Anxiety dreams

Last night I had two dreams that pretty much sum up my personal life anxieties. (Talking about dreams! Is there anything more boring? Ugh! Sorry!) In one, Cookie wrote me a letter (on the dusty layer of grim of a car's door, uhm) about how he couldn't believe we could go from having a good, nay, a happy, great day, to not speaking to each other, and how it all boiled down to my relationship with the baby. It was resentful and accusing, and then I read it again and the spirit was the same but not accusing, just sad. I woke up feeling like shit from that one. Because yes, I had just lost it before going to bed while we got the baby ready for bed. As I have been losing it all week. He was asleep on his side of the bed, far away, and the baby in the middle. I don't know how to fix that. They are both (should be both) my priorities, but I seriously don't know how to do *more* without turning into psycho bitch.

The other dream was more violent. I was heading out of my parent's house with the baby in his car seat when a short woman started pushing me, poking at me with something. I felt angry, and asked her what the hell she was doing. She had a gun, and was nervously trying to rob me. I got so angry, I started to fight her for the gun, with the bay car seat still in one hand (all 20 pounds of it). She was much smaller and was making no sense and I was Not Letting Her Take My Baby Or My Money, so I turned the gun on her. I woke up before I shot her, feeling like I already had, like she was already dead, feeling no remorse, only vaguely wondering if I would go to jail.

I have been so afraid of someone stealing the baby, I guess it's no surprise that it would eventually show up in my dreams. And I have been so neurotic and impatient with Cookie, that I guess it's normal to feel sad and afraid about the state of our relationship.

I did fall back asleep pretty easily after both dreams, though. And I just managed to put the baby down for a nap, so I can work for a bit before school. So. No big deal. I can do this. I will beat the anxiety.

We are five weeks away from the end of the semester. One of those weeks is finals so I keep telling myself I just have to make it through another month without blowing up, and we'll be done. My students aren't helping much, though, whining and complaining every step of the way. I know I have been doing much of the same, but I feel like I'm gritting my teeth through every class with them, I see no glimmers of passion or interest. I brings me down, specially giving that it's my favorite subject to teach, Lanscaping. But I just feel like the biggest nerd, super excited about permaculture and companion planting and rain gardens and everyone looking like ughh, when will she let it go? And there's few creatures better than a 19 year old at throwing disdainful looks. It shouldn't matter to me! I'm an adult! Right? ...it definitely gets to me, though.

I am dreading talking with the department heads at both schools to let them know I'm quitting. I know both will try to convince me not to, for different reasons, and they can be really pushy (which is how I ended with so many hours this semester). It's hard because, in theory, I love my classes. I love teaching. I loved teaching? I am not sure I have it in me anymore, though. I do know I need to take some time to work on my mental health. Which is the speech I'm working on, because it would be a shit thing to tell a teacher you neeed them to work regardless of their mental health, right?

A friend of mine went through PPD and is encouraging me to make an appointment with her psychiatrist. I keep thinking about it but not doing anything. I feel like, if I can find some time for myself, some of the anxiety will go away. So I think I'm going to give myself until January, see if I feel better or not, before going to a doctor for meds. By then I think I'll know for sure if I can work through this on my own. I do feel a bit more stable these days -we're back at having some sort of sleeping routine, so even if Peanut wakes 5/6 times a night, I'm sleeping better- but I'm usually exhausted and Cookie suffers for it. It's hard to not be resentful of his freedom. But I have talked about it a bit with him, and it helped, and he's trying to have us tag along with him more. Even if it's not freedom, at least is something of a social life, which is more than what I had.

Baby Peanut is beginning to be able to stay ib a sitting position for a short time, which xan be fun. He's a super happy and smiley baby. I love his silly face :3

Restless

The sleep front remains the same, with the baby sleeping a three or four hour chunk some lucky nights and then waking up every hour and a half or every two hours to eat. I have kind of found my peace (and comfort) with cosleeping and I feel better. I'm still battling a lot of anxiety, I live in constant fear that someone will kidnap or steal the baby when we're outside, or that someone will break into the house and steal the baby. It's obvious these thoughts are out of control and very unlikely events, but I'm having a hard time not thinking them. At night I still struggle with fear of SIDS, specially while he sleeps in our bed. Recent research shows that proper safety in the family bed actually diminishes the risk of sudden infant death, but we do have a cover and Cookie and I do use our pillows, we have made a sort of spartan zone in the middle of the bed where the baby sleeps. Before bedsharing he was sleeping in a pack and play (where he sleeps the first chunks of the night) right beside me, but for some reason he can't settle back in there in the middle of the night.

I feel like we're doing what we need to sleep right now, so I try to not cling to the anxiety monster too much. I'm still very short on patience at school, and rather disenchanted with work, as it feels very grindy right now. K's house is still NOT finished, mostly because I haven't gone to do the last details and because they just decided on the lighting fixtures this week. Next week we just HAVE to be done with it, I don't think I can handle having it in the back of my mind anymore. H&C's entryway is almost done too, and with some luck it should be finished in a week or two tops. Ms. Prado's dining room renovation is going well-ish. I am afraid of a hundred details going wrong, but so far nothing has gotten too out of hand, so I hope it continues that way.  No end in sight for it yet, maybe a couple of weeks.

I just feel like I need to do... More. Time is so short, I have a lot of things waiting for "when I have a chance", and it's frustrating. I know everyone struggles with deadlines and work loads, it's not anything special, and in a grindy, harried way, I think I am coping as well as I can with the workload. But it's the restless feeling, the frustration and impatience, that I feel is making me bad company right now. I wish I could get rid of those, since I know work is just never going to stop being challenging. My brain is using up energy I don't have to spare to worry about things that don't matter. I wish I knew how to deal with that.

Vet visits

Our dog Odin is a special dog. He's overcome most of his anxiety issues thanks to Max's confidence and Lana's playful company. Max was never very playful, but then again, I noticed the limp that eventually revealed itself to be to bone cancer two weeks after we adopted him. Lana indulges Odin a lot more, but is still dominant and confident enough to keep Odin's anxiety away. Odin has become a very playful and social dog, he's only afraid of some men and some small children, but my friend P's son and baby Peanut are great in his book, as are most of Cookie's male friends. I think he's really turned around from the scared, insecure dog we took in. But some issues remain: he's always had a very sensitive stomach, and we have to test him again for ehrlichiosis after having kind of treated it last year.

That being said... We have had to take him to the vet twice in two weeks -always Sunday afternoon, too! When nothing is open!- because he eats some plants then throws up.. And throws up some more... and more... And stretches and whines in pain, and throws up... And aghh! Why does he keep eating the plants? Why youuu do thisss dawggg!! Over and over again... I ended up moving most of the plants to the backyard, out of his reach, but I wish we could address the reason why he inflicts this on himself. Dumbbb doggg.

The same but somehow better

We had a couple of decent nights this Sunday and Monday and then another awful one last night. Baby Peanut slept from 8:40 to 1:40 like a champ, but I was up until almost midnight watching a movie with the hubby. Staying up late, bad idea! After 1:40 he was up every hour or so. Nghhhh.

Yet I don't feel quite so bad this morning. I guess our only-three-feeding-sessions nights got me some air back.

I'm fighting a cold, though, which was to be expected. My immune system is doing what it can, but I can't ask for miracles! Sleep deprivation and depression are not conductive to great health.

We finally discovered why the baby will take water but not expressed milk from a bottle or his sippy cup. It got to the point where he would cry as soon as he saw the bottle, so we gave up on bottles entirely. I still had some bags of frozen milk in the fridge, since I thought they would be needed when I returned to school, and yesterday I was meeting a new client and it got late ans I couldn't come to feed baby Peanut before class, so I told mom to take a bag from the freezer.

When I came back, baby Peanut had not taken anything but a sip from the milk on the sippy cup, though he had taken some water. We were going to throw the thawed milk out and then it occurred to me to taste it. Yukk!!!! So gross! Mom tasted it too and she was disgusted, it tasted a bit like fridge and plastic but a lot like soap. Grosssssss! No wonder the baby will not take any frozen milk! I've been reading about it and it's apparently an excess of lipase, an enzyme that breast milk has to break down fats so they are easier to digest. It seems to be uncommon to have an excess, but then the forums are full of women asking whyyy foes my frozen stash taste like asssss???

So that's one mystery solved! Deactivating lipase implies scalding the freshly pumped milk before freezing it and zzzzZzzzZzz forget it. Baby Peanut waits for me to eat, whatever. It's good to know that's the issue, though, so next time we leave the baby with our parents for sitting I'll know to leave a fresh bottle of milk instead of pumping the day before. It only takes a few hours in the fridge or at room temperature for lipase to change the taste, so I guess the few bags I have left in the freezer are going to the trash.

Baby Peanut totally pooped on his dad yesterday. First time for everything! We went out to a cafe to get panini and he decided that was a good moment to finally poop after 4 days of no luck. I cracked up, Cookie was mortified/grossed/freaking out, it leaked through the diaper, the onesie and through Cookie's pants. We had to change the baby on one of the tables. We used our travel changer but still. Sorry, cafe owners! We are gross people! The baby was so much happier after that, though! And everybody knows this happy baby makes this momma happy :)

Rope's end

On Friday morning the dogs would not stay inside while I tried to go out to open the fence so we could take out our cars and Cookie could leave for work. The neighbors' dog was outside and our dogs wanted ouuuttt they wanted to bark and run and ouuuuttt and I had had a terrible night and the baby was crying inside and so I headed for the garden hose to scare the dogs into the house with some water. He stopped me, told me he knew I was angry but there was no reason to be mean to them. The dogs ran inside anyway the moment they saw me head for the hose, anyway. I said goodbye to him, with tears in my eyes, and I said it. "You don't understand."

----

I went out to work on Saturday and he stayed home wih the baby. My friend P picked me up, and when we arrived to K's house we found out her old lab Sophie was agonizing. We sat with them for a while, chatted with K's mom, petted the poor old thing -we've been working there for 6 months, I loved that dog- and P suggested we return later to do what were going to do, to give them some privacy.

We went to the other site, dealt with things there and headed back to my place. We ended up talking about our kids and our husbands for about an hour, just parked outside. When I went in, Cookie was pissed. "You could have come inside," he said. "This is not easy. I could have used a break."

He had the baby from 10 to 12:45. I just stared at him in disbelief. I'm sorry, I said. I don't know what else to tell you. He said it felt like I just didn't want to come in.

Can you blame me? I asked him. I said I wished I could have a break from the baby that wasn't me going to class or to work. "You were outside for an hour. You could have come in for tea or something. Given me a 15 minute break."

I didn't know what to say. I wondered if he could listed to himself.

He took a shower. I fed the baby.

I got angry. Angrier. I realized I never showered that morning, so I did. Took my time. So angry. Then it all turned to ashes. Sad. So tired. So ready to flee, to be done with everything.

The day got grayer and grayer, my mind slowing down to a halt.

K messaged me. Sophie had finally died. Where had I buried Max last February?

I took a nap while the baby ate. Woke up. He was playing on the computer, never said anything about lunch or supper. Eventually I gave up and cooked. I knew he was worried about me, perhaps maybe even a bit sorry for being angry at noon, but I didn't care. I couldn't muster energy to do anything. I wanted to sleep more than anything but I couldn't fall asleep for another nap.

I downloaded Ferber's book, How to solve your child's sleep problems, read the first four chapters. I don't like CIO methods, even controlled crying and gradual extintion sounds like too much for me, but I was ready to try anything. I needed sleep, and Cookie had previously been on my case about sleep training.

Baby Peanut cried for 45 minutes before falling asleep on his own, gradual extintion not feeling gentle at all. I wanted to die. I told Cookie as much. "Is there any rule in the book about quitting after an hour and just holding your baby and telling him you love him?" he asked. No. No such rule. The crying was killing us. He slept for only 40 minutes, and then we were back to wanting to eat to fall asleep.

My back hurts so much from picking him up and putting him down every hour or two. I gave up in the middle of the night, screw Ferber, I can't do it like this. Not while I'm this sleep deprived and tired.

We had an awful night, worst than the one before, I think.

But somehow I feel better, the weight of his words is finally slipping off me. He was right. In his own way, maybe he does understand. A 15 minute break would be nice.

Old beloved faces

We had an awful night last night. Baby Peanut woke up every two hours all night long, with a couple of stretches of 20 minutes between awakenings. I felt like I was losing it. Picking him up from the pack and play or from the bed can be kind of awkward -holy 17 pounds, baby!- and my back felt like it was going to give up.

After three students messaged me saying they were not making it to class today and a whole group telling me they were out on a visit and were going to come in late, I decided to skip school today. Screw it. I needed a break. So I went to order the day's construction materials after breakfast and then headed to my mom's. We went shopping for a baby chair, and I got an awesomeeee oneeee, and it was on sale, and we looked at clothes and mom bought a sweater and everything was really nice!

Then K sent me a message about how she thought the installation of the lighting fixtures was included on the budget, and it sent me into a tizzy of anxiety and thebudgetsayslightingfixturesarenotincluededaughnooaughaugh and that kind of destroyed my ability to decide if I should buy a baby bathtub or not. The one we have is my brother's, and his baby will be born in December and Peanut will be 8 months then so maybe I won't need a tub but then I don't want to shower twice every day also I always said bath time should be daddy time so *fizzles crackles explodes*

So I didn't buy the tub though I think I will be back to get it. We really won't have a changing station otherwise, and I don't want to rely on my brother not needing it to keep our routine.

Anyway! Wow, those were a lot of words about nothing. When I was going through my anxiety attack at the store, I also got a call from my best friend. He moved away a few years ago, then hooked up with one of the few real friends I've made after school and she moved away as well. They are in town! For a wedding! Surprise, did I want to have lunch? *fizzles crackles explodes with happines* I can't even begin to explain how good it is to see them, how much I miss my friends. I've been super lucky and I have seen all but one of them this year. It always hits me hard, realizing how lonely I feel when I say goodbye. These people, I chose them, and they chose me, and we work to keep our friendships going. It's not about the convenience of seeing each other at work, not the forced friendships of routine. These are my *friends*. I miss the hell out of them, and I'm incredibly lucky to have had a day with them, amidst so many difficult days.