Hormones are making me crazy

Here, let's have an authentic start to Monday Morning.  ;)

I am swinging from super-manic-happy to utterly miserable this week.  This is how it is for me, not always, but sometimes.  I would like to hide behind that statement and stop typing now...  But denial is a killer, so here we go...

Here is Rowan.  Sitting in my lap with sleepy morning fuzzy hair and the big blue eyes.  She is utterly utterly beautiful and demanding and perfect and I am loving my life with her.  There is this one thing that makes me gasp for breath.  By this point with the others, I was pregnant with their new sibling.  In fact, by this point with the others, I had already *been* pregnant, and miscarried.  I am not having another baby yet.  I don't know if I will ever have another baby.  I long to have another baby.  It hurts to look at baby pictures.  You know - THAT kind of broody.

It scares me to sit here and type the words - I don't know if I will have another baby.

Asides from loving my babies and their babyhoods, I am GOOD at the baby stage.  I could do without colic, but you know what?  I know what to do, I'm well practiced, and when I can't do a damned thing at least I don't feel like it's my fault.  I know babies, the idea of having a seven year old some day is thrilling but also totally unknown.

Here are two big girls, as different and similar as can be, persuing that path off out of my safe arms into the rest of the world Out There.

By this point with the others, I knew what came next.  Yet here is Rowan, even while she is still my baby, walking and talking and looking at me with a sharp wit behind those innocent blue eyes.  This time as the year turns I just have no idea what comes next and how I will handle it.  Worse still, I don't even want to think about it - because the thought of making a decision about so much as what to eat for breakfast currently makes me so anxious I am likely to run and hide.

For the first time in a long time I have both rhythm and freedom in our days.  I am getting things done, in a manner that probably ought to make me at least a little proud after the number of confessions I have made about how naturally disorganised I am.  I have three happy self-contained little souls who check in but don't need me constantly.  I have a home, and every physical thing I need for day to day.  I have friends around me and a faith community and a husband who loves me.

I also have a LOT of hormones, all over the place.  So far we are up to four post partum cycles, all of them randomly spaced so just when I think I MUST be pregnant (or perhaps only night-nursing too much to go "back to normal") there we go again back with the tearfulness and the irrational urges to break things and the needing space to avoid feeling touched out.

Oh yes, and the can't-get-anything-right syndrome.  Most noticeable with friends who keep thinking I'm insulting them when I'm just being friendly, and Jenna who reckons I am deliberately antagonising her and treating her like a baby.  *sigh*  This part is the depression talking.  It can be safely ignored as one of those voices that doesn't get to command my respect right now.  Because depression has a lot of lies to tell, and "everything is broken" is definitely a lie.  See?  I'm starting to spot the signals to listen to and those to tune out.  Celebrate with me for a moment.  ;)

But this is where I am at.  Up, and then down again.  Coming out of that dark tunnel, but totally floored by everyday ordinary safe things.  Sometimes I feel so utterly out of balance.  Precarious.

And tired.  That too.  Very tired.  Rowan is back to sleeping through, and my body is craving more of that strange unfamiliar commodity.  I just want to go back to bed right now, and forget about the prospect of starting a new week.  Please stop the world, I want to get off.

That's all I have to share for this morning.  I hope it hasn't scared you all off.  ;)  The thing I want, desperately today, is to pull out some of the emotional laundry and give it a good shake in the daylight.  You know?  I also don't want to pretend that I am always fabulous and fine, because there are two truths...  What I show you of our triumphs and philosophy and learning, those lovely pictures of my beautiful kids, even the cheerful mess in my house, that's all real too.  It's all true.  :)  But it's never the whole picture.  I even edit the mess (a little - I don't tidy before I take photographs lol but I do avoid the most dreadful areas).

So here I am.  Unedited.  Just a little bit crazy.  But ready to start the day with hope, and a little bit more comfortable with my big questions and doubts and insecurities.  Here's to another week, with all the ups and downs it will doubtless bring us.