got depression?

So, following both my last birth and this one, I joined the approx 80% of moms who have postpartum depression. It has been quite a bit worse this time, and when it got worse, it got worse very fast, to the point of near crisis (you know, when all the self-eval quizzes tell you to admit yourself to a hospital immediately). I've been feeling better---much better---for about three days and I think it's time to give credit where I think credit is due.

Inositol.

Inositol is a nutrient naturally occuring in foods such as brown rice and wheat germ. It's essential in the production of some brain chemicals and is required for the formation of cell membranes, and some studies have shown that depressed people have lower levels of it in their cerebrospinal fluid than healthy people have. It has been studied in double-blind trials and scientists have found that, "Myo-inositol has exhibited positive effects in a number of studies related to depression, panic attacks and obsessive-compulsive disorder"; in fact, one study showed that it was at least as effective as SSRIs, prescribed anti-depressants. Another big plus is that, unlike SSRIs, it starts working immeditely, though, from what other mothers say, it takes about a week to get the full effects and have a pretty constant mood level through the day. Next to no side effects, even for very large doses.

I am taking 3,000mg a day and have noticed a big difference; the studies were based upon the intake of 18,000mg a day. I have also increased my B vitamin supplements, since there is some indication that Bs help the inositol work more effectively. I am still a little down, but much more functional than I was a few days ago.

I am really amazed by this; if you have problems with depression, I would definately encourage you to do some research on inositol for yourself :)

(insert witty infix)

Dangblastit!

I've never been a person to spend a lot of time on grooming. Those of you who actually know me probably already know this...I actually got so fed up with the whole grooming thing that I shaved my head for most of last spring, summer, and fall. Anywho, I hate having to spend a lot of time on my hair, which is why, given the choice, I always choose '2 in 1' shampoo and conditioner blends, which were plentiful through most of my childhood and teenagerhood.

I was in Target today looking for some more hair cleaning stuff and, would you believe it, the only two '2 in 1' blend they had was one formulated to defrizz curly hair. They didn't even have Pert Plus! I couldn't believe it. I guess these time/energy savers are no longer in favor? I did find that they are still manufactured, but I s'pose I'll have to find another place to purchase them. I sadly bought two seperate (argh!) cheapo bottles of Suave, but next time I'll just go get the no-name blend I found last time at Big Lots.

All this unchecked capitalism and I can't even get my blasted shampoo/conditioner!!!

Smash the state!

misc babywearing

Anyone have one of the new Hip Hammocks, made since Playtex bought out the WAHM design? Check this out, 'cause they've been recalled, though it doesn't seem to be an incredibly common issue. Leave it to big business to cut corners and screw things up. BTW, if you don't have one, I don't recommend them---they're not comfy at all. lol :)

The Babywearer mamas came up with a 'Ten Commandments of Babywearing'. While I don't find the biblical allusion all that cool, I couldn't help to laugh at a few of them:

5. Thou shalt have many carriers. When in doubt, thou shalt buy one of each. But thou shalt not reveal the true number of carriers thou hast.

7. Thou shalt spot thy fellow babywearers from a great distance, greet them cheerfully, and communicate in a code of acronyms and abbreviations.

Haha, so true! As a fundraiser, they're having tote bags printed up with them for $20 incl shipping; if interested, the link's above.

libre

I've managed to read a bit over the past few weeks. I really enjoyed Paramedic: On the Front Lines of Medicine and Ambulance Girl, excellently written memoirs that pretty much convinced me that EMT is not the career path for me. I just had to put down another book, Making It Up As I Go Along by Maria Lennon. This is a newly published novel which I got ahold of as an advance, uncorrected proof, a suprise occasional benefit of being a librarian's wife.

Making It Up As I Go Along is the story of Saffron, a war correspondent who finds herself pregnant at the age of 38. It begins as she and her newborn make it back to California, where Saffron grew up, and the novel is split between her life as a single mother, and memories of her time in Africa. You know, if I tried to tell details here, it would sound absurd enough to be a soap opera, and just like a soap opera, it drew me in. But I got halfway through it before I realized I felt worse after reading it than before---the stories from war-ravaged Sierra Leone are too gory and depressing for a mom who already has ppd.

If you're well removed from the postpartum bit, though, you might really enjoy this. Though I must warn my AP friends, Saffron is not exactly AP and pretty much has the point of view of a woman who has never really respected women who become mothers.


On the Tristan front---looks like he's gone down to one nursing a day without too much trauma. Whew.

aaaargh.

I strongly believe in breastfeeding beyond the first year, but this toddler is about on my last nerve.

He nearly weaned while I was pregnant, but began nursing again once my colostrum came in (which, of course, is how my labor started). He really wanted it after my milk came in with Ellie, but I've limited him to twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. It's the morning one that's killing me. I'm not exactly at my best in the morning anyhow...and it seems that he enrolled in an intense 'How to Pester 101' workshop while I was in the hospital birthing. "Tih-tan nurt. Tih-tan nurt! TIH-TAN NURT!" I try to put him off so I can sleep longer, then after we do finally nurse, he starts crying for more. I know it's more about the attention and mommy time than the milk, but, ohmigosh, I can't deal. He can't seem to understand to only ask once, so I've told him that we're only going to nurse at night from now on, since he doesn't pester or whine then. Hope he understands tomorrow.

la de dee

I got a blog counter! Yippee! Now I can track the, um, four folks who visit my site :)

Guess it would help if I had anything interesting to blog about...

lazy week

Not a lot has been going on here this week.

I called to get immunization exemption forms for the kiddos. It looks like Arkansas only allows medical and religious exemptions. The nice folks at the health department are mailing the forms to us, so I didn't have to break out the hijab and trek down the street with kids in tow.

I was talking to Tristan today and remarked upon how much he was growing. I asked him if he wanted to be big and tall like Papa when he grew up. He said, "no grow up!" and started crying. Awwwww.

He has developed a bit of a stutter on hard consonants, like 't' and 'k'. T Barry Brazelton says that's normal and not to push it at all...that he'll get over it naturally, but if we press the issue, the habit might become entrenched. 'Kay.

Oh, and my nice great aunt called yesterday asking if Tristan might want to come to Vacation Bible School at their Baptist church. Wow, I was shocked. I thanked her for asking and said I thought it too late in the day for him (it's in the evening). Am I that private a person or have I just never had a real conversation with them? Probably the latter. It's sad that you can know people your whole life but not really know them.

tuesday

Tristan, I appreciate you helping clean up, but pennies and garbage disposals don't mix. At least, not peacefully.

travel

I need to work on this...can't wait til I have the chance, lol :)

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (50%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Southern United States (46%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Western Europe (21%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Canada (20%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Eastern Europe (20%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in the Western United States (11%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Latin America (7%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Southern Europe (7%)

You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Northeastern United States (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the United Kingdom (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

grandmas rock!

Ooooh, my Mamaw gave me my birthday present, a month early:



Awesome way to beat the horribly sticky Arkansas heat. It's made Tristan's new favorite TV viewing spot and is just the right height for him (though it oscillates so he doesn't hog all the cool air, hehe). Even better, it's made it bearable to raise the thermostat a bit and hopefully save some on our next bill.

happy father's day!

I hope all the attached papas out there are having a great day!



Thanks for being such an outstanding father, Jon.

good news day

Here's an article citing a new British Medical Assn study showing that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth. Not that this will ever affect me, but it's good to see homebirth creeping towards mainstream society.

vax

Salon.com just published a new article yesterday about the link between vaccinations and autism: Deadly Immunity. This is really well laid-out and incorporates some newly-uncovered Freedom of Information Act stuff. Makes a convincing and infuriating argument.

Some excerpts:

Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.

"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

Excellent article. Definately worth the thirty second advert you have to view to get full access.

thursday

I wish toddlers could understand, "Mama is having a hard day, so please stop running, throwing things on the floor, and screeching 'choo choo!' at the top of your voice."

I also wish they could wash the dishes.

Yeah, then life would be good.

all around good day

Great day today, especially for a Monday!

We met up for a playgroup with two of the AP mamas in town, Kamrin and Verde. Awesome women, awesome get together. I just really like Arkansans. Tristan had a grand old time in Kamrin's backyard and really enjoyed playing with the other kids. He especially got attached to four year old Alexandria, and they had an awesome time playing in the sandbox together.

This evening we went to....



Tristan's first ball game!

He really loved it for about five minutes, was sorta interested for fifteen more, than asked to go home. So we did. I enjoyed going back to the ballpark I visited when I was a kid and am looking forward to the other two 'free nights' we get this summer, courtesy of my mama :)

beware little hands

We'd been having trouble with my computer's CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive for quite a while. When a disk was put in the drive, an even, circular scratch would be etched into it. It scratched two of my favorite kids' DVDs before I realized it was the drive causing the issue, not a pre-existing scratch.

Anywho, I told my Dad and he loaned me a lens cleaning kit. I ran the kit last night and was all happy, until I realized that the drive had actually scratched the kit disk, too. Argh. I finally got smart. I got a flashlight and looked in there and, sure enough, way back, there was something that looked like it doesn't belong. I put some tape on the end of a skinny knitting needle and hooked the intruder. It was a small sample packet of lotion.

Tristan must have pried open the disk drive cover and stuffed it in.

I'm so glad to have figured this out, but it makes me worry about not having any way to get info backed up off my computer. The first thing I did after getting the packet out was to burn copies of all the photos I've taken over the past three years. At least they're safe now.

happydance!

I got a Didymos!

Eleanor loves babywearing and will often wake up and fuss as soon as she is put down (though she still sleeps awesomely at night, so I'm not really complaining). Anywho, with my bad back, I'm already feeling her wee ten pounds with ring slings and pouches, and the ABC I sewed doesn't seem too comfy either. I found a nearly new Didy over at the Babywearer...after selling a couple of things and trading a carrier that doesn't work for us, it is mine. It just came yesterday. Wrap-arounds have quite a learning curve and I need to experiment a lot more before I'm really confidant with it, but my initial impression is that it is so much more comfortable than my other carriers for long-term babywearing. It is an Indio Grun (which appears more teal than green) and was originally a size 6, but (in what seems to be normal Didymos fashion), shrunk down after one wash to approx a size 5. It's perfect! I can do the wrap cross carry with no problems.

ugh

Jon is asleep, the earliest he's gone to sleep in over a week. He went in to change Ellie's diaper (I spent forever getting her and the boy to sleep, then she ended up peeing) and now he's passed out. Nice for him that it happened right after I told him I was exhausted and wanted him to do the dishes tonight.

Great.

lactavists unite

Is anyone else riding on a high after the nurse-in in NYC?

If you're in the dark (which is very unlikely, if you made it to this blog, lol), the New York Times has a great article about it. This has been in the works for about a week, with mamas coordinating at MDC and other AP message boards; the purpose was to protest some comments on ABC's The View, which has made anti-breastfeeding comments for years but finally said some things that 'broke the camel's back', so to speak. About 200 mothers with their kids showed up outside the ABC headquarters on Monday; mirror protests were thrown around the country at ABC affiliates. There are photos taken by attending mamas here and here. It has made CNN, local newspapers across the county, and even the Jimmy Kimmel show (he played Barbara W's claim from Monday that she didn't say anything against breastfeeding, then replayed the snippet from last week which quite directly refuted her claim, lol). MSNBC's Keith Olberman said that lactavists are "most powerful lobbying group in this country at the moment."

How awesome is that? As a mama on MDC said, as of yesterday, "we became cool".

And to all you mothers out there pressing for recognition of your rights to feed your baby as you wish, where you wish---you are amazing. Really just amazing.

just showin' off the kids...

Hanging out in the sling:


And the little Builder:

vent

Jon got his first paycheck and now we have a better idea of what he'll get paid after insurance and such. On paper, he should be making $5000 more a year, but after higher insurance prices, he is only making $40 more a month than we did in Kansas City. This is with a new graduate degree. If you take into account the job that I lost when we left KC, we would have made at least $350 more per month in KC, even without Jon changing jobs. If he'd gotten a job there, he would be making $5-10k more per yearn than here, so we'd be much better off.

We were just making it in KC and really looking at Jon's graduate degree as our "way out". Our housing here---while the cheapest decent apartment we could find---costs $115 more per month than it did in KC. Cost of living is equal or maybe even more here. Our net income is less now than it was two months ago.

It sucks. I'm going to have to get a job a lot earlier than we'd been planning. Sending Ellie to a daycare now would kill me. We're going to try to wait until she's at least six months old.

It's just depressing. I love being back here and really enjoy being around family, but financially this is a very difficult place for us to live.

caught on camera

Stop growing up, darn it!

(possible) friends!

I met some local moms today!!!

I went to the monthly LLL meeting, which was SO much better run than the one I attended in Kansas City. The leaders are awesome and very well informed and the moms are super friendly and mostly crunchy. Ellie napped pretty much the entire time and Tristan ran around wildly...he did have a few 'moments', but most of the moms have first hand experience with having two, so we didn't get any looks. The group seems to have a working relationship (lol) with Wild Oats, who donated tons of super yummy snacks for the meeting. They're sponsoring a LLL fundraiser in a couple of weeks at their store, too.

They have a splinter group that gets together for playgroups, etc, outside of LLL. All the moms in it are quite AP. I went to lunch with them after the meeting. Tristan had a great time. There are more kids right around his age and play level, so he'll have some folks to run around with. He had such a fit when we left.

It'll take a while to learn names and have enough attention to spare to really get to know the moms, but I think there's a likely friend or two in there :)

how can people be so dim?

Call me cold-hearted, but if you choose to build an extravagently expensive home in an area which has had major, disasterous landslides in the past...well, to quote the cliche, "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

hallelujah!

Ellie is LAYING DOWN ON THE BED NAPPING! Yay!!!! For the past two weeks, she hasn't napped without being in the sling or in the car. She has been waking within five minutes if put down...but she's passed out on the bed in the playroom, despite big brother making a huge racket a few feet away. I am so pleased! My back gets a rest!

She is still sleeping well at night, though has gone from waking up once to twice or so. Still amazing! And aren't cosleeping sibs the cutest?