one of those weeks

Hi ladies,

Hope you're all well and having a good week! Mine has been, well, one of those! :S
Last Friday my cousins and our tribe of kids went up to Queen Elizabeth Country Park for the day. It was a lovely day, although the idea to actually go for a walk was quickly forgotten and we ended up just sitting in the same spot for 5 hours!!! but the kids were off playing together happily and it was a really nice end to the holidays :D. Friday night Et went to his dad's for the weekend, and Ben was on-call (and had loads of call outs) so the boys didn't come and stay so it was eeriely quiet at my house! Saturday morning Ben was called out at 7.20am..... seriously, who uses a bloody lift at that time in the morning!?!?! and that was the last i saw of him all day because damn people kept breaking lifts! grrrr lol.... so me and the baby desended on my mum's house for the day. I wanted my hair dyed in preperation for the wedding reception i was going to on Saturday night, and dying my own hair just leads to me getting very stressed and covered in dye, so i insisted my mum done it for me- which she did.... we also tried curling my hair, but, well, it was a disaster so we soon gave up. My mum, step-dad and brother were looking after Eryn Saturday night at my house while Ben and i went to the wedding reception. We had a fabulous time!! :D My friend Julie who got married looked AMAZING and it was such a great night :D However, Sunday, i was proper, proper ill!!!! I didnt get dress all day and I swore to myself i'm not drinling that much again!!! I did however catch up on loads of crap tv i'd recorded lol.
Ethan came home on Sunday night and started crying when i put him to bed. He was soooo upset because his best friend has changed schools and he was worried that he wouldnt have any one to play with on Monday. I felt sooooooo sorry for him, it makes my heart ache when he is so upset over something i cant do anything about. I was dreading Monday morning, but he was actually full of beans and went off to school without any problems, i'm so proud of him! He came home Monday saying the year 2 is exactly the same as year 1 and he has one level of reading books to complete, then he's up to junior school level and can read any book in the school :D im soooo proud!!!!!!! Also on Monday I finally got my timetable for university! I paniced at first, but i'm now thinking that it could have been worse.... so i've started on a mission to find childcare for my darlings. I'm viewing a nursery for Eryn today and meeting a childminder for Ethan tomorrow, so wish me luck! I also found out that i won't be getting half terms off, with is a right pain because now Ethan will need childcare for them too :( but i'll have to deal with that when it happens i suppose.
Tuesday I went to see my friend who i haven't seen for months (i really am crap at seeing people!) so we had a good catch up. And in the afternoon my cousin popped over with her eldest. He's 12 and he's taller than me now!!!!!! and i'm near-on 5ft 9in!!! i felt very old and very small! lol
2am Wednesday morning Eryn started crying, i didnt think much of it but 10mins later she was still going, so i kicked Ben out of bed to see to her (she cries more when i go in there! lol) She'd been sick and done the most explosive poo ever, it'd leaked through her nappy, sleepsuit, sleeping bag and on to her cot sheets and she was really really upset. We ended up bathing her because i just couldnt get her clean. There was sick in her hair, all over her beloved 'cat' and everywhere else. It was vile..... bless her, all she wanted was a cuddle but she stank to high-heaven! Her crying woke Et up, who scared me to death by appearing on the stairs as i was getting her out the bath (damn downstairs bathrooms!) and then she was pretty much awake all night after that. She spent half the time on me, the other half on Ben, but she was sooooo fidgety neither of us slept properly after that. I got up at 8 and sorted Ethan out for school while Ben dressed her, and she promptly feel straight back to sleep in my bed. Which is pretty much where she stayed all day. She woke up and had some water, went back to sleep, threw up the water, i changed her, she went back to sleep and that was pretty much it :( bless her heart. She only spent about an hour awake during the whole day.
Ethan had his first proper swimming lesson and had a fab time. He was a bit disappointed my dad wasnt there though- funny since 6wks ago he couldnt stand my dad! lol
Thankfully Eryn is back to normal this morning! Grumpy, but she's eaten and kept it down :D
This weeks topic is one very close to my heart. Having spent a lot of my life battling with depression i feel it really is important for people to talk about it, and Liz is right, people do think it's a 'taboo' but it really shouldn't be...... lol, one of the reasons i wanted to study psychology was because i thought it might help me work myself out! lol.
My buliema started when i was 11, because i was fat. plain and simple. My mum was 5 months pregnant when she married my step-dad, and i was fatter than her in the wedding pics. That's what started it all anyway. I went through bouts of it for years, and, i really dont know how, because i wasnt trying to make a secret of it, but no-one noticed. After a couple of years it stopped being about weight, and more to do with things in my life. When i felt things were out of control, i'd eat and be sick- because i could control that.... for instance, i had to leave home at 17 (for reasons beyond my control) and i had 'an episode'(lasting a couple of months) then. When my marriage broke down, and when i was desperately trying to get a divorce that took what seemed like forever, i had 'recurring episodes' ( i'd be ok for a week and then it would start again, repeatedly, for the duration of my divorce lol)
But the bit that got me most was after i had the ectopic, followed closely by the miscarriage. I truly was at rock bottom, and i really didnt know what to do. i wasnt eating so that i wouldnt make myself sick, and when i was eating i was sick, i was suicidal, and just basically couldn't function. My family and friends knew i was depressed, and had always know that i'd suffered bouts of depression, but no-one knew what was really going on. I'd been trying to be so strong, but i just couldnt do it any more. Et used to ask me why i was always crying, and i wasnt coping with anything. It was just awful. And i felt soooooo incredibly guilty because it was affecting Ethan too. So i went to the doc and got some anti-depressants, but unfortunately they made me worse. I was displaying signs of bipolar (and this had previously been mentioned years before) and i was scared stiff. So my anti-depressants were changed and slowly, very slowly, things picked up. I went to see a counsellor about 'my demons', and a psychologist about the buliema, and although i only attended a few sessions with each, they made a real difference. I was still making myself sick occassionally when i fell pregnant with Eryn, but as soon as i found out i was carrying her i stopped. And it's not started again since :D (go me! lol) I was soooo sick when i was carrying her, and i still have random days of sickness now and i have to convince people it's not due to pregnancy or buliema! my mum reckons i've done myself some sort of irrepuble damage lol.
On the subject of baby blues i didnt suffer at all with either of the kids, but i look back now and feel the first 6 months with Eryn passed in a complete blur, and i was probably on the boarderline of depression. Not to do with PND but just the other things in my life (and lack of them) Once she got to about 5 months i realised that i had to do something about it before things got any worse, and started attending baby groups and i've met some really lovely people, and that's helped get me back on track. And if i'm honest, i'm happier now than i can ever remember being before, so something has gotta be right ;) xx I've also learnt that some things just don't matter. I used to get myself worked up about soooo many silly things, but now, i know my kids are happy and i'm happy and that's all that really matters.

Again, i've written loads!!!!! sorry!!!! i'll try and keep it short and sweet next week! lol, hope everyone is well x Nolly xx