Bex, where you at?

I deactivated my Facebook account for a while. Why? Well, like the relationship status: it's complicated. In a nutshell, I didn't want to continually go on there, posting my lamentations of my baby blues and sleepless nights. I feel like I should be posting sickeningly sweet updates about how happy I am and how amazing my baby is. Don't get me wrong: she is perfect, precious and a gift from God. I can't imagine life without her. I don't want a life without her. But I feel like I'm dog paddling in circles in sub-zero waters, barely keeping my head above water and my limbs are going numb.

The automatic judging one feels when pregnant is nothing compared to what she feels when the baby is now born. Sometimes the flood of advice is really overwhelming because so much of it contradicts each other. When a new mother's brain is scattered, to say the least, from lack of sleep, the outpouring of conflicting advice is like trying to take a college final after a 48 hour bender with no sleep. But worse. Because I've done the finals hungover and they were nothing compared to this.

After another night of EK screeching, thrashing and refusing to be comforted, I sat up and just cried. My husband said, "Well this is just how it is for now and it's going to suck for a couple months. Everyone tells me that is how things will be." My reply, "No one told me it would be this bad. Everyone told me how blissful I would feel, how in love I would be and how I should enjoy this time. But you know what? I don't feel joyful or blissful. This sucks and I feel horrible for not finding it a happy time. I don't know what she wants half the time, I feel like I can never put her down, I love her and feel a rush of emotion every time I look at her but I hate this." We determined that even experienced mothers have told my husband how bad this time can be but no one tells that to me, the mother. Were they trying to spare me the reality? Or do some mothers just blank this period out to the point where all they recall is the lovey dovey moments? I have no idea. But I just feel like we set women up to fail over and over again by making them think it's not ok to admit to the world that at times, yes, this experience sucks ass.

Recently a local, popular meteorologist, committed suicide. I have watched this morning show since I moved here and it was the most popular morning news show in the area. This man was always so happy, cracking wise. His death was shocking and combined with some postpartum depression, really set me off in a funk. At first it was just sadness and shock and then anger. I'm angry because he gave up. Some of us are still putting up the good fight, determined not to give in to depression and let it bowl us over, fuck up our families. But he gave in and took his life. And if someone so successful and who seemed to have it all could throw in the towel, what's that say for the rest of us?



So I realized that, like this man, I also use humor to hide what's really going on. I make fun of myself to try and find the bright side of life, to make light of heavy situations and to make others laugh. Maybe that's why he seemed so happy. He was also trying to deflect attention off his dark side through humor. And so instead of coming out to people and saying, "jeezus this infant stage really sucks. I'm not having an easy time of it and I am struggling," I just withdraw from people rather than have it pointed out to me that I'm not acting the way society tells me I should be.

Before you call CPS on me, just know that I am seeing a counselor, I have alerted my doctors that I'm not all roses and rainbows right now and we are on top of this. I have no thoughts of harming myself or others. I deeply love and adore my baby. I'm so grateful that she's healthy and in our lives. I just don't do well without continuous, night time sleep. I feared this would happen and that it would be this hard. And yes, maybe I should never had a child if my health was so fucked up. But regardless of the shoulds and woulds, she is here. This is my reality and now that I have experienced it, I can honestly say my support system is not working. It's lacking.

What I don't need to hear right now is that this is a GOOD kind of tired because it's the blissful baby causing my lack of sleep. Lack of sleep is lack of sleep. In fact, it's worse when the lack of sleep coincides with a baby who is crying and fussing for six solid hours. What I will take from this is that all new parents should be told that yes, you will love your baby unconditionally. But there may be times you don't really like your baby. And those times are just when she is screaming in your face, inconsolable. But when she's calm again, you realize that you still love her and will do anything to protect and care for her. And this is normal and ok to experience.

So my next steps are to find a moms group or a church community that has support systems in place for new mothers. I knew most of my acquaintances wouldn't be able or willing to help me during the day so this is not a new revelation. I did try the "sleep when she sleeps" thing but that is very hard when you have a sleep disorder on top of chronic health conditions. Today, for instance, I had to be out the door by 7:45AM to drive the 20 miles to the pain clinic. I'll have to do that every month to renew my medications. I have to check in at least every two months with my rheumatologist to make sure my blood counts are ok so I can continue my RA meds. I'm still trying to get set up with a new mail order pharmacy that my insurance requires me to use because, for whatever reason, they just don't want me to go down to the local Walgreens to fill my RA drug. It has to be mailed from a specialty pharmacy. And I'm due for a shot next week so I am using my daylight hours to hound the necessary schmucks into getting that done for me on time. Then there is the debacle of the drug test company that my pain clinic requires its patients to use sporadically. The test costs $500 and for some reason they were given the wrong insurance information for me. So there was an hour on the phone trying to straighten that out. I've also got to carve out time to drive 35 miles to see my neurologist and then there is the visits to the counselor to help keep my head above the raging waters. Add that to the upcoming one month check up for EK and my postpartum check up to my OB. That's JUST my medical shit. That's not to mention trying to make time for visitors and to do the very basic household chores such as keeping up on dishes, sterilizing bottles, scooping dog poop, paying bills and scheduling the furnace guy to come in and fix the humidifier. So really, even if I could nap, when is there time? I know millions of women before me have worked out a balance and I need to find mine too. I just haven't yet.

So why deactivate FB? Because I wear my heart on my sleeve and eventually, no matter how I try not to, I will end up posting something like this blog all over there and come off as a big whiner and an ungrateful jerk. And I can't rely on people on social media to help me out because they can't. I need people in person who can listen to me, give me a hug, spend time with me and maybe come over and sit while I try to sleep or get some time to myself. (Although I will terribly miss my interactions with my stitching group, the EFU. You guys know who you are. I love you guys and I regret that this means time away from you all.) And quite honestly, I'm really saddened and disappointed that people have substituted fucking Facebook for real interactions with their friends. I have a few wonderful and amazing people that know better and we call each other, email and keep in touch. And then there are people I have known in person for a long time that I have yet to hear from. Oh sure, they have made a few "likes" on my page and some comments here and there. But no calls. No visits. I think that's so sad.

So I'm taking a break until I can get myself mentally in a better place. Then I'll go back to not giving a flying fuck what happens on Facebook. Once I have some people in real life that I can turn to, things will get easier. And time will help EK learn the ropes on when to sleep and when to be awake.

So there is the long, drawn out reason why my account is gone. I'll be back eventually. Could be a few days, could be a couple months. Until then, I'm sure I'll continue to blog and Twitter because Tweeting is so less complicated and dramatic.

Tschus.