Better and better...

So I've already fallen behind in my blogging after a grand total of 1 post. It's been a particularly gruesome week or two in the Crazy Mama household. It started with the baby waking up at 3 in the morning a couple weeks ago. She had a temperature of 102.5, and as we were administering tylenol, the 8 year old woke up and wandered down the hall, burning up with a fever of 101.5.

Now I'm the type to give them both some tylenol/motrin, send them to bed, and go back to sleep myself, or else sit up with them while silently cursing the cesspool of germs that is the elementary school. My husband is the more cautious type, and after a thorough examination decides that the baby is breathing funny and we need to call the ask-a-nurse line that comes with our insurance. So I play along, and as soon as I hear him tell the lady reading the script on the other end of the line that the baby is breathing strangely, I know that in typical CYA fashion, she is going to tell us to take the baby to the emergency room. Sure enough, she does. I roll my eyes and say there is no reason for us to take her in, but my husband calls our pediatrician and tells her the issue, and of course the pediatrician, groggy from being awoken at what is now 4 am, tells us to take her in as well.

I'm not sure what side of the line my imaginary readers fall on, but in my family you only go to the emergency room if you are also transporting a limb that is on ice so that it can be re-attached. My husband is the better-safe-than-sorry type, and in my opinion goes to the doctor WAY TOO MUCH. But what am I going to do when TWO medical professionals tell us to take the baby in? When my husband is staring at me with a look that says, "Why don't you love our baby?" When he is telling me about all these cases of swine flu where the kids said they didn't feel well and then WOKE UP DEAD!!!! (If that's even possible). So I don't want to be the one responsible for some medical disaster, so I pack myself up and take the baby to the emergency room. Side note: the lovely, clean, suburban hospital located about 10 minutes from us is apparently not good enough for our pediatrician, who treats us like we're taking the baby to a tribal elder for an amulet when we tell her that's where we are going. Instead, she tells us to take her into the city to the huge, urban emergency room.

I want to stop here and just say why I am against going to the emergency room AT ALL COSTS. It's not just that I'm lazy. Which I am. Unbelievably lazy. But it's also because it seems to me that 99% of the time you take your kid into the doctor or the emergency room, one of two things happens, and sometimes both. The child who looked near death about five minutes before arrival will start giggling and smiling at everyone in sight, and all coughing/wheezing/fever/spurting blood will miraculously heal itself and the doctor will look at you like you are insane when you insist that it looked REALLY bad a few minutes ago. Or the doctor will tell you that it's a common cold and there's nothing they can do besides recommend fluids and rest. Meanwhile, you have sat in the emergency room waiting room for approximately two hours with a whole host of the most disease ridden, coughing, oozing human beings on the planet, and while your child was probably just fine upon entering the emergency room, they probably have the ebola virus now.

So these things all happened to me. I entered an emergency room filled with people lining the walls, sleeping on the floors, hacking up lungs and spewing germs everywhere. Luckily, I got in to see the doctor in record breaking time, maybe five minutes of waiting. Unluckily, the ushered me into a curtained cubicle and instructed me to put the baby onto a crib that upon further examination, I swear to God, had sheets with some other kid's snot on them. Then the doctor came in and examined the baby while the baby played the poster child for perfect health. She then told me that the baby had the common cold. She said they could test for the flu, but it wouldn't really matter since the treatment was the same as a cold, fluids and rest and fever reducing medicines. I thanked her, kicked myself in the ass, and left.

The next day I take both kids in to their regular pediatrician to ask about my older daughter's chronic cough, for which she is prescribed allergy medication. We discuss the baby, the doctor agrees with the ER that there is no reason to test for flu.

Fast forward a couple days, after both kids are fever free and seem to be feeling better. We go to a lovely Halloween party at a neighbors with a lot of other kids from the neighborhood. The next night, the baby spikes a fever and won't stop crying. We take her into Nighttime Pediatrics, and the doctor there tests for flu, tells us it's positive, and then tells us that IF IT HAD BEEN CAUGHT EARLIER he would prescribe Tamiflu, which would have helped her get over it sooner.

What. The. Fuck. I want the ER doctor, my pediatrician, and this guy at Nighttime Pediatrics to all get together in a room and argue it out in front of me, because I have no idea what just happened and why there were so many different opinions here. As it was, I was too exhausted to even question it.

Suffice it to say, the baby also had a double ear infection from the congestion. I got put on tamiflu by my midwives since I'm pregnant and the baby tested positive for the flu, and they assumed it was swine flu (perhaps another reason they should have tested her?) All of this lasted a while, during which I slept about two hours uninterrupted at a time and was pretty much on the verge of a psychotic break. Add to that the fact that my germ-infested children infected all the kids at the Halloween party and most of them were out sick for some portion of the next week.

Then, as the kids were getting better, I load them up into the car one morning to take my older daughter to school. I back up directly into the side of my next door neighbors brand new car. Like doesn't even have a real license plate new. For no reason at all. It's like she materialized out of nowhere, even though for this accident to happen she had to be pulling out of the space next to me AS I WAS GETTING INTO MY CAR. If I needed any more proof that I am the most self-absorbed person in the world, there it is.

She was very sweet about it, though, and didn't call CPS despite the fact that the only logical conclusion she could draw was that I was a raging drunk or terminally stupid.

Then, I started vomitting a couple days ago and couldn't stop. Stomach bug? Reaction to the Tamiflu? Morning sickness? Who knows. But it sucked. Big time.

So that leaves me with a lot of excuses why I haven't blogged, and I still haven't even gone into how my first therapist appointment went. Maybe I'll write about that tomorrow.

One more thing: I guess that I should give my kids some sort of names so that I'm not constantly describing them. I would like to think this blog is anonymous, so I guess I'll just call them Kid #1 (K1 for short) and Kid #2 (K2).

DISCLAIMER

Wow. I can't believe I'm writing a blog. And a blog about depression at that. My husband, who is always thinking up money making ideas for me, suggested that I start a maternal depression blog awhile ago. Whenever I thought about it, I pictured a commercial for fibromyalgia medication I saw once. It was an old woman, and she tells us that she's going to read us a page from her, and I'm not kidding here, FIBROMYALGIA JOURNAL. And then she does. And she's all, "Oh the pain, so tender to the touch, yada yada yada."* Surely a blog about depression would be just as seemingly pathetic, boring, and self-indulgent. And what would I write that anyone would want to read?

"Today I'm sad."
"Today I'm so sad I just want to lay in bed all day."
"Why is life so hard?"
"Why me?"
"I wish I didn't have to get up today."



Then I read a book called The Ghost in the House by Tracy Thompson. Tracy Thompson is a woman who suffers from severe depression. In her book, she quotes from a bunch of women who are mothers and have depression, and as I read the book, I sobbed with relief at reading my own feelings put into words by other people. So maybe this blog will do the same thing for someone else. Or maybe it'll go viral and make me a million dollars. Not that I am web-savvy enough to understand what "going viral" means, or how going viral would translate into cold, hard, US currency being transferred to my checking account.

First, I want to issue a disclaimer. I think this is necessary because I certainly don't want people to think that I think my feelings or behavior are reasonable, normal, or excusable. Here is a list of the things I know for a fact make me a very, very, very lucky woman:

1) I am happily married to a wonderful man who puts up with all of my nonsense without complaint, bathes the baby every night, and AT LEAST twice a day asks me in a sweet tone of voice what he can do to help me.

2) I have a healthy, sweet, eerily compliant eight-year-old daughter.

3) I have a healthy, funny 1-year-old who sleeps through the night, takes 2 naps a day, and plays by herself on the floor for minutes at a time.

4) I am about 2 months pregnant with my 3rd child, and I have gotten pregnant all 3 times without any medical intervention. (In fact, with the 1st and 3rd, in spite of poorly executed birth control methods.)

5) My husband has a good job that allows me to stay at home with my kids, go to the doctor when I need to, get pedicures every once in a while, and order pizza when I don't feel like cooking.

6) I have wonderful parents who live close enough to babysit my kids whenever I ask, and who are constantly doing things for me like coming over and building shelves in my utility room (my dad) and recovering my dining room chairs (my mom).

So I get it people. I was recently flamed to a crisp on a message board for saying I was depressed, as if people think I don't get how lucky I am. Let me say one more time, loud and clear:

I GET IT.

This is why it's called crazy, people. There is no reason at all for me to be sad. I should wake up every morning with the birds chirping around my head. But I don't. I cry myself to sleep almost every night because the next day looms before me. I cringe when I hear my kids call me because I know they need something from me. I drag myself through every day counting the minutes until I can sleep again. The list goes on and on. I know it doesn't make sense, but I don't know how to fix it.

Hence the second reason for the blog. Today I called a mental health professional that was recommended to me by my midwife. This will be maybe the 5th or 6th time I have sought help from some form of mental health professional since I was about 18. Sometimes I've been on meds, sometimes it's just therapy. The end result has always been the same. I've never been sure what works and what doesn't. I'm hoping that by keeping a detailed account of my feelings I'll be able to objectively measure whether whatever I'm trying to do is working. Hope it works, and sorry in advance for all the writhing.


* For the record, I have nothing against people with fibromyalgia. I think it was mostly that the lady in this commercial really reminded me of a controlling, prissy art teacher I had in high school.