No Really, I'm Still Alive!

So since my last post...which was sometime last year....I've been sick.  Yes, I know its been like 5 weeks.  But I've been sick for five weeks.

For real.

I've been felled by the plague.  First Ari gets sick, then Karys, then me. That's just how it goes.  But this time around, before I could get better, Ari got a second plague, then gave it to Karys, and then to me.

Of course I neglected myself because I was so concerned for my babies health.  As in only 3 hours of sleep a night concerned.  Did I mention that when I'm sick the anxiety medicine does not work?  Well it doesn't.  Anyhow, once my babes were better, it occurred to me: "Gee, I've been sick for 4 weeks. I should probably go see a doctor.  Because if I don't take care of myself, I'm no good for my babes."

So I went to the doctor.  Turns out that in those 4 weeks I ended up with an extraordinarily bad sinus infection.  I haven't had one of those in like over 10 years.  I thought I was going to die.  Well, not really, but I do have postpartum anxiety issues you know.

I went through 3 antibiotics.  See, as a nursing mother, I can't have the antibiotics that usually work well for me, so I had to slog through two antibiotics, not getting any better mind you, until the doctor gave me something stronger.

And then I had a cough.  A bad cough. The kind that leaves you in pain because you're coughing and hacking so badly.  The kind that taking OTC cough syrup only results in a cough syrup flavored cough and vomiting.  Which then results in the throat and chest getting irritated and swollen to the point where you can barely breathe.  So guess who had to get the really good cough syrup with codeine. Yep me. Couldn't even enjoy it because I can't take it with my anxiety medicine, so I didn't take the medicine for anxiety. Which left me super anxious about the effects it could have on my little plumpie pie through breast milk. So I took half the dose I was prescribed.  Now mind you, I know this concern was ridiculous.  I had a c-section, was pumped full of morphine (which kinda sucked btw) and was given codeine pain pills for 2 weeks afterwards and breastfed the entire time.   My little plumpie pie was fine then and she was fine this time as well.  But anxiety isn't logical, which is what bugs me the most about it.

Did I mention postpartum anxiety sucks?

And then the fevers and chills.  I never get a fever. Ever. I will be burning up and my temperature will be 98.6...which is actually high for me since I normally have a low body temperature.  So here I was freezing cold and chilled and shocked to hear that I had a fever of 101.1.   But if I took an advil, I'd be burning up and sweating like mad.  I don't get it. But whatever.

So now, I am finally getting better...but now my postpartum anxiety is getting to me.  Because I didn't take the medicine while I was taking the cough syrup and because it doesn't work if I'm sick.  I'm so tired of the anxiety.  It really is ridiculous.  And annoying.  


So I'm hoping that once I'm 100% I'll get back into the swing of the blogging.  

We'll see.

I Am Still Alive.

I am still alive.

I just haven't posted anything new in my blog for a really long time.

I contemplated just ending the blog.  Still am.

But I got the urge to blog this evening as I was putting away the groceries.

What about?

Postpartum Anxiety.

Did you know that it existed?  Well guess who has it - ME!  Joy oh joy. (/end sarcasm)

I had never heard of postpartum anxiety before, only postpartum depression.  I had postpartum depression after I had Ari, so I knew I'd probably have issues with it this time around.  I did everything to prevent it starting from the second Karys was born (well, not the SECOND....I was still open on an operating table, but you get the idea.)   I still don't understand why I have this after my second pregnancy but not the first.  From my research, it seems that postpartum anxiety really seems to manifest roughly 4 months after giving birth. 

And all was going well until my little Kare-bear was around 4 months of age.  And oddly enough, that corresponds to about the time I stopped blogging. There's probably a connection there.  Anyhow.

That's when I noticed that I was having some crazy issues.  I kept worrying about my mortality.  As in "What if something happened to me? Who would take care of my babies?"  To demonstrate how ridiculous it was, I would worry about walking down the stairs, because what if I fell and hurt myself and had to go to the hospital, then who would take care of my babies?  Or I would worry about what if I was in a car accident and had to go to the hospital, then who would take care of my babies?  And of course there was always the underlying fear of dying in which case who would take care of my babies?

I know, it sounds irrational.  I knew it was irrational.  I still know it's irrational.  But nothing I did would stop these thoughts from happening.  I'd mentioned this to my doctor and he upped my anti-postpartum depression medicine.  While it helped with the depression, it was not helping the anxiety over my mortality.  

It was getting rather bad, to the point where I did  not want to walk down stairs lest something happen to me, or go outside, or drive anywhere, or anything that could possibly result in me somehow ending up in the hospital and away from my babes. I'd force myself to do these things of course, and nothing would happen other than me worrying the whole time. I'd lose sleep worrying about it.  It was very debilitating. 

Case in point, driving to my next doctor's visit the entire ride, no matter what I did I could not get over the anxiety of being away from my babes and from worrying about who would take care of them if something happened to me.  I played the radio, sang along to the songs, told myself I was being irrational, tried to block the thoughts from my mind and NONE of it helped.  And even waiting to see the doctor I was worrying about this! After all, what if my blood work came back and it was something tragic?  My blood work (as usual) was fine, but I was stressing out like mad over it!

So of course, I told my doctor about all of this and I am so thankful that I have such a wonderful doctor who CARES.  He prescribed medicine for the anxiety and told me to take it as needed and that it works quickly.  I didn't want to take more medicine.  I didn't go to the doctor to get another prescription.  I just went to find out the results of my blood work and update him on my postpartum depression.  But I couldn't continue to exist in a constant state of worry about my mortality.

So I took the medicine.  And it helped immensely and immediately.   It was amazing how well it worked.  I could feel myself relaxing, untensing, my thoughts on mortality fading away.  Even if I forced myself to think about it, the thoughts went away when I stopped thinking about it.

And so that brings me to today, thinking about how far I've come from just a few weeks ago and realizing that I should probably blog about it so that there's more information out there about this.  Mothers already have enough to worry about. The last thing we should have to worry about is postpartum anxiety.  And just like with my issues with adenomyosis and my infertility issues, maybe there's someone out there who will be helped by this post as well.

One Year

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of Chou's passing.  That's right, it's been a year.  One year. Without Chou.

Oddly enough, the weather was exactly the same as it had been last year: cloudy and depressing....until around 4:45pm, when the clouds finally let the sun show through and shine down on the world. I don't know if the weather necessarily mimics itself year after year on each day, but I found that to be oddly interesting.

It has been different without Chou here. And I still miss him so.  My brother asked me if I was ready for a new cat yet.  The answer: not quite.  While I miss my precious jungle cat, and I know my girls would love to have a pet cat, I just can't do it yet.  I don't have the energy for taking care of another cat.  I don't think I have the mindset to take care of another cat yet.  While I wouldn't necessarily want a kitten, I also wouldn't necessarily want an older cat either.  If I got a kitten, I'd have to train it to not destroy the house.  An older cat would be calmer, but knowing that kidney failure is what takes cats blessed to live to a ripe old age, that's just something I don't want to go through again.

Another thing is the freedom that not having a cat gives: we can actually go places and not have  to make arrangements for cat-sitting.  After 20 years, I'd like to take advantage of that freedom for a bit.  

So life goes on, and we'll see what the next year holds in store for us.

Still Having A Rough Time.

I wish I lived in a place that did not have seasons. Because as the summer nears its end, I've been thinking about Chou.

I've subconsciously been reliving the stress from this time last year.  The subtle indicators are just wreaking havoc.  The coolness to the air. The initiation of the changes of the colors of the leaves.  The annual events being advertised.

It's not like I'm doing this on purpose. I'm not thinking "Let me be all sad because my Chou-Chou was dying this time last year."  But it just permeates everything about this time of year, making it worse than it usually is anyhow.

I hate when summer comes to an end.  Little did I realize at the time, the day we put Chou to sleep was the last day of summer.  I realized that the next day when the news people were talking about how it's was officially autumn.

It doesn't help that I've been felled by an early flu, barely getting any sleep, and just downright tired as a result.  So that mimics the exhaustion and physical discord my body was in a year ago.  It's a perfect storm.....

I still miss my baby boy.  I suppose with time it will get easier.

Sick, but life goes on.

I'm sick.

Ari was sick. Then she passed the plague on to me.  Because when a child doesn't feel well, where do they want to be? All hugged up on their mommy, which in turn makes mommy sick.

So I'm sick.  Because I got Ari's plague.  And then we both passed the plague on to Karys.  Why? Because she's a baby and wants her Mahney 24/7 and Ari kept coughing in her face.  Since Ari has never had a really bad cough, she didn't know to cover her cough. *sigh* Since it only lasted a day, she still hasn't learned how to.

So now Karys is sick too.

Hubby is just fine.  That's usually how it works out though.

*****

Speaking of hubby, Ari has taken to calling him Ryan for the past few months.  I think she does it because that way she knows she gets his attention, even if his attention is him asking her to call him "dada".  Well, it's a good thing he has me for a wife.  Thanks to Ari's non-stop love of "Hello Kitty's Furrytale Theater", I now have her calling him "King Dada".  So now she's more prone to calling him dada again as opposed to continually calling him by his first name.  I should also mention it's a good thing that I like him since there are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many other things I could be teaching his daughter to call him.  To my hubby: You're welcome.

*****

Speaking of Ari's love of cartoons....she has now developed an interest in the alphabet thanks to a show called "Super Why".  Consider she can already count in 3 different languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese), it's about time she moved on to the alphabet.  Since I'm using the hands off approach to her learning, I wait until she expresses an interest and utilize the teachable moments, now that she has an interest in letters, it's time to teach her the letters and their sounds.

Now I just need to get over being sick.

Up.

Lately I've been up late.  As in I see the sun rise before I go to sleep.

Why?

Because I have two lovely night owls!  And sometimes they double team me something awful!  See, both of them awake isn't bad.....it's when one is asleep and the one who is awake wakes the sleeping one up...and then goes to sleep....and then they repeat that over and over again.  Which drives me insane because I think "Oh, I can get to sleep soon, just as soon as (insert name of daughter who is awake) goes to sleep" and then my hopes are dashed to bits.

But it's okay.  Sure, I'm only functioning on less than 1 hour of continuous sleep.  Sure, I wake up anytime one of my babes makes a peep or moves.  And then I have to wake up anyhow and change Karys' diaper twice a night.  But that's okay. My babes tend to drown me in hugs and kisses and smiles and giggles while they are depriving me of my much needed sleep....which makes it hard to get mad about being up so late...and being so tired all the time.

Because I am tina, Mahney to two amazing girls, I know that this does not last forever.

Sadness.

I've been sad since late July.  I realized why that was about a week or so ago.  This time last year was the most stressful time of my life.  My precious jungle cat of lore was dying.

I find that I am thinking of Chou-Chou more and more as the anniversary of his death rolls around. It's crazy how that works because I think of him all the time anyway.  But lately I feel the grief I felt after he died when it just seemed inconceivable that he was no longer with us.  I feel sadness, but not as deeply as I did last year.

I think of his sweet little face, his kitten eyes, his sweet meow and his crazy Chou-Chou cat antics. I think of how he would lay at the top of the stairs.  How he would sit in the kitchen.  How I would take him outside to roam and soak in the sun.  Of how he would sit in the backseat with Ari on our road trips.

I still catch myself when I'm fixing plates involving chicken or fish thinking about how I need to set his food aside so it'll cool off along with Ari's prior to dinner.  About how I can't leave food on the table to run upstairs because he'll get into it.  When Ari drops food on the floor, I think, "Oh, Chou will get that".  Even when I was mentally preparing for having Karys via c-section, I was thinking of how to make sure he would be cared for while I was in the hospital.  It is hard to not do the things I have done for two decades.

I miss Chou like crazy.  I wish he was here to see Karys.  I wish he was here to hang with Ari. I wish he was here for me to pet and talk to.  While I have his cremains, I don't have him.  It just seems impossible that he's not here anymore.