going to do a comic strip but then i suddenly could not think of anything and i had recently made this drawing and showed it to my therapist. he thought and i agreed, that the baby looked very happy and carefree and i looked happy and protective as the elephant mommy. i felt very happy and motherly while making the drawing and it was nice to show the therapist a happy picture as i mostly focus on my own inner conflicts and dark side in there with him... he also noticed that it looked like i was watering the tree with my trunk and that it seemed to be about growth which i agreed with.

i welcome your comments on the drawing even if you see totally different things in it. i debated whether to talk about what it meant for me as i like hearing what you all think just from looking at my pictures without explanation from me, but i felt like writing about some positive stuff about the pregnancy as i am very good at complaining. and there has been a lot of good positive stuff. it feels good to share the joyful part of connecting with her, the baby!

by the way we are past the 5 month mark!!!

drawing of me and the baby

guess who is who!!!