Turns out, I’m not alone – that’s how most people adjust to change. Once you get into it and really get going and see things start to happen, the doubt creeps in and chickening out looks like a swell option.

It gets worse before it gets better, and all that.

I knew going into Getting Off the Junk there would be a “transition” period, where my hair might get all freaked out and start overproducing oil. No ‘poo-ers report this transition time as being anywhere from just a few weeks and practically painless to two months of smelly, disgusting greasiness.

I’m just going to assume skin goes through a transition of sorts, too. All of a sudden my skin isn’t covered in chemicals and it can breathe. And also release toxins. Boy, is it ever.

Let’s pick up where we left off.

Day 4

On Day 4 I woke up to my hair being a tangled, dry mess and deodorant that had clearly stopped working sometime during the night. As I mentioned in my last post, when I used the crystal before, I always had to wash and reapply it after about 12 hours. So maybe the first few days were just a fluke? Not sure, but my sheets were wet from the kind of night sweats I haven’t had since I was pregnant.

The plan for Day 4 was to do nothing to my hair (bun for the shower, then just brush it out) and shower/shave with the KMF shaving lotion. My hair was a mess, yes, but it was dry and tangly, not dirty, greasy, or smelly, so I saw no reason to change that plan to a baking soda wash. I would leave it alone, then when I brushed it after the shower I would try some of the coconut/almond/vit E oil blend I had on the ends.

You know how I have an almost-10-month-old? Did I mention she’s teething?

I never managed to find my way to the shower on Day 4. At some point in the day my still-tangled hair went into a bun, but that was the extent of my grooming for the day.

No, seriously. I didn’t brush my teeth, wash my face, reapply deodorant, nothing. Add some leaked breast milk to the stretched out nursing tank I was wearing, and I’m telling you, it’s a miracle my husband managed to keep his hands off me.

Day 5

I have an eye doctor appointment today, and my mom is coming with us so we can check out the mall and get Giant Baby some new clothes that she can wear for two weeks before she outgrows them.

I’m still a Yeti, but I also need to do something about my hair. (I try not to shave and wash my hair in the same shower because the hot water starts running out toward the end, and I hate feeling like I’m racing a clock.) My hair still looks dry, my scalp is still not greasy, but it also doesn’t smell clean.

I decide to wash my hair and shave just my pits, saving my legs for tomorrow. I have a theory that the crystal will work better if I stop being a Yeti.

Hair

I use the same routine and amounts of baking soda and apple cider vinegar as before. My hair feels clean and again looks really good as it’s drying. However, when it gets completely dry, I have a bunch of little flyaways everywhere and it looks messy, like I didn’t brush or comb it. But the bottom two-thirds of my hair looks fantastic. I wear a bandanna. Like I’m wearing in this pic:

Body

I still haven’t made any facial cleanser or moisturizer, so I use KMF olive oil soap on my face and body, and shave my armpits with KMF lime shaving cream.

The shaving cream works well, but it’s an adjustment for me because I usually use a foaming gel. My heritage is about 75% Eastern European, and we’re a hairy folk. I need shaving cream to really soften. I don’t think I can judge this until I use it on my legs.

I’m still liking the KMF honey calendula lotion. It feels lightweight, but it’s moisturizing enough to clear up the dry patches I had and keep my skin soft in the dry winter air here.

My face, however, is a dry, flaky mess. The honey calendula lotion feels soothing and clears up the flakes, but I obviously need to start taking better care of my face.

The crystal stings when I apply it to my just-shaved pits. This displeases me, and I’m not sure what to do about it. For a crystal to work well, it needs to be applied as quickly after your pits dry as possible, but I’d like to give my pits a little bit of time to recover from being shaved. Dilemma.

The deodorant holds up during a long afternoon of appointments and errand-running. I go to bed still un-smelly.

Day 6

I braided my hair before I went to sleep last night to try to cut down on the tangle factor, and it helped. This morning my scalp isn’t greasy (or dry) and it’s not smelly. I mean, it doesn’t smell clean, but it doesn’t necessarily smell bad either. Thanks to the braiding, I have this 80′s crimped look going on.

My body is super sweaty again and my pits reek. I think my body is flushing out toxins through my skin while I’m sleeping.

According to my “every other day” schedule, today is a shave my legs, no wash the hair day. I’m going to spend some time googling to see what sort of adjustments (add coconut oil? rinse with water on no wash days? more or less vinegar?) I need to make to the wash routine for the dryness in my hair.

I’m also determined to make my own facial cleanser and moisturizer today. While caring for a teething 10 month old and organizing two bathrooms and a hall closet.

My last attempt, when I realized I was pregnant with Mini E, was the most successful. Since then, I’ve been cleaning the whole house exclusively with baking soda, vinegar, and steam. (OK, and a tiny bit of bleach in the toilets). But all of my “products” have slowly made their way back into my bathroom.

I’ve been wanting to change this for a while, and I’ve been seeing more and more talk about no ‘poo, natural living, homesteading, etc in my twitter stream. It’s really been resonating with me, so I made a point to do some google research over the weekend.

The more I read, the more excited I got. I also got really, really overwhelmed. Once you decide to get off the Junk, you realize just how much Junk you’re on. My eventual goal is to make all of our own everything, but it’s going to take a while to get there. In the meantime, we’re going to fill in the blanks with some store bought brands like Kiss My Face (KMF because I’m going to be typing it a lot.)

Here is my journey, probably in more detail than you’d care for, to get our family completely off of commercial grooming and cleaning products.

For reference, I didn’t have a terribly elaborate grooming routine before I got off the Junk anyway – I let my hair air dry, I rarely wore make-up. It was pretty much shower, body lotion, facial moisturizer, some sort of no-frizz stuff for my hair, deodorant, and done.

Day One

Hair  Since I still had some product (Garnier Smoothing Milk and Frizz-Ease) in my hair, I decided to start no ‘poo with some ‘poo. My thinking was that it takes chemicals to remove other chemicals. I washed and conditioned with Aussie Moisturizing. I combed my hair and let it air dry. It was very soft, fluffy, and flyaway. I was quite pleased not to have anywhere to go that day.

Body  I washed my face and body with KMF olive oil bar soap. We hadn’t yet made a store run for lotion, shaving cream, or chapstick so I decided to use the Mother’s Special Blend toning oil I got for my belly when I was pregnant as a body lotion. It’s a blend of coconut oil, almond oil, and vitamin E. It smelled good, dried quickly, and softened my skin. However, I have some dry patches near my wrist that stayed dry and itchy.

My face and lips were still pretty dry so I had a brief relapse with my moisturizer and chapstick.

I used a Naturally Fresh with aloe vera deodorant crystal that I still had hanging around from my last attempt to go Dirty Hippie. I’ve had good results from using crystals in the past, my only complaint is that it seemed to stop being as effective after about 12 hours. To avoid some funk, I would need to take my shirt off, lean over the sink, wash my pits, and reapply.

Day Two

Hair  I put my hair in a bun while I showered, then brushed it afterward. Before, I had a little squirt bottle with a solution of two parts water and one part detangler/conditioner, and I would squirt this on my hair to help control the flyaways and static and freshen the waves/curls. And also so I didn’t cry like a baby while I brushed out all the tangles.

I’m not gonna lie, of all the Junk, I was the most nervous about giving up my squirt bottle. But, I was pleasantly surprised to find I didn’t need it! The brush slid easily through my hair, which was hanging down in perfect waves. Until Mini E yanked on it a few times and it went back up into a bun.

Body  I shave on the days I don’t wash my hair, but we still hadn’t made the store trip and I was already basically a Yeti because I have a 10 month old. I decided one more day of being a Yeti was better than slathering chemicals on my legs and armpits, and other more sensitive areas.

Once again I used the KMF olive oil soap, toning oil as lotion, and my deodorant crystal. I noticed when applying the crystal this time that I hadn’t used it since my last shower… I never got stinky enough to have to do the wash-and-reapply step.

Day Three

We went to the store last night to pick up some natural products to use until we’re set up to make our own things. I purchased KMF lime shaving cream and honey calendula lotion, an aloe vera glycerin bar soap for hand washing, and two chapsticks.

Hair  All the links I found online seemed to start with a basic “recipe” of using about 1 tbsp baking soda and enough water to form a paste. The advice about apple cider vinegar varied a lot more and seemed to depend on whether or not your hair was “oily”. I really, really hate tangles and my hair tends to be soft and flyaway, so I decided to use slightly less than 1 tbsp of vinegar in a 20 oz cup of water.

I’m storing the baking soda, vinegar, and measuring spoons in the bathroom, and keeping a small tupperware dish and a cup in the shower. I put 1 tbsp of baking soda in the dish and 2 tsps of apple cider vinegar in the cup and took it in the shower with me. I wet my hair, then mixed some water with the baking soda. I used a little too much and it was more a thick liquid than a paste. I poured it on my head, concentrating on the roots. There was a small amount of paste in the bottom of the dish, so I rubbed that on my roots, like you would with shampoo. I left it on while I washed my face, then rinsed.

I filled the plastic cup with water and dipped the ends of my hair into it a few times, then poured it on my hair, concentrating on the ends. I left it on while I finished showering, then rinsed it out. I combed my hair with a wide toothed comb while still in the shower. My hair was soft and there were very few tangles.

I combed it again when I got out of the shower. I noticed immediately how much more cooperative it was. It just stayed wherever I put it. I combed it straight, then scrunched it with my fingers. I was going for those “sexy, just from the beach waves” the fashion magazines are always telling you about. And it totally worked. My hair looked fantastic, and it looked and felt clean. Oddly enough, it still smelled like the Aussie shampoo and conditioner I used two days before.

Body  I still don’t have it together enough to make the facial cleanser and moisturizer recipes I found, so I washed my face (and body) with the KMF olive oil soap, and used KMF honey calendula lotion on both my face and body. I felt weird using body lotion on my face (media conditioning that they need to be different products, maybe?) but it worked really well.

I used my deodorant crystal again. It’s working well and still only needs applied once per day.

Day Four

I woke up this morning with smelly armpits and tangly, dry hair that looks like shit.

I found that paragraph, dated January 12, in my drafts folder this morning. Today is the first chance I’ve had to try to finish that post. I don’t even remember what it was about.

And you know what, I don’t remember what this post was going to be about, either. Because the same thing happened this morning – I open up wordpress, and the cries start on the monitor. I drop what I’m doing to get back in bed and nurse Mini E back to sleep.

Attachment Parenting is hard.

I crossed out the attachment because I realized it was going to take this post in a direction I don’t want to go. Parenting, however your family chooses to do it, is hard. It’s also amazing, gratifying, rewarding, and I could come up with many more words to describe how wonderful it is, but it’s 5:30 am. I’m tired.

I hesitate to write too specifically about how we parent, because, well… I don’t know how to. I don’t want to be part of any of the “mommy wars”.

I don’t want what I write to make you feel judged/bad/wrong about how you parent, and I don’t want you to try to make me feel judged/bad/wrong about how I parent.

I remember in what felt like the worst of my no sleeping, no showering, living on granola bars, constantly nursing, does it really get better after the first 3 months, fuck this anxiety disorder times, I vented on (my now deleted) facebook about how hard it was.

The responses?

“That’s what you get for not getting her on a feeding and sleeping schedule. You’re her bitch now.”

“You don’t have to pick her up every single time she cries, you know.”

“You need to stop nursing her down to sleep.”

“You’d have more time if you would just stop using those cloth diapers.”

And so on.

I got my share of supportive, hang in there, and everyone does what works for their own family comments. They were outnumbered by the negative ones, though.

I’m vocal on twitter about being anti-Cry It Out, pro-breastfeeding anywhere, anytime, pro-extended breast feeding, and other issues. I don’t really write about it here, though. See, the thing is… *takes deep breath*

I do think Cry It Out is wrong. It makes me sad to think of a baby lying in a crib, scared and crying alone. Because I don’t believe they are learning to “self-soothe”. I believe they are crying because they need you and they don’t understand why you aren’t there.

I do think feeding schedules are wrong. It makes me sad to think of a baby crying in hunger and being denied food because someone decided babies only need to eat every 3 or 4 hours.

I don’t know how to talk about these things. I don’t want other mamas to feel the way I felt reading those facebook comments, but at the same time I can’t go on not writing about being a mama.

No, my bad habits are more along the line of drinking coffee and soda all day instead of water, never exercising, eating my feelings, not writing, letting my anxiety overwhelm me, that sort of thing.

My house was getting cleaned, but I was doing far less than half the work.

That issue right there has been a big contributor to my recent anxiety- and depression-riddled state. When I was on bedrest, my husband and mom took over most of the household tasks. There were a few things I could manage from the bed/couch, but mostly I felt helpless and useless.

Then, as new parents we struggled with the lack of sleep, dear God will I ever sleep again routine that inherently comes with a newborn. As Mini E has gotten older, her naps, feedings, and even poops have come on a more regular schedule. But those first few months were rough, and not just because of the parenting learning curve (OMG so steep someone get me some climbing gear).

But more than that, we weren’t happy with our day to day lives… we didn’t like living in the northwest, we didn’t see ourselves ever being able to afford a house, J was feeling stagnant at work, we just wanted a different lifestyle. We knew the answer was to move like we’d been discussing for years, but the stress produced from waiting for all of those details to fall into place took its toll.

We’re lucky that we have a strong marriage, because the worst it got was a few instances of us being short with each other. And I may have slammed a door in frustration (in front of our friends, not one of my finer moments), but no real arguments. I think it’s because we are very much on the same team. We don’t fight over “who does more”.

We both know that marriage is a give and take, for the long haul, insert other favorite cliche here. For the last few years, J has done more. He’s done this so that I could heal, get pregnant, keep the pregnancy, give birth, successfully breastfeed, and take care of our daughter. Now it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.

It’s time for me to take over the majority of the shopping, cooking, cleaning, so he can focus on this transition in his job.

Also? I want to do those things. I long to do them. I love my job. I want to be better at it. I want to feel that sense of satisfaction from putting away a freshly washed load of towels. I want to watch my daughter sign for “more” of the food that I cooked for her. I want her to lick the kitchen floor that I mopped.

OK, maybe not that last one.

Anyway, today is the day we buckle down and focus. The holidays are over, we’ve recovered from our Welcome to the East Coast colds, and we’ve had a chance to catch our breath and look back on all that we’ve survived as a family in the last few years.

It’s time to unpack the final boxes, hang up the pictures and curtains, and start our new lives.

The end result of this is far less posting and less writing in general. I need to follow my own advice, and snatch moments to write. Mini E is finally taking naps and doing some sleeping at night and in the morning without me. I don’t know if I have 10 minutes or an hour and a half to write this post, but if I let that stop me from starting, the cobwebs and tumbleweeds will never be cleared away from this site. And from my mind.

I’m one of those people that don’t do resolutions. Sure I need to eat better, and work out more, etc, etc, etc, and I do see the New Year as a good time for a fresh start.

But I don’t want to make a list of things I’ll probably just beat myself up later for failing at. I want to grow, change, improve as a person and that requires more than a list. I want our life to run more efficiently, and that requires more than just some organization tips and a new calendar.

But most of all, I want to stop feeling this disconnect between my values, thoughts, and opinions and the way I live my life.

2011 was a year of me being a writer who rarely wrote.

A housewife who rarely took care of her house.

A friend who avoided social interaction, and felt more deeply wounded by slights, real and imagined, than the situation called for.

A mother who let herself be intimidated by the judgment, real and imagined, that she felt from other mothers.

A mother who didn’t trust herself and her instincts.

An eternal optimist, full of determination, who let herself get mired in despair and loss of hope.

A woman who let her Anxiety and various other Labels get the better of her.

All of that changes, and it changes now. Today. This year.

We’re ideally suited for change right now at The Family E. A bright, shiny new house; a new city; new routines; new people. I need all of these things, and I’ve needed them for a while. We all have.

I was weighing these thoughts and ideas, formulating some sort of end of the year post, when I read this from my Easily Mused partner, Kemari.

Exactly. A manifesta.

It’s not the endless list of little things that I need to do: write more, exercise more, drink more water, eat less crap, clean out my closet, vacuum more.

It’s the big picture I need to focus on. If I’m living my life according to my values, those little details will naturally fall into place. How can you feel anything but derailed when you have no sense of direction?

Like Kemari’s, my manifesta will be organic – changing as I grow, learn, and discover more about who I am as a woman, wife, mother, and writer.

2012 Manifesta (first draft)

1. I will write, live, and love Out Loud. I will no longer let the expectations and preconceived notions of others define who I am, what I say, or what I do.
2. I will embrace all the parts of myself, especially the ones I don’t like very much. I can’t work on changing what I haven’t accepted is there.
3. I will be true to my word. I will follow through on my promises to others, and to myself.
4. I will breathe deeply and remember that it’s going to be ok.

This year, the contents of our house will be in a moving van December 14. December 15 – 20 I’ll be in a car with my husband, baby, mother, and dying dog driving to our new life. December 21 (hopefully) we’ll be unloading our moving van into the perfect rental.

I just can’t imagine that finding and putting up a tree and ornaments will be a priority. Nor will rushing out to a store with all the other last minute shoppers to frantically buy things that none of us need.

And for all of this, I am so very grateful. The “pressure” of the holidays is off. The focus will be on family, love, home, and faith, because there is no time and no need for anything else.

I have a habit of always thinking ahead… and missing what’s happening in the present. I’m trying very hard not to do that during this time. I’ve yearned for this relocation for so long, but I don’t want to make the mistake of not properly saying goodbye to this life.

I make a point to be conscious of all the “lasts”, the mundane ones most of all, because some of them are happening already. I’ve colored my hair for the last time in this bathroom. We’ve grilled for the last time in this backyard.

I’ve been in Oregon for ten years. This is where I met my husband, made wonderful friends, had the favorite job of my career, and gestated and gave birth to our daughter. My husband is from here, and his family is here. Oregon will always be a part of us.

I’m so far away from that 23 year old girl who left her whole life behind in West Virginia with stars in her eyes and fantasies of a fresh start.

But at the same time, she’s still very much here, inside me, bouncing excitedly with stars in her eyes and fantasies of a fresh start.

There are times I can sit with my angst, in fact it drives me. There are times when it overwhelms me and I write posts like this, that cause my best friend to call me to make sure I’m not going to “jump off a bridge”.

We talked about anxiety, and postpartum anxiety, and mothering, and how very soon, for the first time in 15 years we’re going to live near each other again.

This move has been my reset button. The closer it gets to the the date we’re leaving, and the more pieces that fall into place, the more my anxiety lifts. I can see and feel again, and the answers seem clearer and easier to reach.

This leads me to the belief that my symptoms were primarily situational. Like I have my whole life, I’m simply riding waves of depression and anxiety that come and go. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t.

I’ve been talking to other mamas, too. Mamas that have postpartum mood disorders, those that have regular old mood disorders, and mamas that have never had more than a twinge of the “baby blues”. And most importantly, I talked to my doctor’s office. The consensus seems to be that the lack of bonding and attachment is an integral part of the postpartum mood disorder diagnosis, and without that symptom, you just have a regular old mood disorder.

This distinction is important to the logical part of me that wants to sort, label, and understand all things. But it’s unimportant to the emotional side of me. Pain is pain, right?

Except when it’s not. Saying I have postpartum anxiety feels like wearing a hat that doesn’t fit and doesn’t belong to me. And in some weird way, it feels like I’m taking away from the pain of those that do suffer with lack of bonding and feelings of ambivalence about motherhood. I can’t even imagine how painful and disorienting that would be on top of already feeling depressed and anxious.

At this point, I’ve decided not to take medication. My symptoms are still manageable, and they’re improving every day. Despite the fact that in three weeks from today we will be moving across the country, and I haven’t packed a single box. We don’t even know what our new address is going to be yet.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going to drown in details and to-do lists. I get overwhelmed. I cry. I want to throw things. Those times are starting to get outnumbered by the times I feel excited, exhilarated, and optimistic.

I arrange our furniture into imaginary houses with big windows.

I google local Catholic Churches.

I look up babywearing groups, cloth diapering groups, the local la leche league contact.

I dream of new friends, new routines, change.

I dream of being myself again.

As I’m collecting all my pieces of writing in one place, I’m noticing several themes and learning a lot about what I can do to improve.

I have a problem with follow-through. Like whoa. Every single piece I found, whether it was an essay, part of a book review, or fiction, was unfinished or at the very least, unedited. I mean, the most basic editing for typos, tense errors, spelling mistakes wasn’t done. Also, notice how I’ve never posted a single book review here? I’ve posted exactly one book review in my life, and it was at Easily Mused. There’s something motivating about editors and deadlines.

I thrive on outside motivation/inspiration. See above. I love to write, but I also love to read and be lazy in the rare times I have a few moments away from my daughter. A deadline forces me to write. The nerd in me loves getting assignments, especially writing prompts. I seek them out, but have never had the nerve to post anything.

I am such a pantser. I just sit down and start writing whatever pops into my head. Most of the time I’m writing flash fiction in response to a prompt, so I just sit there and let it flow. I found pieces that I have no memory of writing. Incidentally, they’re usually a meandering mess because I don’t go back and finish them. Time to embrace the outline and work on my follow-through. Including posting some of what I’ve written here.

I’m Suzy Social Worker. All the fiction I found had themes of abuse, addiction, domestic violence, trauma, etc, and it was all very dark. Not a happy ending in sight. The essays were all about what’s wrong with our mental health treatment, our child welfare system, how we parent in this country, and so on.

Writing is therapy for me. See above. I think I might be working out some of the vicarious trauma I experienced in my 13 years working in the mental health field. When I reread my flash fiction, I see vague hints of former clients, a mishmash of their stories and the impressions they left on me. Over the course of my career, I worked with thousands of people. A piece of each and every one of them is stored in my memory somewhere, and the pieces are spilling out all over my stories.

Apparently, I really like the name Kate. I found 20ish pieces of writing, and in 8 of them was a character named Kate. Interesting.

photo credit

It’s been both easy and hard. Not paying attention to the drama of the day has been freeing, but at the same time only being online here on the blog has been a little isolating. Between deleting my facebook (and networked blogs) and this hiatus, my blog traffic has tanked. People that I had interacted with and considered friends on twitter are unfollowing me. I’m not sure why, but I’m trying not to think about it too much. I assume that this, like everything else, is happening for a reason.

I’m guessing part of that reason is to help me focus on the things in my life that matter – my family, my writing. One of the projects I’ve been working on is trying to collect all my writing in one place. I have pieces of stories saved in notebooks, on my ancient laptop that overheats and shuts off after running for approximately 8 minutes, and on my recently deceased desktop. My husband just bought me a new laptop and I’m transferring everything there as a first step.

This is the level of disorganization I’m talking about. I found the following, titled simply “story” saved in my documents:

Kate hadn’t intended to read her daughter’s diary.  It just sort of… happened.  She was putting the basket of clean clothes on Hannah’s bed when she noticed the diary sitting on the desk.  She probably wouldn’t have been so tempted if Hannah hadn’t taken lately to answering even the most simple question with a shrug or eye roll.

Her friends tried to reassure her this was just what parenting a teenager was like, but it felt like something more.  Maybe it was because Hannah’s dad was never really in the picture, but the two of them had always been exceptionally close.  Hannah was the kind of child that blurted out every thought she had, and now Kate couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation about something other than what was for dinner.  Her daughter felt like a stranger, and it scared her.

The diary started at the beginning of the school year, and was filled with the usual teen angst of who had to sit alone at lunch that day and which boy was cute that week.

I have no idea where I was going with that, and I barely remember writing it.

I think I need to add “embrace the outline” to my to-do list.

My brain’s been broken and put back together before. How often can this happen? Are my thoughts, memories, ideas, just going to start leaking out like water from a broken vase that’s been glued back together too many times?

A psychologist first said Major Depression, acute, situational, to me in 1996. I was 23 years old. In the previous year and a half I had: graduated college, moved 3 times, gotten engaged to (and eventually married) an alcoholic, gained 20 pounds, dropped out of my master’s program, and very poorly dealt with the deaths of five family members.

I kept seeing the psychologist, started taking Prozac, ate better, worked out, went to church, started writing again (in secret, of course). Things improved. I stopped taking the Prozac after 10 months or so, and felt fine without it.

A few other times in my life I’ve sought out a therapist, usually at times of transition, or when I’ve slacked off on self-care and replaced it with unhealthy coping mechanisms.

The last few years have been pretty stressful. Sometimes it feels selfish to say that, because in so many ways we are very blessed. But pretending everything is OK isn’t going to help me get better.

A twitter friend the other day called the day she was having “the day of 1000 papercuts” and I’m going to steal that expression here.

We had about two years of “1000 papercuts”. Some were big: I got laid off. We had problems conceiving. The pregnancy was high risk. I had HG. I was on bedrest. Mini E had labored breathing at birth and spent the first few hours of her life in the NICU. When she was six weeks old Mini E choked on spit-up. Like, really choked. She couldn’t breathe, her eyes were panicked, I had to do first aid for choking and call 911. Then we rode in the ambulance to the emergency room so they could make sure she didn’t aspirate spit-up into her already tender lungs.

The small parts of the 1000 papercuts don’t really matter. They’re probably about the same as the ones in your life.

Part of me is dying to know what sort of broken I am this time… is it postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, PTSD, my previous brand of situational depression brought on by all the changes of the past few years (including the hormonal ones brought on by pregnancy)? Is there really a difference? Does it matter?

I don’t know if it matters. It’s just that when I look at the symptom checklists for the postpartum mood disorders, they all include feeling overwhelmed by motherhood and a lack of connection/bonding with the baby.

See, I don’t have that. It’s not that I don’t want to admit those feelings are there. It’s that they aren’t. I feel like I have been waiting my whole life to be this child’s mother and I’m good at it. Without a doubt, this is my true purpose.

Mothering her feels natural to me, and I love everything about it. I love all the tasks involved in mothering – nursing her, feeding her, changing her, washing her diapers, playing with her, entertaining her, holding her. I let her nap on my lap and we cosleep because I think sleep training and babies sleeping alone in cribs is bullshit. I’m not missing a moment of her sweet baby goodness.

In fact, my only issue with how I mother is when I don’t feel strong enough to listen to my instincts and disagree with “conventional” parenting wisdom. Like when the lactation consultant at my pediatrician’s office sent me off with instructions to only nurse my 2 day old daughter every 3 hours and to supplement with formula that she so helpfully handed to me on the way out. And I fucking thanked her for it, instead of calling bullshit and saying, “How about I just nurse her whenever she’s hungry?”

Back to whether or not it matters. The part of me that’s dying for a label for this is the part that’s craving support from others. Labels sort us into our little groups, so we can find the people like us. We can talk, we can vent, we can support.

But lately it seems when I find the people like me, and reach out to them, I get rejected and ignored. I tweet with the appropriate hashtag, I don’t get a single response. I join a chat, I get ignored. I follow similar minded crunchy mamas, strike up conversations, and get ignored. Not all the time, of course. But it happens more often than not, and I can’t figure out why. It’s obviously me, because I see them all talking to each other and being supportive. Inside I’m screaming, I struggle with that too, but no one seems to hear.

I’ve taken a twitter/G+ hiatus for awhile, because honestly, I took that to mean that I’m seeking support from the wrong place, and in the wrong way. To watch all the support and camaraderie that I’m not a part of is too painful right now. A hiatus is the way to go until I’m in a better space and can see it for what it is, instead of seeing it through the haze of my anxiety.

I’m hoping a hiatus will also allow me to focus more on self-care, and that includes my writing. If all goes well, we should be settled in Pittsburgh before Christmas. If things are still this bad, I’ll find a doctor.