bad mom story

i'll keep it short. at one of the rest stops on our trip as usual denzel went to the restroom and i was with dog and baby. he gave me the keys to the car. baby was asleep in car seat. there was a sign pointing to where to bring dogs. for some stupid reason i did something really dumb. i locked the car with baby in it sleeping and walked over with doggie to let him pee in the grass. i was not in eye shot of the car but it was only a few minutes while denzel was in the bathroom. dont ask why i did not think about how stupid it was to leave the baby. but keep in mind that i am not a car person. i dont even have a license and hardly ever go places in cars.
anyway denzel came out and was furious at me for leaving the baby even a few minutes and mentioned that i could have gotten in serious trouble with the authorities. i thought he was exagerating though i of course agreed that it was terrible judgment to do what i did even though the baby was still asleep and fine. i kind of avoided the topic the rest of the ride as i didnt want to get in a fight and he was really upset and even said it scared him.
anyway later i looked on the internet and saw that a mother got arrested for leaving her baby in her car for a few minutes. that made me feel even worse.
what's wrong with me? and does society not give anyone a chance to make a little mistake? it's not the same thing as leaving a baby in a car for hours while shopping or soemthing like that. anyway i feel branded as a bad mom. in addition denzel thought i was choosing dog over baby. i didnt see it that way. idont know why it happened as there were so many times when he left me with both dog and baby and i stuck right near the car and was talking to the baby with the dog out of the car and her in it with the door open and me monitoring her. was it the sign that pointed further away for bringing pets to do their stuff that misled me? or that denzel gave me the car keys.
anyway has anyone out there ever done something stupid like that? and hwat would they do if they had arrested me? would they take the baby from me?
should i just feel like i made a mistake after being in a car all day and not having enough sleep and being at the end of a long trip visiting three different places? or should i feel like a horrible lousy abandoning mother?
am i the kidn of person who should not be allowed to have kids?? i dont want another one as i think one is hard enough to take care of while dealing wiht bipolar and owning an old dog i am overly attached to.
please help me sort this out and forgive myself. i really love our baby and spend more time with her than any other being, even elvis...

one week later...

hi. not so bad to get back on one week later now that i have a baby it's hard to post more often.
first off, the trip was mostly a big success. the first car ride was the worst as the valium calmed elvis down a bit but he did n't put up with being in the crate for more than about an hour or so at most. then he sat on my lap for about five hours (including many stops for all of us to get out of the car). the next day's ride was better saturday but i felt bad giving him more valium (it's human valium which is safer for old dogs anyway). the best use of the valium was for giving him a bath outside. i had not bathed him in about a year as he almost injured himself trying to jump out of the bathtub last year and i practically had a panic attack, so you can imagine how dirty a new york dog can get. doing it outdoors on a sunny day was perfect and i was so happy to see him clean. he smelled lovely for a few days.
the next big breakthrough was my realizing the obvious, that the best way for him to ride in the car was to sit at my feet. i was sitting in the back behind denzel to be next to the baby in the car seat. he was not confined in a box and had room to lie down and was right at my feet. he even slept for a lot of the trip today which was the longest amount of driving and i did not give him any valium!
so now i am quite excited to take more weekends away with dog and baby. i sensed that elvis was happy to be in the countryside and smell grass and daisies instead of garbage bags and sidewalks. when we were at the lake house of denzel's parents and i walked with him in the grass near the lake and he sniffed the wildflowers i almost cried i felt happy he got to be out of the city at his old age and wanted to bring him to places like that more now. carpe diem, seize the day. it's never too late to try new things.
i took a lot of klonopin over the course of past few days but really felt happy to be away from the city. i think one reason i resist going anywhere is that i hate returning...
the next thing is the only bad thing that happened i'll reserve for a separate post...

wow it's already almost two weeks later...

hi thanks for the comments. i wish i could post more and get back some of my readers. also wish i had time to make more comics as this originally was intended to be in comic strip form with occasional writing and now it's the other way around.

got to go to bed. dilemma: elvis seems to be sleeping. it's mdnight and i havent walked him s ince a little around 8 or so. normally he'd get a walk at about 11 or now. the lights are out adn all are asleep,baby doggie and denzel. what point is there in waking elvis up to walk him. he's asleep and i'm too lazy.

this means he may wake up early and pee in the kitchen if i dont wakeup first adn get him out of the house quick for his early walk.

has anyone out there given their dog valium for anything, especially travel and how was it for the doggie and you...
still worrying.
good i took my meds already.
i'll go to bed. last week i had a few nights of about only five or six hours sleep. i need at least seven, better eight or more, to stay stable...

i'm still going to the PPD group. now i'm the mother whos been coming the longest. this week is the first time i'm going to see one of the mother's outsied the drop in group. we arranged to have lunch together. i'm a little wary as i dont know her well and she is pretty intense. more about that later. i guess i just need to be careful about boundaries...

wed. may 7

it's about a week and a few days since my last post. not bad for me, considering my slowdown with blogging.
i wont write long as i need to go to bed. tomorrow morning i have my six months since followup after birth check up at the ob/gyn. the last checkup was at six weeks or so. wow, how different things were. i was proudly off meds and breastfeeding. he gave me a special birth control pill prescription to be used while breastfeeding that i never filled. about two weeks later at end of oct. halloween i was psychotic.
now here it is the baby is 8 months old, i'm long done breastfeeding, taking meds and had another episode last month that lasted on and off throughout april.
this time i'm bringing the baby to the appointment. it will be fun to show him the being that he pulled out of my belly and brought into the world around 8 months ago. i'm not sure how much i want to tell him about the episode as he had recommended while i was pregnant that i go right back on meds after the birth and skip breastfeeding altogether.
and i'm taking this birth control pill that is ok but hard to tell when i get my period. i just dont want him to put me on a different one, as i've only been on this one for two months and hate changing meds in general.
i read the other day that seroquel is now being used as a stand alone med for bipolar, which is reassuring as i used to take depakote and did not go back on it and did not want to go back on it. i much prefer just taking seroquel and wellbutrin and some klonopin. it's also nice to take one less medication adn i think the depakote made me lethargic, sleep a lot, tired, and took away my sex drive. plus i find it creeps me out to be on it for the rest of my life. i now realize most likely i'll be on the other meds most of my life, but at least now there is even more reason to keep taking them, to make sure i can take better care of my daughter and spare her as much as possilbe the bad sides of the illness...
more anticipatory anxiety, this time about taking the dog and the baby upstate on a trip to see denzel's family. i worry about the car trip with elvis. i dont want to keep him in a crate during the car ride as he hates it. i'm afraid it will exacerbate his stress, his arthritis and his back problems...