Psych 101

     Today I saw a psychiatrist. She is amazing and I'm SO GLAD, SOVERYGLAD, that I called and got an appointment. As luck would have it, I called her on Friday and someone had just cancelled a Monday appointment. When I first started going to PT at the beginning of the year, I kept saying that God had sent Christie (my PT-ist) to me. I was sure of it. She was supposed to help me in some way; I thought it was with my tailbone. And she definitely helped with my tailbone (I have my last - fingers crossed - PT appointment this week for that.) but we also talked a lot about all sorts of stuff while we did the PT exercises. It was therapeutic. Soooo as our PT sessions were coming to an end, she suggested that I entertain the idea of talking to a professional. I knew deep down that it was time. So, I actually got the info for this psychiatrist from her! I'm not surprised that it worked out when I called to schedule and that there was a cancellation. It usually takes months to get into see a psychiatrist. God works in mysterious, and sometimes not that mysterious, ways! I know this is all connected to help me.... so I'm going with the flow.

     Anyways, the appointment went really well. It was a good first appointment, and we talked about nothing I thought we would! Yes, of course I cried. I laughed a bit, too. She's a redhead - well, formerly a redhead like me. We must be kindred spirits to some degree; and she reminds me of Sarah Jessica Parker but not in a squeaky mousey way (No offense, SJP!! Loved you in Girls Just Want to Have Fun!! Classic!!) And she was able to point out so many things about me already. This is her job and she's been doing it for a long time so of course she's really great at it ~ attended Columbia, John Hopkins, Yale... has had a lot of training in all sorts of areas, is also a psycho-analyst, a doctor in other areas too, etc... I just feel like she's really going to be able to help me get to the bottom of myself and fix things. I'm looking forward to next week's appointment. She upped my Paroxetine (Paxil) by 5mg and gave me a month of Alprazolam (Xanax). I hope I won't need the Xanax for a long time; I think the whole "meeting my birthdad" thing has me really anxious lately.     ............ Obviously that would make someone anxious and emotionally charged; I didn't really put two and two together, lol. Lunatic. :) I thought my body had conquered the medicine and wasn't going to let the medicine help me anymore. Yes, I probably had some little vision in my head of Viking-hatted Masked Marauders invading my little Happy Rainbow Medicine Cells inside and pillaging them. 

I need to be easier on myself. There are reasonable explanations for almost everything.

Anyways, I'm glad to have it for the days when I need it and for our flight to Flo-Rida.

I am too old to say Flo-Rida.

    My only qualm about this therapy is that it's expensive. $165/50 minutes. I do not see any dinners out in our near future! :) I really do NEED this though. It's been a long time coming and frankly, I'd like to feel like a regular person by the time I'm 30. You know? I can't be an emotional nutcase forever right? 

She suggested I ask my parents for the money to pay for the appointments. I said I'd think about it; and I really will. But I'm 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% positive I do not even want them knowing that I'm IN therapy. We'll be fine. We'll make ends meet. 

God will provide. He always does.

Blogging Again :)

Me: Feeling Good These Days

Ahhhhh I haven't blogged since June. I started taking medication for my PPD/PPAnxiety about that same time. Of course, I think it's all related. Since being on medicine, I've been super active around the house keeping up with chores and with the girls. I've been Twittering {Superfab912} a bunch and have been enjoying it. I've also come to the conclusion that I think I actually NEED to be on medicine full-time. I'm not sure if this is totally a PPD thing or not. It all might have just manifested into the worst-blue-period ever after having these babies. You know? Without sharing too much, I feel like such a better person now that I'm taking medicine. I was super against it but I can think more clearly now. And that's so good. The morning after I took it for the first time, when I woke up, it was so silent. In my head. Like when a record is turned off real fast and the sound goes "zzzzzzchuupe" and then it's silent... or when you're the only person in a small coffee shoppe and a gaggle of people come in and are chatty and giggly and busy, and when they leave the store ~ THAT silence. That's how it felt in my head.

I wasn't hearing voices or anything but do you know what I mean? That Inner Monologue just shut-up.

So on Monday I have my first appointment with a psychiatrist. She was recommended to me by my physical therapist (who I just had a playdate with this morning - her daughter is a month younger than my oldest girls - we had a blast, and I think I made a friend for myself!! YAY!!!) I really don't want to talk to anyone about all my shit but I think it's time. And I don't think my OB can handle the adjusting of this, not in offense to her ~ it's just not her area of expertise. It's time to pass the torch from OB to Pysch. I think I need some adjustments on my medication AND I think I might need a PRN. I think going to a psychiatrist is the best way to figure out the right plan of action. Sometimes the medicine works really well but I have days at a time where it just seems like it's not enough. Does that make sense? As always, I will let y'all know how it goes. I don't ever actually say "y'all" it just seemed appropriate to use at this time. :)

MIRACULOUSLY, I haven't lost a follower during this little blogging sabbatical of mine. {Can I call this a sabbatical?} I'd like to thank the Thirty-Nine of you Followers for sticking around! Maybe you have been on the edge of your seat anxiously waiting for my return. Maybe you've been busy yourself and haven't even noticed. :) That's okay, too. I am starting to feel more like writing again so I hope to be blogging more. School is starting soon so I'm definitely going to have more time on my hands to blog. I really have a hard time blogging when the kiddies are about. :)

As far as the house goes, I finished, & started and finished, several projects (& started a few more) around the house that I've been wanting to get done for quite some time. Like these things:

hallway curtains

bookcase

the Hancock shelf

frames for Snowdrop's frame-wall

baking, baking, baking

curtains in our bathroom

sewing, sewing, sewing

cleaned out and organized so many things

threw out so many things that I didn't need/want

AND four years of projects that never got started or finished.

If I had time right now I would take and post pictures of these things to show you. But I don't today. Sorry.

I've pretty much caught up on Project Baby Clothes {which I talked about in one of the Vloggin' Vednesdays that I'd love to get back into doing}. I've got one basket of clothes that turned up after I put away all the other stuff and did more laundry. BUT, I've got almost everything that doesn't fit put away! The upstairs closets are dangerously stuffed with bins and other things haha ~ it's always a little scary to open the doors! I never know if something is going to come flying out at me. :)

I {mainly} finished that project in June but this past week we moved all three girls into one room. The third floor is no longer Snowdrop's room ~ it's the playroom! I'm thrilled!! I even moved my sewing machine up there. We're moving my desk up there this weekend so I'll have a little space of my own within the playroom to work on MY stuff. :) OK. SO. The big move. I did it all by myself. See. I've been on Hubby for like two months to do this and it {ahem, he} keeps pushing it back. He went golfing on Sunday and I was mad about something that happened the previous night so I said "F it. I'm doing it myself!" All it really involved was moving the full size mattress from the third floor, taking down one toddler bed, and converting the other back into a crib. Mattress moving isn't really that hard when you're just going down the stairs. The girls totally helped me maneuver it around a couple corners ~ they were awesome helpers! So we got the room set up and I'm just so happy with it. I think we need a little tweaking here and there, and I need to fix some of their alphabet but for the most part I'm just thrilled to have them in one room. It opened up the third floor to become a straight up playroom, which in turn meant that we moved every. single. toy. upstairs. WHOOHOO!!! We left a bunch of books on this floor but other than those {and of course, the tv} our main floor is now 'kid free'. YAY! :)

We went to Portland in the middle of June for a friend's wedding and had a blast. I LOVE PORTLAND!!! It was seriously a great trip. Honestly, there isn't time to talk about how much I loved it. The street-pirates (the street kids/people) that were so very interesting to watch and talk to. The freedom I felt there to be ME. We were there for the PRIDE parade, too, which absolutely contributed to the feelings of acceptance, friendliness, and youth of the city. I love the downtown area so much, I could definitely see us living there. I could open my vintage/handmade shop in a little place in the city instead of on Etsy (it's coming soon!!!)... Hubby is not sold on the idea for "right now" because of the family business (of course) but maybe we can retire there someday. Early. Early retirement in Portland. Haha. In my dreams.

Actually, in my dreams ~ I'll retire to Europe. Vacationing in America occasionally when I get homesick for a Windy City or SoCal beaches. Anyways..........

A good friend of mine came to visit over the Fourth of July holiday and we had a blast. We've been friends since high school, worked at THE bakery together, I was involved with her older brother for a few years and generally always figured I'd wind up as part of the family. THAT didn't happen (obviously) but we've all remained super close friends over the years. It was sooooooooo good to see her. I am lucky to have such great friends even though they don't live nearby. It's hard not having "real friends" down here. Do you know what I mean? Not that I don't enjoy the company of my friends here, I just feel so often like people "have" to be my friend just because I married their friend.... anyways. MY friend and I had a spectacular time. We cooked and baked, and refinished/painted/recovered two chairs I found at the Goodwill Outlet for the girls room, and we sewed a bunch of little things for the girls (like pillowcases!). We stayed up late and laughed for hours. And we brainstormed about some projects we're going to work on together. It was SUCH a great weekend when she was here.

My soulmate (and very best friend in the entire world), O and I had a Girls Weekend late in July and it was just ridiculous. So much fun!! It was just like the old days. But better. So neeeeeeeeded to be just us girls. O's boyfriend (who I love and who will marry her someday; I've already granted my permission. He was very sweet in asking for it, seeing as I am his future wife's soulmate. Really, isn't that cute to ask me? What a doll.) was going out of town for the weekend so we had full-range of the apartment to ourselves. It was a great weekend; we also got together with some other girlfriends of ours ~ grilling tofu and drinking champagne on rooftop decks overlooking the skyline. It's so great that we're all still close. We've known each other since high school. Like Freshman Year. It's nice to have people from back in the day still around. They've been around through it all. A girlfriend of ours works at Tiffanys so we went that Saturday and tried on ridiculous rings. And by ridiculous, I mean HUGE. And redonkulously expensive. I tried on a $165,000 ring. ZOMG. It really WAS beautiful. Though, I think I'd rather we pay off the house than spend that kind of money on a ring (we don't have that kind of money anyways, haha!).  That said, however, I would absolutely accept and proudly wear a ring of that caliber and size. HA! :) OMG. It was so pretty. And it looked nice on my finger. ;) O also bought all us girls a stacking ring to commemorate the weekend. She had a LOT of credit from a (an old-boyfriend's) gift she had returned. WHAT an awesome friend I have. AWESOME!!! My ring is pretty and had to be ordered so I'll get it the next time I go up there for a visit. Which will be soon. I think the more I see my soulmate, the happier I am. And vice-versa. We are seriously like part of each other. It's amazing to me, our friendship has come so far and been through so much (long story, not for today) and here we are: as strong as ever, finishing thoughts again, can't stand being 300 miles away from each other... in fixing our friendship (and growing the fuck up), I have been able to find so much of myself that I thought I had lost years ago when I became a mom and moved out. O had those pieces the whole time. And you know what's funny? I had her pieces that left with me when I left ~ we were both fools and I'm just so glad we can share our pieces again. I missed her SOFREAKINMUCH and while it doesn't necessarily make me happy to think of her sharing all that pain with me, I'm "glad" (?) that I wasn't the only one who felt so lonely without the other. We are truly soulmates. How cool is that!

I am meeting my birth-dad and his side of my family the weekend of August 19th. 

This is a HUGE DEAL, of course. I'm SO full of all sorts of feelings and emotions. I am super excited and super nervous. I think it's going to go great! I have a feeling that I am very much like this side of my family. Part of the reason I am seeing this psychiatrist now is so she can help me prepare for this. Hubby, God Bless him, just doesn't get it. I don't expect him to, he's not adopted so he'll never really 'get it'. But he tries and is being supportive of this event even though I KNOW I'm being very wishy-washy emotional high-strung about it. I'm all over the chart of emotions these days when it comes to meeting him, understandably. I hope I get the chance to cook with my grandma/aunts, that would just be so cool. I have a full-blood biological brother who lives in the same city as my dad (Tampa/Ocala, FL) (and a full-blood bio sister, but she lives with my mom in Pennsylvania) and I'm hoping he'll come and meet me, too. When I asked my JohnDad (that's what I call him; his name is John but that didn't seem personal enough; I already have a Dad so... JohnDad it is) about it, it didn't really sound to me like my bio-brother was going to come. That's okay. I don't want to push anybody into doing this, you know? It's a big deal. I know that my biological mom doesn't want to meet me. Or at least that's how she felt several years ago... or maybe it's that she wants to but can't because it's too hard. I totally get it. {as much as I can get it.} Part of me feels like she should be the very first person to meet me, considering she's my mom, but I really can't wait forever for her to come around and want to meet me. I wanna meet my grandma before she kicks the bucket ~ sorry to be so insensitive about that thought.

*sigh*. 

Okay. I totally whipped all of this out in the last hour or so while I let the girls play upstairs. They are supposed to be napping but I REALLY wanted to post on my blog so I'm letting them run around like banshees up there. {Disclaimer, they are totally safe in their room.} It's been forever since I posted and I'd probably write more but it's time for "naptime" to be over. I tried a few times before to post this summer but the girls got in the way and I didn't finish my thoughts, things ended up needing to get done, there were poopy diapers, etc. I'm glad I could get this posted today.

Hope everyone is doing well! I hope to catch up on lots of things this weekend. Like some more blogging. And reading about your lives. I have thought of so many of you during my time off and truly hope everything is fabulous in your neck of BlogLand. 

On a Very Serious Note.

{I wrote most of this post on last Friday 5/6/11. I was interrupted before I could finish it... and well, you know how life goes.}
~
Seriously, this is totally on a very serious note. 

And I'm just going to dive right in.

I have been SO depressed. SO stressed out. SO anxious about... everything!! 

Anything and everything can set it off. I feel like a ticking time-bomb. I can eat just fine (haha, I'm even doing a good job at losing weight through clean eating!), I am exhausted but I can't sleep, I have zero desire to do housework or anything else, I yell at my kids all the freakin' time. I'm a ballistic bitch. Ok. I said it. I'm a big bitch. That is not always my fault. Hubby (God bless him, it's not totally his fault) has been SO unsupportive of my issues. It's not totally his fault; sometimes I'm just a bitch. On the other hand, it just doesn't help me out when I'm having a horrible time coping and he tells me to "Just Leave. Get out of here. Go back home if you're really so unhappy here. I'll raise the kids and you can have your life back."
(Really, he does! What a jerk!! Way to make me feel like you are totally not on my team, dude!)

I have been able the last few years to pick myself up, dust myself off, and live on. Sometimes I wonder if I have some sort of second personality that "takes over" when I can't. Or is that just "Being a Mom"? I do not know. I have reached a point now where I am just tired. I can't do it anymore.

I cannot function like a normal person should function.

So I just had my annual exam {YAY FOR PAP SMEARS! ~ that was only sort of sarcastic because truly YAY FOR PAP SMEARS they can save your life!} and I totally caved when my doctor asked me how things were going. I just seriously could not hold it together for another minute. My doctor, an OB/GYN who for the record is just about 40 and STILL trying to have a child, was really just so amazing.

I felt like SUCH a JERK complaining to her about all this.

{Sidenote: my mom, who was unable to have children, makes me VERY AWARE (in a negative way, duh!) how "fortunate" I am to be able to have kids. As if that means I should be happy my tailbone still hurts and I can't sit down/stand up without feeling it. As if I should be happy that sex fucking SUCKS because it's so painful, I should be delighted when my nipples bleed while nursing my newborn and I should praise God every time I pee my pants because peeing in my pants means that I got to push a baby out of my hoohoo... She has made me feel that I should never have a complaint about my life because I'm so fortunate to have been able to have my own kids. *le sigh*}

But my doctor is amazing.
And supportive. And sat with me for SO LONG to talk things out. And so she hugged me and told me that we are all blessed in different ways and that I'm not a jerk for how I am feeling about mine. She insisted that I am not complaining and that she is there to help me. She even said that I am one of her easier patients! She's really just so great. She didn't take it personally, like my mom alllllllllllways does. {And if I did offend her in any way, she never showed ONE inkling of it. Not one.}

And that meant so very much to me.

So now I'm supposed to be picking up some medicine later today that is supposed to help me function.

In addition to my mind being out of sorts... my tailbone/pelvis is still out of whack as well. This probably has made some contribution to my unhappiness since the baby was born. Long story very short, the muscles/bones in my pelvis got really out of whack when the baby was born. I began going to PT in February of this year. We worked just on my tailbone (which cracked and mishealed due to the muscle straining it) to see if that would help "everything" else down there, too. I felt great after a couple months of PT. So when Hubby and I resumed our...relations... and my tailbone got pushed out of place again it was SUPER depressing that I had to start PT again. I just feel so defeated. This time, we are treating me for the tailbone issues AND for pain in my hoohoo. See, the muscles in my pelvis are like SOTIGHT that they are knotty. Like how you get knots in your shoulders? I have knots in my hoohoo. And they are extremely painful. Especially when...you know. So the worst part of this is that we have to do these muscle releases. Sort of like massaging. Do you get where I am going with this? Yeah. My physical therapist has to massage my hoohoo (from the inside) to get the knots out.
Can anyone say Awkward? Embarrassing? Find me a rock to hide under? Or perhaps a heavy narcotic so I can forget about this easier? Please?

Why am I being this honest with you, Stranger?

Part of me does not know. Part of me hopes that someone out there is having similar issues to mine and goes to get help. Because I SWEAR that my physical therapist is a miracle worker sent to me from God. She has done SO MUCH to help me feel better down there. It is NOT normal to hurt down there after giving birth. Scratch that, it is not normal to be hurting sixteen months after giving birth. Yes, my tiny little body has been through A LOT (having twins plus another within two years) but it should not be "left in ruins". She said that so many women come to her and say that they just didn't realize it's not supposed to hurt, even a little. This week in fact, of the 60 hours she worked, 35 of them were with women who were having pelvic pain, as a result of childbirthing/pregnancy/etc. That amazed me! And made me feel so much less alone.

And the whole sharing thing is not just about the physical stuff, it's the mental stuff too.
If you're stressed out, depressed, "feeling blue", losing your marbles, a bitch for literally no reason at all, whatever is going on ~ you are not alone.
I feel that way, too.
All of the freakin' time.

Bloggers, like Chelsey The Paper Mama and Jennifer from Dishes in the Dryer and Delane from Life of a Mombie have reminded me that I am not alone in my struggle to enjoy mommyhood to its fullest. I wanted to say THANK YOU to Chelsey & Delane & Jennifer, and to all the others who I did not mention because so many of you have made a difference to me and have made me feel like I'm not a total nut-bag for feeling like this. You have also inspired me to speak up for myself and get myself 'fixed'. It is not fun feeling the way I do while I watch so many other mothers gleefully dance through motherhood. For me, the best news right now is that I have spoken up for myself and I am getting the help that I need... or at least starting on that road.

5/14/11 Update:
I am starting medication tomorrow night. I didn't want to start it Mothers Day Weekend and Hubby is out of town until tomorrow afternoon so I didn't want to be tinkering with medication while he wasn't home. Some of the side effects listed really scared me: psychotic episodes? WTF. AND the side effects are all like: extreme anxiety, depression, all the things I'm trying to get rid of? I'm confused by that. And of course, anxious (great) about what side effects I will have. Whatever. I can't remember what the medication is called and there's no way I'm running upstairs to find out. :) I will let you know how that goes. I HATE taking medicine mainly because I am always the one who gets the nausea/vomiting side effect. I feel like a nutjob. Fingers crossed, this will help me and not make me sick. Le sigh.

Okay. It felt really good to get all that out. Thanks for reading. I hope I didn't scare anyone away from reading my blog or step on toes or be a TOTAL Debbie Downer. Really. The blogging community has truly meant so much to me. Thank you!