Back after a long hiatus with big PTSD

Hi to the few people who read this blog, to which I have not posted for over a year. I am trying to come back to it again and gain from the therapeutic benefits of posting and getting helpful supportive comments. It's been almost two years, on june 8 it will be two years since elvis' death.
the latest thing that sent me into a swirling dissociated depression happened several weeks ago. i got completely swindled on the internet to the tune of about 2500 dollars. someone contacted me about reiki. i'm an advanced reiki practitioner and advertise on some websites so i often get emails from people. back in beginning april someone pretending to be a client from england contacted me about coming to the US for several reiki sessions and told me about a recent thing that happened to her that got her depressed. in that email she said she wanted to prepay with a cashiers check. to make a very long story short, i should have at that moment told her i only accept cash and not cashiers checks but i didn't spot it so began a long back and forth with this fake person including several missed sessions and fake reasons for not leaving the country and insisting on prepaying. anyway i got a check in the mail for almost three thousand dollars and still didnt suspect anything. i ended up spending a day taking cash to western union to send to her. the reason i did it was that i was stupid, but also that my bank lied to me. i asked the teller several times if the check was good and would not bounce and he told me yes. of course the next day friday the thirteenth of may, i was buying medication of all things and my bank card showed i had a minus balance. i rushed to the atm to look at my balance and realized the check had been fake and bounced.
what followed was a downspin into PTSD, self hatred, self blame, going over and over the events and what i could have done differently, crying every day about it and freaking out. my father is a lawyer and told me we could sue the bank in small claims court. but he was having terrible back pains and going into surgery soon after that. he is still healing from it and i have the papers i have to go on tuesday to file in person at the small claims court. then in about three weeks on a thursday night we get to pick an arbitrator or judge to hear our case against the bank. i stupidly looked up some things on the internet and started getting depressed that i would never win the case and get my money back from the stupid bank but my father is still optimistic that the bank won't show up for the court date and the arbitrator will rule in my favor.
whatever happens at least today was a big turn in a better direction for me. yesterday i left a desperate message with my psychiatrist that i was going to take extra wellbutrin because i was fantasizing about going to the hospital and things like that. for once he called back quickly which he doesn't usually do and we decided i would try that before trying new meds. i think the boost in meds really worked quickly because i went from feeling like a depressed zombie who didn't care about anything in my life and wanted to just die or have a lobotomy so i would never remember this awful event to functioning, doing some cleaning in our very messy apartment which had added to my depression and just yesterday i felt like i could never do any cleaning and would just spiral down into a mess in my head and in the apartment. somehow throughout this my daughter has been in my care a lot but hasn't seemed to catch on to too much of my negativity and terrible mood swing to downward downward downward. throughout the events in a kind of haze i was aware that nobody had harmed her or my husband or me although at times i wished someone had harmed me physically instead of financially.
i think i'm getting better. i hope the wellbutrin doesnt ware off. this is the second time i've taken the highest dose of 400 mg for a while. i'm really hoping it will work along with just trying to force myself to function better and be nicer to myself while being completely broke and dependent financially on others.

Sluggish depression...

Part 2, A difficult day...

Comix at last and a lot!

here they are finally! my new comix posts!!! Read the one below first! I screwed up the order...

fear

i can't sleep. money worries create great fears. as does noise of dog and not having any way to do anything for him though he seems to have stopped. i tried just petting him. he's back on prednisone. the current vet (not his regular one) has not called me back proably is sick of me. so am i. i feel fearful of a lot of things. in one day a lot of scary possibilities happened. maybe the real fears are all in my head and its not that bad. i cant say more. i just wish practical aspects of life were in my range of abilities. why am i so unable to deal with real things? is it a gift to be able to deal with things that are not on this reality plane. i feel for other people with mental illness who are totally unable to care for themselves or anyone and live in residences and shelters. life is not made for sensitive dreamers. being good at making things that are not useful is a difficult gift to have -- it does not help you provide for anyoen and makes me a dependent. i have never been able to support myself by myself. i assume my other qualities have to make up for this but maybe not. sometimes i berate myself a ton for it. it's hard to not know how to be the way everyone else is but i cant seem to do it. at least i am taking carea of the baby most of the time but then we pay a nanny so i can work and it costs more.
there are more messes but i dont know. i maybe need to stop therapy as i cant afford it even with insurance. whatever. i need to sleep. is anyone out there at all who feels this way or reads my words?????

new year's resolutions, new news and new episode!

hello all, so much for blogging more frequently. i've stopped using my mac almost completely as it's not hooked up to the internet and in a bad place for watching baby girl at same time. i think i'll start calling her lola just so she has a name here but it's not her real name. i don't want to regret writing about her in this context and as my name in here is fake anyway, as is denzel's and elvis' hers needs to be too.

anyway i will try to hook up my scanner and start doing comix again. i really strayed from the whole point of my "notes from underground" which was to post comix frequently about my bipolar adventures, as practice for the graphic novel i've been blocked about doing for about 9 years now. i'm on page 26 or so. today i'm going to a fun party where i will find some great old comic books and get reinspired. my friend whose party it is, a great friend of denzel and an "uncle" (not biological but more of an uncle than her "real" ones) to lola, set aside a bunch of wonder woman and other related comics by and about women.

anyway i will try to figure out a way back to comix. i haven't come up with the right drawing of myself but i have been doing some drawings that i think will help get to it.

this post should probably be divided into several posts. january news was that i got very depressed and then started a new medication towards end of jan.
abilify!!!
i had talked to the doc about changing to something more as the seroquel was not enough to manage my episodes or at least to prevent frequent severe ones. at beg. of jan. as you see from last posts i was kind of in a mixed state. the angry depression at end of january lasted only a few days. as soon as i started a low dose of abilify it went bye bye.
i know abilify can stimulate in low doses when it is helping your antidepressent work better. i think it did cause some hypomania...

anyway more about abilify. where have you been all my life? all those years of depakote, feeling sluggish and needing about 9 hours sleep a day at least, unable to wake up early etc etc. it did not affect my creativity though, so depakote takers out there, if it works for you, great! i also did not keep up with getting my blood checked and hate needles so abilify is great for that. no need for the blood levels i had to do for about 10 years of lithium followed by years of depakote.

more in next post.

very short summary of i don't know what to call it.

yes, up again at 1 but i just took my seroquel so i'll be tired soon.
i think i mentioned starting an episode two weeks prior to the april 7 post. up until last monday the mania seemed low or gone, just a lot of paranoia, emotional getting way emotional more than normal, like crying more at certain topics, talking a lot to one of my friends...
anyway long story short, monday the 21st i got so manic i was really scared it was goign straight to psychosis, but i recognized it.
next post more detail.
today i found out that since april 11 i have been taking about twice or more of my normal dose of generic wellbutrin. i didnt realize as i'm used to always taking three pills a day but anyway i finally figured it out after i had taken 6 00 milligrams instaead of 300. i'm sure some of the past sixteen days i've taken three pills by mistake, three times the normal dose.
anyway that explains a lot at least from april 11 on and especially this week's mania followed by mixed state and sort of rapid cycling stuff i'm not used to.
more on another post.
has anyoen also been so oblivious that s/he did not notice that the new bottle of meds was suddenly changed.../??

the "vatta" temperament

i don't know if you have heard of the ayervedic classifications of "dosha". anyway my friend who is studying it in depth did a consultation with me and it reinforced what i already knew, that i am very "vatta", air, nervous system imbalances, easily spiritual, disorganized, unable to do anything consistently, make friends easily with like minded people- trusting, moody, then the physical stuff: dry skin, fast metabolism, small bones etc. she said i was the most vatta person she'd come across, as most people are a bit of a mix.
anyway all this to say that my blog does not escape my vatta nature. i do it in an intense and genuine soulful way, but cannot keep it up in a disciplined consistent way at all. in fact due to this very nature, she did not give me a lot of instructions about diet, habits exercise etc. as she knew i would not be able to follow them. she sort of gave some gentle suggestions about ways to try to ground myself. we vattas are very much air, in our heads, need warm food, even oily heavy food to get us down to the ground. also even meals are inconsistent. some days i eat regular meals, other days i snack all day, other days i forget to eat, and some days i eat really only salty and sugary foods. it turns out ice cream for breakfast is not so bad for me.
that's what i like about this ancient system, it is all about how to balance one's intrinsic physical/spiritual/mental/emotional nature...
anyway so here i am, i guess it's about two months and a week later.

quick report:
two weeks ago i noticed the very moment my brain switched over adn went to manic mode, shortly followed by "mixed state", anxiety, paranoia, fear of getting psychotic etc. i took care of it pretty quickly with a heavier dose of seroquel, leaving three messages with my psychiatrist and of course telling denzel. it was very intense but i'm getting used to knowing that for now i am in a sort of "episode" or kind of fragile imbalance state where i take a more klonopin during day and sometiems extra seroquel in day and more seroquel at night too. the depression peeks its head through all this too so i'm continuing wellbutrin...
it has been mixed with baby. moments of delight and connecting with her and enjoying her laugh and smile, lots of physical contact and full of love for her. then also horrible moments of feeling resentful, bad, wanting not to have her around, or feeling kind of like a zombie or whatever the word is for feeling totally cut off and not responding to her at all and feeling bad about it but somehow locked off and incapable. other worse moments of bad thoughts that are too hard to write about. but feeling a little proud of myself that i'm livng through it and surviving...
a lot of this was triggered by our wonderful nanny having to leave due to the hours no longer suiting her for her family life. we now have a new nanny, but it was a terrible shock and loss. i still miss the old nanny. so does denzel. this ending somehow went to my nervous systema and triggered all kinds of abandonment stuff that went to my brain and started the bipolar imbalance going...
that's about all for now. i'm still quite paranoid around the new nanny, and a little paranoid in general. i should be asleep as i took my meds and usually make myself go to sleep earlier than this. bad sign. i'll take an extra seroquel now.
still attending the postpartem depression mother's group with baby. it's helpful but as it is a drop in group i find myself missing one of the mothers who left. she shared so much and then she was gone and now there are new moms there. i am such a creature of attachment and staying with people in my life that i am too sensitive to changes and people leaving... i hope the people who read my blog will come back... ok. i really will go take another seroquel...

self hatred

happy new year. i felt nothing hopeful about the year changing. this is the first year that i have ignored three holidays in a row, thanksgiving, chanuka/xmas, and new years eve. i did not even have a glss of wine on new year's eve. my bday's coming up, forty. i am not going to do anything for that either. my parents are forcing me and denzel to go out to dinner for both of our birthdays which are around the same time. i'd like to cancel the dinner but my parents would be too hurt. i'm not even feeling close to them anymore. ive never felt so isolated from everyone in my family.
i am really hating myself. i just took out my contact lenses and rubbed my eyes because they were bothering me. then i continued to rub them hard and now they are all red. i imagined sticking a knife in my eye. i dont do any kinds of self mutilation and i never would but i sometimes fantasize about doing things to myself out of self hatred.
i wish i could go somewhere and be completely anonymous and start a fake life and just have no friends and be alone and away from everybody in my life.
i know all this is just bad stuff in my head. it will go away. the people in my life who are not talking to me have told me i am self absorbed, imature, selfish, self involved and not a grown up. they are probably right. i dont think of them as models of the kind of people i want to be even the ones in my family who think this of me. i'm sick of everything about myself. if i didn't have denzel and a baby and a dog i probably would just go disappear.
i had always imagined i would have some big party that was really special when i turned forty. i used to enjoy my birthdays. if i could go away and not be around that's what i would do.
i thought i'd feel good about myself at forty. having the psychotic episode and being distant from everyone in my family and not talking to one of them and another person because of the episode makes me feel like a failure at relating well with people i'm close to. and being in debt and not making enough money to support myself, that was not soemthing i'd envisioned about being forty. not being in any way what i had hoped. i wonder how bad fifty will be. i guess i'm done with birthdays. now the only birthday worth celebrating will be my daughter's.
if i could go back in time and change one thing in my life i would do soemthing so i could erase the psychotic episode of two months ago. so many things in my life would be different. i would not be posting a negative depressive post like this if not for the episode, nor would i hate myself so much and have ruined relationships and fights that occured after the episode. i waste time fantasizing about going back to the birth of the baby and starting that over so i woldnt have to go back on meds and so i wouldnt feel so distant from my family and others. i could even change the bad stuff that happened in the hospital when i had the baby. if only i could go back, not even really far back. i'm sure if i went back to age 20 i could change all the things that led up to today that were shit. but life can only lived forward.

depression...

continues. i've had a lot of difficulties with some important relationships since the psychotic episode and it's been horribly distracting and upsetting. i had a terrible interchange with one of my siblings and it's pretty much over, any positive communication, so there is no communication. he was horribly cruel and judgmental about how i handled the episode, did not apologize, and said some awful things about me and denzel and how we handled the episode. he was not here during it. anyway, it's been a terrible loss as i thought we were close, and it's hard to avoid thinking about it and getting very sad and angry. i find myself crying every day at odd moments.
most of my friends have been super supportive so i'm truly appreciative of that and of denzel and elvis and the baby. i hope the new year brings a relief from emotional and financial stress and positive things for me and everyone who is positive in my life... i am grateful for people who read this blog and are so caring and supportive.
my psychiatrist said it takes six months to a year for the brain chemistry to totally get back to normal after a really intense episode like the one i had. i am still feeling the ramifications of it and it is almost two months later. i got stable really quickly but the emotional upheaval has been intense and difficult.

black hole

i just tried to post using safari adn its all messed up. i wrote a whole paragraph about how i hate this illness and feel so depressed i wish i could die.
i hate what happens after an episode. everything is messed up and i feel like a failure in many ways i'm too tired to list. i would like it all to be over with, i am tired of so many years, in fact my whole adult life about 20 years of living with this illness.
i even felt like i just can't do it, be a mother adn a good partner, but i will keep trying because i chose it and it would be much worse on all three beings that i live with to give up on myself.
if you make comments be nice as i have no ability to face anything difficult. i feel like there's nothing left in me. i know it's the depression talking adn i'll just wait it out like i always do. i wonder what the point of having this illness is. it would be good to know there was a reason, like if reincarnation was true and something happened in a past life so now i'm paying for it; it would make sense. human beings seem to be desperate to make up storeis so that things that dont make sense make sense. but they dont and all of that stuff is just things we make up to feel better. chaos is real. fabricated order like religion is just story and tool for power.
the way to get through depression is not to find a good story to get addicted to.
i guess it's just to accept what's there and not look for explanations. when i'm psychotic things all make sense but they are just things in my head that are more real to me than anything outside my head.
when i'm depressed there is nothing in my head to hold on to. only bad cruel voices telling me i'm a horrible person. not other people's voices. my own.

thanksgiving and new comic strip yet again

this is getting very frustrating. i've written this post a a few times and it keeps going weird on me. anyway long story short mommy is on zyprexa still plus wellbutrin and seroquel but thankful for growing baby, been depressed and difficult coming out of the psychotic episode, got down to earth and off crazy planet quick but it's a difficult landing on earth and recovering from the damage
. anyway no more boobie milk it's all contaminated with drugs/meds. very sad, thus the new comic strip which was fun to do. having a gquiet thanksgiving at home with dog baby and baby daddy denzel. went to a great yoga class. here's the comic strip:

biggest challenge of my bipolar pregnancy...

i've been wanting to express this in comic strip form for a while; it somehow could have come out better, but it's the best i can manage at 1am...
it is confusing enough dealing with bipolar episodes and constant monitoring of whether i'm manic, hypomanic, depressed, psychotic, mixed state etc. whether on or off medications, but being pregnant and bipolar throws in a real extra challenge -- hormones!
then the question becomes "am i being normal crazy hormonal pregnant or am i being crazy made more nutty by hormones but not at all norrmal for a pregnant lady at al, in other words, bipolar crazy and pregnant at same timel..." in some ways it's not that difficult. when i have symptoms that women describe having after having the baby or when they have postpartem issues, but i'm still pregnant, i know this ain't normal for being pregnant... when i feel crazy but it turns out, as denzel puts it "you're just exactly normal for being knocked up and so many months along! how does it feel to be just like everyone else at this stage! ha ha. i know how you hate to admit you're going through the same stuff every other hormonal pregnant woman goes through!!!" he likes to rub that in. i do admit that if i'm going to suffer through being bipolar and pregnant, at times i enjoy that i'm having a very unusual pregnant experience that brings me to deep levels of awareness of all the transformations i'm going through and that most pregnant women are protected from going to these places and lucky in that they don't suffer the torments of it, but at the same time they don't get the special experience of being so in touch with all this intense unconscious material that if you live through it without destroying yourself, the fetus and your partner and anyone else along the way, is quite an extra special experience... along with that i also get to have all the other regular normal pregnant hormonal stuff. so sometimes i confess i bask in my own admiration of my special crazy and pregnant status. i can't get too grandiose because denzel is around to bring me back down to earth...

depressed

depressed and unmotivated. have not had any work so i've been napping and sitting on the couch eating crackers. the most i did was to take elvis for short walks. can't seem to do anything or bother with anything. have not been able to visit other blogs. feeling crappy.

more anxiety, dog related...

thank you ol' lady for voting me a rockin' girl blogger. i'm too tired and stressed out at the moment to figure out how to put the image icon of it on my blog and i don't know how to link up anyone i nominate as i have a mac and safari program does not work that high tech with blogger.

for now i'll just post as it's been a while. i was hoping again to do a comic strip post but not up to it right now.

super stress and anxiety about going to visit denzel's parents as we are leaving elvis with my parents. what seemed like a nice arrangement that had me relatively calm and ready to go home from dinner and pack slowly and clean the apt. was horribly shattered by a phone conversation with my mother.

not to bore you with the details but my father is much more amenible to taking care of elvis and as the baby of the family and daddy's little girl, i appreciate his sweetness and caring and that he at his age walks elvis and takes good care of him though it's not without its pain in the ass aspects. the late night walk is hard on him. my mother on the other hand tends to make everything into a big crisis in general and i caught her after a horrible long airplane trip and having to sit in the plane in the airport for two hours when they arrived home due to stupid security stuff. so she was in a terrible mood and started complaining about taking care of elvis and asking why we couldn't take him with us. there are many reasons it won't be ok to take him on this trip, but after talking to her, i was trying to figure out a way we could bring him, as it was so disturbing...

i kind of freaked out and burst into tears several times talking about it with denzel and later again. he was pretty pissed off himself and our whole evening was almost ruined. so much for packing and getting ready and cleaning.

we're still going to leave elvis with my parents tomorrow. i trust my dad to take great care of him and my mom will just have to deal with it. i think she mainly can't stand that he pees in her kitchen and she doesn't like all the walks. the funny thing is i think she misses him when he goes, but she complains and bitches and gets so anxious about it, it sucks. last time i made sure my dad was in charge of all the medication as he is very thorough.

anyway my other big stress from all this is i don't know what to do with elvis when i'm in the hospital. i'll be there for four days probably because i'm getting a c section. originally i had talked to my dad about my parents taking care of him while i was there. it seemed reasonable to ask them that small favor while i have a baby on no medications and recover from surgery and deal with learnign to nurse. but now i don't know what to do. i have one friend who could take care of him maybe but she now has a baby who will be almost one year by then and i don't know if she can handle it or will even want to. i may have to consider hiring a really good vet tech/dog care person to stay at our place and take care of the dog. i know they exist, i've seen their cards at the vet but i have no idea how much they cost. having a baby is costly enough. and i dont like the idea of elvis with a stranger. he's not used to being taken care of by anyone except a few people he knows really well and his other owner who does not live near here anymore. so it's a real point of stress, worry anxiety.
meanwhile ihave to survive this trip and hope my parents take good care of elvis and don't stress me out with complaining.

elvis is so important to me i'd sacrifice just about anything for him. i'm really anxious that having a baby is just too much and i have to be able to trust that he'll be ok. i had all kinds of scary thoughts tonight after denzel fell asleep.
i'm not packed or ready to go tom. morning in any way.
i feel very freaked out and am trying to tell myself it will all work out. reality is always much better than what's in my mind and my mother is very blunt and does not keep her feelings or annoyance to herself.

Top 10 Most Challenging Life Experiences...

i decided to try a list of them, the ones i've actually experienced so far, so having a baby can't be on the list yet...

1. death of a loved one
2. serious illness of a loved one
3. first time experience of psychosis and hospitalization
4. being pregnant with no medications for bipolar
5. bipolar "disorder" and all that comes with it, including dealing with its effect on one's loved ones
6. moving
7. dealing with anger and disapointment, conflict and confrontation from others
8. taking care of a dog coming out of anasthesia
9. high school and living through it
10. ages 13 through 28 and living through them

i am sure there are others that are worse that i have repressed, such as witnessing cruelty, violence and abuse, being mugged and some other things i probably "forgot" as i would not want to list them here...
if anyone else feels like making such a list, let me know and i'll check it out!

elvis back to his old self! me back to messier self...

the good new is that elvis is doing much better, back to his 14 year old puppy self, even doing some of his adorable puppy like things like getting enthusiastic puppy energy and bounding around before going downstairs to his walks. some of his slowness last week especially on wed. was due to the rabies shot which i found out makes you exhausted and stiff in the muscles.

he's now getting special beef pill pocket treats after meals to see if he can digest them ok and prepare him for getting cosequin, a glucosamine supplement for arthritis. of course i'm partly wondering if i should even give him the pill as he seems much better, but the vet noticed arthritis when she examined him even though he moved fine when i walked him around in front of her.

the main new stress about him is that i have to get his teeth cleaned this month and he has not had that done yet. it's bad to let it go further as his teeth are not in great condition but they have to put him out for it and of course i'm super worried about it.

in general i think my trip into the dark and familiar zone of the more crazy parts of my mind has ended for now with a return to better places, but i'm very anxious and tired, totally exhausted. i had fine plans to go through piles of things on my desk and try to do some cleaning as things are more disorderly than ever but i got home from an outing late afternoon and went straight to bed. i'm constantly tired and have no motivation. all the stereotypes about being pregnant and nesting are bullshit where i'm concerned.

i've been trying to resign myself to the baby arriving in a messy disorderly apartment and that plenty of slobs bring up happy children. it sucks that the media paints a picture of organized expectant parents happily painting special things on the walls of a sparkling baby room and a clean neat organized apartment or house. when i was growing up i used to feel trapped in a family of neat people and hated being told to clean my room. now i'm worried my poor baby will be trapped in a chaotic totally messy disorganized house. i've lost all hope of things getting pulled together. we only have a few more months left and i can barely keep my papers in order and pay bills on time, much less pick up clothing and keep the kitchen neat, a bare minimum. the idea that we can reorganize the apt. and build storage space and transform it in time for the baby seems hopeless. i'm realizing i'm still slightly depressed but in this case the feeling of resigning myself to the worst case scenario seems a lot more comforting than having grand ambitions for our place and making room for baby. you can't be disappointed when you resign yourself to the reality of your own limitations. it's also just too hard to motivate or imagine that i can motivate when i'm pregnant and constantly tired. just keeping up with the bare minimum of one day at a time is a huge challenge.

the idea of a baby shower is scary and daunting. more stuff to put in the middle of the apartment. there's no more room under the bed or under the big dining room table so anything we get or are given for the baby will just go in the middle of the loft.

i have rescue fantasies of some magic person coming over and fixing everything. i've watched too many reality tv show of makeovers. denzel would never let someone come and reorganize our place anyway. but i admit i've had fantasies of waving a wand and everything being organized and fixed in two seconds with no suffering of dealing with the worse chaos that occurs when you start moving things around to reorganize in a place that does not just feel like a big close/garbage dump but in fact is. tonight is indeed garbage night. it's usually my thing to take out the trash or make sure denzel does it but i don't really care. i know how far i've descended when i can't find favorite items of clothing and dont bother looking for them.

i woke up this morning with grand plans to have new energy and tackle my desk and area and clothing areas and closet but that was a fantasy. i'm back to not caring and feeling the ultimate lazy slothful feeling that is a big part of my personality. as i get older i only get worse as i get better at living in messier and messier and more disorganized environment. sometimes it seems to mirror my inner situation and gets me down even more. sometimes i think this is actually a strength. all the neat freaks out there with perfect and organized apartments are sitting on total fear of the real chaos that is life and their own emotions. at least i'm totally aware of and living in my chaos and lack of control or anything. but i'm wondering how great it is to bring up a baby in this kind of environment. i guess i'll just have to hope that the baby will see that life is messy and disorganized and uncertain and chaotic but love can be grown in very messy places and love is messy anyway...

any words of encouragement or support greatly appreciated. i''m not sure this post conveyed all my fear and anxiety and exhaustion with worrying about how to deal with the mess of the environment and the big fear of the bigger mess of figuring out how to manage my life when the baby is here and be a good enough mother. i had great hopes of drawing a fun comic about elvis but that went out the window with my big plans of getting organized. i'll probably walk him and make a bigger mess getting ready for bed. sometimes i notice i retreat to bed to hide from the rest of the mess. somehow the messy bed is a slight haven to hide from all the clutter and mess.

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.