No More Purple Pills

Tags

anxiety, busy, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, motherhood, stress, time management, welbutrin, work

I have been off of my Welbutrin for about three months now. I started to wean myself off in June, skipping the occasional day, until I actually forgot to take it at all for a week.

Then, when we went the the states, I left the pills behind, and I haven’t touched them since.

I’ve been doing fine.

I had a happy summer, loving my husband, liking my job, training dogs, writing on Elance.

I’ve been very tired. I feel very extroverted out.

I wish that I didn’t have to juggle work AND dog training AND Elance, but I’m not willing to give up any of these. I need them.

I need the work, the dog training is my insurance for the future when we have a second kid and full time work will no longer cover daycare costs, and Elance is extra money in my pocket while building my writing credits, which is REALLY part of my long term plan.

I spend my mornings trying to shepherd Owl into his clothes and into the car, I work for 9 hours with no break, and then I pick Owl up and entertain him while PH makes dinner. By the time we get Owl to sleep it’s 9 pm and I’m exhausted.

PH wants me to take more time to myself, to hand him the baby and say “YOU deal with it, I’m out of touch for an hour” but I rarely take him up on it. First of all, because I hand him Owl and then disappear training dogs a couple times a week as it is, and second of all because I want to spend time with my husband and son.

But PH thinks all this work is adding to my anxiety.

I haven’t really noticed it (maybe fish don’t notice water, much) but PH thinks it has been worse lately. I don’t know if fall coming on is beginning to activate my SAD, but that seems hard to believe, because it’s been warm and sunny an gorgeous outside lately.

So maybe it’s just all too much.

But I’m not quite sure what to do about it. We need money, and I need to make money while building a way to make money with fewer hours in the future. So I think this is just how it is right now, and I’m not unhappy or miserable.

Just a little stressed.

That’s within normal range, right?

Still not ready

Tags

busy, friends, heat, nursery, pregnancy

I spent yesterday at a friend’s house “helping” her get ready for her garage sale today. I put “helping” in quotes because I don’t feel that I was very helpful. I sorted some books, moved some not-too-heavy objects from point A to point B, and directed her teenagers a little.  Even with that minimal involvement, I was wiped and back-achey by the end of the day. The sweltering heat is really getting to me.It’s only really at times like that, when just a bit of minor light lifting in the heat sends me into spasms of Braxton Hicks that I really realize how pregnant I am.

Just like how Perfect Husband’s first words to me when I get up in the morning tend to be “holy crap… you’re PREGNANT!” when he sees me afresh each day.

My friend really didn’t work me too hard. SHE’S more aware of the limitations of my pregnancy than I am, I think. Mostly, I was there for company and to poke her if my friend wandered off to a computer or something. That wasn’t necessary, though. She plowed through an entire garage worth of junk and by the end of the day everything was sorted.

This is the same friend who wants to paint my nursery for me as a gift. To my original vision of blue sky and clouds she has slowly added in her imagination a giraffe, a lion, a tree, and even my own pets all painted on the walls. All of which would be totally amazing. But she works full time, has two teenagers, and is trying to get her house ready to be sold. She’s a busy, busy lady, and she just hasn’t found the time to get paints and come to my house yet.

As much as I would love the giraffe and lion and tree with my cat in the branches, I think I’m going to have to remind my friend that it doesn’t all have to be done at once. In fact, the nursery doesn’t NEED to be done at all, since the baby will sleep in a moses basket with me for the first few months (breastfeeding = getting up every hour and a half = me not wanting to go to a different room to pick up the baby every time) but the pregnancy hormones are screaming “YOU NEED A NURSERY!!!”. The baby, due to show up in the next eight weeks, doesn’t really feel real yet, even when he’s propping up my ribs like a tent pole with one of his limbs. The spare bedroom is still a mess of gulag-grey walls, bare futon, piles of clothes and so on. It doesn’t LOOK like we’re expecting a baby, so it’s hard for me to believe that my life will change so utterly in just a couple of months.

So I think I’ll wait until her garage sale is done, then call her and propose that we do the basic blue paint with clouds, so I’ll feel like there is a nursery around, and my friend can add giraffes and trees and things in the nebulous future when she finds the time and energy.