The reason we need more women doctors (or, things my male psychiatrists didn't warn me about)

Because, apparently, rapid weaning from breastfeeding can cause or exaggerate (wow, I had NO idea how to spell that word) depression. Yeah, so that can help explain some of what I'm still feeling. Especially, the difficulty sleeping. My anti-depressants, for which I had to wean, may have brought this upon themselves. They are definitely having to work double time.

Good to keep in mind.

Would have been nice to know ahead of time.

Thankyou...thankyou...thankyou...thankyou

I've started feeling better. So soon after starting the medicine. I'm no longer expending all my energy trying to keep from falling apart. It was as if there were 100 little strings tied improperly to each other, the knots constantly untying, to keep me together, and I was spending all my time retying them as they slipped apart. And I was a collection of marbles in the middle, about to disperse if any knot opened. And now, I'm just a solid piece of clay. The strings can fall, all of them. I won't fall apart.

Yesterday was going to be my first day of gratitude, too, with the end of breastfeeding. 

But I hadn't counted on my milk supply. My body.

Many women wean gradually, dropping one feed every week. Or at least every few days. I did that last time too, even though I was pumping exclusively, and over a month, I was done. There was a last pumped bottle before starting anti-depressants last time and the pump got stored.

This time it's different. I've been producing a lot of milk, and it is going to be an uncomfortable, sometimes painful process to stop. I need to watch that I don't get an infection, to pump only a bit of milk until things are feeling better. And it means I've been feeling like "I should really breastfeed" a lot these last two days. It is making the gratitude-by-way-of-ignoring thing really hard. I'm constantly reminded that I could still be breastfeeding if I wasn't depressed. I'm still having to spend a non-negligible amount of time pumping and throwing it down the sink. And when I go check Google for any more hints on "rapid/emergency weaning", I'm having to avoid the sites that, in the middle of all the good advice, have one bullet point like "#5 make sure you're really ready to wean. most medical problems do not require weaning and you can find a way to continue breastfeeding." Ouch. No, no I can't. I already tried my best and it didn't work.

I tried, in quiet moments, falling asleep (which I can finally do, again!), to tell my body I want it to stop making milk. But that's a lie. Sure, I've made a choice, but I don't love my choice and I can't say that honestly. And then I remembered a poster I'd seen online, which said something like "This Sucks and Thank You are impossible to think at the same time." And it gave me a little window to crawl out of, and I just started thanking my body, for all it had done in the last 18 months to produce and nurture life. For being pregnant, giving up nutrients, giving up energy, pushing a baby out, holding and rocking him, and, feeding him. And, finally, for taking to these anti-depressants so well and letting me start feeling better.

So that's where I've come to a stop. At "Thank You", especially to the breasts, whenever I can. Because "This Sucks" is also hovering around a lot right now. Just, not as much as two days ago.

Ripping off the band-aid...to put on a...cast?

Ok, that metaphor isn’t going to work. Is it even a metaphor? I kind of can’t think anymore, so I’m not even sure.

Turns out, I can start anti-depressants right away, yay! Which means I also have to stop breastfeeding at the same time, boo. But it also means I won’t have as much time to mourn the end and I’m probably mourning more because I’m not on anti-depressants. boo-yay?

Tomorrow I stop one to start the other. Tomorrow I will be all about gratitude for what I did have, and the upside of ending this phase of life. I’m good at finding the upsides. I’ve already bought pesto sauce to go with dinner because who hasn’t eaten any onions or garlic for 5 months? Yeah, over here.

But today, I’m still sad. And I still get to grieve. I’m letting myself still be sad (how is it that it is so hard to allow oneself a bit of sadness, too?), and tomorrow things will be different. And tomorrow night it may be Baby J’s turn to grieve a little. Or, he’ll drink his bottle, snuggle into my or M’s arms, and get all sleepy again anyway. Who knows.

All I know is that sad is ok. And then it is okay for me to do something extreme to make sad be over.

This is not going to be very coherent

It is time. To stop breastfeeding.

I don't really want to. We've worked so hard and it seems to be going well enough, and baby J isn't eating solids with much enthusiasm yet.

But he also isn't sleeping through the night, due to colds. And it is starting to take a serious toll on me. So here I am, a second time, ready to start anti-depressants.

I wish I wasn't here. I wish I were somewhere else. With him. With me.

But I can't sleep very well anymore, even when he is napping. My brain is just too alert. And I'm in tears a lot - once a day. That is a lot.

So even though many of those tears are about stopping breastfeeding him, the fear of being past my childbearing years, the fear of lost connection and not being able to soothe him as I have for the last 8 months, I need to do something to feel better again. To not see every day as so much of a struggle. To get a bit of levity back.

I've looked at each breastfeeding session over the last few weeks as possibly my last, so I've taken time to stop and notice and just be present. And I can tell you, that even having done that I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I noticed it or cherished it enough. It is a major milestone for me, for women who go through it, and it can feel so final, so sad, and I guess that is just the way it is.

I don't want to find any solutions for not having to stop, though, because I'm so very tired. Of all these work arounds to try to make things just a bit better, to hold on just a bit longer. And finding websites about drugs I could take and continue feeding just make me more overwhelmed and don't actually provide comfort. I need some chemical help.

So there we go. A new phase of life coming. And, as a friend very wisely pointed out to me, having gone through a similar stage, while it is the end of physical fertility for me, creativity is also fertility, and there is still a lot of that ahead. It doesn't feel like a great trade right now, at this moment, but I think on the other side of starting anti-depressants, it probably will.

Time to leap, and hope the net appears.

Practice what you...blog

Last night I was awake at 1am, unable to sleep, because I had just woken and fed the baby.

Tonight, I am awake at 1am, unable to sleep, because the baby hasn't woken yet.

In my tossing and turning and anxiousness because the baby wasn't crying, A, whom I was sleeping next to, and who had just clocked me in the head in her sleep, woke and started quietly crying.

"Oh no, just don't get louder and wake the baby!" my most contradictory brain thought.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"I don't want to sleep alone." She told me.

At which point I proceeded to not really listen to what I had written about last time. While I didn't try to talk her out of thinking she was going to be alone sometimes (like when I couldn't sleep), I tried to wrap up the whole interaction immediately. Turns out, I'm really bad with letting my kid have her worries or pain and sitting with her in it. I'm scared of where it is going, that it will get worse if I sit there with her in that emotional space. I'm scared that it will be about me, probably.

Let's just agree, I'm not very good at staying with her when she is sad. Or mad. About something that involves me. That is the part I personally cannot tolerate. And wish I could.

Tolerating someone else's suffering

I think one of the hardest things to learn is to let someone you love be in pain. To not try to take it away with one or a 100 different suggestions on "how to fix it", or to not just ignore it and tell them to "cheer up, it gets better." But to just be able to tolerate another person suffering, and to be able to sit with them, in person, on the phone, over email and let them have their process. And yet, I think it is the most useful thing, the most helpful, that any of us can do for someone who is going through some difficult time.

And I think it is selfish to try to fix it or make it go away, because we ourselves feel uncomfortable with it. It is not ours to dismiss or to pretend to take on for the other person. And it is one of the least helpful things a person can do.

I've learned this from the really excellent therapists in my life (and it is part of how I think you spot an excellent one). Their capacity to sit with me, in tears, and instead of trying to talk me past it, to say "I see your pain. I'm sorry. Tell me about it." and then just listen. Because I also think most of us are strong enough to endure much of the pain if we have someone to share it with, to air it out in front of and bring it into the light with. To talk about it and diffuse some of its power and know we are not alone in seeing it. To name it and know that it isn't so overwhelming that it incapacitates even those around us.

Because here is the thing. I've realized that breastfeeding is just getting more (not less) tense for me and Jonas. I can't feed him when he's sleepy during the day because that isn't helping his napping and nighttime sleep. I can feed him in the middle of the night. Other times, he's too distracted and the milk flows just so much more slowly than from the bottle. And I'm going to have to stop all this trying, which just ends up in tears and irritation. I can pump during the day and feed him at night while it still works. And what I don't need, is for someone to try to stop my tears, because then I don't get to mourn this ending, this never-quite-found-our-groove. And I don't get over it and find peace with the new solution. Because it is sad, and I will need to cry some so that I'm not crying more later. And so often every day. Because, sure, you can find 100 things I could try to not need to stop, and none of them make our family more peaceful with more time to be in the present with each other. And you can tell me "at least you fed him this long" and that isn't the point for me.  The most helpful things right now have been: (1) people who have been in a similar situation, whom I've found on blogs, and (2) people who have just expressed their sympathy and let me be. May I be so gracious as to offer similar behavior to others in the future.

Setting the bar low

Two cans of ready-to-go caffeine in the middle. Two small, shelf storage containers for my coffee at work.

And a photo orientation that pretty much sums up how life is going right now. Just trying to make it in to work on the days I'm supposed to be there, and keep up with the minimum I need to do.