Rebuild from Depression Blog

This blog has been dead but luckily, it's not because I'm vacationing in a state institution.

We don't often get second chances in life and I didn't really expect I'd get this particular second chance. In fact, I was too chicken to plan for it. If you haven't followed my story, my biggest depressive and psychotic moments came in pregnancy and postpartum starting about seven years ago. I'm here pregnant for the second time. Smart money would have been that I'd go crazy again because these things tend to get worse instead of better. We have worked just about every day to keep that from happening again and it has paid off so far. I am increasingly confident that we can manage postpartum as well.

I posted some tools on this blog, particularly in the post "Surviving the long pregnancy march" in which I provide my somewhat notorious (around here) "Future Baby Agreement" as well as some other key rules:

(1) Do nothing that's not necessary
(2) Sleep is everything;
(3) Determine what you are deficient in;
(4) Focus your brain on something healthy;
(5) Get a bit of exercise.

For me, "focus your brain on something healthy" has been an important framework in this pregnancy. When I am under stress I actually have certain work-related projects that are very good for my brain. I write the programs for these graphs which is about 95% monkey work at this point but programming forces you to focus and to think logically. It works for me though I know that asking anyone else in this house to write a program would drive them crazy. I have found something that works very well for my brain. My son and I also enjoy side-by-side games of "Rush Hour," a board game by ThinkFun. He plays the junior version, I play the regular version. If you brain is focused on a puzzle, it's hard for it to also be anxious.

Staying focused on health is the primary reason the book is not available. It is looking like it will be January. Apparently it seemed wise to put it off, reduce stress in my life, in an effort to avoid a psychotic sequel. Someone else will handle orders from here while I rock a newborn, though I do hope to blog. In these last days I'm trying to get used to a dictation software to allow me to rock a baby and blog at the same time. That may end up being a bit much, but it's likely the only way a blog entry will happen. Of course, I may decide to focus on the rocking the baby part.

Any hour now
I had originally intended to take off the whole third trimester to reduce depression fallout. It turns out it wasn't necessary and I just kept on working until yesterday. At some point yesterday I decided "I'm done" and woke up this morning and decided "I'm really done." There's a full moon tomorrow night and if there is anything to those wive's tales about birthing on full moons, I may really be done after all. Let's hope. It's a major gymnastic event to get out of bed these days. I've had a lot of prelabor activity. I'm surely just about ready.

I have been out walking on our road, a pretty steep climb, and neighbors have been commenting. One said, "I'm surprised to see you out here at this point." I thought the comment was odd and my mom said, "I don't know how you're walking either." I asked her to take a picture and I thought, "Damn. I'm surprised too." I'll have to post a picture adding yet another reason I will not ever be able to run for public office.

Technorati Tags: brain exercises, depression, pregnancy, postpartum depression