I am two weeks into reducing my antidepressant It isn't going well. I don't know how I am going to be able to get through this honestly.
My depression and anxiety are worse. I am having horrible intrusive thoughts. About the baby having horrible withdrawl after she is born. And that I won't be able to stay off medication to breastfeed which I desperately want to do. I am worried about myself and of course the baby. I don't want to become unhinged during my last 13.5 weeks of pregnancy. I know how bad it is to be unmedicated.
There is so much more I wish I could articulate but it feels like a jumble of vines in my mind.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Idle hands and mind are OCD's play things
Well so it has been a little over a month since i was laid off from work. I have fallen into a depressive slump, I consider myself a fairly social person and it is very hard for me to be home alone all day with no one to talk to. Today was particularly bad. I ended up sleeping most of the day to pass the time after I tried to watch day time television (which irritated me no end). I am also 7 days away from the start of my third trimester of pregnancy. This is the time that I have been fearing since the start of the pregnancy. This is the time that I have to come off all of my psychiatric medications. I am starting to come off my SSNRI (selective seratonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) which is an antidepressant and also works to control my OCD and the pseudoseizures (psychogenic non-epileptic seizures). I am on the first step of coming of the medication and already my depression is worse and my intrusive thoughts are getting worse. I spent almost all day in bed. The worst possible place for me to get stuck.
I don't have many friends in the area where I live and my closest family member is down in Boston. I am struggling to get out of the house everyday and today was not successful.
Once I come off this SSNRI, the next thing to come off will be a benzodiazepine that I have been on for the past 4 years. The "benzo" is used to help me sleep and to control my panic and anxiety attacks. Coming off that is going to be a nightmare.
After the benzodiazepine my sleep aid will be next. It is a serotonin 2 antagonist/reuptake inhibitor.
I know all of this is for the benefit of my baby girl. But that doesn't mean it is going to be pleasant.
I thought that I had more to share but I guess not.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Realizing I have a ton of work to do before the baby gets here
lets see. alot has happened since the last time i wrote.
Well first things first. I got laid off from my company, not much I can comment on other than they are taking care of me in terms of severence which was nice of them. So I am not in a huge rush to get back to work honestly. I honestly don't know how I had been working full time, dealing with my OCD full time, commuting 145 miles a day on top of being in a high risk pregnancy.
I have been unemployed now for a total of....8 days (sorry had to look at the calendar).
And in my 8 days of being home, I have realized a number of things. I need to do some serious work on myself still before I can be Mama. Much of the realization came today actually. I had an appointment with my therapist this morning and we were talking about what i wanted to work on. Honestly most of my symptoms are in remission. All except for the nasty eight letter word- hoarding. I need to do some serious work on this issue. I think that the combination of working a ton of hours and coming home and crashing from exhaustion hasn't helped the issue but I will not use it as an excuse.
Really, I feel very nauseated about how it has gotten. I was watching one of my very good friends 8 mo old granddaughter. Just for 2 hours in my house. And I got in the door and it all hit me like a wave. I actually fought back tears going, I don't want to put her down anywhere! I am worse than Level 1 but not as bad as Level 2 and certainly there are no pet accidents in my home, nor are any of the exits blocked.
So she and spent the 2 hours on our bed playing and giggling. I really did want to let her crawl around but in good conscious and being embarassed about the house to a 8 mo I couldn't let her touch the floor.
I have a friend visiting in 10 days and I still have to get the guest room under control so that she will have someplace to sleep! And I want to get our bedroom done by then as well so that I don't have to feel like I have some monster hiding in our room.
So this whole set of realizations set off a cleaning binge on my part. Short lived as it was, I scrubbed our kitchen floor (it really needed it) And now I am sitting in the guest room writing this and I can feel my OCD trying to take over. I can't give in to it. If I do i know that i won't stop. And i know that it is bad for the baby to have my anxiety that high.
I just sit here and wonder how I got here. And no reason seems acceptable. I am really beating myself up, per the usual. I know it isn't constructive. But right now I am just ripping myself to shreds.
Time to practice thought distancing and pick up the pieces tomorrow.
Well first things first. I got laid off from my company, not much I can comment on other than they are taking care of me in terms of severence which was nice of them. So I am not in a huge rush to get back to work honestly. I honestly don't know how I had been working full time, dealing with my OCD full time, commuting 145 miles a day on top of being in a high risk pregnancy.
I have been unemployed now for a total of....8 days (sorry had to look at the calendar).
And in my 8 days of being home, I have realized a number of things. I need to do some serious work on myself still before I can be Mama. Much of the realization came today actually. I had an appointment with my therapist this morning and we were talking about what i wanted to work on. Honestly most of my symptoms are in remission. All except for the nasty eight letter word- hoarding. I need to do some serious work on this issue. I think that the combination of working a ton of hours and coming home and crashing from exhaustion hasn't helped the issue but I will not use it as an excuse.
Really, I feel very nauseated about how it has gotten. I was watching one of my very good friends 8 mo old granddaughter. Just for 2 hours in my house. And I got in the door and it all hit me like a wave. I actually fought back tears going, I don't want to put her down anywhere! I am worse than Level 1 but not as bad as Level 2 and certainly there are no pet accidents in my home, nor are any of the exits blocked.
So she and spent the 2 hours on our bed playing and giggling. I really did want to let her crawl around but in good conscious and being embarassed about the house to a 8 mo I couldn't let her touch the floor.
I have a friend visiting in 10 days and I still have to get the guest room under control so that she will have someplace to sleep! And I want to get our bedroom done by then as well so that I don't have to feel like I have some monster hiding in our room.
So this whole set of realizations set off a cleaning binge on my part. Short lived as it was, I scrubbed our kitchen floor (it really needed it) And now I am sitting in the guest room writing this and I can feel my OCD trying to take over. I can't give in to it. If I do i know that i won't stop. And i know that it is bad for the baby to have my anxiety that high.
I just sit here and wonder how I got here. And no reason seems acceptable. I am really beating myself up, per the usual. I know it isn't constructive. But right now I am just ripping myself to shreds.
Time to practice thought distancing and pick up the pieces tomorrow.
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