Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • On Postnatal Depression and shaving my head

    Tomorrow, school starts again. I am beyond relieved to be heading back to our regular routine. School holidays are lovely, but it’s very easy to let the hours bleed into one another, leaving a muddy mess of weeks that passed without anything remarkable happening, or getting done.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s been lovely to laze around the house, playing games and reading books together, but Amy needs more stimulation than I can easily provide, so yay for school.

    In other news:

    I’m cutting off all my hair. Yes, that’s right, shaving my head to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation. My hair reaches the middle of my back now and it’s thick and long. Evie keeps getting her fingers tangled in it, and while it’s a little scary to be contemplating shaving it all off, I’m also looking forward to it. In a terrified kind of way.

    When Nan was dying of cancer, I could appreciate the work that places like The Cancer Council and The Leukaemia Foundation do in supporting families who are walking that path.

    I’d love if you could sponsor me, so that I don’t feel all lonely over there.

    Sponsor Me

    And I am over at The Shake today writing about Postnatal depression.

    The Shake PND

    Comments are off. Click the links instead.

  • The depths of uncertainty

    Some days I wake up and I’m sure everything is going to be terrible. Plagues of locusts; hordes of zombies; houses imploding – that kind of terrible. Those mornings are the easiest in a way, because when everything fails to go wrong then I can be pleasantly surprised. I’ll look around and realise that I’ve drunk an entire cup of tea before it went cold and my toast is still warm; that the garden is still intact and everyone under my watch is still alive and realise that maybe it’s all going to be okay.

    Other days, I’m wrapped in the warm cotton wool of certainty. Everything is going to be fine. Of course it is. Nothing worse than spilled milk and cereal on the floor is going to happen and we’ll all make it to bedtime happy and healthy.

    And then there are the days that crack like eggshells, going from everything is going to be fine to holy fuck, nothing is ever going to be the same again.

    I’m talking about Evelyn of course. I’m always talking about Evelyn lately. All I ever fucking talk about is this baby and whether her issues will resolve and what those issues are and how we can help.

    I get smacked in the face sometimes by her issues, because it’s easy to forget, wrapped in this warm cotton wool, that everything is not okay and that our future is not certain. It’s easy to forget that she is six months old [oh god oh god, she’s six months old and look at her, will someone just fucking LOOK AT HER and tell me with their magic crystal ball what our fucking future is like please] and that she is not progressing as normally as we’d all like.

    Sure, she’s not missing everything yet, but she’s not rolling over anymore and so that milestone doesn’t count because it’s not something she added to her repertoire. She’s not babbling. She’s not using both her hands effectively. She’s barely using her right hand at all. She only manages to put things in her mouth 30% of the time. Her right leg kicks repeatedly. She has very little control over her body.

    And yes, I know that the optimists in the audience will point out that at least she is doing some things, some of the time. Trust me, I know how to count my blessings here. I also watch her and worry and it’s a hard worry to push down, because I mention small things she’s doing to her Paediatrician [her tongue trembles sometimes, and not in a feeding flutter, but a tremor] and he looks worried, but also pleased that it doesn’t happen all of the time, but still, he was worried and her tongue still trembles and I think it’s getting worse, but who knows? I spend so much time just WATCHING this baby that I don’t even know what is important anymore. Her desire to be a starfish [jerk all limbs outwards, arch back and screech because that is NOT what you wanted your body to do] or her twitching while she’s asleep [non-epileptic paroxysmal episodes, that look like complex partial seizures] or her jerky movements or or or or….

    It’s just, enough already. I need a crystal ball and to stop being smacked in the face by the possibility that none of this will be okay.

    I mean sure, it might all be perfect in six months, but you’ve got to give my brain props for showing me that it might just get a whole lot worse.

    Thanks brain. I couldn’t do this without you.

    003

  • An adjustment period

    I’d forgotten just how miserable adjusting to antidepressants can be. Some things flew out of the window, despite my promises to myself that they wouldn’t. Writing being one of those things, sleeping another.

    I twitched and worried at things, paced around the house constantly, played with my children, laughed and smiled, before collapsing into a heap on the couch with a small tired baby and a series of books [these ones this time].

    It’s easier in a way and harder. I feel disconnected and a bit discombobulated, but it’s easing and I can feel my head and my sanity trickling back in. Which is nice, frankly.

    Some things are harder to deal with. I have no appetite and have to force myself to eat. My mouth is dry constantly and I have electric shocks behind my left ear, which has also, strangely, gone numb. My teeth ache because I keep grinding them and my ability to type comes and goes, depending on how distracted I am at any given moment.

    That’s okay though. The depression is lifting and I’m happy to be me again.

  • Postnatal depression and speaking up.

    It started when I realised that I didn’t want to do anything except read. I stopped writing. I started shouting. Taking care of the baby felt like something someone else was doing; like an animatron I went through the movements, but there were cloudy panes of glass between me and everything else.

    My anxiety got worse and I was checking every five minutes to make sure everyone was still breathing. Under these conditions, having a vivid imagination is a curse, not a blessing and I imagined a thousand ways in which my life could get irreparably fucked up.

    I was pacing the floor with the baby tucked under my chin and I cried.

    and cried

    and cried

    and I couldn’t stop.

    And I couldn’t stop the next day, or the next, or the next.

    I fantasised about running away. I didn’t want to do this anymore; be here anymore. Whose idea was it to have children, let alone three of them? It’s very easy to suffocate under the needs of others and I was drowning.

    Last week, I confessed to my husband that I thought I probably had postnatal depression and that I definitely needed help. Yesterday, I saw my doctor and came home with a script for antidepressants and a small speck of hope that maybe, this would all be okay again.

    It’s an interesting thing, depression. It sucks you down into the black hole, a quagmire of hopelessness and hate. The Bloggess declares that depression lies and I held onto that through the weekend, and didn’t leave, or throw coffee cups at my husband, because she’s right, depression lies and I do love this family of mine, more than words can say.

    In hindsight, I probably had PND after both of my older children. I remember pacing the floor with a sleepless screaming Amy and sobbing into her head until we were both covered in snot and angst, just wanting it to be over, to be done. I remember the resentment that built up because my husband got to leave the house for work, and then got to sleep eight hours straight while I had this soul sucking black hole of need attached to my breast constantly.

    Obviously things improved, and I didn’t kill Nathan, or leave, because at the end of the day, I love him.

    After Isaac was born, I was too deep into the cancer journey we were on to put my own needs first. Then my grandmother died and everything went to hell and grief was killing me, but surely, it was just grief?

    Hindsight is a beautiful thing.

    I didn’t want to write this post. I just wanted to crawl back under my rock with a book and a packet of antidepressants and emerge in a few weeks, like a butterfly, fixed and okay again. I didn’t want to talk about it, or have it open for discussion. But life isn’t like that and depression lies.

    I spent the last six months bouncing from crisis to crisis, watching my baby like she was going to die at any moment. It will fuck your head up, waiting for blood tests to tell you if your baby has a fatal disease. I was running on so much adrenaline that when it deserted me, I felt bereft and dead inside. Surely panic is a normal state of being?

    No.

    Depression is a bastard thing that sneaks up on you while you’re busy with other things, until one day you look around and wonder where your happiness went.

    Today might not be better than yesterday, but I’m working to make sure it doesn’t get worse.

  • Lunchtime vignette

    One child spins madly in circles while begging to vacuum, […but there are things on the floor and I need to just vacuum them…] and the baby tries to fall asleep pressed into my heartbeat while we pace pace pace around the house. My footsteps are a backdrop to the other noises. A DVD running. A fan. The dog panting.

    I pace pace pace and her eyes close slowly, but then someone wants a sandwich […with tomato and cucumber and cheese, but you have to put the cucumber on first, and then the tomato, and then a little salt, and then some cheese, but I don’t want butter and Mum, why isn’t there any square bread left? I guess you can make me a breadroll then, but I don’t want butter…] and her eyes open again, a fitting counterpoint to her mouth, which is leaking baby drool all down my arm.

    Someone needs a drink […can I have cordial please? Why not? I want cordial. Okay, I’ll have milk…] and I am pace pace pacing while my heart beats a soothing refrain for a tired and grumpy child.

    […Mum, when are you going to make me my sandwich? Whoops, I mean breadroll, there isn’t any square bread, did you tell Daddy, he’ll have to buy some…]

    […I want a breadroll! But I want a honey breadroll, not tomato. I don’t want tomato, I want honey! No, I don’t want honey, can I have ham and cheese and can it be cooked please…]

    I pace pace pace around the house, crooning and rocking and her eyes are closed now and I am nearly free to sit down and drink a cup of tea […Mummy, I spilled your cup of tea and it was cold and I am sorry…] and the warm weight of the baby presses into my front as she snuffles at my shoulder.

    […But where is my breadroll? And why is the carpet wet here? Mummy, did something get spilled. Oh FINE, I’ll get a cloth, but they have to help me clean it up…]

    Carefully, oh so carefully I put the baby down, smoothing her cheek and kissing her gently. It’s a risk, but a minor one and it’s worth it, oh so worth it, just to kiss her while she’s sleeping. There is baby smell all over my shoulder and someone needs a breadroll and someone has spilled milk on the kitchen floor, but it’s all going to be okay. I remind myself to stop pace pace pacing around the house and I drop into a chair to breathe, to relax, to just sit for five seconds, please, just five seconds.

    And someone wraps their skinny arms around my waist and someone lays their head against my knee and it’s exhausting this job, so very exhausting, but I rub their hair and breathe them in and it’s worth it. It’s oh so worth it.