Learning to Stop my Depression in its Tracks

Normally on a Monday, I post a weekly weigh-in. This week, I’m posting this instead. I don’t feel like weighing myself or measuring myself or taking a selfie for a weigh-in post. I don’t feel like facing the fact I’ve put on weight and am the largest I’ve ever been in my life. I have enough going on in my head right now…

I I’ve not taken medication for my depression since I was pregnant witih S – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis. It’s an ongoing battle, sometimes daily.

With S being ill for last week, I’ve found that stinky little bog monster has been doing its best to climb back onto my shoulder. We have been out of the house every day, as I know it’s bad for both of us to not go out of the house. However, the majority of those trips were to the shop for supplies, and straight back again. Going any further afield has been entirely thwarted by the fact our buggy is dying a death. I bought it for £30 two years ago, and it’s really served us well but now the tyre keeps slipping off the back wheel, which makes it a complete pain in the bum to use. And when your toddler is so poorly and tired they can’t even cope with walking up one flight of stairs, there’s no going out without a buggy!

On a normal day off if we don’t have plans, we’ll go to the shops and spend a good hour or two wandering around. We might go to the library, visit the ducks or the park, or go and see some Barons. It’s good for both of us to get up and out of the house, to get some fresh air and to stretch our legs. I know from previous experience that I cannot allow myself to stay in the house all day. Even over Christmas, when I had the Evil Chest Infection of Doom (it lasted over a month), I did my best to get out of the house every day.

Aside from our  enforced house arrest, we’ve also not had a proper night’s sleep for well over a week now. Looking back, I think the symptoms of S’s ear infection probably began last weekend. Since then she’s been waking in the night, either crying in pain or just unable to breathe properly. On several nights we ended up watching Baby Jake at 3am. On Saturday night, the first night in a week that S had not woken up, I was awake from 3 til 4, unable to sleep. I do not cope well with a lack of sleep.

I know that S cannot help being grumpy and whiney. I know that she’s just trying her best to get through her illness in the only way she can. But after several days with little sleep, I have a short fuse and get very antsy about things being shoved in my face, being poked, toys being shoved down my top or my feet being stood on. Aside from feeling like the world’s worst parent, I also just plain feel shitty.

A couple of things have happened work-wise this week, which I’ve been unable to address properly because I’ve been busy watching Pinocchio with S for the umpteenth time. Instead, they’ve sat in the corner of my mind and festered. That combined with a lack of sleep or fresh air, and a predisposition towards depression, has led to me becoming what in my days at Zenith Windows we referred to as negged out. I’ve been feeling negative and miserable and just not myself. I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want anyone to talk to me, I don’t want anyone touching me, and woe betide you if you stop in front of me in the street. When you feel like that, it’s really difficult to parent a poorly toddler who just needs cuddles and love and something to entertain her brain while she goes stir crazy stuck at home.

In the past when I felt like this, I’ve just taken to my bed and hidden under my duvet until it passed. That always worked, until 2010 when it just didn’t. And it didn’t work in the most monumental, ridiculous, worrying way possible. I stopped eating, I was drunk for days on end and taking whatever medication came my way. I can’t do that now, and I can’t take to my bed either. S has gone back to nursery today and will hopefully last the day – but I can’t go back to bed; I have a week’s worth of missed work to catch up on, and only a couple of days free this week in which to do it.

So what do I do? How do I drag myself out of this pit, before I sink past the point of no return? Here’s my plan:

• Socialise with people even when I really can’t stand the thought of making conversation
• Meditate
• Limit screen time
• Avoid multi-tasking
• Avoid sleeping during the day
• Set an alarm to remind me to eat during the day – and eat decent, fresh food not chocolate and ice cream
• Early nights
• Read good books
• Positive mantras to repeat in my head when it all begins to spin

I know this will work, because there is no option but for it to work. There is no plan B; there is nobody to fall back on. If I fall back into the pit of eternal stench, S has nobody else to take care of her and make sure she’s happy. So I’m working bloody hard on making sure I get back to where I was, as quickly as possible!