Kadiera's Playground Cute but Evil - it averages out

I went back to work this week - it's good in a lot of respects. Helps motivate me to get things accomplished. And it's rather oddly helpful to hear everyone genuinely happy to see me back and genuinely concerned about my health and wellbeing, and about Alexander too. There are lots of questions, of course, but explaining makes me feel better - makes being away from Alexander feel less distant.

I need more sleep; my normal sleep schedule and my work schedule interfere, and working in the time to spend with Alex and still get things at home managed is a challenge.

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I'm also tapering off the zoloft. It and I don't get along all that well. The issues are mostly minor, but there are a lot of them - and they add up to me not being me in a big way (particularly the not-so-minor issues). It did help, but time and rest have helped a lot too - and really, I'm not sure that I was any more depressed than usual after my hospital stay, just that I was too stressed to sort through things, and afraid to let things get too far out of hand.

Almost immediately upon dropping the dose in the process of tapering, my dreams are my own again, rather than the crazy ultra-peculiar things they've been lately. So I'm hopeful that the rest of me will be getting back to normal shortly (though it supposedly takes a month for all this crap to metabolize out of my body) - and given that this post is more than I think I've written in the last couple weeks *total*, it's probably a good sign that things are getting back to normal.

I mentioned a while back that getting pregnant didn't erase all the past history of infertility. Having a baby doesn't either...but it makes the hurt less, and makes it possible to not focus on it so much.

Right after Alex was born, one of the hardest things I encountered was going into the hospital during the day - to get to the NICU, you must walk past fetal imaging (ultrasound) and past the elevators to labor and delivery, and thus women well into their third trimester are everywhere. While I still grieve for the fact that we missed out on that....but then I look at my little boy and realize that it really doesn't matter so much, because he was the goal all along, the rest was just the road I thought I was taking, and this is a state function rather than a path function.

I've been out shopping (well, mostly window shopping) for baby things, and babies are everywhere. And while it makes me wish so very much that Alexander was home so he could go with me...it's not the paralyzing and deeply empty longing for a child that it was.

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There is much family drama, which I'm not sure I want to post publicly. Suffice it to say that I apparently need to remind people that this is not about them, it's not a competition, and that I don't have time to be their mother. They are adults, and should act as such. My first priority has to be taking care of Alexander's immediate needs, my next priority has to be to take care of me - because if I don't take care of me, I can't take care of Alexander. Finally, I check in on my immediate circle of friends/family of choice and my household (Barry, cats, chores, etc) - not because they need my assistance, but because I have to maintain my own sanity and put food on the table and have clean clothes to wear. Beyond those things, there really isn't time or energy left right now, so I am not going to call and check up on them or go out of my way to make them feel included or put up with very much bullshit.

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Anyways. Baby shower this weekend, plus family will be in town, so how much I say the next few days will depend on how timing works out.