I had Kid #3 (henceforth to be referred to as K3) in May. It was a girl, and I spent the nine months leading up to her birth in terror for no reason at all. She is the easiest baby that ever was. From the day she was born, she has been nothing but agreeable and sleepy, the two things I love most in people whose day-to-day care I am responsible for. She slept through the night at 6 weeks. A few days into her life, while we twiddled our thumbs in the hospital waiting for her to wake up to eat, my husband described her perfectly:
She's like the Christ child, but better, because she doesn't attract any weird gypsies.
K2 is now just over 2. While in my disclaimer I stated that she was healthy, that turns out not to be entirely true. Shortly after my last post, she got a diaper rash that wouldn't go away. After trying multiple remedies, we took her to a pediatric dermatologist who diagnosed her with psoriasis. Now reader, you may be like me and think, "Psoriasis, that's not so bad. A little dry, itchy skin, right? Like eczema." If that were only the case. What started as a red diaper rash that wouldn't go away became a raised, red, itchy, scabby rash that covered her entire body. She screamed in agony every time she started to urinate. She woke up three, four, five times a night screaming in pain. Her head became covered in scaly scabs that my husband described as "what dragon skin would look like if we knew what dragon skin looked like" (!?!?!?). We had to shave her head to get the medication on it, which made her look like a burn victim on chemotherapy. People stared in public. At library story hour parents snatched their children away when K2 got near them, lest they catch her flesh-eating disease. And here's some pictures to show you why they were totally justified:
Yikes, right? So we went through months of topical steroids and treatments until we finally got her on a systemic medication that has worked wonders. She takes it once a week and within a few weeks she was totally clear and I stopped crying every time I looked at her or thought of what prom was going to be like with dragon skin. The medication is kind of scary stuff, it used to be used for chemotherapy but now treats psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. She has to get liver tests every couple months, and she might go off of it in the future to see if it comes back or if she's in remission, but for now we're just thankful that it's working.
K1 is 9 and gets more and more like a teenager every day. Attitude, attitude, attitude. That's all I have to say about that.
In terms of my depression, three things happened.
One. Spring rolled around. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The cold sucks. Winter sucks. The sun setting at 5 pm sucks. I've noticed this cycle in my life before. Right around October or November, life goes from painful but bearable to agonizingly painful and unbearable. I think the end is near, or hope it is, and all of the sudden it's March and I think maybe I can trudge through. The same things happened this year. So I'm thinking that I have some definite seasonal affective disorder stuff going on.
Two. The baby was born and was the Christ Child. See above. While I spent hours with K2 trying to get her to go to sleep by swaddling her, holding her just so in the pitch black with a sound machine going full blast on white noise and a hair dryer on in my other hand, K3 just gives a polite yawn and drifts off. A sleeping baby will do wonders for your mental health.
Three. I went on Adderall.
I know, I know, it's not for depression, right? I went to a psychiatrist when I was in college who thought that I displayed symptoms of ADD and prescribed Adderall and it worked wonders for me. I had energy (it IS speed, after all), I got stuff done, I was focused, etc. Then I graduated, switched health insurance, and my new psychiatrist said, "You're depressed. Adderall isn't for depression. Here's some Wellbutrin." Wellbutrin didn't do anything, but I took it for over a year. No results. My latest psychiatrist said if it works, do it, and put me back on Adderall after I was done breast feeding K3 (which is another guilt-laden story for another post.) It is truly a miracle drug. My love affair with Adderall and my internal struggle about whether or not I should be on it deserve a post of their own, which I will do soon.
Despite the miracle-working power of Adderall, I still have some major depression issues that mostly show themselves in the form of EXTREME irritability. On most days it's not so bad, but there are still some days that I wake up and can almost see the big, black raincloud over my head. Those days suck.
I'm going to keep blogging. I'm not sure if it'll be about being a mom whose depressed, or just about a mom that isn't all "Being a mommy is the best thing that ever happened to me!".
For now, I'm caught up. For real this time, I plan on posting at LEAST three times a week. And maybe, just maybe, I'll post this somewhere so that someone might actually read it.
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