What it's like to be a fat woman in this culture

• Internalized self hatred
• That nagging feeling that everyone who looks at you is judging you
• Feeling like you are morally bankrupt for letting yourself get fat, for not having the self control to keep yourself from it
• Hating yourself for letting yourself get fat
• Never being able to shop in the cute boutique shops
• Fighting with the impulse to do fad diets/starve yourself in an attempt to lose weight
• Looking at old photos and thinking to yourself, "And I thought I was fat *then*"
• Feeling like skinny people don't want to get too close to you, as if being fat was contagious
• Feeling like you are the wrong kind of fat - if only I was pear-shaped instead of apple-shaped, maybe I wouldn't hate myself so much
• Fighting between trying to change it and lose weight and just giving in and letting yourself get as fat as you will
• Worrying about how your own crappy body image and eating habits are affecting your daughter (especially long-term)
• Feeling like you don't deserve to be happy because you're not skinny and pretty
• Wondering what it's like to have a healthy relationship with food
• Feeling like all your good years are behind you (maybe this is just depression, which is correlated with my bad eating habits, which is correlated with my weight gain)
• Not wanting to look in the mirror because you know you won't like what you see
• Being afraid to try different hairstyles in case they make your face look fatter
• Feeling bombarded with messaging that you are not good enough to exist

Originally published on my Livejournal page.

Am I the Only One Who Just Wants One?

I feel like I need some sort of support group for moms who actually ONLY WANT one child. There is so much pressure from...society in general, I guess, that it's hard not to feel guilty or weird for only wanting one child. This is especially true since I don't have any "good" reason (like infertility) other than I don't really like being a parent and want the very young children stage to be over as soon as possible. I never babysat as a teenager because I didn't really like kids. Having one of my own has made me realize I still don't really like kids. Don't get me wrong, I love Junior Mate. I don't love being a parent. I'm not very good at it, and it's exhausting. All I really want is some sleep and more than 1-2 hours to do something I want to do.

At this point, I'd love to find just one other person who understands me on this...one other person who has no desire to have more than one (and maybe even questions whether it was a good idea for them to have the one they have). I want to feel less alone in my weirdness. Sometimes, you think you've found an only child ally, only to discover that they have what society considers legitimate reasons for only having one (usually infertility). My heart hurts for those friends who want more kids but haven't or can't have more for those reasons. But I don't understand that impulse, and I feel a little more alone every time I find out that I'm still the only one I know who is not only happy with an one but has no desire to have another. I mean, to be honest, the main reasons I consider having another child revolve around guilt. I feel guilty for only giving my mom one grandchild (since I'm her only child). I feel guilty not giving Junior Mate someone who, in the future, can share the emotional and/or physical burden of caring for aging parents.

I have two half-siblings from my dad's first marriage, who were 18 and 22 when I was born (and out of the house), and I am my mom's only child. Since I never lived with my half-siblings, and my mom and dad divorced when I was 5, leaving me primarily living with my mom, I consider myself an only child. I had a great childhood - plenty of friends, plenty of quality time with my mom, plenty of time to myself when I wanted it, cousins to play with at family gatherings. I don't really remember feeling lonely that much, at least not any more than I figure is typical for a kid at a given stage in his/her life. It's only now as my mom is getting older that I miss having a sibling. I live about 1000 miles away from my mom, and her health is up and down. It's hard not to be there for her all the time, knowing that there aren't any siblings to take up slack for me. I worry about that for Junior Mate in the future when she has to watch us grow older and less vital than we once were. I don't want to put that burden on her alone. At the same time, though, I'm not really sure I can survive another newborn/infant/toddler. There are days I'm barely making it through this one, and the PPD was bad. I'm afraid that if I had both a toddler/preschooler and a baby, I might not get through that suicidal ideation. I mean, it'd definitely be worse to leave her with no mom than with no sibling, right?

All of this is stuff that's so hard to talk about with other people because women are supposed to want and love children, and we're supposed to want as many as is culturally acceptable (which seems to be somewhere between 2 and 4, since I know several people with 3, which is entirely acceptable, but the ones with 4 get the whole "You know how that happens, right?" speech. Oddly, growing up, I always wanted 3 kids for some reason.) A few things make it harder: 1) I have an alarming number of friends and acquaintances who have had multiple miscarriages and/or cannot get pregnant (a first or following time). It makes me feel profoundly ungrateful and horrible to have gotten pregnant without actively trying and then not really like being a parent. The whole "life is unfair" epithet seems to apply here - women who want multiple children can't seem to have them easily, while I was sort of ambivalent about having one and got pregnant more quickly than I expected. 2) Women are supposed to LOVE being moms, and their children are supposed to be their sun and brightest spots in their lives. I keep wondering when that will happen. I'm glad Junior Mate is here, but I don't love being a mom. I love Junior Mate, but most days, she is not the brightest spot in my life. Most days, the best part of my day is the 1-2 hours after Junior Mate and First Mate have both gone to bed, and I get to sit with the cats and read, watch TV, or sew by myself - no one to have a fit because I'm not watching the right show or because I made her wear underwear, no one expecting attention from me that I only have half the energy to give, no chores staring me in the face (or at least it's easier to ignore them in the evening). 3) There doesn't seem to be anyone safe to talk to about this because you don't want the few friends you've managed to tentatively make since your daughter started preschool to think you're a horrible person and shun you. I just want someone else who is actively making the decision to only have one child...someone who understands. Maybe our kids could even be friends. My best friend growing up was another only child of a single mom (until she turned...14? 15?), and she's like a sister to me, to this day.

You know, the stereotype is that only children are lonely (which wasn't true for me). No one talks about how lonely it can be to be the parent of an only child, particularly if you only wanted one.

Captain's Log Stardate 121717: The Old Me

When you're not sure if your total lack of passion for anything is because of the depression, the antidepressants, or just getting older and more cynical. Or maybe all of it. Or none of it.

I miss old me. Or I guess, more accurately, I miss younger me. Maybe I'm also missing an older me that will be happier and feel more like someone worth being around. I recently titrated down on my antidepressants. Things were going pretty well, and I thought maybe I was getting ready to move away from the antidepressants. Now I'm not sure if what I'm experiencing is because I need to stay on the slightly higher dose or if there's some situational stuff (including winter's arrival) going on. When I first tried an antidepressant, I didn't like it because it made me flat. It's not like I felt happier, I just sort of felt nothing. Having always been a rather sensitive and emotionally volatile person, I didn't really like that. I've realized recently that I've been sort of flat for a while. It didn't really bother me now that I have a kid because it's more important to be able to function with a toddler around. Lately, though, I keep trying to remember the last time I actually felt happy. You know, that kind of happy that you feel deep inside, and not just in your head? I'm not sure if other people experience those things in the same way I do, but that's sort of what I'm missing. I'm missing those deep emotions that I feel deep inside rather than just surface. I even miss that painful feeling of deep sadness. I'm tired of that smile being something fleeting that just covers my face but doesn't reach my core. The problem is, I'm not sure that going off the antidepressants will work because I don't think I'll be able to function well enough to take care of Junior Mate. Whether or not the cause is titrating down on the antidepressants, I'm clearly having a low period, and it's just not possible for me to take the kind of care of her I think she deserves when I spend half the day weeping.

I know I need to make some friends and start to have a social life, too, but it's hard to do because I just don't feel like someone worth hanging out with right now. Younger Captain was great, sure, but Current Captain doesn't feel like someone I'd want to hang out with. I'm getting kind of tired of her, honestly. It doesn't help that, on top of feeling sort of meh about myself, I'm constantly tired, both from having a toddler and from chronically not getting quite enough sleep. The depression also just limits my general energy for things, so there are only so many things I can do/people I can be around in a day before I just need to be home. And that level varies so that some days it's practically nil, while other days I can do several things. It makes it hard to want to say yes to things I may be invited to because I don't want to flake out at the last minute. Honestly, life just generally isn't how I imagined it would be, and I often feel like I just wasn't made for adulthood - like I'm not able to survive the monotony and pressures of adulthood.

I'm not writing to get people to feel sorry for me. I just needed to get these thoughts onto paper to help me organize them and process them. I sort of generally need to start writing more again, I think. I guess I need to figure out how to prioritize what I actually need to do to help me, rather than just, you know, TV that lets me just veg out. I guess I need to actively process sometimes.

Captain's Log Stardate 021716: Just Slow Down!

Some days I feel awesome at being a mom, and other days I really suck at it. I'm short-tempered with Junior Mate, cry a lot, and sometimes even swear at her. I'm horrible. These days tend to be the days when I didn't get much sleep for whatever reason (sometimes, but not always, related to Junior Mate's sleep). I'm really trying to cut back on the swearing because she's definitely getting old enough to start repeating stuff like that. Obviously, I also want to cut back on the swearing because it's not nice; most people don't like to be sworn at. Also, it can be hard to remember that babies are actually just very small people. They seem so different to adults that it can be easy to think of them as if they're a different species or something. I told my mom the other day that I really think I should get some Buddhist practice into my life. I tend allow myself to be ruled by my emotions, and you really can't raise kids that way. The truth, my friends, is that there are times when you just don't like your kid(s) at all, but you can't let that make you treat them like you don't like them. This is what I'm struggling with. I know Junior Mate deserves better than this, but I have not been good at it. I am trying to get my depression under control, upping my antidepressant a bit and continuing to go to counseling. (I've also gotten someone to help me with her two days a week, allowing me to get out and have some me-time.) Unfortunately, I have not yet arrived at Happy Captain, and there are days I feel I never will again.

Anyway, I sometimes let my emotions rule me in my dealings with Junior Mate, and I know this is unfair to her and unhealthy for both of us. I know I cannot continue this way with her because I want to do as little damage to her as possible. (I'm of the belief that your kids are going to be screwed up somehow no matter how awesome you are. The best you can do is try not to actively screw them up. ;) I have a couple of books I want to read to help me get in this mindset. I started reading a series last year called The Dalai Lama's Cat, by David Michie, and it basically presents basic Buddhist tenets through an easy to digest little story about a cat who learns these tenets through her life with the Dalai Lama. I have enjoyed them and recently purchased the newest one. Maybe when I get around to reading it, I will actually try to think about practicing some of the ideas. (The last one I read had a really good part about not letting anger and frustration rule you; I could definitely use that one.)

One of the things I've been thinking about recently in this vein is "slow down." Now, I could have used this for the weird dichotomy of having a newborn/infant where you are sort of just hoping that they'll grow up so things get easier while also mourning the fact that they don't fit into those little 3-month clothes anymore. However, I think this is more important, at least for me. Lately, Junior Mate has been having a little trouble falling asleep, taking closer to 30 minutes (or more) than 15 minutes. At first, I would get so frustrated that I'd end up just getting First Mate to get her to sleep. I should also point out that, having read all these infant sleep things, I was totally stressed about making sure I put her to bed awake. Otherwise, all sorts of bad things would happen, and she would NEVER SLEEP NORMALLY!!! Finally, I decided that it didn't matter if I rocked Junior Mate to sleep. In fact, it doesn't bother me (most of the time), and it's not like I'll be able to do it forever. She is usually able to fall back asleep by herself when she wakes up in the night, which is the main reason given for not rocking to sleep. I've decided to just enjoy getting to hold her and watch her fall asleep, knowing this will not last forever. At some point, though, I started getting impatient for her to fall asleep so I could get my little bit of "me-time" during the day.

Recently, while we were visiting family, I found myself rocking Junior Mate to sleep for naps. Yes, I'm still trying to figure out how to transition Junior Mate out of the swing and into the crib for naps. I would feel impatient about getting back to family, and then I thought, "Slow down, Captain. Just slow down. Enjoy these moments. Let Junior Mate sleep on your shoulder. Maybe take a nap yourself." And then I realized that even though my life has felt incredibly hectic and just trying to make it from day to day, Junior Mate is actually making me SLOW DOWN in some ways. Adult life is so humdrum sometimes that we forget to appreciate the uniqueness of each day. In the midst of doing the same things we do every day, we forget that there will never be another February 17, 2016, and we take it for granted. Babies grow so fast, especially in the first year (I have yet to experience the second year), that it's much harder to take it for granted. And the older they get, even at a whopping 11 months old ;), the more independent they want to be. Those sweet times of them snuggling into your shoulder become fewer and fewer, and I imagine I'll find myself missing them. I do miss the newborn times when Junior Mate would just sleep effortlessly on my shoulder. Now she does sometimes, but she's more restless. And she only naps two times a day, so there aren't as many opportunities.

Stardate 030216 Appendix: I started this a couple of weeks ago and am now not in exactly the same place anymore. Antidepressants have been upped a little bit, and Junior Mate is once again sleeping more easily. Junior Mate is helping me to slow down and appreciate little things more, and I appreciate her for it. I'm currently finding it easier to do this whole mommy thing than I have for the past nearly 12 months. However, I think the things I say and feel in the first part of this post are important because I'm certain some people feel them but are afraid to talk about them. We have to be willing to talk about our weaknesses in order to support one another and overcome them. Thus, I am posting it as is, though I could not figure out how to finish it in the same vein. Just remember that we all screw up and don't do as well as we'd like. Fortunately, kids are resilient, and I think if we try our best to be great most of the time, they will be fine.

Captain's Log Stardate 092615: PPD Sucks

This post's title could also be "How I Learned that Depression Really Is Exponentially Worse When You Get No Sleep and Have Crazy Hormones"

I dealt with depression before I became pregnant, so I knew to watch out for Post-Partum Depression (PPD) after Junior Mate was born. I had been on anti-depressants before getting pregnant, and I stopped them completely by my third trimester (which was the recommendation for the particular drug I was on). Unfortunately, this halt in my anti-depressants coincided with an extremely stressful December, so I was unable to tell if the depression and anxiety I was feeling were related to the stoppage of medication or just the stress. Looking back, it was probably both, because I spent much of my last trimester feeling anxious and unhappy about the impending birth of Junior Mate. (There may be another post about how I think it really took about 5 months after Junior Mate was born for First Mate and me to really accept that our lives were forever changed.)

Junior Mate arrived about 4 weeks early because I had low amniotic fluid levels (AFL). On a Monday, I went in for a routine doctor's visit and (yet another) ultrasound. I'd had 4 ultrasounds in 5 days at that point, as we were monitoring my AFL to make sure it didn't drop too low. I was already exhausted with having to do all the ultrasounds while trying to finish up things at work. When they did the ultrasound, they told me my AFL was 3.5; anything below 5 calls for immediate action. They called my OB-GYN, who said I needed to head across the street to the hospital's maternity ward. I assumed I was going to be checked in for monitoring, but when I got there, they said I was being induced. I was like o_O and had a pretty hard time keeping it together. The nurses all acted surprised that I was upset about being induced 4 weeks early (seriously? Is it super common for people to be excited about being induced 4 weeks early?). I guess I was supposed to be thrilled that I would get to meet Junior Mate 4 weeks before I was supposed to. Unfortunately, I had been counting on that 4 weeks to finish getting everything together. The previous Friday had been my last day at work, and I thought I'd have the whole month to get things together, as Junior Mate's due date was at the end of the month. We didn't even have a mattress for our crib yet. (To be fair, I had ordered it the previous Friday, but the day I was induced, it hadn't yet arrived.) There were no diapers in the house, and we just simply weren't prepared for the baby. Yes, I'm sure people will argue that I should have been prepared at the beginning of the third trimester in case something like this happened. However, see my parenthetical above where I say that I think both First Mate and I were sort of in denial about how radically our lives would change.

I share this with you to sort of set the stage for my mental state when Junior Mate was born. I wasn't prepared, either physically or mentally. I know I'd had 8 months (she was about a month early) to get prepared, but I wasn't. To be fair, I'm not sure you are ever really prepared because it's so radically life-changing that you simply can't imagine how it will be until it happens. However, I was clinging to that last month of pre-babyhood like a lifeline to help me come to emotional grips with this impending change, and just like that, it was snatched away. I resented my body a bit for not keeping the amniotic fluid where it needed to be, and I was anxious about how healthy Junior Mate would be. I was also anxious because I knew that induction often leads to a more difficult labor than when your body naturally goes into labor.

Anyway, I'm going on more about the birth process than I meant to. Suffice it to say, my anxiety levels were pretty darn high for several days before Junior Mate even entered the world. Additionally, she had to be in NICU for a week due to a suspected infection, and my milk took forever to come in (see my post about breastfeeding here). I felt like a literal milk-cow because I was pumping every 2 hours but without the benefit of having the baby to bond with. It was exhausting. Once we finally got her home, I was already exhausted, and we hadn't even had the first night with a newborn in the house. Enter Junior Mate's reflux(ish) problems. She would spit up every. time. she. ate. To help with this, I would hold her up for at least 30 minutes after she ate. This meant that by the time she ate (which sometimes took 45 minutes), I held her up for 30 minutes, and then put her in the bassinet, I would get maybe an hour of sleep before she woke up again. I guess now's a good time to explain that lack of sleep greatly exacerbates my depression and anxiety problems.

I found myself wishing I had never gotten pregnant and feeling as if my life would never be good or happy again. I was mourning the loss of my old lifestyle with First Mate and couldn't see how I could possibly enjoy this new (currently hellish) lifestyle. I cried a lot. Some days (not all days) I had trouble feeling connected to Junior Mate. Some days, I felt as if Junior Mate had destroyed my life and that I could never be happy again. Eventually, I decided how I would end it if I had to (I'm not sure what was going to be the indicator that I had to), and I had decided that I should probably take Junior Mate with me so First Mate could have his own life back. (You don't have to tell me how messed up this is; I know.)

This went on for about a month until on one of those days when I actually had enough energy and initiative to do it, I called both my counselor and my psychiatrist to schedule appointments again. Fortunately, they were both able to work me in right away. I got back on a medication that was safe for use while breastfeeding and started seeing the counselor on a weekly basis again. Having taken antidepressants before, I was prepared for 10-14 days of waiting for it to build up in my system before I felt better. However, I was shocked when literally two days after starting the medication, I felt better! My psychiatrist explained that when depression is hormone-related, as with PPD, the medication tends to work right away.

Don't get me wrong - it's not like being on the medication magically made everything better. I still had A LOT of adjusting to do, and I really think it wasn't until Junior Mate was about 6.5 months old that I finally started feeling like I could be a semi-normal person again. However, the medication helped me to have far fewer days of crying and feeling as if my life was over and would never be good again. There were far fewer days when I wished I had never gotten pregnant or wished that I could just run away and never have to deal with any of this again. There were far fewer days that I was afraid I might actually do something bad to Junior Mate. (For the record, I never did - the few times that I was unable to deal with her crying, I put her down in the crib and walked away to do my own bout of crying until I was calm enough to pick her up again.) Even now that I'm feeling significantly better, I have days when I wish I could go back to pre-babyhood. Life was easier. However, I'm also excited to see the changes happening practically every day as Junior Mate grows. I've realized I'm not really a baby person, even when it's my own baby, and I'm looking forward to each day that she becomes more interactive. I feel like I can actually handle this whole mommy thing now.

So here's my advice for this post
If you are suffering PPD, particularly if it is severe, don't put off getting help. Don't spend the first month (or more) of your baby's life wishing you were dead and getting to the point that you're planning on how it could be accomplished. Your doctor can give you something that will help get you through the crazy hormonal changes and lack of sleep so that you can actually try to enjoy your newborn. While it is perfectly normal to feel a bit overwhelmed and exhausted after the birth of your baby, it is not normal to constantly wish you and/or the baby were dead. Seek help. It is worth it. Because that thing everyone says is true: it doesn't last forever, and before you know it, you won't have a newborn anymore. Things will get easier, you'll start to get sleep again, and you'll be grateful that you made it through the first few months.

ETA 100315
Another relatively recent new mommy friend of mine reminded me that PPD doesn't always hit right away. Sometimes it can take several months, and then suddenly, WHAM, you're hit with it. This does not make you abnormal. This article suggests that it can begin even before you deliver, and at any time within the first 12 months after delivery, it's considered PPD. The article also points out that it is not actually only depression that new mommies may experience. There are also postpartum psychosis and other similar mental issues that can crop up. While it absolutely breaks my heart to hear stories of moms neglecting and even harming their babies, I better understand how it can happen, having experienced my own severe depression. Hormones are whack, y'all. They can MESS. YOU. UP. Either way, you know yourself best, and you know when your mental state isn't where you prefer it to be. You are not crazy or horrible. You and your baby deserve the best you you can be. Get help if you need it.