No, my bad habits are more along the line of drinking coffee and soda all day instead of water, never exercising, eating my feelings, not writing, letting my anxiety overwhelm me, that sort of thing.

My house was getting cleaned, but I was doing far less than half the work.

That issue right there has been a big contributor to my recent anxiety- and depression-riddled state. When I was on bedrest, my husband and mom took over most of the household tasks. There were a few things I could manage from the bed/couch, but mostly I felt helpless and useless.

Then, as new parents we struggled with the lack of sleep, dear God will I ever sleep again routine that inherently comes with a newborn. As Mini E has gotten older, her naps, feedings, and even poops have come on a more regular schedule. But those first few months were rough, and not just because of the parenting learning curve (OMG so steep someone get me some climbing gear).

But more than that, we weren’t happy with our day to day lives… we didn’t like living in the northwest, we didn’t see ourselves ever being able to afford a house, J was feeling stagnant at work, we just wanted a different lifestyle. We knew the answer was to move like we’d been discussing for years, but the stress produced from waiting for all of those details to fall into place took its toll.

We’re lucky that we have a strong marriage, because the worst it got was a few instances of us being short with each other. And I may have slammed a door in frustration (in front of our friends, not one of my finer moments), but no real arguments. I think it’s because we are very much on the same team. We don’t fight over “who does more”.

We both know that marriage is a give and take, for the long haul, insert other favorite cliche here. For the last few years, J has done more. He’s done this so that I could heal, get pregnant, keep the pregnancy, give birth, successfully breastfeed, and take care of our daughter. Now it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.

It’s time for me to take over the majority of the shopping, cooking, cleaning, so he can focus on this transition in his job.

Also? I want to do those things. I long to do them. I love my job. I want to be better at it. I want to feel that sense of satisfaction from putting away a freshly washed load of towels. I want to watch my daughter sign for “more” of the food that I cooked for her. I want her to lick the kitchen floor that I mopped.

OK, maybe not that last one.

Anyway, today is the day we buckle down and focus. The holidays are over, we’ve recovered from our Welcome to the East Coast colds, and we’ve had a chance to catch our breath and look back on all that we’ve survived as a family in the last few years.

It’s time to unpack the final boxes, hang up the pictures and curtains, and start our new lives.

There are times I can sit with my angst, in fact it drives me. There are times when it overwhelms me and I write posts like this, that cause my best friend to call me to make sure I’m not going to “jump off a bridge”.

We talked about anxiety, and postpartum anxiety, and mothering, and how very soon, for the first time in 15 years we’re going to live near each other again.

This move has been my reset button. The closer it gets to the the date we’re leaving, and the more pieces that fall into place, the more my anxiety lifts. I can see and feel again, and the answers seem clearer and easier to reach.

This leads me to the belief that my symptoms were primarily situational. Like I have my whole life, I’m simply riding waves of depression and anxiety that come and go. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t.

I’ve been talking to other mamas, too. Mamas that have postpartum mood disorders, those that have regular old mood disorders, and mamas that have never had more than a twinge of the “baby blues”. And most importantly, I talked to my doctor’s office. The consensus seems to be that the lack of bonding and attachment is an integral part of the postpartum mood disorder diagnosis, and without that symptom, you just have a regular old mood disorder.

This distinction is important to the logical part of me that wants to sort, label, and understand all things. But it’s unimportant to the emotional side of me. Pain is pain, right?

Except when it’s not. Saying I have postpartum anxiety feels like wearing a hat that doesn’t fit and doesn’t belong to me. And in some weird way, it feels like I’m taking away from the pain of those that do suffer with lack of bonding and feelings of ambivalence about motherhood. I can’t even imagine how painful and disorienting that would be on top of already feeling depressed and anxious.

At this point, I’ve decided not to take medication. My symptoms are still manageable, and they’re improving every day. Despite the fact that in three weeks from today we will be moving across the country, and I haven’t packed a single box. We don’t even know what our new address is going to be yet.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going to drown in details and to-do lists. I get overwhelmed. I cry. I want to throw things. Those times are starting to get outnumbered by the times I feel excited, exhilarated, and optimistic.

I arrange our furniture into imaginary houses with big windows.

I google local Catholic Churches.

I look up babywearing groups, cloth diapering groups, the local la leche league contact.

I dream of new friends, new routines, change.

I dream of being myself again.

I very nearly had a day like that Monday.  Fortunately the only thing actually different about my life is some decisions were made and some insights gained.

I would tell you the whole long story, but… no, there is too much, let me sum up.*

It turns out my mom was experiencing the first migraine of her life, but did you know sometimes those things can cause part of your face to go numb?  There aren’t many things more terrifying than getting a call from your mom, who’s a nurse, and hearing her voice sound kinda like it does when you go to the dentist.  Hearing her say that she’s worried something’s really wrong.  Seeing part of her eye and her mouth not respond when she talks or smiles.

The next few hours were a blur of praying that my last coherent conversation with my mom wasn’t going to be about which meds she had recently taken – shouldn’t it have been more… profound? and helplessly straightening her blankets in the ER bed while we waited for CAT scan results and I tried not to think about things like rehab, or God forbid, advanced directives, wills and funerals.

Fortunately the CAT scan showed nothing – no ticking time bombs of any sort – and the pain decreased significantly and the feeling in her face came back when they gave her migraine medicine.  So we left with a migraine diagnosis, a prescription, and a large medical bill.

You know how people describe having some moment of clarity during a trauma where all of sudden their life has new meaning?

Yeah, that didn’t happen to me.

But. To some extent my social work training kicked in.  While I was falling apart emotionally on the inside, my brain immediately went into planning mode.  At the time, I was afraid the very least I would have to deal with is a parent who couldn’t work anymore and would need some mild rehab.

But every scenario in my mind involved all of us going home to Pittsburgh.  There just wasn’t a question.  I wanted my daddy. I wanted the rest of my family around. I wanted familiarity.  I wanted a family member to leave my eventual children with when Jerrad’s at work and one of my parents needs something.  I want my eventual children to know their cousins and their grandparents.  I want us to be able to live in such a way that we can still afford to make frequent visits back to Oregon to see Jerrad’s family.

(I keep saying “eventual” because if one of you asks if I’m pregnant I will be at defcon 1.  Wait, is that the worst one? Because that’s the one I mean.  I go back to the doctor on the 27th and I’ll find out if we can start trying again.)

The relocation plan has always involved mom coming with us and living with/near us in some sort of mother-in-law suite, or apartment or something.  We were trying to be open about which city for various reasons that honestly now seem silly.

Nothing is more important than family.

So, there it is.  We’re moving home to Pittsburgh.  Many things still have to fall into place before this can happen, so it’s not like I’ve started packing.  I can’t even describe what a relief it is to finally have a decision made and one direction in which to focus our energies.

At times it won’t be fantastic – every family has their moments.  Our family vacations are referred to as “family fiascos” and with good reason. At times one of us won’t talk to the other for months over some perceived slight or other.   And, well, this sums up what happens when I sit at a table with my whole family:

In short, we’re a typical family.

* I’m not explaining this reference, because if I have to we shouldn’t be friends.

When last we spoke, Jerrad and I were trying to sort out where we wanted to move.  We’re still trying to sort that out, but some recent events have made some of the answers much clearer.  Although not exactly in the way that I would have liked.

I quit my job last Friday.  It was a very abrupt, but necessary decision.  I decided to just sum it up for you guys like I summed it up in an email to one of my friends:

It’s mostly more of the same – IBS, chronic fatigue, and all the shit growing in my uterus. I was in so much pain when I woke up on Friday that I knew not only could I not go in, I can’t do that kind of shift work at all anymore.

And my girly parts problems are just getting worse and more painful, and I know I’m going to need two different kinds of surgeries. And in October is when we’ve been trying for a year, so then I’ll be infertile, all official-like. Which obviously sucks.

I think I’m overall just really fucking pissed and sad that I have health problems that affect my functioning this much. I just want to be able to do what I used to do. Plus all this crap means I can never, ever let my health insurance lapse.

Which brings me to the next point, which is that now we can’t just pick up and move. We *have* to do it so that he has a job – with benefits – before we can even think about moving.

So, is everybody all caught up now? Basically, I’m “officially” infertile,  my intestines are trying to kill me from the inside out and trolls are now executing their well-planned hostile takeover of my uterus.  Apparently the only treatment for these sorts of trolls is to have yet more sharp pokey metal objects inserted into my girly-parts.  And this troll execution service is insanely expensive and requires me to keep this thing called health insurance.

Do you know what has become my new least favorite phrase?  “pre-existing conditions”  This little phrase means that I can’t be without health insurance ever again in my life.

I’ve spent the last almost week feeling sad, mad, frustrated and helpless.  As has my husband I’m sure.  It can’t be easy to watch your wife be sick and know you can’t make it go away.

I’m really sad about quitting the job, too.  Stop laughing!  I’m totally serious.  Some of you might remember that I had a few concerns about taking the job in the first place because I was worried the shift work wouldn’t fit so well with my health problems, and sure enough I was right.

But aside from that, I really liked the work.  I liked the facility, the kids, my coworkers, the way they ran the program, and being just an on-call helped me detach enough to do (what I hoped was) a good job and then be able to go home and not stress.  In many ways, it was a perfect job.

I’ll stop with that topic for now, because I suspect my feelings about my work future could take up an entire post on their own.  I will say one more slightly emo thing, then I’ll move on.  I realize that quitting the way I did caused an inconvenience, and if there was any way to avoid that, I would have.  But in the numerous messages I left and in the resignation I sent in writing, I made it clear that I was quitting due to a medical crisis and how I wish circumstances had been different because I enjoyed the job so much.

Not one person from there has called or responded to see if I’m alright.  Not one.  (Except for one coworker who’s a facebook friend).  Even though in my messages I could barely be professional because I was in so much pain and so upset.  I suppose I should take that as a good sign, right? My loss wasn’t even noticed, so they must be managing the schedule just fine with one less on-call.  And I should take it as a sign that moving on was the right thing.

Speaking of signs.  Lots of people are reminding me to pray, which I appreciate, but trust me, I have been.  I’m Catholic, so we got that shit down pretty good.  I’m saying rosaries and everything.  AND I’m even doing it all “right”.  Like instead of begging God to just get me the fuck up out of here please before I kill someone, I’m praying for guidance.

What I would prefer to have happen is like to maybe have a nice dream about Jesus where we’re like walking in a field or something and he’s all, “so, this is what’s up” and he tells me exactly what we’re supposed to do.  Also, if he wanted to heal me, I would be totally cool with that.

In all seriousness, we did get the answers we need to figure out the first part of the plan.  The fact that I can’t be without health insurance, and we aren’t about to drain our savings on COBRA payments, means he finds a job, then we move wherever it is that he finds that  job.  As he’s been looking at what’s out there, it’s confirmed a suspicion he already had that if he takes a few months to earn some certifications and try to take on new projects at work, not only will he be more employable, but likely to land a better job with a bigger salary in our new city.

Also, I kind of like the troll execution service I already have, and I wouldn’t mind letting them finish the job.  It could take anywhere from 3-4 months.  Incidentally, that’s about the amount of time it will likely take Jerrad to get his certifications.

And.  Since I can’t work right now, it seems to be as good a time as any to start practicing being  a one-income family.  A spreadsheet fueled budget discussion has determined we can do this as renters in this area. Homeowners, no way.  Renters, yes.

One last point.  Have I mentioned enough in past blogs how much I hate and despise the house we live in? Besides being impossibly tiny and not having a dishwasher, it has so many other issues that if I list them all I’ll start twitching.  Did I mention they recently raised our rent?

A quick internet search has revealed that we can find a bigger, nicer place in this area for the same or less than we are paying now.  The money we’ll pay in deposits will be evened out by the fact that we won’t pay $300 a month in electric bills to freeze our asses off this winter because the insulation in this house is so bad. And there are plenty of month-to-month and 6 month leases available.  I refuse to sign a one year lease.  Like, stomped my foot refused.  Not that he seriously suggested that.

So, to sum up the revised plan.  We are moving into a new place here before October 1.  While here we will have trolls removed and he’ll study for his test thingies.  We can start the first culling of our many belongings so we have less to move to our new city.  And I plan on spending at least the first week making out with the dishwasher.

This health crisis forced us to look at things in a new way, and that’s good.  Although the revised plan isn’t ideally what I wanted, I know it’s the right thing because I feel at peace and happy with the decision.