Title of post

I used to be a fiction writer. I still have stories that I wrote before I could really write that my mother saved for me. I find them particularly amusing because they’re very short and they were printed out on our old dot matrix with clip art for illustrations.

When I was in high school I had some very excellent English teachers who told me I had a talent for writing. I would lose myself in my stories, create characters that were a little bit of me, write out the situations I was most afraid of. I was always good at copying the styles of my favourite writers – Dickens and Salinger being the easiest to emulate. Short sentences, deep characterization. One of the stories I remain most proud of is a story that was meant as a tribute to Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish, with a little bit of Canadiana thrown in (I set it in Brandon, Manitoba and my main character had season tickets to the Wheat Kings, as you should if you live in Brandon, Manitoba).

When I went to college and started writing in news style, I stopped writing fiction. I don’t know if I was just too busy, or too tired of writing anything when I got home, but the fiction in me went away and it’s never really come back. I miss it.

I feel as if at some point between childhood and here I lost my imagination. I used to be very good at playing pretend, with friends or by myself. I used to lose myself in books, just fall right in. When I was with high school I had notebooks that I carried with me all the time and I was always writing, sometimes stories, sometimes stream of consciousness, always writing the things that filled up my mind.

Now I have notebooks that act more as journals and I get irritated that I’m always writing about me. Where are all the people I used to build in my head? Where are the ideas that used to flow like water.

I tried to get it back when I did NaNoWriMo this year, but even that was about my fears about my life and I was never totally happy with the characters, they seemed so fake. I want to try again when November comes around, but now I wonder if it’s even worth it. Honestly, I’m spending my mat leave thinking a lot about what I want from my life. I’m going to have to figure it out and start demanding things of myself.

by AEB on August 23, 2010
filed in Personal

Not a valid opinion

Two days ago I read, along with a lot of women I talk to, the AOL article about Shaquan Duley. I read Her Bad Mother’s reaction and I read the open letter to a so-called expert on Pretty Babies.

I’ve let it sit for two days that this women, a criminal profiler that should never have been portrayed as an expert on this case or on Post-Partum Depression or Post-Partum Psychosis, declared that my problems are not chemical, unless I’m one of those “rare cases.”

I’ve let it sit, but I still can’t help but take it personally. I don’t think there’s any way to not take it personally since I’ve been dealing with depression for 13 years of my life, I’ve been suicidal on more than one occasion, and apparently, according to this criminal profiler who has no experience working with women affected by PPD, I just need to suck it up and stop feeling sorry for myself.

What I can tell Ms. Pat Brown is that when I was in the depths of my depression I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, I was feeling sorry for everyone around me. When I was suicidal it was because those around me didn’t deserve the burden. When I was in the depths of post-partum depression, I felt that my daughter would be much better off with Joe’s memory of me.

I didn’t ever have feelings of wanting to harm her. It was the first question my caretakers asked and the thing I paid the most attention to. Hurting her never entered my mind because, as I told my doctor through tears, I knew that she was not the problem, I was the problem, and I didn’t want her to inherit my problems by watching me. I specifically didn’t want her to suffer, but I did have anxiety.

Every time we left the house together I felt as though I was going to do something that would cause some sort of accident. I might trip while I was carrying her, or lose the stroller, or forget to check my blind spot, and then she would get hurt. In that way I felt as though I was a danger to her.

I worked with two midwives and a licensed doctor who all agreed that I was suffering from PPD and needed to be monitored and medicated. I was actually lucky to have been suffering from depression for that long because I know my own signs. I see the appetite changes, the mood swings, the sleep problems, the voice in my head that starts to point out my mistakes and all the ways I’m not quite good enough. I warned everyone that I was at risk for PPD and I told them what I was feeling.

I say lucky because another woman might not have known her signs, might not have had the clarity, that soon after giving birth to tell someone what she was feeling. Lucky because I can’t be embarrassed about it anymore. My depression is part of me and any stigma just floats away.

If one other woman who is suffering finds me and recognizes herself, I’ve done some good. If a woman sees Pat Brown’s comments and takes them to heart, something very, very bad could result.

If you don’t get help, you’re not going to get better, and this woman who decided she had the right to speak about something she knows nothing about, has the ability, because of the way she was represented in that article, to get into women’s heads and make them think they don’t need help because they’re just fundamentally flawed – And that will send them further into the darkness.

4 Comments by AEB on August 20, 2010
filed in Issues, PPD, Parenting, Personal

It’s what’s for dinner

I’ve come to the realization over the past few days that I am very good at taking care of my daughter – filling all her needs, paying her attention, pushing her limits a little bit every day – but I’m terrible when it comes to taking care of myself. I always have been, so I can’t even blame the fact that I’m a new mom focusing solely on the baby.

I have always been terrible at getting the sleep I need (she writes at almost 11 pm when she knows the baby will be up by 7 am). I am terrible at feeding myself if there’s no one else to be fed. This is becoming a problem because I’m at home taking care of my own lunches. Breakfast is fairly easy – an English muffin, a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit, even a muffin or a smoothie – I can usually figure out breakfast. Dinner can be more complicated, since we’re often both tired, and I know it will be more complicated when I go back to work and we have more of a time crunch, but it’s doable. I have go-to recipes, I’m learning more, we have the slow cooker, things can be pulled together.

Lunch has been a problem for me since I started being responsible for my own. It’s so bad that I’m already concerned about what I’m going to pack for the baby girl’s lunches when she starts school – IN THREE YEARS.

I have trouble coming up with lunches for myself, and I have access to a fridge and a microwave, and I’m allowed to use peanut butter. When I’m at home I can usually snack through the day and not ever be really hungry, but some days, especially since the baby started crawling and thus wants to be moving all the time, I don’t get a chance to slow down and really think about eating. Like yesterday and today for example.

Yesterday and today I went through my usual routine of feeding the baby breakfast and having mine at the same time, but then for some reason I didn’t eat lunch when I fed her lunch, and then when I realized I was hungry she was ready to go again and I didn’t have time to actually stop and put anything together for me.

Today for lunch I ate a banana and a chocolate chip cookie at 4 pm. I can only imagine what that’s doing to my metabolism. It’s strange, when the baby was newborn, I didn’t eat lunch because I was often too depressed to put the effort in and then I started giving in to cravings and eating a lot of junk throughout the day to just forgetting to eat, or putting it off, or just giving up, and then I get frustrated because it shouldn’t be this difficult.

The fact is that I know I can’t just set the baby aside while I prepare food for myself, but if I know that why can’t I plan for it better?

I’m well aware that I feel better when I snack through the day, and that fits better with the shape my days take, so why don’t I think about what I like to snack on and write that plan into our grocery list?

I’m nearly 30, it’s really high time I figure out how to take care of me, isn’t it?

6 Comments by AEB on August 19, 2010
filed in 30lbsbyBlissdom, Personal

What now?

While the BlogHer conference was happening in New York I tried to follow along with all the women I knew who were there. One of the things that caught my eye was a few people I follow on Twitter using the hashtag #changeagents.

It’s a concept I’ve heard of before, but I had no idea that BlogHer had planned a track at this year’s conference about it. If I had known there is a good chance I would have desperately wanted to be there.

I blog, I tweet, I get out and meet people. I talk politics and I talk babies and I talk about me, me, me. I haven’t really defined myself in the online world, though I fall more and more into the category of Mommy blogger (which isn’t a bad thing, considering I’m a mom with a blog), but I do want to use my voice.

There are a lot of issues I am passionate about and I have blogged about some of them in the past as things come up, but I don’t consistently fight for what I believe in in any forum. I need to decide if there is anything that I care deeply enough about to expose myself to cruel comments from people who don’t know anything about my situation.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference, it’s part of the reason I’ve followed the path that’s brought me here, but what’s next?

by AEB on August 18, 2010
filed in Issues, Personal

Sigh.

(As a side note on the title, I used to read a lot of Archie comics, and there would be a speech bubble that said ‘sigh’ and I thought that meant that you were actually supposed to say the word.)

My mood has been up and down over the past couple of days. I can feel it. I’ll be fine, everything will be fine and then suddenly for no reason other than a second ticking by I will feel like melting into tears. I try to find a reason – maybe I felt like an outsider at the playdate yesterday, maybe it’s because I ate Mcdonald’s, maybe it’s because the puppy is acting strangely and I wish I could give him more attention. Maybe the person I really am is trying to break through the persona I’ve set up. Maybe I’m overtired. Maybe it’s because I haven’t exercised in a couple of days. Maybe the fact that I only have four months left at home is starting to sink in.

Maybe I’m concerned about the state of the economy.

Or maybe, just maybe, I have post-partum depression and I get these highs and lows and I need to just give myself some friggin’ slack already.

I’m going to feel like crying sometimes, I’m going to get tired, I’m going to get hungry while the baby is sleeping in the backseat and opt for the drive-through to avoid waking her.

I’m going to spend time wondering what I’m doing with my time and where the days are going and I’m going to wonder who I am because a hack of a lot of thing have changes in a short while.

I didn’t expect to get pregnant, I didn’t expect to have such a difficult pregnancy, I didn’t expect to speed through this year while she goes from not being able to move by herself to crawling and pulling herself up and getting into everything she can get her hands on in 7 months. A year ago we might have even been talking about me going back to work and Joe taking paternity leave.

For the past year and seven months I have been doing nothing but adjusting to my situation, and then having to re-adjust because everything changes. It’s crazy to expect to feel good about it all the time.

Last night I had a bath. Since I was a kid, the bath has been a refuge for me. I take baths when I’m sick or need to relax, when I want to get warmed up in winter, when I just want some time. Since I was a kid, my bath time has always included a book or a magazine. Sometimes when I was in school the bath was the only place I could get any reading for pleasure in – outside the bath it was all textbooks.

Last night, I took a magazine with me into the bathroom. And then I left it on the floor and just sat there. I was thinking about anything too hard, I wasn’t doing anything. I was strange for me, as I’m used to doing at least two things at a time (I’ve been that way for years, I’m not good at being bored), but it felt really good.

The baby was asleep, dinner had been cooked and eaten, everything was taken care of and I didn’t have to think for those few moments, and it felt good.

3 Comments by AEB on August 18, 2010
filed in PPD, Parenting, Personal

An open letter

Dear Mr. Harper,

I am a Canadian patriot. I understand what a privilege it was for me to be born here, to have been educated here, to be able to present myself as a Canadian. I plan on teaching my daughter about this great nation, it’s history and geography and what Canada has done for the world.

I believe that you too, Mr. Harper, are a Canadian patriot, but I always thought that acceptance of other views, beliefs and cultures was part of being Canadian. Clearly you don’t share that view.

To you, it seems, I am a dirty socialist – a word you spit out of your mouth with venom. I am less than you because I am a woman. More than that, I’m a woman who doesn’t know my place. I also believe that a Canadian is a Canadian whether they were born it or chose it, and that title should give us all the same rights.

Unlike you, Mr. Harper, I believe that Canadian citizens should be told how their Parliament actually works, not lied to. They should know that they elect MPs not the government and that they certainly don’t elect the Prime Minister, because part of democracy should certainly be knowing what you’re voting for. Knowing what I know about our system, I also believe a majority vote in Parliament should mean something. I also believe that the government cannot just decide to ignore decisions by the Supreme Court.

I believe that countries like ours need good census data, especially when such data often affects where the money flows. I don’t believe that a majority or even a strong minority of Canadians considered the long form census an invasion of privacy. Until it became an issue, I really don’t believe anyone thought twice about it.

I do believe that this whole census thing is another one of your distraction techniques while you do something more sinister much more quietly.

For a little while, Mr. Harper, you had me believing that we may disagree with each other, but we both want what we think is best for this country. Now you have me wondering if you ever understood what this country represented to those outside of it. We are supposed to be peacekeepers, aid workers, a sane voice in a crowd of superpowers trying to get their own way. We are a safe haven, a leader in ideas, a country that takes care of its own and others. Right now I can’t even be sure I will be protected by the Charter rights I hold dear if I say or do the wrong thing.

I am a Canadian patriot. I love this country, its history, its geography and its people. I hope I will still be able to proudly state my citizenship at the end of your term.

1 Comment by AEB on August 16, 2010
filed in Canadiana, Issues, Personal

Fat Mom

I’ve heard women say that after they have babies they feel much more in tune with their bodies. Like having the baby showed them what their body was made to do and they have a newfound respect for it.

I don’t feel that way. At all.

Maybe it’s because my body proved to be not very good at being pregnant – I was horribly uncomfortable the whole 42 weeks, and yes, I went to 42 weeks and had to be induced. Maybe it’s because I’m almost 30 years old and I’ve only been pregnant once, for less than a year. (And I don’t really plan on being pregnant again).

After 42 weeks of feeling uncomfortable and not at all like myself, and then 6-plus weeks of healing from birth, my body became mine again, but so much was different.

My belly is much more elastic. I have stretch marks across my stomach. My hormones are still going wild 7 months later. I am scarred, literally. I am thankful that my body could handle the pregnancy in the end – there was some question about that – but I also felt a little betrayed by how it reacted. If this is really what is was made to do, then why did it end up being so hard?

Still, I know that my pregnancy could have been a lot more uncomfortable and a lot more dangerous. I was at risk for things like ectopic pregnancy, early miscarriage and gestational diabetes that I was very lucky to have avoided. My blood pressure stayed low and she was born healthy.

But now that she’s here it’s so much easier to complain that I want my old body back. In fact, I want better than my old body back. I’ve heard other say it and I’m jumping on the bandwagon – I don’t want to be the ‘Fat Mom.’

I want to be an example to her, and I also don’t want to reach a point when she’s embarrassed of me. I don’t want to reach a point when she doesn’t want to do an activity because she doesn’t think I can physically handle it. I want to be energetic and ready to go when she says she wants to try something new. I want to try new things by myself so she knows it’s okay to go in blind. (Like the Hip Hop class I signed up for this fall – more on that later, I’m sure).

I don’t think I’ll ever be classified at thin, but I want to be not fat and not tired all the time. I want to be able to put on anything in my closet and feel good about how I look and how I’m representing myself. I want to be able to say no to myself and yes to her more often.

I want her to know I’m working on it.

by AEB on August 16, 2010
filed in 30lbsbyBlissdom, Parenting, Personal

Fat Girl

This post was inspired by the women at Losing It In Ottawa, particularly by Lara’s post yesterday. I admire their courage in putting it all out there for the world to see, pictures and all, and I hope to match their successes with my own.

I’ve been fat most of my life.

When I was a kid I didn’t really notice – it’s cruel to say but there was another girl who was bigger than me so I was never “the” fat girl. I got teased but it was nowhere near as brutal as some of the stories I’ve heard lately. I remember weighing 170 lbs in Grade 8, and considering I was only 12 years old and probably was much over 5′ tall, that’s too much.

When I got to high school I stopped eating as much and started walking home about halfway through Grade 9, so by Grade 10 I was as thin as I’ve ever been. My mom kept asking me how I was doing it, and when I think about it now, I was sort of starving myself during the day and then binging in the evenings, so I was thin, but really not healthy, and in no way ‘fit.’ The strange thing about it was that I lost 40 lbs without really noticing until my pants started falling down.

I didn’t gain it all back in one shot. I know by the time I finished high school I had regained some and it felt more like me. I think I was back up to about 170 lbs, but at a much more comfortable 5’9″. When I worked for a year after high school I was probably the healthiest I’ve ever been.

And then I went away to school, and started eating out more than cooking at home, driving to school and getting little to no exercise and little sleep. After college, there was getting depressed, moving across the country twice, getting more depressed and eating way too much, having no time and no opportunity to exercise, and I was at my highest weight ever.

When I went back to university, I was busy and much happier, and I don’t really remember what was happening with my weight while I was there, at least not until Joe and I got engaged and we both decided it was time to do something about it. I wanted to lose 50 lbs before my wedding, I ended up being happy with 30.

And then it crept back up on me again, and then I was pregnant and allowing myself whatever I wanted. When the baby was born I weighed 220 lbs, I am now back down to 210.

Oy.

That’s fat.

I’m told I don’t look that heavy. Joe tells me not to call myself fat, he doesn’t like the word, but it’s a fact.

I’m a fat girl, and the past few years have been a new experience for me because I was never really uncomfortable with my body before, but now I am. I blame part of that on how I got here – I know I’m unhealthy and I know I’m unfit. I also blame part of that on my PCOS. It feels like I’ve done this to myself, and if I could lose the weight and keep it down, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

I don’t care about being fat, I care about feeling the way I feel, and if I don’t change now I’m never going to because it’s only going to get harder.

5 Comments by AEB on August 15, 2010
filed in 30lbsbyBlissdom, Personal

Connections

I used to hate being too connected with people. (A therapist might tell me that this stems from ‘breaking up’ with my life-long best friend when I was in Grade 6, but I digress).

I only talk to one person from high school. I’m Facebook friends with a handful of people from college, but that’s as close as we get. Many of my current friends are friends that Joe is was connected to first, and he is much better at keeping in touch than I am.  One of our friends (who needs to get back to blogging) is someone I felt a connection with and actually managed to keep in touch with before she ended up in my city here.

The fact is that I always assume I’m fairly easy to forgot and that people I remember just won’t remember me, or won’t feel as close to me as I do to them.

I trained myself to be independent. I love going to movies by myself, I have no problems eating at a restaurant by myself. I like being quiet and alone, I can easily occupy myself. Since I was in high school I have depended only on myself for my own happiness. (And since I was in high school I’ve been on anti-depressants, connection?.)

And then I met Joe.

Suddenly being alone felt terrible if he wasn’t close by. Suddenly I couldn’t be happy unless he was happy. There have been many points in our relationship where I have pushed him away – even trying to give his engagement ring back to him – because I honestly believed that he would be happier with someone else and that making him unhappy would hurt more than being without him.

But we did get married, and part of the reason I knew we should is that I felt more comfortable depending on him that I ever had depending on anyone but me or my family.

And then we had our baby girl, and now nothing matters to me more in the world. People told me, I watch TV, I read books, I knew that I was supposed to love her absolutely and I spent my pregnancy afraid that I was put together wrong and I wouldn’t be able to feel that way. When they first placed her on my chest I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to think or how to react.

I wasn’t sure I wanted her and I didn’t think we’d get along. Now that we’ve gotten to know each other a little better, I would die for her. She wears me out and she’s more demanding that any person I’ve ever met, but when she’s not around she’s almost the only thing I’m thinking about.

And then there’s my online friends, who I have made far closer connections with than I ever expected, to the point that I missed a few people that I’ve only met in person once or twice when they went away for Blogher, that I notice when I haven’t heard from them in a while, either on Twitter or on their blogs. I share more here and on Twitter than I do anywhere else. I read other peoples’ stories and I’ve find out that there are a lot of people that are a lot like me.

Suddenly, my connections are so important to me that I hate being away from it all. My only time almost always includes my iPhone (though I have yet to take it into the bath, which I’ve heard some people do). When Twitter is down I wonder what to do with myself and I miss the people I talk to there. I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through the first few months of the baby’s life without all you wonderful people to distract and advise me.

So, I write a blog post to say thank you for caring and thank you for sharing, you all make my life that much easier.

2 Comments by AEB on August 12, 2010
filed in Personal

Step Up

So, since I made my pledge to lose 30 lbs by Blissdom Canada, I have lost a total of 0 lbs, at least according to the scale this morning. I’ve also given myself a hell of a lot of leeway.

And now I’m mad.

I’m mad at myself for lying to myself about what I was eating and drinking. I’m mad at myself for forgetting about exercise. I’m mad at myself for thinking of other things over and above what I originally meant to concentrate on.

Right now, there is no candy in the house (except a bag of licorice Nibs that I’m not all that interested in eating). I don’t remember the last time I had a Coke or Pepsi but I know it was about a week ago. I don’t remember the last trip we made to Dairy Queen. I’ve been consciously eating less, eating with my appetite, trying not to eat late at night, trying to change what I view as snacks.

I want to move every day. That’s what been missing lately and, oddly, what I had been doing well before. The most exercise I’ve gotten over the last two weeks is when I cleaned the house.

My biggest problem is myself. I’m almost paralyzed right now. I want to do so many things that I end up not doing any. I want to read more and write more and study more and learn more. I want to focus on so many different things that I end up not focusing on any and it’s infuriating even as I’m doing it – the baby’s napping, why aren’t you meditating and doing some yoga? The baby is playing by herself, why don’t you pick up a book as you watch her? Why don’t you read to her and you can both enjoy the story? Why don’t you set her up in her chair so she can watch you while you cook and you can talk to her?

Why don’t I?

Because I’m completely overwhelmed and that makes me more prepared to fail completely that do the work I set out for myself.

And it makes me mad.

I do better when I have more to do, usually, but right now a schedule is an almost impossible thing. I don’t know what the baby will need when, I don’t know what Joe needs to do when, I don’t know what money we’re going to have when, and I’m learning that sometimes everything you were planning needs to be dropped because one thing changes.

Maybe now that I’m mad I’ll push through and get what needs to be done done even with those setbacks. I have to push harder, I have to get the hell out of my comfort zone and I have to remind myself of all the reasons why this is so important.

  • I am an example to my daughter
  • I am risking my own health and my families if I don’t make changes
  • I will continue to lose self-confidence if I don’t succeed
  • I will get so much more by pushing myself out of my comfort zone

So I need to step up, answer to myself and make the changes I keep telling myself I need to make.

4 Comments by AEB on August 11, 2010
filed in 30lbsbyBlissdom
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »
BlissDom Canada