A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Yes, in the early morning I am packing up my kids, three suitcases, a stroller, two carseats, a husband, two grumpy kids, and a partridge in a pear tree and leaving for the lovely island of Maui.

I need a vacation. It is time.

Be jealous.

Current Mood: Cool

Have you seen anything about that show on TLC, Toddlers and Tiaras?

I can’t watch a full episode without my chocolate and peanut butter ice cream making a comeback, but I’ve seen plenty of clips and segments of shows on the internet and read more “news” articles about it than I care to embarrassingly admit. Like watching a couple in a bad relationship and placing bets on how long it takes before one of them gets a black eye (yeee hawwww!), it’s kind of a guilty pleasure to keep tabs on this kind of crap.

Do people actually LIKE this kind of crap on TV, or do they just watch it with a horrified, sick fascination like I do? Do people watch it thinking: Wow! What a great idea! I should totally doll up my kid and try to enter her onto this amazing show!

No seriously, do they? Does anyone ACTUALLY think piling tons of makeup on their toddler, fixing their hair into an updo that rivals Dolly Parton’s golden locks, zipping them into a wedding gown made by Vera Wang, stuffing their little feet into a pair of hooker stilettos, and watching them parade on stage like a done-up poodle (poor little girls) is a healthy and positive way of life for their child?

Look, I am by nature a pretty damn open-minded individual. I don’t care how you raise your kids, the choices you make, the parenting styles you’re comfortable with, or even if you choose to spank your kid on the bottom when nothing else is working… even if it’s not necessarily the choice I would make. As long as it’s legal, I’m going to make the assumption that it works for you, and it’s just not my business to tell you that you’re wrong. You know why? BECAUSE ONE SIZE SURE AS HELL DOESN’T FIT ALL, and just because I may not agree with your choices does NOT make you a bad parent.

However, this show? You know what presses my tweak-out-and-twitch button more than anything else? The moms. With risk of sounding horribly judgmental and asinine, I have to resist the urge to smash Ralph’s screen with a baseball bat when I see the way these women behave and treat their baby girls. Plain and simple? They’re not doing this for the well-being of their daughters, they’re doing this completely for themselves. “You’re not going to screw this up, right?” How on earth could a mother say that to her teeny little kid? No wonder the girls are such snooty little brats. It’s not the girls competing with one another- it’s their mothers shooting each other sneers and raising their noses.

Am I just being over-sensitive and close minded about this? I actually feel like in some ways, it’s a form of child abuse. Those girls must spend an astronomical amount of time preparing for these competitions. How about reading your kids a bedtime story, making sure they feel loved and secure, and focusing on education so that they have the necessary tools to soar through school? Or are those priorities just completely forgotten? And crap, those kids are SO NASTY (not their fault) what kind of horrendous adults are they being set up to become?

Please tell me I’m not the only one who wants to knock some sense into the people that encourage this kind of garbage. Then again, maybe this isn’t that big of a deal and I’m just a freak.

Current Mood: Alarmed

My little too-big-for-her-britches-and-smart-as-a-whip booger graduated from preschool last week. It’s officially “summer vacation” around here.

And you wanna know what I found this kid doing this morning as I made a lazy exit from my soft bed in my upstairs bedroom? I walked downstairs into the kitchen to find her and her little sister celebrating her new educational freedom by scooping ICE CREAM into bowls. And popsicle wrappers winked at me from the table. They both stared at me with HUGE eyes when they got caught red-handed.

I am the amazing, negligent mother. What makes the whole scenario even better is that after I almost died laughing, I finished scooping a small amount of ice cream into the-half-finished bowl and let them eat it for breakfast while asking Julie not to do it again.

To think that my postpartum depression with these girls was crippling, varying from unbearable all the way to flat-out paranoia and suicidal psychosis, is inconceivable now that I am past it. I have never been the girl who suffers from PMS or hormonal-related mood swings. I’ve always just quite level-headed. I get to play with my dear co-pilot, Bipolar Disorder instead. But at the time, it wasn’t diagnosed, and I had never experienced what role postpartum hormones can possibly play in an unstable mind. I found out, and I suddenly understood why mental hospitals are packed with people wandering the halls with vacant eyes or sitting in the corner batting at imaginary bugs.

I breastfed both my girls because I knew that it was, beyond a doubt, far healthier than shoving a bottle of formula in their mouths. Hindsight is 20/20. I should probably have risked the slight possibility that their IQs might drop, you know, a whole point on the scale if I let a cow or soybean feed them instead. Because what I later learned made so much sense that I probably could have avoided the whole trip to the psycho hospital had I just listened to my body in the first place.

I HATED breastfeeding. HATED. In fact, there was one solitary moment where I kind of enjoyed it- and that was when I nursed my friend’s foster son, a newborn drug baby who had just been weaned from meth. I babysat for him one day, and it broke my heart seeing a baby so listless and pathetic. I scooped him up, shoved his mouth on my boob, and that baby didn’t want to let go. After that, his eyes were open, he looked at me, and my friend was thrilled to see a new baby when she came to pick him up. That moment was so special, so amazing, because I knew that for whatever reason, my boob was a comfort for a baby who needed it most.

That was the one time that the horrible hormonal manic rush didn’t shoot through my body when I nursed. Most women like, even love, the way it feels. I couldn’t stand it. It tickled my nipple to the point where I wanted to scream or cry or throw my shoe through the wall. Once the let-down happens and milk starts to gush, I’ve seen dozens of moms get this sleepy, smily, dreamy, relaxed look in their eyes due to the release of prolactin, a supposedly awesome hormone that makes moms fall madly in love with their baby and forget the fact that they haven’t slept more than 2 hours at a time in the last 6 days.

That whole prolactin thing? Yeah, that was a myth for me. Instead of relaxing, I felt like I could hardly breathe while electricity shot its way up my spine. Night time feedings always forced my mind and thoughts to run a marathon, and I became the amazing, unsleeping insomniac. I’d get a burst of negative, manic energy, and I’d stare at the clock, sometimes shaking, wondering how long that freaking baby at my breast was going to feed off of me like a leech. See, that’s not a normal reaction. I didn’t think of my girls like that when they were off the boob, just on it.

Later, during all my treatment, I learned that for women struggling with a postpartum mood disorder who have that kind of reaction to nursing frequently have prolonged and more severe difficulty with depression, anxiety, and psychosis. My uncomfortable mental and physical reaction to breastfeeding? That was most likely my body’s way of trying to tell me, “This isn’t healthy for you… your kids will be just fine sucking off a bottle. Give it up and stop being such a stubborn brat.”

In other words, if I hadn’t breastfed, I probably would have gotten away with a minor version of the extreme postpartum mood disorder that I experienced. Almost three years after my little stinker was born, though, I can hardly remember what I was actually going through during that time. My mind was a black hole.

But see, that was then, and this is today. That picture above is me, truly proud and happy to have just watched my 5-year-old walk across the stage and accept her preschool diploma. Somehow, I survived those miserable postpartum crazy hormones, and now I’m just as happy- if not more so since I know what it’s like to be on the other side- than the “other moms” to be a mother.

Yay me! I’ve really gotten somewhere!

And as a side note, I love that color blue on myself. Normally I tear myself to shreds when I have to look at a picture of myself… but this time, I just see a happy mom with two amazing girls wearing a lovely blue top.

Current Mood: Happy

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You can choose up to two answers. As always, your vote is anonymous unless you choose to comment. And even then, you can make those anonymous.

Tell me: How alone in this world of mental strife am I?

Current Mood: Playful

1. Ugh, the time I felt like I *had* to tell my mom I was having sex. I was a sophomore in college, and I’d waited quite a bit longer than everyone else I knew to lose my V-card. My mom, a hard-core-wait-’till-you’re-married advocate (despite being a total hypocrite in that realm, naturally) was treating me like shit because I was dating this (older) guy that she hated. It was all she could talk about, and so finally, I admitted it had happened. What I didn’t tell her or anyone else at the time was that it hadn’t been consensual with this guy, and I was so ashamed that I just couldn’t even admit it to myself or anyone else. I never should have told her. I spent the next few years putting up her making me feel like like a dirty slut, leaving printed-up information about HIV and other STDS, and making off-color cracks about how tainted and dirty I was. Every time I think of that, I just wish to God I hadn’t said a damn word about it. I needed support for the trauma I’d dealt with, not someone damning me to hell over a mistake.
2. The morning I moved to Seattle, my dad broke down and cried when he said goodbye. Up until that point, I thought he was incapable of tears, and I was horribly shaken by his pain. If I’d known just how badly it was going to affect him, would I have dealt with moving here differently? Would I have second-guessed it? Was the move really worth the pain I was going to inflict on so many people, even though it was a better choice for us?
3. I made this demo-tape at a news broadcast station during my internship in college. I’d written this clever story, did the shoot outside onsite, and even had the clothing, hair, and makeup to play the part. Upon seeing it, I knew that I was never going to pursue a career in Journalism. I sounded like a young, immature girl, my long hair looked ridiculous, and my expressions were unconfident. Staring at my face on screen, I realized how much I hated the way I looked and sounded in this unnatural role, and there was not a chance in hell that I was marketable as a reporter. I turned away from that screen, the internship, finished my degree since I was on the last year of it, and enrolled in a post-bacclaurate program before that semester was over. I’d spent years pursuing this degree that I was unsure about from the get-go, and all it got me was this crappy demo-tape that proved to me that once again, I’d made a poor decision.
4. During my days at ballroom studios, I was hired to go on a cruise. The man who asked if I’d be his dance teacher for the trip was a kind old gentleman in his mid-80s. Had I known that I’d be trapped on a ship playing the role of escort (minus the sex- thank the Lord) for the 3-day cruise, I would have sprinted off a cliff to avoid it. It was, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable weekend of my life while I quickly learned that my role was to get as done up as possible, dress like a gold-digger, and spend the weekend on this old man’s arm while he spent money on me, held my hand, and kissed my cheek. I felt sick as the people around me glanced in my direction with smirks and I felt like my personal space was completely compromised. When I talked to my boss about the situation, I was basically told to suck it up, enjoy it, and go with it- that’s why I was hired, after all.
5. And are you ready for a good one? I saved the best for last… I once had a guy I was sort of seeing (yes, just sort-of seeing… shut up… it was a short-lived phase) ask, “How do I measure up?” when he pulled out his (dinky) peen in front of me for the first time. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph… how do I answer something like that? You wanna know what I told him? I cared about him, so I very cooly rep(lied)… “Well, uh, I’ve seen bigger, and I’ve seen smaller (I’ve changed a few diapers in my time), so you fall somewhere in the middle. And besides, why worry about that, anyway? From what I hear it’s not the size, but how you use it that matters.” Was that so freaking incredibly kind and gracious of me, or what? (Bows and accepts Oscar). Looking back, I probably should have told him the truth… I just hope he doesn’t have a lifetime of thinking he’s hot shit and doesn’t have to work his ass off to please a woman in bed because I didn’t have the heart to be honest. Oh well. Happily, his little dick will never be my problem. Bah ha ha ha! And to be honest, I’m not sure what makes me cringe more… the fact that I saw his teeny wiener, or the fact that I lied by omission about its size.

For some reason, my mind is taking a walk through the cringe-worthy moments of my recent years today. But as much as these memories catch my attention from time to time, I think all the therapy I’ve been taking over the last two years has been truly helpful. Yes, I shudder to think of some of these, but it’s more like a minor “eek” than something that sticks with me to agonize over for hours. And at least that last one makes me laugh out loud more than anything!

Current Mood: Mischievous