Therapy

“Are you a caretaker or a caregiver?”

The question my new therapist asked me at our very first session this week.

“What’s the difference?” was my response.

A smile spread across her face and she said “I’m actually SO happy that you asked that instead of trying to muddle your way through an answer.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know what the difference was, and I had promised myself that I was going to be 100% upfront and open if I was going to embark on $145 therapy sessions. The previous version of me would have tried to give an answer mainly out of fear of being judged for not being entirely certain what the difference is between the two words. But I bit my pride and asked her. It was a small moment in the grand scheme of things, but, to me, it was a big moment in me feeling total comfort in being able to totally let go and expose all to this new therapist.

I was hesitant to seek out a therapist again after being guilty of repeated times, sitting in front of one and not being totally open and raw. Putting a smile on my face and pretending that it’s not all bad. But I needed to do this. I needed to face reality and talk about it. I needed to stop shoving everything down deep inside of me and figure I can pull things out one at a time to work through on my own. That was the wrong answer. Because so much of what I have going on in my head is all inter-connected. There’s no way to unpack one thing without having to look at unpacking something else too. And there’s no way I can do it alone. Not anymore.

My first session with Kat was a bit all over the place as she got to know me. I bounced around and felt a little frazzled the whole time. She assured me that this is normal. That it’s part of her figuring out what makes me tick and me gaining trust in her. She closely watched my body language as I moved around on the couch, how I fidgeted with my hands, bounced my foot constantly, and how my chest and neck got red the moment I became anxious. She figured out a few things about me quite quickly.

I had 50 minutes with her to try to unload as much as possible. It wasn’t nearly enough time. I felt stressed out that I wasn’t able to get it all out on the table in the first session so that the follow up ones can be about starting to break it all apart. But that’s me….wanting things to happen immediately instead of taking the time to slowly work into it. This is going to take some getting used to.

She asked if there was one area I wanted to focus on for our last few minutes of the session. So I picked one that has been weighing on me for weeks. The insecurity and uneasiness I had been feeling for a while with the guy I have been seeing for 3 months. There’s a lot of backstory on this one, but lets just say there’s a lot of differences in communication. ie: I’m a communicator (after my marriage failed because of poor communication) and he is not. Because of this I was constantly trying to figure out where he was at when it came to “us”. I never felt pursued. I felt like it was me showing all the interest. I would constantly be left feeling like he was losing interest and that would result in me getting needy and doing things to try to keep his interest.

Kat looked at me and she said “Why is he the prize? Why aren’t you the prize?” She said that he might be a great guy in a lot of ways but maybe he’s not the right fit for me if I’m constantly feeling this way. She said that too often women end up being the ones trying to convince a guy that we are worth being involved with. That we do all the chasing as though he is the prize and we aren’t. This really resonated with me. I was literally doing everything with this guy and he wasn’t meeting me in the middle at all, despite me literally handing him the tools on what MY needs are in a relationship.

Well, last night I messaged my sister and told her I was thinking of ending things with him. I gave a long explanation as to why. I said that I would be open to sticking around if we were able to have a conversation and he could agree to work with me a bit more on things.

It didn’t really matter that I said that last night as this morning, around 7 a.m. I got a text saying:

“Honestly, with so much going on right now, I think we should just be friends. I’m sorry. You’re a great person and I had a great time with you.”

He ripped the band aid off for me. But I’m a little pissed that it wasn’t me who got to do it given that it was me who was constantly being left hanging, not knowing what was going on. I took my power back by messaging him back saying:

“Well, you just ripped off the band aid for me as I was personally starting to feel like the ending was near anyway. I wasn’t liking the needy, insecure person I was becoming because our communication styles are so different and I was always left wondering about you. That’s not who I am, or who I have ever been. I know my self worth and it isn’t spending my time trying to convince a guy to be into me or want to talk to me. I tried. But clearly it wasn’t the right fit. I liked when we spent time together. But obviously there was some disconnect there that you never wanted to talk to me about. Personally, I don’t see a friendship happening as it would likely be me trying to pursue it but it not being reciprocated. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. I wish you had been a little more respectful to have this conversation not over text. But it is what it is.”

I have no intentions of being friends with him. He did not bring enough to my life that would warrant me feeling as though he’s someone I can rely on as a friend. I clearly ignored a lot of red flags because I was convinced that he was a great guy. But if it wasn’t for the therapist saying what she said to me, I’m pretty certain I would have been a big wreck after receiving that text this morning. If anything, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. The anxious feeling I have been dealing with daily in these last few weeks because of him was instantly gone. I felt lighter. I’m sure a point will hit where I will miss his daily good morning texts. I will miss his crazy dog. But because of ONE session with my new therapist, I can walk away with my head held high and know that I am worth so much more than he brought to the table.

I don’t want to go back to the dating apps again. I don’t want to go through first dates again. I don’t want to do any of it. So I will wait for a bit. I will see what kind of break throughs I have with therapy. I will try to get myself healthy again, mentally and physically. Or I may get lonely and decide that in the new year I want to give it another go to try to find someone great. Who knows.

My new therapist came into my life right in time and I now can’t wait until my next session with her in 1.5 weeks. I think I have a lot to gain.

And Crawling Back She Came

Back in April 2019 I made a post on here saying that I had lost the desire to keep writing to the same intensity that I was before. I essentially halted writing in here immediately after I made that post. Some life events happened and I tried to go back to writing but I did it through a different blog name that I was using to remain anonymous. Something never felt right with that one, so this morning I decided to re-visit my old stomping ground and see if I can return back to the interest I used to have for writing about life.

Shortly after that April 2019 post my life got flipped upside down in a way that I never expected. No one ever stands at the alter, promising the very best of themselves, and thinks that it will take a downward spiral and end. We all speak those words in front of our family and friends. We make promises to one another that we foolishly buy into. But what a lot of us don’t realize is how much actual work is required in order to fulfil those promises made on that day. There isn’t any point of me going into the nitty gritty of what happened. It’s been 2.5 years now and a whole lot of shit storm that has taken place. I don’t need to rehash it all. My ex husband and I are in a good co-parenting place, our son is loved tremendously by both of us an life continues to carry on.

I will talk about the present and future. The good and the bad.

What triggered me to come back here and start writing is that recently I have come to the realization that I struggle with anxiety and mild depression. Deep down I have known for a while about the anxiety. Hell, I have even known about the depression. But I have pushed it aside. Because no single mom has time to deal with these things when life has so much going on that is taking priority. I have allowed myself to believe that it’s not that bad and as long as I am getting up each day then I’m ok. Wrong. About three weeks ago I put my son to bed and I went into the kitchen and burst into tears. Uncontrollable, overwhelming tears. I had dark thoughts that scared me. I didn’t know what to do but I knew I needed to call someone. I ended up calling my ex-husband as I knew he would still be awake. I sobbed into the phone. I honestly cannot remember much of what I said. I do know that I said that I don’t think anything is going to get better. And that I don’t want to be a burden on others. He got me calmed down and made me promise to reach out to a doctor to discuss anxiety meds and mood stabilizers. He also made me promise to find myself a counsellor to talk to. He said that I am destroying myself by regularly putting on a brave face for everyone while inside I’m breaking down. He is right.

I sent my mom a text telling her about what is going on with me. I never received a response back from her about it. It’s like the words “depression” and “anxiety” scared her off and instead of embracing me, I feel pushed away because she doesn’t know how to handle it. I have started to distance myself from my parents because I am so hurt that instead of asking how they can support me, they are instead acting as though I never sent that message and are trying to replace it by talking about anything else. I should talk to them about it, but I don’t have the mental strength to right now. So it sits as something to be added to my never ending “To Do” list.

Today I heard back from the counselling office that I had recommended to me. I sent in a very large intake form to them a few weeks back and when it asked me to list the reasons for needing counselling, I shocked myself with everything that I listed. It was a reality hit for me. Brutal honesty right there on the paper. I fought back tears as I hit “submit” on the form. I was told that my intake form would be looked over and then given to the Counsellor who they feel is best suited to my needs. The person who got back to me is a Clinical Therapist. Not a Counsellor. In my irrational brain the word “Therapist” leapt off the screen at me and told me “Wow, you must really be fucked in the head if they gave you to a Therapist and not a Counsellor.” I have always had this belief that there are three different levels of help depending on how bad you are.

3) Counsellor: means you have some issues but they are mild and just need a bit of help

2) Therapist: means you have some pretty big mind fuckery going on and have done a deep dive into a dark and horrible place

1) Psychiatrist: means you have experienced insane levels of trauma and horror and need the most intensive, maybe even hospitalized, care possible.

Don’t come at me for my irrational thought processes of the different levels of mental health care. I don’t claim they are right in any way. But inside of me I still feel that Therapist is a step higher than Counsellor when it comes to mental health help. Because of this thought, and seeing the word “Therapist” jumping out of my screen, my heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach and I felt a wave of emotion hit me. Tears tried to spring out of my eyes, but I’m at work and I needed to pull that shit together fast. I hesitantly sent a response to the Therapist and asked if she can accommodate an appointment next week after work. I’m still feeling a major mixed bag of emotions. There is some relief, there is some upset that I am at this place and there is some anger that I can’t even explain.

I have sat in counsellor’s chairs a few times since my marriage ended in 2019. I saw one provided by my former work place who I actually really liked, but she was only there to do three sessions and that was it. So I found another one who almost let me walk all over her with me putting on a brave face and making it seem like I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was. She didn’t call me out on my bullshit. She should have. Covid hit and after a couple sessions with her, I didn’t return. This time though, I have promised myself that I NEED to be open, real and raw. I need to talk about how insecure I am. I need to talk about how I regularly think that life isn’t going to get any better. I need to talk about how I struggle to put me first, mentally and physically. I need to talk about how I don’t think I’m someone who will ever find someone who will love me again. I’m not going to put a smile on my face and act as though I’m not struggling as much as I am.

This is a pretty heavy hitting return to the blogging world. But it is the exact reason why I decided to re-start this blog and see if having my thoughts flowing out of me onto the screen will be beneficial as I start to do the work to heal myself.

I have taken care of everyone else in my world….now I need to take care of me.

The End of the Road?

I’ve been losing steam on this whole blogging thing lately.  I feel as though every time I start to write something I either take all day to write bits and pieces here and there and never finish it so it just sits in my drafts for days and days until it becomes something I’m no longer interested in sharing or else I write half of it and think to myself “who cares?” and delete it.  Usually those are the ones that have no real direction to them and are just me rambling about nothing.  I’ve also noticed a growing trend in my posts feeling quite negative due to the horrible sleep pattern I’m in these days and how much that influences what I share here.  Everyone knows that a mom is always tired, but they don’t want to read about the tired mom complaining about being tired all the time.  I know this blog was started and has continued to be maintained as something for myself and not necessarily for other people to read, but I can’t help but feel some element of influence in what I share based on the fact that I know I have people who do read it.  There aren’t a lot of commenters or likers on it, but I know that eyes land on my page whenever I post.  So that changes what I decide to share as there just aren’t things that I feel the blogging world needs to know about me, my child, my family, etc.  I never started this blog to be something for other’s entertainment.

So I’m left in a little bit of a hard place as not only am I not feeling it about writing about things in my life, but I’ve also noticed a drastic decline in the writing people are doing on the blogs I enjoy following.  It seems to be a growing trend that people are fizzling out.  I have tried to find some more like minded blogs to start following but after a few relatable posts, a lot of them start shoving out posts that are clearly advertising influenced or else just not at all about anything I’m interested in reading.  I’m hitting walls on finding new people to read about who are in a similar phase in life and I now find myself not even bothering checking wordpress daily, unlike when it used to be the first thing I opened up to read while I have my morning coffee at work.

I don’t really know where this leaves me.  I’m not going to shut my blog down because it has over 4 years of my life written in it, from when I was newly pregnant right up until life right now with a 3.5 year old.  There is too much to just delete.  But I don’t know how much I truly will be posting in here going forward.  I’ve lost my drive to share bits and pieces of life as Hunter’s mom.  Maybe it will come back at some point or maybe this blog has just done its dash and it will do the slow fade out.  I would love to find a way to print all of my posts from the last 4 years so I can always have them to refer back to, but something tells me my workplace won’t be too interested in hundreds of blog posts being printed on their paper and ink.

Because I don’t want my lack of enthusiasm about blogging to totally halt the recording of memories that form every day as our little boy grows up, last week I went and created an email account for Hunter.  I saw it suggested as something to do when you have a new baby and want to create something for that baby to read when they are old enough.  I created the account and have now sent two emails to it.  One is simply talking about where he is at in his life as our stubborn, smart, adorable 3.5 year old and then today I sent another one about the milestone of him working hard to learn how to put his own shoes on.  By the time he’s 16 (or older) and needs the email account, technology will be even more advanced and email could be considered a dinosaur program, but at least I can attempt to start on something that has remained consistent in the internet world despite the growing technology out there.  I hope to raise a boy/teenager/young man who will appreciate that I took the time to write him these emails and will value them for his adult life.

Knowing that I am doing these emails helps me feel a little bit better about my fade out from my own personal blog.  So, while I’m figuring this all out, I will check back in every now and then to see if others have picked up on the frequency of posting.  Maybe it will influence me to come back to mine.  We will see.

Not So Funny April Fools

My kid didn’t waste any time before tossing his very first April Fools joke at me.  In fact, he was so on the ball with it he probably didn’t even know he was doing it.

12:40 a.m I woke up to the sound of the dog walking around the room and whacking her tail on walls and our bed.  I hesitated to open my eyes because I know she only does that when Hunter comes into the room.  But I knew I had to open them eventually, so I started with one eye…didn’t see anything.  Opened the other eye and there was Hunter standing beside the bed.  I whispered “What’s up buddy?” and he just stood there staring at me.  So I asked again.  He then quietly whispered that he needed to pee.  This is a first since we potty trained as he still wears a pull up to bed at night and has remained dry almost every single night.  So I couldn’t be too mad that he listened to his body and came to let me know he needed to pee.  So I got up, helped him go to the bathroom then held his hand and walked him back to his bedroom.  This is when shit hit the fan.

He suddenly did not want to sleep in his bed.  He said it was cold.  He said it was too hot.  He said he didn’t like it anymore.  He said it was scary.  He then said he wanted to sleep on the floor.  I told him that I didn’t care where he slept as long as he stayed in his room as it was the middle of the night.  He got two stuffed animals and a blanket and cuddled up on the hard floor.  I started to walk out knowing that he would eventually crawl into his bed.  But no…the tears started.  I spent the better part of 25 minutes trying to get him to settle in somewhere…anywhere and go to sleep.  He wanted to come in our bed, which I flat out refused to let happen.  He screamed and cried every time I tried to leave the room.  I pleaded with him.  I begged him.  I sternly tried to tell him what was going to happen.  None of it worked.  Eventually my heart softened as I saw an exhausted little boy sitting on the rocking chair with his teddy bear, crying his heart out and likely just needing one thing.  A cuddle.

I picked him up and tucked him in on my lap and with his head cradled under my chin, we just rocked in silence for 15 minutes until his sniffles stopped and his body went heavy on me as sleep took over again.  Despite it being well after 1:00 a.m at this point, I took a couple extra minutes to enjoy a moment that I know won’t be around forever.  Knowing that my little boy needed me to give him the comfort he needed to go back to sleep is priceless and I  savoured the moment of feeling his soft hair under my chin and his warm, chubby cheek pressed against my chest while his breathing slowed to a steady deep sleep speed.  I was able to transfer him back into his bed and tuck him in with him only briefly waking up to ask me to hold his hand for a bit, which I (sort of) happily did.  Eventually he was back into the land of nod and I was able to sneak out of his room and go back to ours.

At this point though it was just after 1:30 and I was wide awake.  There is no possible way to stay drowsy enough to fall back asleep after a debacle like that.  I got into bed and was met with my husband’s nightly symphony of snores.  I gave him a few shoves to get him to adjust positions so he wasn’t snoring right in my ear.  The change in how he was sleeping didn’t stop the snores, so I angrily grabbed my pillow and my phone (alarm clock) and marched into our spare room and assumed my usual spot in the guest bed.  I swear this is becoming the norm these days as my husband does nothing to manage his snoring even though he knows it is affecting my sleep.  He admitted that he doesn’t love that I go into the spare room, but I told him its either I do that and we both get some sleep or I stay in the room and grow angrier and angrier with him and also not get any sleep and the next day it gets taken out on him.  It’s his choice.  So now I just sneak into the room, sleep, and when my alarm goes off I sneak back into our room and put my pillow back so when he wakes up he has no clue that I ever left.  He sleeps so heavily that he won’t even notice if I’m not there in the middle of the night.  But, anyway, once in the guest room sleep still didn’t come.  I tried not to look at the clock but the last time I glanced at it, it was 2:40.  I had been awake for 2 hours at that point.  My body and brain truly thought it was time to wake up, despite having only had just under 2 hours of sleep at that stage.

My alarm then went off at 5:15 and it felt like my eyes were glued shut.  With the bad insomnia of last week and a weekend camping in our trailer, which I rarely sleep well in, then last night’s situation, I feel like I’m in a giant fog that I’m somehow having to function through.  We have a busy week ahead of us and I’m hoping that tonight will be relatively normal and I can get some much needed sleep and the midget will stay in his bed all night.

May the sleep gods be with me.

Bedtime Is Breaking Me

I’ve been feeling some massive levels of guilt in the evening because of how bedtimes have been going with Hunter.  He has officially learned how to start using delay tactics to keep us in his room or from actually having to put his head down at go to sleep.  He isn’t the kid who keeps climbing out of bed asking for things.  He’s the kid who actually stays in his bed and makes our evenings difficult with his many demands.  I knew this day would come, but I thought it would be in the form of wanting water, to go pee, to read another book.  Not the following:

• One of his kajillion stuffed animals on the bed isn’t in the right spot
• The books that we usually tuck up against the bed railing aren’t in the right order (we put them there because he likes to read to his stuffed animal friends before he goes to sleep)
• The pillow is cold
• He doesn’t want a certain stuffed animal in the bed
• He then wants that stuffed animal put back in his bed
• The special glow lamp I got him isn’t “white enough” (it has three white light settings and about four coloured ones and he prefers the brightest white one)
• He wants another hug and kiss
• His teddy bears need hugs and kisses
• He has to pee (at least he’s stuck with one of the traditional ones that kids use)
• He has a booger on his finger
• We didn’t talk to each other enough before bed
• He wants to pick a stuffed animal of his for me to bring to bed with me
• And my “favourite”…..
• The door isn’t closed in the right way. We keep it cracked open until we go to bed and then we completely close it (for fire safety) but he will sit there and dictate that he wants it open more, now closed more, no cracked a little bit more, no now completely open, no that’s not right, he wants it cracked again, and on and on and on.  Only to have the door landed at the same spot we started with.

Some nights will be just a small handful of these options and some nights, like last night, it will be ALL the above options.  As our formerly quick bedtime routine is slowly now stretching out into almost an hour bedtime routine I am slowly losing my patience with all of this.  I can get through a few of the demands, be firm that we are done and start walking away from his room and he will cry out for me.  I will go back, deal with whatever the next issue is, walk away and he then will cry again.  And I’m not talking that he’s just calling out my name.  He’s legit crying with big tears rolling down his cheeks over wanting a stuffed animal moved out of his bed.  I don’t even know why the tears but I can only guess they are there because he’s so tired that he’s getting over-dramatic about the “issues”.

I try my hardest to remain patient through all of this because I know it’s a phase and I know that I need to keep level headed and firm in order to help him navigate through it, but some nights I just totally lose my cool and I start to snap at him.  The moment I do snap I immediately feel bad because he’s sitting there, in his bed full of probably about 40 stuffed animals, with big tear filled eyes.  He isn’t crying because mommy snapped at him, but I’m sure it isn’t helping.  He doesn’t know that what he is doing is something that makes mommy annoyed.  He doesn’t know that the reason I’m annoyed is because this forever lasting routine is starting to infringe on what little time I have to myself in the evening or what plans I had to get chores done before I have to go to bed.  He doesn’t know any of that.  He’s just a little boy who doesn’t want me to leave and is finding reasons to make me keep coming back.  My heart actually hurts right now because my last words to him last night were a barked out order of “Time for sleep.  Good NIGHT.”  Instead of him going to sleep with loving motherly words in his brain, he has snap show mom words there.  I really wanted to go back and apologize to him last night after snapping, but I didn’t want to start the whole bedtime routine mess again by showing my face after he stopped calling out to me, so I just left it and went to bed feeling terrible.

After the events of last night, and the many nights before, I have decided that I really need to learn how to take a (or multiple) deep breath and take this moment as it comes.  To not totally lose my cool on an innocent little 3 year old.  I reached out to the internet world to try to get some tips on how to work through this phase and found a few suggestions:

• Start bedtime routine an hour earlier so that when he finally does get through all of his delay tactics, it is now his usual bedtime. This option is one I can try but not every night as the nights I go to the gym after work we don’t get home until 7:00 or just after, so I can’t just walk in the door and immediately rush him upstairs with no dinner.
• Be firm and refuse to return even if he cries. I don’t know if my mama heart can take hearing him crying out for me.  I had no problem doing the Cry It Out method (to an extent) when he was a baby.  But now he has words that can describe how he’s feeling and I truly don’t want to prevent him from expressing his feelings even if it is bedtime.
• Stick to the routine. I already do this.  We have a pretty tight routine when it comes to bedtime right down to singing the same songs in the exact same order.  He won’t let me sing them out of order or skip a song.  So the routine is the one positive part to bedtime every night.
• Don’t stick to the routine and tell him that he has “x” amount of time before he absolutely has to be in his bed, ready for sleep. And that in that time he has to brush his teeth, pick a book to read, organize his stuffed animals, and do whatever else he needs to do before he has to stay in bed and that I’m not coming into the room until he has done everything he needs to do.  This one is fine….if my 3 year old could tell time and understand all of the things he needs to do independently.  It is something that will work better when he’s older I think.
• Cover all of the usual delay tactics during the routine so he can’t use them. This one I’m going to actually work on.  I don’t know how I will master the door issue, but many of the other things I can easily cover off before he even lays his head down on the pillow.
• Just ride it out and accept that some nights will be smooth sailing at bedtime and some nights will be worse and my own evening routine will be affected. This is also one that I need to make a point of remembering every night.  I almost need to set my mind up for the worst case scenario so I don’t become the snap show and instead just roll with it and keep being firm about things but not doing it in an exacerbated way that upsets both of us.
• Send in the husband. I already do this.  Eddie seems to be able to get him down way faster than I can.  So if he’s home and not making dinner then he usually goes up and deals with the delay tactics for me.

I know this is just one of a million phases that Hunter is going to go through in his life and that how I react to them is going to make a difference in how easily we navigate through the phases.  If I keep on with the current frustrated snapping routine then nobody is going to be happy and nothing is going to get easier.  I can only encourage and influence him to not be such a pain in the butt but I can’t control him completely.  But what I can control is my reaction to it all.

When Words Carry Power

It seems as though we are starting to have to have more and more talks with Hunter about how our choice of words can affect people in many different ways.  We have been working hard on the “hitting people hurts them and makes them sad” thing for what feels like forever, but now with this new-found language and no social awareness, Hunter is now saying his thoughts out loud and sometimes what he’s saying can hurt others.  I posted not too long ago about him starting to comment on other people’s appearances, specifically if they are a plus sized body type.  It sounds as though, for now, our talks have worked and he hasn’t made any mention of other people’s size, but he has pointed to my jiggly stomach recently and giggled and said “mommy’s big tummy!”  I very quickly turned it around to make it so my “extra” tummy wasn’t something to be laughed at but something to be appreciated because I grew him in there.  So now when he sees my bare stomach he will talk about how he was in there.  I don’t know if he fully understands the concept that he was once inside of me, but we are close enough at the moment.

But now his words are going on to be ones of saying something he doesn’t necessarily mean but not knowing that it isn’t a joke to say them.  Last night he had a bath and was getting ready for bed and he wanted his dad to read books and put him to bed.  So Eddie went upstairs and got all settled into the comfy chair in the room, picked up Hunter’s current favourite book and called him over for cuddles and story time.  Like many toddlers do, Hunter suddenly decided he did NOT want daddy to put him to bed, he wanted mommy.  And because he wanted mommy, daddy was to get out of his room RIGHT NOW.  Cue the horrendous meltdown and screaming before Hunter screamed the words “I no LIKE daddy” with his little fists at his side and tears streaming down his red face.  I almost saw Eddie’s heart crumble out of his body as he sat there holding the book he wanted so badly to read to his son.  Hunter repeated the line a few times before throwing himself on the ground in a tearful fit.

In  the last week or so, Eddie has really been struggling with the death of his own dad and has also had a busy schedule of events in the evening so he hasn’t gotten to spend as much one on one time with Hunter.  These bedtime moments really mean a lot to him.  So having the most important person in his entire life screaming at him like that just crushed him.  Really crushed him.  He got up and left the room in silence.  He went downstairs and I stayed with Hunter and gave him a very, very firm lecture on how his words can affect people and how he is never ever to say that he doesn’t like his daddy.  Eventually he calmed down and said sorry to me, but that wasn’t good enough.  I brought him downstairs to Eddie, who was sitting fighting back tears on the couch, and I sat him down and asked what he wanted to say to daddy.  He then apologized twice to Eddie, told him he loves him and gave him a long hug.  I took Hunter back upstairs and we read his favourite book, ironically titled “Just Daddy and Me” (or something along those lines) and then had another serious talk about how we use our words while we cuddled and rocked.  I find that the moment right before bed, when all is quiet and everyone is starting to relax, is the best time to talk to him about learning curve things or to get him to open up to me about anything he wants to bring up.  He went to bed saying that he understood what I was telling him and he promised to try not to do it again.

Most people would say that Eddie is a grown up and Hunter is just a kid so he really should get his emotions in check and not let words that truly had no truth behind them affect him.  But my husband, as strong and stubborn as he is, can also be incredibly emotional.  For most of Hunter’s 3.5 years on this earth he has been 100% a mama’s boy and for a very long time he literally wanted nothing to do with his daddy.  It is only within the last 4 months or so that Hunter has started to make a shift to prefer his daddy over me on occasion.  So that’s 3 years of sitting on the sidelines waiting for his kid to finally accept him as number 1 every now and then.  That’s a long time to be continuously rejected by your own flesh and blood that you love so much.  He has mentioned on numerous occasions how tough it is on his heart to have Hunter not want anything to do with him.  So…yeah…of course anyone who has been the runner up for 3 years is going to be upset to some extent when they hear their child say that to them even though rationally he knows that the words carry no true meaning.  Couple that with his major struggles he’s had this week with missing his own dad terribly, it’s just a hot bed for emotions to bubble over in an unexpected way.

This whole moment that lasted maybe 3-5 minutes really opened up a whole new area of parenting to embark on.  My grown up brain suddenly has to think of a way to explain hurt feelings to a 3 year old.  He doesn’t know what feelings are yet, so that needs to be broken down before even being able to explain anything further.  I tried to use how when a friend at daycare pushes or hits him and how it hurts him and makes him sad.  He understood that.  So I followed that by talking about how sometimes words can hurt people and make them really sad too.  I don’t even know if I’m doing this right, but I am really trying.  It is a little intimidating to think of ALL the many things that I’m going to have to explain to Hunter as he grows up.  Things that are common sense to me but he has no clue about.  We haven’t even scratched the surface.

But…for now…he’s back to loving his daddy and that is the ultimate goal of an unintentionally bad situation.

Insomnia Ain’t No Joke!

 

Insomnia is hitting me hard right now.  I got a little cocky a month or two ago because my sleep was actually, by my standards, pretty decent.  I was falling asleep within about half an hour (yes that’s good for me) and staying asleep besides only one wake up.  It was wonderful.  But since coming back from Costa Rica my sleep has been bad.  Really bad.  I’m taking forever to fall asleep and I’m waking up constantly throughout the night.  Every now and then I have relied on Nyquil to finally knock me out, even though I’m not sick.  Melatonin doesn’t work for me.  It gives me jitters and then when I do fall asleep it gives me crazy dreams that go on all night so my brain is active the entire time I’m asleep and I wake up more tired than the day before.  I know Nyquil isn’t a long term solution, but when it’s midnight and I’m lying there with eyes wide on the ceiling, it really starts to appeal.

I decided because of these issues that I am going to work to cut out screen time closer to bedtime, which means stopping watching Grey’s Anatomy which I have used as my “Ahhh time to relax because the kid is in bed and I have some me time” thing.  I am aiming to read more books in replacement.  So every night this week I’ve climbed into bed with my book “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” (I know, such a light read) and have been getting fully absorbed into the story.  Usually reading in bed is a guaranteed way to get me to start feeling drowsy but maybe because this book is so interesting I find myself staying totally alert and wanting to read more.  I don’t know.  But drowsy definitely isn’t coming.  I force myself to go lights out around 10:00/10:30 and then the last three nights I have laid there willing sleep to come.  I do all the right things.  I’m eating pretty decently, I’m exercising 5 days a week, I’m drinking lots of water, I don’t have caffeine, I have a hot shower before bed, I reduced screen time, I’m not stressed, I prepare things for the next day before I go to bed instead of the morning.  Literally everything done right yet here I am…

Midnight…still awake.

3:00 a.m – eyes jolt open and lay there wide awake for 45 minutes before drifting back to sleep

4:45 a.m – eyes jolt open again, realize my alarm is going to go off in half an hour, try not to cry about how little sleep I will be getting, fail at going back to sleep and just lay there pissed off until the alarm goes off.

5:15 a.m – alarm goes off and I grumpily question every decision I’ve made in life, battle off the thoughts of taking a fake sick day and sleeping more, then get up and shuffle to the bathroom where I sit like a zombie and eventually attempt to cover up the dark circles under my eyes and making myself look or feel human.

6:30 a.m – leave for work and drive the 45 minutes in a total fog and once I arrive at work realize that there are parts of the drive I can’t even remember doing.

Insomnia is no joke.  I used to not put myself in the same category as insomniacs because so many of their cases seem much worse than mine, but the more I read about it, the more versions I learn about.  I just assumed insomnia was not being able to sleep.  Period.  But it’s also waking up frequently, especially when the body should be in the REM cycle.  So I have a combination of the not being able to fall asleep and not being able to stay asleep.  I’ve had suggestions from people that I should try to go to bed earlier so that maybe once my body finally decides to go to sleep, it will be my normal bed time.  I tried that last week.  I went to bed at 9:00, lights out at 9:15.  I was still awake past 11:00.  And I was still waking up continuously during the night.   The reality is that if I go to bed that early, nothing will ever get done in my house until the weekend.  Laundry will pile up (not like it isn’t already), dishes won’t get done properly (because my husband seems immune to completely emptying the dishwasher properly and just stacks things on the counter for me to deal with later), general tidying won’t happen (because my husband truly isn’t fazed by a messy house unless we are having people over so he doesn’t prioritize it over making sure he gets to relax in the evening for a short bit).  I already struggle to keep up with the day to day things, and a bedtime only 45 minutes after Hunter has been put to bed isn’t conducive to helping with all that needs to be done.  Plus my sleep would be way worse if I knew that I had even more house work looming over my head not being done.

I try to put my finger on why I have so many issues with sleep but neither of my siblings do.  My twin sister is a champion sleeper and can close her eyes and sleep anywhere.  So how did I get the crappy end of the gene pool with sleep?  I got it from my mama.  That’s how I ended up with it.  My mom shared that gene way more with me than she did my sister hanging out next to me in the womb.  My mom is now 60 and she still has sleep issues.  I don’t hold out any hope that this is going to improve for me over time.  I could go to a doctor and talk about it, but I’m not interested in any sleeping medications and I know that he’s going to suggest everything I’m already doing to help it.  But this 4-5 hours of sleep a night thing is starting to affect me in not a good way.  It’s making me snippy with my husband, it’s making me horribly impatient with my son and I keep realizing that that impatience is making me miss out on very sweet little things he does or says that he won’t be doing or saying forever and that upsets me.  It’s affecting my eating as being so tired I just want to eat whatever and not think about the consequences it will take on my body.  It’s affecting my ability to run or have the energy to run.  Which blows because I have a half marathon race to run in a month and a half.  It’s affecting my productivity at work.  Because why do work that I don’t even really care about when I can instead browse the internet, write blog posts or scroll mindlessly through Facebook.  It’s affecting my happiness…meaning my usual laid back, chilled out, happy disposition at work is being replaced by a puffy eyed grump.   It is truly all encompassing.

I don’t know what the answer is here and I know that this is something I’m going to have to learn to live with unless I do something like find a tiny amount of time to take up yoga or properly learn meditation.  Meditation may be my best hope at the moment as that is something I can do right before bed that won’t take that long.  I don’t know.  I’m going to talk to my trainer tonight to see if he has any stretches and breathing techniques I can try out before I climb into bed.  He loves that kind of stuff so I’m sure he’ll have some ideas.  I used to be able to rely on weekends as a way to catch up a bit as Hunter would chill out in his bed until about 8:30-ish on weekend mornings before coming to wake us up.  But he’s now coming into our room anywhere between 6 and 6:30 on a weekend and laying quietly for a couple minutes then asking to go downstairs.  I can buy a bit of time by having the ipad on hand to toss over to him and he will quietly watch for about half an hour while we try to sleep more.  But more sleep never comes, for me at least, as at this point I’m already mostly awake and he seems to constantly have issues with the ipad that he only wants mommy to fix, never daddy.  So those two extra hours I used to get on a weekend…they are long since gone.  I miss them.  I really miss them.

I’ve been trying really hard to not write too many negative vibe posts for 2019, but when I’m literally falling asleep at my desk at work, I think I am allowed to take some time and vent about my situation.

Day 19 of 90

I’m now on to day 19 of my 90 day challenge.

I won’t lie….I have failed miserably a few times.  On Wednesday my work had donut holes sitting on the large table of the main meeting area of the office which also happens to be situated right by my desk and without even thinking I shoved two of them in my mouth when walking by.  Then a couple hours later cookies that were left over from a meeting the night before were brought in and an afternoon craving hit and I ate the delicious chocolate chip cookie.  I immediately regretted my decisions of the day.  I have zero intention of ever vilifying food.  My firm belief in life is that everything is ok in moderation.  I don’t ever want to be that woman sitting in a restaurant shaming other people for choosing fries over a salad.  And I never, ever want to live a life where a big greasy slice of pepperoni pizza isn’t something I will allow myself to have.  Food isn’t the enemy but how we consume it is.  Or maybe I should say that how *I* consume it is as I am definitely a victim of binge eating weakness when something delicious is near me or when I’m home alone and nobody is there to make me think about my choices.  So that is where my problem is at.  And it clearly showed when unsupervised donut holes made a rare appearance at work.  I am responsible each day for texting my “accountability coach” (aka as my personal trainer who I pay way too much money) and report my exercise and eating for the day.  He doesn’t want to know everything I ate, just wants to know if I’ve had any struggles or fallen off the wagon hard and fast.  So I texted him and let him know about my baked goods consumption.  I had already come to terms with my decision and decided I wasn’t going to beat myself up over it because one slip up doesn’t undo the however many other days of good eating.  He did respond fairly quickly and gave me a little lecture, as he is supposed to do as my motivator and then ended it by saying that I’m human and slip ups are going to happen during this challenge and the important thing is to remind myself of my goals whenever I feel the urge to feast on goodies.   I won’t lie…but he was a bit of a dick about it and I let him know that a bit later on.  He apologized for being a bit harsh and said it had been a rough day for him and he had pigged out on tacos and beer and was feeling his own guilt as he is supposed to be motivating people and he is also on the challenge team as well so he thinks he took some of his frustration with himself out on me.  So we both agreed to write off the one day and start fresh again the next day.

So the week has carried on and despite the scale being up a bit earlier in the week, this morning I was delighted to step on it and see that it is down to what my goal was to hit this week, and the week isn’t even done!  One more pound and I will be the lightest I have been since I had Hunter.  And that’s a pretty good and motivating feeling.  It’s still about 15 pounds away from what I weighed right before I got pregnant, but it’s great progress for only 19 days.  The scale itself hasn’t changed a ton, but my body is starting to show small changes in physique.  It isn’t anything you see when I’m clothed, but I can see it when I’m in front of a mirror in my underwear at home.

I forgot to take a day 19 picture this morning but it likely isn’t too far off of day 14, so this works.  A little bit of a change in the tummy area

For the 90 Day Challenge itself, every two weeks we accumulate our points and report them to our coach.  The points go like this:

2 points – personal training session at the gym

1 point – WOW (workout of the week) home workout (a workout designed by the coach to do at home but for me I count my runs as a WOW workout too)

1 point – attending a group fitness circuit class at the gym

5 points – attending a gym organized event (snowshoeing, hiking, cooking class)

1 point – hit nutrition goal #1

1 point – hit nutrition goal #2

The points are added up for each day.  So if I’m doing things right I can get between 3-4 points a day depending on if I have worked out at the gym or gone for a run and then hit both my nutrition goals.  My nutrition goals are super simple, besides the intermittent fasting and clean eating during my eating period.  My goals are to avoid alcohol completely and to not eat prior to my fasting period ending.  My trainer said that the challenge itself is already hard enough so to pick 2 goals that are easier to achieve and make for easy points.  So those are what I chose.  On Sunday we reported our points to our team leader and I accumulated 40 points for 2 weeks.  I am currently running in second place out of our team.  The guy ahead of me had 42 points and was only ahead of me because he attended the gym organized cooking class that week.  There won’t be 5 point events every week so there won’t be the unfair advantage of the child-less getting to go while the people with young families struggle to.  But not being able to attend probably most of the 5 point events is something I will have to take into consideration when I’m fitting in my workouts to try to earn myself a little more through them.  I did explain to my trainer that it kind of sucked that it’s so many points for the group special events because there are 3 of us on the team who have kids under the age of 5 which drastically restricts our ability to just go snowshoeing for hours up the mountain on a weekend or attending a 4 hour cooking class session on a Tuesday night.  I said that I don’t expect any special favours because I have a kid and Joe Blow in his 50s over there doesn’t have to worry about his kids as they are all adults, but that maybe next time they do this and they are planning their points system to have another opportunity in the list to help people who have family commitments earn some big points too.  I don’t know what that would be, but there’s gotta be something.   He agreed with my suggestion and said he would mention it to the gym owner and see what can be done.  He said that because he wants me to be the leader of the team he wants to do everything he can to ensure I’m getting the points needed, right down to coming in on his evenings off to watch Hunter if it means I can get a workout in with my other trainer.  Something I may take advantage of in March when we are in the final stretch of things.  But all in all, I’m pretty stoked to be at the top of the points board as it hasn’t been easy to convince myself some days to go out for a run right after a long day at work or to do the WOW workout once I get Hunter to bed, so seeing the results on the points board as well as physically is just enough to help push me along.  Next week we leave for our holiday and I know that it’s going to be a huge struggle to stay on track and fit my exercise in so I really need to start my focus now so that once there my mindset is already strong and ready to succeed.

So there we have it.  Day 19 almost in the books.  A few speed bumps along the way but some progress too.  Tonight I have a run scheduled for after work and I can do a bit more than my 4kms that I squeeze in before getting Hunter as Eddie is picking him up from daycare.  Tomorrow I have a session with my trainer at the gym.  So that’s 3 points right there to add on to my already 15 for the week.  Killing it!!

 

Hand Foot & Mouth

Last week I arrived at my son’s daycare to pick him up only to see on the whiteboard at the front entrance, in bold red writing:

1 confirmed case of Hand Foot & Mouth disease at the daycare.  Symptoms include:

                                        blisters and rash on feet, hands and around mouth

                                        Fever

                                        Irritability

                                        Loss of appetite

 

My heart immediately sank.  NOT the news I wanted to read right before we are about to take Hunter away on vacation.  I went and talked with the caregiver on the toddler side of the daycare and she confirmed that the case had been on the baby side of the daycare and that the child was removed early on.  She said that they immediately bleached the crap out of the entire daycare to try to prevent any germ spread.  I know I should have felt some comfort in that it happened on the baby side, but I know that occasionally early in the morning or near the end of the day when there are only a few kids left, babies and toddlers get mixed together in the “big kid room” because as the numbers dwindle down, caregivers go home, so it’s easier for one caregiver to watch all ages if they are in one room.  So there is a good possibility that the baby could have contaminated the big kid side too.

The days carried on and I have watched Hunter carefully for any signs of having caught it and I haven’t seen any indicators yet.  But then this morning when Eddie dropped him off he was told that a second case had been confirmed on another baby who goes there.  Once again, anxiety and stress built up in me.  They said that they had come in early that day and again bleached the hell out of the entire place.  But I still feel incredibly anxious about it.

If it was any other day or week I wouldn’t be as concerned because it’s life.  Kids get sick from being at daycare and sharing the space with other little germ magnets.  But with us having to fly out for our 2.5 week vacation in exactly one week, I’m freaking the fuck out.  Hunter has a pretty good immune system that we have really enjoyed.  But I keep feeling that it’s going to be just our luck that his rock solid immune system is going to take a hit and he’s going to get sick with this either before we leave or when we are already there and totally destroy our vacation.  His daycare has had another case of HF&M a few years ago when he was still on the baby side of daycare and he didn’t catch it, which was amazing.  But what are the chances of him avoiding it twice?  Especially when he’s in the bad habit of putting things in his mouth these days to be cheeky!

I never get paranoid or concerned about germs and sickness.  But I truly don’t know what we would have to do if he gets it right before we go.  He’s basically supposed to be kept in quarantine until some stage passes with it.  Or so I’ve read.  So putting a rashed up, blister covered kid on an airplane is just insane, not to mention creating a hot bed of germs shared with people on the flight.  Yes, I know it isn’t an airborne illness, but kids still touch things that other flight users touch.  But we can’t exactly cancel our trip without losing out on thousands upon thousands of dollars in flights and accommodation.  So I truly don’t know what we would do if he comes down with it.

I’m hoping that I’m just being my usual overly dramatic self and that it’s going to be ok.  That we will roll with whatever happens.  But any sane human who has a long, non-refundable vacation planned would be just as freaked out about this sickness announcement.  I truly wish that I could pull him out of daycare until we leave, but I don’t have the vacation time available, I can’t use sick time and I have a ton of stuff to get ready for the person covering for me when I’m gone.  The husband has too many meetings to attend this week and next week so he can’t stay home with Hunter.  The only other idea that comes to mind is putting him in a bubble.  That’s acceptable right?!  Kidding, kidding….sort of!

Anyone reading this please put out all your positive vibes to keep my kid’s immune system rock solid!!!

Teaching Moments

I took Hunter to the doctor last week to discuss his bowel issues he’s got going on, but what really happened at that appointment was a big learning curve….for both of us.  And it had nothing at all to do with why we were seeing the doctor.

We were sitting in the waiting area and Hunter quietly played with some toys that were there and pretty much minded his own business.  A man came near us and was smiling and watching Hunter play and he made a comment about what a good little boy he was being.  Hunter went into shy mode and hid behind me.  The man then got called in to see his doctor and that’s when Hunter said for the first time ever….

”Mommy why that man so big?”

My jaw just about hit the floor.  Who was this child who suddenly knew or seemed to comprehend what an overweight person was?  He’s never pointed out a dog being bigger than another dog before and instead just jumped right in to talking about people.  I didn’t even think a person’s size had even crossed his radar given that we spend a lot of time at home not differentiating anyone for their size, neither me or my husband are small people and two of his favourite caregivers are plus sized women.  Size of a human is just something we have never talked about and if we have, it has been in a positive way.

Thankfully the man was far enough out of ear shot that he likely never heard my son’s whispered question.  I quickly scrambled to come up with a response on the spot as it was something I have never really put much thought into needing to respond to…at least not yet in this stage of parenthood.  I explained to him that people come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and that’s what makes us all interesting.  I talked a little about how it doesn’t matter what a person looks like on the outside, it is more important to know that what is on the inside is the same in each person and that the most important thing is if they are a nice, friendly person.  I also told him that we don’t talk about other people unless we have nice things to say to them.  I asked if he understood what I was saying, his response was “No” and he went back to his toys.  It’s likely that because of distractions of other people around he didn’t 100% absorb what I said, so I chalked it up to a good attempt at a learning lesson and promised myself I would try again once we were at home and having quiet talk time before bed.

This also triggered me to realize that even though I am 100% body accepting, I don’t necessarily know how to explain that to a toddler whose world isn’t as expanded and exposed as mine is.  I started to do some research on kid’s books that talk about body love and acceptance, different races and LGBTQ friends as well as did some reading on how to talk about these things to a child.  In my research I came across some interesting things that I hadn’t thought about.  One article was about how we shouldn’t rush to shush a young child and tell them to mind their own business.  Actions like this essentially van vilify an overweight/tall/different race because we are making it a taboo subject to talk about and our kids can start to think that if it’s something we are telling them not to talk about, that it’s a bad thing.  Not only that, but it aids in stunting our kids from noticing differences in life because we are wanting them to turn a blind eye on it and not talk about it.  That is something I truly had never even thought about and now completely understand it.  My first instinct was to shush Hunter and tell him not to talk about people he doesn’t know.  The article I read talked more about talking to our kids away from the scene, to start with, about how there are all kinds of different body types and people in the world and that it’s really fun to notice it and appreciate it, but that it is important to not talk about other people as sometimes our words can hurt their feelings, but that mommy is happy to answer any questions once we are at home later.  And if they do happen to point out someone who they feel is different, then we quietly remind them that everyone comes in different sizes and that we don’t talk about anyone if it might hurt their feelings.  Or something along those lines.  I’m probably butchering the explanation a lot.

So that night we sat on the chair in his room, read some books and then had our nightly cuddles where he usually tells me about his day.  But that night I talked to him a little bit about how neat the world is because of all of the amazing people on it who all are different sizes, skin colours, cultures, and who love who they love.  I have a long way to go in learning how to explain everything to him in a way that is open and accepting and will help mould his mind to be one of acceptance and zero judgement.  It is a big job that I know is going to take a fair amount of work on my part. I’ve never been great at explaining things to adults so it is even harder to explain to a little brain like my son’s.  I’m definitely going to try.

I thought that our conversation before bed that evening had gone well and he really seemed to be listening and taking in what I was saying.  He said “yes” when I asked him if he knew what mommy meant.  But a few days later we were at our local pool where of course is where we see ALL body types in their most vulnerable state…half naked and exposed.  There was a woman there with her small baby and she was quite a plus sized woman.  Hunter watched her as she walked into the shallow end of the pool and I almost knew what he was going to say even before he said it.  And of course the words “mommy that a big lady” came out of his innocent little mouth.  *insert facepalm here* We clearly have a long, long way to go in teaching our little man about differences in life.