cranky pixels

You may remember that I started Wellbutrin last week, possibly because I posted a long, involved rant about it (which did not, surprisingly enough, include links to the manufacturer’s website, the Wikipedia page and the article on Mental Health dot com – but rest assured that I read them all, and several more besides).

The first couple of days were…not good. Bad, in fact. The first day I felt like a zombie and couldn’t speak without slurring my words (fun!), and I felt a little bit like I was on acid, only without the speed. Oh, seratonin! You jokester, you! The second and third days I was…well, the words wildly overemotional would not be out of place in a description of my mood. My mantra was “It’s supposed to get worse before it will get better,” alternating with “THE MEDS AREN’T WORKING AND WHERE ARE MY ANXIETY PILLS?”

I’m feeling better now, thanks. Just in time to up my dose! So this weekend should be a mood-altering extravaganza. I almost don’t want to take more of the medication, since the half dose seems to be doing okay and I’ve only just gotten past the dry mouth, which was annoying. But I’m game. If I’m going to do the antidepressant thing, I may as well go whole hog.

Speaking of whole hog: I jumped headlong into my WIP manuscript last night and ended up writing 2500 words. Woot!

Tags: wellbutrin, meds, antidepressants, WIP, manuscript, writing, seratonin

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, during which I thought I’d mention that I was pretty depressed and anxious and might possibly benefit from some sort of pharmaceutical intervention. I also wanted to discuss migraine meds, but a funny thing happens when you mention depression at the doctor’s office: all else is eclipsed by the sudden need for them to quantify and prescribe. I was given a weird electronic device – something like an ugly LeapFrog – on which I was instructed to take a quizlet to ascertain just how depressed I am. “Press 1 for true and 2 for false,” the medical assistant told me, and then closed the door so I could have some “privacy.”

Of course, after taking the quizlet – which asks things like “Do you feel irritable or cranky most of the time?” and “Do you often find it difficult to interact with others?”) – I start to see “hidden” meaning in everything. OMG I call myself Cranky Mama. Cranky Mama. That means I am cranky! As in, not happy! I might was well call myself Severely Depressed and Should Be In Therapy Mama! (Forgetting, of course, that Cranky Mama evolved out of Cranky Pregnant Girl, which I thought was unbearably cute during Ellison’s gestation.)

I could have told you what my results would be. After all, I have the Internet, and what is the internet if not an enormous LeapFrog? Every once in a while, just for fun, I take various depression assessments, and my scores are pretty universally in the “Meep! Get thee to a doctor!” category. And, see? I got me to a doctor! It only took, what, 20 years of being morose to convince me that I wasn’t just going to “snap out of it”?

Said doctor came in very earnestly and proceeded to quiz me about my history of depression, taking copious notes and furrowing his brow a lot. My monologues tend to do that to people, I’ve found. There’s a reason I am not a super villain. However, at the end of said monologue, I successfully bent the doctor’s will to my own, prompting him to prescribe me the antidepressant I wanted (Wellbutrin) as well as an anti-anxiety pill (though not Valium, sadly)…so maybe I have a future as a super villain, after all. (“It is I! Prescription Girl! Fear my mighty Google-inhanced knowledge of psychotropic substances!”) Amusingly, the doctor actually had to leave at one point to discuss my treatment options with the on-duty psychiatric consult…since apparently I have “a long history of severe depression” as well as the “possibility of mania” (which is news to me, but whatever) and he wanted to make sure none of the meds would bring out what I can only imagine are my latent bipolar tendencies. People: I am depressive. Period. The closest thing to manic that I get is when I’m hopped up on sugar and exclaiming over Shakira videos.

We did not, however, discuss migraine meds, despite the fact that I was coming down from a migraine at the time of the appointment. It occurred to me that I ought to bring it up at some point, but I was tired of discussing things by then. You may be shocked to hear this, but I do get sick of talking about my problems. Eventually. Besides, do I need to add more pills to my daily arsenal? I do not. (I am a person who rarely even takes a multivitamin, after all. Ingesting substances that are not delicious isn’t really my thing.)

I have high hopes for the Wellbutrin. If all goes well, I will not only be a veritable fountain of good cheer and optimism, but I will also be thin and randy (those being two particularly attractive side-effects of this particular med). Let’s all think happy thoughts about that, shall we? Er, those of us who aren’t clinically depressed, that is.

Tags: depression, severe depression, wellbutrin, meds, cranky, diagnosis

Man, I’m in a bad mood today. You know those days where everything seems to be arranged in a perfect tableaux of pissing you off? I couldn’t even find the floss. Clearly all my teeth are going to fall out now, which would be the perfect end to a perfect morning, and also prove that I have deeply prophetic dreams, especially if they crumble while still in my mouth. Dude, you’ve all had that dream, right? It’s such a bastard. I always forget what it means, too, aside from you are a crazy person who needs to floss.

Anyway, enough of all that. I will tell you about other things. The kid, for example! The kid is enormous now, all long legs and big grins and the very beginnings of actual speech, much of which involves either “Go!” or “More!” He’s ridiculously musical, which is baffling, given that Not So and I are…not. I wouldn’t use the words “tone deaf” to describe us, but you could, and we probably wouldn’t correct you. Not So does play a mean harmonica, though, so perhaps that gene just got passed on with interest. Plus, you know, my dead brother was all sorts of musically inclined, so you never know. The kid, though, he thinks everything is an instrument. He drums on boxes, strums his wooden sword like a guitar, and blows on puzzle pieces like they’re horns. You have not lived until you’ve seen him bouncing in front of the TV, watching Dan Zanes and strumming along on his sword.

The weather report said it was going to rain today, but it looks pretty shiny outside to me. We’re at the office, trying to get some work done before heading back to the house and trying to get more work done, plus laundry. The good news is we finally (finally!) have internet at the house, so working from home is decidedly more productive. The Covad people came out and hooked us up on Monday, and I celebrated by staying up until 3am working on all the projects I’ve had on the back burner for the past month. Because (and I know you will be shocked by this) it is not entirely productive to go to the office, frantically download everything that I might need for a project, transfer it to the ipod, bring it home, get it all uploaded to the home computer and then try to blindly make changes without being able to check to see if they’re working. And then bring them back to the office the next day to start the process again. I did that for a month. A month! And the fact that I managed to get anything done at all is testament to my extreme refusal to let something like lack of web access get in the way of web design.

But now I can work from home again, joy of joys and all that. I have to admit that part of me is a little disappointed that I no longer have an excuse to sit and read a book in the evenings anymore (because I couldn’t work anyway, not if I had something that required being online). We watched the last episode of Alias last night (only a year late! Go us! But it was full of stupid so I’m not really sad I didn’t see it when it aired) and I spent the entire time glancing at the computer, making a mental tally of all the things I needed to do as soon as the show ended. Hooray, OCD! How I’ve missed you!

You’re probably thinking Gee, it sounds like you need a day off, to which I respond Have you been talking to Not So? Because it isn’t nice to conspire behind people’s backs, you know! Also: that rhymed. I am so funny! And I do not need a day off. I have too much to do! Once I have done it all, then we can talk about a day off every once in a while. Assuming, of course, that I am still capable of speech by then and am not communicating by a series of expressive blinks.

Kidding! I’m kidding. Besides, I’m too tired to blink.

Frog’s legs are, actually, very good. They do taste quite a bit like chicken, which is reassuring when confronted with a food that used to be covered in a slick reptile skin. I was afraid that they would come like that, covered in frog skin, and I was certain I would not be able to consume anything covered in frog skin. They were deep-fried, though, battered, and only resembled the extended, leaping legs of a frog in shape.

My week was a lot like that: unexpected goodness in unexpected places. I was surprised on Thursday by an e-mail from the Portland Picks folks, saying they love my Cranky Pals and are featuring them in (last) Friday’s newsletter. Squee! The Crankies, they are all about the love. (I accidentally typed “lobe” there, the Crankies, all about the lobe, and then spent a period of time contemplating what sort of lobe the Crankies might be all about and where in the brain it was located. Although perhaps the ear. It is hard to say.)

The kid = still weaned, which is good since my supply is finally (finally!) dwindling. Apparently I am a milking machine. Several third-world countries could be sustained on my milk supply. Unsurprisingly, now that the milk is finally going the way of the dodo, I find myself suddenly deflated. This means none of my bras are even remotely functional. You’d think I’d just start wearing one of my less immense bras, considering that I had a stash of them from my less endowed days. You’d think that, but that would presuppose that I knew where any of them were, and could locate them as needed. I suspect that they are in a box somewhere, like pretty much everything else we own. Being prepared is not one of my strong suits.

Not nursing is pretty great, though. I heartily recommend it.

technorati tags:cranky pals, portland picks, frog legs, milking machine, weaning

A couple of people asked how I was managing to convince Happy Fun Baby that his favorite pastime (nursing) was no more. I’d like to offer some sage advice on how to wean. I’d like to, but I really don’t have any, so in lieu of advice I will just tell you what I did:

Stopped nursing. (Dude, I know.)

This is how it worked:

Saturday morning (when we decided to run with the whole weaning thing) I hadn’t nursed the kid yet, so we just kept not doing that all day. He’s typically pretty take-it-or-leave-it about the daytime nursing, so we kept him well supplied with snacks and drinks and he didn’t really seem to notice. Not So took bedtime that night, and the kid put up his usual pre-sleep fight but didn’t really seem to notice that he hadn’t been nursed.

Until 3am. At 3am, he woke up wanting to breastfeed. Mama did not accommodate. He woke up more, pulling at my top and weeping. We offered water, milk, rocking, singing. The weeping escalated to screams. Scream, scream. After 45 minutes (!!) Not So put the kid in the Ergo and took him for a walk around the neighborhood. Apparently he calmed down pretty fast once they got outside. When they came back to bed, Ellison grabbed on to my neck like a drowning person and fell asleep like that, clinging.

The next day there was a fair amount of “Nuh? Nuh?” and me saying “No, we don’t nurse anymore,” which prompted brief teary episodes but nothing like the screaming of the night before. That night he woke up at 3:30, screamed for 15 minutes, and then fell back asleep clinging to my neck…right after Not So finished getting dressed to take him outside again. Poor Not So!

But the next night the kid slept through, and last night he only woke up briefly and fussed before going back down.

He’s still obviously quite interested in nursing, but he seems to accept that we’re not doing it anymore. He’s eating a lot more solid food. He’s also a bit clingy, needing more hugs and snuggles than usual…which is nice, actually, because I feel a bit bereft as well. It’s not that I miss nursing (I so, so do not) but it’s really hard to hear my baby cry and know that I could make it better and I’m just not.

So, yeah. That’s my big reveal. If I were to proffer advice, it would be to start the process on a weekend so at least you can nap during the next day, since there’s going to be no chance of sleep the first night. Of course, if you are clever and have already night-weaned, you’re one step ahead of me.

(By the way, I’m still in a fabulous mood. Am I the only person in the world whose weaning hormones actually make her feel better?)

technorati tags:weaning, breastfeeding, nursing

Friday night I completely lost my shit, which is impressive considering that an argument might be made for my never having had my shit together to begin with. I’m not a particularly upstanding girl, but you know it’s bad when I’m making detailed plans for who’s going to watch the baby while I check myself into the mental ward.

Not So rallied spectacularly, and I’m happy to say that I feel much, much better today. Good, even! Want to know my secret? Wait for it…we’re weaning.

Yes. I know. My inner Attachment Parent cringes at the thought of abrupt cessation of breastfeeding. What happened to my warm, cosy daydreams of child-lead weaning? Where is my slow, gentle weaning process? WHY THE HELL DO MY BOOBS HURT SO BADLY? (I can answer that last one: I’ve never had supply problems, and apparently the kid was consuming a lot of milk. Milk which now has nowhere to go and is making me look like a poor-man’s porn star. Not cool, mammaries, not cool at all.)

The kid’s almost 18 months old, so I’m basically telling my guilt over sudden weaning to sod off. He doesn’t need to nurse. He likes to nurse, but he doesn’t need to nurse. Yesterday when I gave him his breakfast, Happy Fun Baby chowed right down on his croissant in a way I’m not used to seeing, and it took me a minute to realize – he was hungry. Which, isn’t that a good reason to consume food? And also illustrated the fact that he’d really been getting a lot of his nutrition from nursing, still. In a way, I think it’s good that he’s now eating because he’s hungry and not just for kicks. Maybe we can consume a little more than the occasional spoonful of peanut butter and our body weight in french fries, huh, kid?

My outlook has improved noticeably since we stopped breastfeeding, which is weird. I keep waiting for the hormone cocktail to kick in and render me useless (well, more useless) but so far I feel…great. Really great. Here’s hoping that it stays that way.

technorati tags:nursing, weaning, breastfeeding

I was all set to write a nice, pleasing post about our new place (short version: I LOVE IT OMG) but was derailed, as always, by my reflection. My belly, specifically. Belly: what did I ever do to you? I feed you. I bathe you. I sneak you treats every once in a while. So why all the hate? Why do you protrude, gelatinously, from my midsection, rather than laying flat like you used to? Remember how fond we were of each other when you were small? What happened to that, huh?

I know what happened. First, I stopped being 19. Funny thing: just because you had the metabolism of a hyperactive finch in high school does not mean that you can go through your life eating brownies and not exercising, no matter how many times you had to argue with people about whether or not you were anorexic. (Which, so not. I ate then exactly the same way I eat now, only in high school? I weighed 107 pounds. I could almost fit two of me in my skin right now. So. Creepy.)  And then, secondly, I gave birth to my lovely son. And ate brownies. And did not exercise. Except that I did! I do, I mean. Exercise. I run after a toddler all day, and I lift things, and I walk everywhere. (Ponderously, sure. But it counts.)

The hot weather is bringing my reflection-hatred to a head (as it were), since I find myself leaving the house in things like skirts and tank tops. Don’t get me started on the tank tops, either – I used to be able to wear one without looking like a low-rent porn star, and now? Let’s just agree never to speak of it. (Except I totally will.)

On the other hand, we have a full-length mirror in our home for the first time in two years, and that’s pretty keen. Assuming what’s being reflected isn’t me.

technorati tags:self-image, weight, belly