stuck in the house

It's been a rough week with the weather and I have not had a chance to get out of the house much, today, I didn't leave at all, last week, I went three days without leaving the house because the roads are so terrible.  Being stuck in a house all day long, with my daughter for a very short period of daylight is like a breeding ground for OCD, not to mention feeling fatigue from a lack of stimulation and conversation (toddler babble can only do so much for me....and I feel like an ungrateful mother saying this, possibly leading to me losing my daughter for this utter and selfish lack of appreciation for our conversations).  If OCD is like athletes foot, my foot is moist, hot and wrapped in a sock!!!!
Since my last therapy session, I have been doing better at not trying to do an exposure when I'm already stuck in an OCD cycle....instead I respond "I'm not playing" when a thought or worry pops in my head.  That has been working so the OCD has begun to go toward even more vulnerable places for a cheaper shot.  All day long it said: "you are a terrible mother, your Aubrey is so sweet and innocent and you are failing her all day long just by being you because you are a bad, damaged, charcoaled person, you break her heart in all of her moments with everything you do and feel."   

PMS...a premenstrual syndrome or poisen mental shower?????

So, I had a crappy case of insomnia last night due probably to my upcoming .  I'm laying in bed dead-eyeing our clock with the green numbers bouncing off the screen taunting me, my heat is racing, I've read, I've done breathing, read more, did more breathing, and read some more but I could not fall asleep.  Then, the poisen began to pour upon me and I pondered the crisis it presented with everything I had except ACCEPTANCE so, of course, that notion being my one and only umbrella I was soaked in agony.  First, I began to become excited about a recent purchase I had made and my husband and I had been working on diligently before going to bed....SHRINKY DINKS!!!!  (I found them after 20 plus years of missing them).  I couldn't wait to put them in the oven and watch them curl and shrink!!  Then I thought, this would be fun to do with Aubrey someday too like my mom used to do with me....then I went to enjoying a moment and then I went to OVEN!!! What if I stuck Aubrey in the oven and made her stay in there at 325 deg?????  Oh my God!!! This thought broke my heart over and over again, I know I could never do that to her but I decided that instead of letting this idea pounce my soul I would expose myself right now, I would come up with a long drawn out terrifying scenario of me doing this horrific act to my sweet baby girl until I didn't not feel any more pain (I tried to neutralize it in my head with by doing an exposure which sounds more like a compulsion with a mask.... The Joker wearing a Batman Suit if you will....)  And boy did it backfire, each time I tried to have an internal exposure with this scenario, it did not get any better, I felt terrible, I think almost to the point that my mind couldn't handle anymore (my mind in these moments is like a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, with just two personalities....bully (OCD) and unbelievably wimpy kid (not OCD....mother, wife, human, child, innocence.....)  so I thought "Man I must be getting my period soon because this feels like PMS (and I know I am) but then I thought....wait, should I be getting it soon????  Did I miss it????? Why can't I be more organized and write this stuff on a calender??????? WHAT IF I'M PREGNANT????!!!!!!!!! but, my husband and I use protection because we are not ready for another little one yet......WHAT IF I'M PREGNANT FROM A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH SOMEONE ELSE WHERE I WASN'T USING PROTECTION AND I JUST DON'T REMEMBER THE ENCOUNTER!!!???????????  A few weeks ago, I had a girls night with my friends, we had a few drinks but I remember most of the night.....but I don't remember every detail????  What if I was more intoxicated than I thought I was?????  What if I took a stranger in a closet at a club and had sex with him and I don't remember.....What if someone drugged my drink too????? and it happened so quickly (the sex) that my friends didn't even remember me being gone for a significant amount of time???????????  Oh crap!! I'm pregnant with a child that is not mine and my poor innocent husband sleeping beside me, he's going to divorce me....how will I support myself and Aubrey, will I lose custody because I'm a drunk mother who has sex with strangers in bathrooms and gets pregnant?????  How will I figure out who this baby's father is????  Will I secretly resent the child because it reminds me of a mistake I made and don't remember that tore apart my family?????  What if I got an abortion, OH MY GOD am I really contemplating that....(5 minutes of rationalizing why I know I wouldn't have an abortion, including an Albert Einstein reference....)  on and on and on.  I know I shouldn't have done this but I did anyways, I knew I had a pregnancy test in our bathroom so I decided instead of me lying here in bed trying to accept this traumatizing scenario along with what I just attempted to do in terms of exposure where I purposely harm/burn my daughter (writing this is really exposing too because CPS could be contacted due to this thought that I am now manifesting in written text on the INTERNET)  while at the same moment I think about how terrible of a mother I am going to be tomarrow when I got no sleep and won't be present for our daughter (it was 3 a.m. by this time....my daughter gets up around 6:30 a.m.) I thought my best bet for getting to sleep was to take the test...so I did....not pregnant!!!  Luckily I have a therapy appointment tomarrow :) and I'll learn a better way to cope with pms (spike ocd symptoms) and I must say I went through the day not beating myself up about my night....which I rarely do so I am proud of myself for that.

Shine!

Potential Loop Tape

I have done loop tapes in the past, I am thinking about doing another one with everyday worries that dance/prance/stomp around in my mind on a daily basis

Aubrey may choke and I will fail to save her because I was unable to perform an adequate emergency response

I might give her something that is a chokeable item by mistake when it is time for her to eat

Aubrey might be exposed to germs that I failed to erradicate

These germs that I failed to erradicate could cause serious bodily damage or kill her

Aubrey might become a victim of a medical mistake causing brain damage and mental retardation because I brought her in for a treatment that I could have avoided

I could miss something that my instinct tells me because I think it's OCD and fail to save my daughter as a result

I will do selfish things today despite Aubrey's reliance on my presence as her mother

I may cause a car accident because of my lack of focus causing the death of Aubrey

Aubrey may have or develop cancer

My exposures could cause Aubrey harm, especially the ones where I imagine something bad happening to her because my mind might be powerful enough to create that reality

just ocd...

Since my last blog/exposure I have been feeling more empowered but the past two days, I have noticed some worries trying to make themselves louder in the back of my head so I thought I'd take note of them and see where I can do some exposure. 
Tuesday was our daughter's first birthday and we had a wonderful day all and all, but I am slightly bitter that in the back of my head I was thinking about "what if she died on her birthday????, how traumatic that would be....." I began responding to that "what if" with...."ya that wouldn't be something that I would be joyous about...." and left the notion at that.

Today, I am getting ready for a sleepover we are having tom. with a family friend's daughter whom I adore but, the last time we had her over, (she is 7) she was sick and our daughter got her illness times 1000 (the croup when she was in the hospital) so I'm worrying about her spreading germs and if I made the right decision in exposing Aubrey to her even though it will be after a school day so, she probably will have some germs......(when I do my exposures, I have to keep in mind that yes, these exposure put Aubrey at risk but paradoxically I do them for her because I need to be a mother that let's my daughter live in the world and not in a bubble that is quarantined by my ocd) So....I am choosing to have Kayla over for a sleepover, I will probably be worrying about germs the majority of the night, it might be an unhealthy decision for Aubrey and she may get sick and....I am NOT going to Lysol everything that I think might get her sick from the night because ultimately I can't lysol everything I am going to be particular about certain things that are triggered so really I can't be completely germ free for the night 100% so, I'm not going to brake my back trying to have control over 10% that doesn't make any sense. 

Also, my husband and I are going to a wedding in Cleveland without Aubrey and she is staying with family friends because my parents are going to the wedding to.  We will be away from her for 24 plus hours yikkkkeeeesssssss!!!!!!!  and it's 2 hours away ahaahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   So, naturally, I think that because I am selfish and am excited about going to this wedding even though I am not leaving Aubrey with family, that she is going to die.  The friends she is staying with are very close to me and they are celebrating Thanksgiving that day with more family so, they are going to take Aubrey with them, in a car to someone's house I don't know...my initial reaction was "how incredible, Aubrey gets to have Thanksgiving with my best friend and her family" and then OCD set in....she is going to die in a car on the way home or she is going to choke on food that someone at the Thanksgiving gives her...either way she's dead and my selfish ass went to a wedding....still contemplating how to exposre myself to this.  I am almost convinced that she's not going to live past next weekend (this is when we are going) so, each day is seemingly getting heavier....I need to work on an exposure to this. 

okay a few more....

maybe i will tell the new and proud parents i think their baby is ugly
maybe i will become brainwashed and join a cult
maybe i will scream "fire" in a crowded area
maybe a significant amount of people think that my opinion is worthless because i am so painfully idiotic
maybe there really is a shark in the deep end of the pool that is after me

On a slightly lighter note

Since I last blogged about horrific scenarios that rummage my mind everyday day, every hour, every minute, I thought I would also do the "maybe..." on some lighter and more comical worries

maybe i do have romantic feelings toward our dog
maybe heaven really is acutely exclusive
maybe i will make a racist comment to a person that is not my race
maybe i will fall in love with a 12 year old boy because i'm convinced he's my soulmate
maybe i am walking around the grocery store with a poop stain on my tight white pants
maybe i smell like poop
maybe i will impulsively shave my eyebrows off
mabye i will trip that waitress in the busy restaurant
maybe i will make out with someone impulsively in a professional situation
maybe i will walk into church while mass is going on and the priest completely stops talking, points at me and says that satan has just entered the building
maybe i will close my eyes while driving
maybe i will forget how to swallow
maybe i am having a secret affair...so secret in fact that i don't know i'm doing it
maybe the hospital did give me the wrong baby and her real parents are going to call and want to switch
maybe i will get plastic surgery that completely changes the way i look even though i'm content with my natural features
maybe i will object at a wedding for no reason
maybe i will laugh when i am back to working as a therapist when a new client discloses something personal and private
maybe i will egg our neighbors house because i just want to be mean even though they are the sweetest people
maybe i will flip off a cop when driving past him
the worries could go on and on....but it helps when you have a sense of humor ;)

Where did all of my Courage Go?????

On Thursday, my mom and I attended a monthly support group for OCD and I felt confident about my exposure abilities and potential.  On Friday, I was even beginning to feel like a normal mom because I exposed myself so much with an inner dialogue (changing a "what if" into a "possibly" or "maybe" and also that " I have NO certainty about anything" ) I had really been pleased with myself all through the weekend and then today, I feel like garbage :( 
I had a stressful morning so this could be in part why and also, we took our daughter for her One Year pictures and there were triggers there, and it's Sunday and Sunday usually is difficult for me, it always has been, I think because it reminds me of endings...end of the week....end of life (such an obvious comparison right?)

I know a pretty chunky amount of effective exposure therapy techniques (easier to help others do, harder to do on yourself) as I have been using therapy and doing hard work since I was 14 but sitting here right now, knowing what I am about to write to expose myself and be vulnerable on the INTERNET is making me feel like I am going to throw up (which is a likely possibility as I just ate a steak sandwich and I know it's just balled up in my stomach right now....ew), my heart race, my palms sweat, the screen irritatingly bright, the sound of the fish tank screaming in my ear, clenching my jaw, biting my lip....it's endless what is going on in my body and mind right now and it's chaotic! but, I am going to do this, I have to...unveil to breathe.  I am going to write a stream of fears in this blog replacing "what if" with "maybe" and see what comes out and read it back to myself, what's hardest for me is to do this on the Internet because it's "out there" instead of safe and confined in a notebook or saved on my computer, Oh God (saying this is exposure, "lord's name in Vain...but is it in Vain???? lol, irrelevant!)  here I go....
Maybe someone from Children and Youth Services will see this and think I'm an unfit mother because I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, remove my daughter from her home into a foster home where she will be mistreated and they will use therapy tools on her that are not empirically sound and traumatizing like Holding Therapy, all because I was so selfish as to expose myself through a blog in order to REALLY REALLY make it a powerful exposure
Maybe a Haulocaust will happen here and I'll experience an evil I couldn't even imagine but worse my daughter will experience it too....and maybe I am slightly responsible for our suffering because I failed to finish The Diary of Ann Frank, maybe writing this will make it happen, create an energy force in that direction
Maybe there is a prowler who watches me and my family and is going to stab me at any minute in our home as I am taking care of our daughter, I'll lay on the floor bleeding and unable to move as this person grabs my crying baby and takes her away and I can't rescue her because I'm immobilized from the wounds, maybe they might even harm her in some horrific way in front of me because she is taken away and I have to watch because I can't move (ooooh, shaking and crying now....)
Maybe I don't appreciate our daughter enough and because of my lack of appreciation and affection I'll somehow lose her
Maybe she does have cancer and I fail to identify the symptoms in time for her to receive treatment that would have been effective if her cancer had not progressed
Maybe I don't keep our house clean enough and she is exposed to germs that make her very very sick but I let her crawl on the floor when it wasn't spotless because she wanted to and I didn't want to agravate her by not letting her do it
Maybe I'm spoiling our daughter when I have moments that I give in to something she wants like crawling around on a floor that is not spotless which makes me a selfish and lazy mother
Maybe I will give her gingivitus if I don't floss my teeth daily and then I kiss her or let her eat something off of my fork
Maybe I will accidently give her something to eat that she chokes on and I can't perform the necessary emergency reponses because I haven't practiced them or studied them enough
Maybe I will be wrongfully accused of a homocide and sent to jail for life unable to be there for my daughter
Maybe I will die of cancer that I caused because I did not practice enough healthy habits or because I worried so much of developing a cancer, I die and my husband remarries a woman who despises our daughter and she is cruel and damaging to her (Cinderella???????)
Maybe I will develop paranoid schizophrenia
Maybe I will miss an important detail in our home that causes a fire/explosion to errupt and kills our daughter in the night
Maybe a rat will enter her room because we have an opened bag of dogfood in our garage and eat her alive in her sleep
Maybe a mosquito will bite her and give her Malaria
Maybe her flu vaccine will kill her and I did not do enough medical research to have prevented this
Maybe her pediatricians do think I'm a bad mother....maybe they even have a reason to think that I have Munchausan by Proxy
Maybe I will get investigated for putting this in a blog on the internet, I don't have a good feeling, it might be a gut instinct telling me to erase this.......POST!

Not Going to Check or Rationalize!!!!!

So, returning back from a trip to K-Mart for something to do this morning...my daughter fell asleep in the car, whew, because she was Cranky and I really was not feeling up to rocking her upstairs when we got back because I'm tired, I only got 3 choppy hours of sleep last night.  I feel inclined to explain why so that people don't question my parental techniques in terms of a sleeping baby but...I'll refrain and let you think what you want, whatever that may be.
When we got back, I carried her upstairs to her bedroom in her carseat with her jacket on and I was so tired and so worried about waking her up, I snuck back downstairs as quickly as I could and then descended further away from her into our basement/den area to curl up on the couch and read.  So, then I began obsessing about whether she would overheat with her jacket on strapped in her carseat because she does tend to sweat and get hot when that happens and then I went into she will overheat and die and whose fault would that be MINE! So, my immediate inclination is to swiftly tiptoe back upstairs to the emergency at hand unbutton her coat and if I'm lucky leave her sleeping still (fat chance she'll stay asleep from that) relieve my anxiety so I can relax and read.  But, I'm not going to do this, I am going to leave her up there even she is warm let me rephrase that.....OVERHEATING!  And yes, there is a chance that she may die as a result of this but I am choosing to stay down here anyways.  The thing with exposure work is I always think "yes sounds good but...this could be the .1% that doing an exposure could result in negligence and harm to my daughter and so on this particular scenario, I need to fullfill the need to check and "make better."  And the answer to that "what if" is....right, this could be the .1% that happens and I'm still choosing to do the exposure, even though right now that's really really really really HARD!

The Rehearsal

This post is not OCD related.  This evening, my mother, grandmother and I went to visit my Aunt Cindy who is in the hospital today.  She is suffering from a degenerative disorder of her cerebellum and today she experienced an incident that the doctors are currently trying to determine were the result of a stroke or seizure.  She was lucid and fine one minute and then the next minute she was "gone" in the sense that she doesn't remember what happened I couldn't think of a better description than "black out" (even though I hate that term, I think because of my connotation with it and someone blacking out because they are drunk which she def was not....ne ways) and when she came to, she had no idea where she was and who she was with (her caretaker Maria) so understandably so, this scared her.  A few minutes passed, slowly as it would when you have no idea who you are and where you are and why you are where you are....and she "came back" or "came to."  As a result of this, her caretaker took her to the ER and the doctors decided to keep her and run some CT scans on her to determine what is going on.  It seems that this is just a further progression into the degeneration, this "leaving and coming back" and that is hard to accept :(  But, I am also beginning to feel, believe and have faith in that maybe, this "short exit and re-entry" is her soul rehearsing where is needs to go next and something deep inside me ignites when this concept arises and I feel it's truth so in those moments, I am no longer fearful for her but I feel peace as her soul rehearses her to peace.

clenching through the day with a vengence...

Well, let me start off my saying that I am totally PMSing right now, so, any stressor that comes my way already gets an amp of plus ten!!!!! 
Today:  6:00 a.m. my husband violently vomits in our bathroom :(  We have all gotten a horrible stomach virus and he seems to be having the most difficulty overcoming it, Sunday morning at 3:00, all three of us celebrated Halloween via violent pukefest!  The terms of a virus roaming around our home and causing our daughter suffering are unvbelievably tormenting factoring in that I myself feel like absolute hell and can't comfort her as I give myself whiplash over anything with a drain for the entire day but...in the words of Jay-Z on with the next one...which is a continuation of today, Tuesday)
10:30:  Our family friend who cleans our house comes to clean the house, I'm relieved because this will help me in the quest to disinfect our house of all the germs from the virus which my m.i.l. so kindly reminded me over the phone the same Sunday that we were all sick that...."these germs stay in your house to, you have to disinfect everything or else you'll get it again" which of course I, having OCD...REMEMBER!!!!!!! I took this as I am totally totally responsible for disnfecting all of my house ASAP because if my daughter gets sick again, it's my fault, so I lay in bed with that all Sunday but, continuing on....so relieved to answer the door to have help cleaning and disinfecting the mean germs in my household when I see her daughter behind her who is SICK, vomitting, coughing up blood....."she is just going to stay here while I clean, I was contemplating taking her to the hospital but, I'll just keep an eye on her here" was the explanation I received, to which my reply was of course and please please take the hint...."oh that's awful, if you need to take her to the ER, I totally understand, you can come back another day, we were all very sick with this bug too and we are just getting over it" her response" oh no we'll, stay she's just going to lay down"  (AWSOME....) my response: "she can lay down on the coach downstairs and watch TV (I hadn't disinfected that yet), she comes back with: "well, I was just going to have her lay down in your room" (WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!, I had just disinfected that room and washed all the sheets and comforter!!!!!!!!!, how is this not processing??????)
So, my daughter and I leave, all the while I'm obsessing about how terrible of a parent I am for not being more assertive and allowing these germs BACK into our HOME after I was getting the house DISINFECTED now, I have to do it again and more, and again, I'm an awful awful mother for my need to please over my daughter's health/life :( 
My mother in law was also at our house shortly to share some good news and she called my husband to tell him that there was a sick girl in our bed understandably so....on her part, so I get a phone call from him, agitated that this happened, feeling even worse for not sticking up for our helpless daughter and the threat of infection, he calls our friend and asks her if she can come clean another day....so now of course I feel badly about that too, she's going to think I told, even though I should have not let this happen in the first place so I might as well have told or done something more than I did because my need to please didn't get fullfilled anyways ughghghg, all through my head, I'm a horrible horrible mom, the inner critic just having a wonderful song and dance in my conscience :(
So, when my daughter and I get back to our home I am prepared with Lysol I bought that day to disinfect which I am so nervous about doing because I try to disinfect organically with non-toxic products because reading information about chemicals having an impact on your baby and her environment when you have OCD is tormenting!!!!  but, that's the best I knew to do with viruses, I did not see any organic made product that said "kills 99.9 % of virus and bacteria" so I had to to do, so I spray the areas of the house that my daughter will not be in presently like crazy, open windows even though it's freezing outsite and now as she sleeps, of course I am obsessing about toxic particles coming into the airs and infiltrating her small lungs!!!!!
Oh and...to top it off...it's election day and some of the candidates have had pretty cruel campaign motives so....if someone advocating for them says one thing to me while I'm in line to vote......let's just hope people notice the steam shooting out of my ears as I stand in line at the booths because if not...they are going to experience a wrath of .....oh wait, nothing, I'll just experience it all because I have a need to please!!!!!

anaphylactic shock!!!

So, last night I was reading about a mother whose son began to have trouble breathing when he was sleeping and they had to go to the emergency room...so guess what I have been obsessing about for the last 24 plus hours, this happening to our daughter except we don't make it to the emergency room, the ambulance doesn't make it here and I could have saved her life but my ignorance of what to do in this type of situation causes her to die instead...(I am exposing myself as I am writing this). 
This is a very scary scenario, and I have to keep telling myself that I'm not certain this won't happen, it could.....ughghgh not an easy line to say sometimes but it's much easier than trying to research all the ways I could prevent it because in reality, there's always gonna be some way I can't.

"To do lists"

My issue with my to-do lists is that I know I need them they help me get things done but they stress me out so badly because, if I can't complete something at the moment I write it down or shortly after, it sticks to me and agitates me until I complete the task.  Sometimes, these tasks are not things that can be done in an hour, a day or a week, and sometimes they can but...I don't have the time or energy to do them because I'm tired and drained from the day and I feel like that is somehow my fault or I'm unappreciative for even saying that "I'm tired and drained from the day." 
For example, I am planning on ordering from Etsy, wall art decorations for my daughter's room but my husband and I still have to decide what exactly we want....so, it's not going to be ordered for awhile and every time I get on the internet I feel like I need to do something that will enable me to get closer to getting this done even though, I don't have all of the information yet and my husband needs to help me so I feel like I can't do anything else on here until that's done, because tasks go in order (even though they actually don't), then I beat myself up for becoming so drained from a task and not enjoying the nature of the task itself as much as I should or even just appreciate being alive, that I can plan this task, walk to the computer to order it, have money to order it.....all the things I could appreciate more and I don't and because of this I'll somehow been shown what I'm missing...
My most difficult "to do" is accept myself, as a person, a human, who gets caught up in tasks sometimes because this is what I've been conditioned to do in this current world and see that I'm doing my best...because I am and Love myself anyways.

yucky

I should start off by mentioning that it's that time of the month and for me, that means my ocd has more kick than usual and it takes me extra energy and work to stay on top of it, which is hard to do when you are menstrating, have anemia, got about 4 choppy hours of sleep and have a headache. 
Needless to say, I was doing much better in terms of my wellness but today was not so great and my only word to accurately describe what I felt all day long was "yuck" as I had a lurking sense of dread, worries, judgements. 

When I woke up with our daughter this morning, on the Today Show, there was a 16 y/o boy who had been a victim of a horrific burning incident from 3 other boys a year prior and he has now completely recovered, this is a very inspiring story but at the same time I felt so much pain for this little boy, and how traumatic this must have been for him and his family then....I thought about someone doing this horrific act to our daughter and it got stuck in my head for a good amount of the morning (3 hours or so) and even though I know better, I became so upset with the images in my head it was hard to look at my daughter at moments, I became angry with myself for not getting the thought out of my head and letting it get stuck/locked....(I know the better solution would be to just accept the thought instead of trying to remove it) but it's harder to do when you are tired and haven't prepared to be faced with such a horrifyng scenario my initial reaction was to break down in tears.
I remained semiparanoid for the remainder of the day, more paranoid that usual.
I know I have some more work to do in terms of this and I know the work really does help a lot (Exposure Response Prevention/coupled with learning to accept uncertainty) but like I said, some days staying on top of these things is harder than others and today was just one of those days. 

Along came a Spider....

After rocking our daughter to sleep, I left her bedroom and went into the kitchen where I saw a Spider.  I used to never kill spiders I saw in our house or even remove them...I just let them go along their way hoping they enjoyed the stay until I had our daughter.  Now every bug I see I imagine it harming her...mosquito (which I admit I did kill because I hate being bit) is carrying Wes Nile and is out to bite our daughter in her sleep, a moth is going to get into her ear....a spider is a rare poisenous one that is going to kill her in her sleep (even a Daddy Long Legs....it may be that one whose mouth can open large enough to bite, letting loose into her small helpless veins its deadly poison) so I try to erradicate anyone I see ASAP.  But...I have to release them outside because, I don't want to cause another living thing harm for fear that if I do, I will be harmed back.  So, I see this spider who looks harmless but he is clear in color and being very fast as I approach which I conclude is a sure sign of aggression and this spider is a major predator in my house hunting my sleeping baby...so I try to coax it onto the top of  my shoe so I can release this murderer outside but he is not cooperating so I take that as another form of aggression, so I stomp him with the shoe, oooh and it's a struggle, I have to hit him three times before his belly is smashed and then, I feel AWFUL and I picture his spidery mom and siblings waiting for him in their home under our deck hoping he makes it there safe and I think...what is that spider was Aubrey and someone smashed her, so, now instead of a murderous eight legger with a hunger for babies...he's an adventurous yet naive young spider who went on an exploration and was squashed by a shoe with no sense of compassion by me....Sorry Peter Rabbit of the Spider World

Exposure without the preparation...Oh wait, that's a TRIGGER

On Wednesday night I had the most difficult time getting my daughter to go to sleep, she seemed miserable, she still had her croup cough and I suspected she was running a fever again :(  Neither of us got much sleep...she had small cat naps in my arms...I got nothing the entire night, so I had been up for 24 hours straight.  I called the on-call doctor as soon as possible and of course I was afraid I would be thought of as overreacting because I'm sure I come across as an anxious mother.  The doctor told me to bring her in in the morning at 9, so we waited anxiously for the time to come.  I brought her in, still fearful that I would be judged for overreacting about a cough that had already been treated but instead the doctor was very compassionate and worried, and she wanted to keep her in the hospital overnite....Oh No!!!! I began to cry in the office, I felt so horrible for not reacting faster, for her being so sick, for getting emotionally/internally frustrated with her last night when she wouldn't go to sleep or let me sleep, all the things I could quickly blame myself for in a 10 second span, I did and felt them deeply.  After waiting an hour in the office so she could finish a breathing treatment we were sent to the pediatric ward of the hospital, I was so worried that someone would make a mistake who was caring for her and she would suffer from medical accident that left her different from the baby I brought in, I was terrified of how traumatizing the situation was for her, nebulizers in her face, her screaming (even though no sound was coming out), all the new faces giving her medicine, taking her temp. examining her, how would all of this effect her, I was a wreck but as always, I was able to remain competent for my daughter and my fear of being judged crazy and incompetent as a mother. 
Then of course, I was never going to blog again because I was sure that the blogging about my fears of her being sick is what caused her to be so sick and have to be hospitalized.  I had pictured in my head the entire scenario, going to the doctors, being sent to the hospital what if my last image happened too...that she dies in the hospital due to complication....how the heck do I stop that, not imagine it, not talk about it, get reassurance....do anything to counter act the potential for it happening???!!!!
Well, I had little time to meddle in the land of fear since my main source of energy went to taking care of my daughter and pushing horrors aside as best as possible.
She did recover, no medical accidents, no death and still blogging.
Was I triggered, TOTALLY, did I survive YES, am I still terrified, everyday but also, my aim to control my daughter's health and hospital visits to a 100% healthy, never needs to be hospitalized is in the can and that's a good thing for me and by proxy for her.

Tired, What's on her head????? Tired, Tired,

Sept. 29 2010,
    Since last blogging, I have been obsessing about the fact that I might have appeared stupid and annoying from my last blog and that I had not articulated perfectly EVERYTHING that is on my mind...oh and, I am not a master blogger in terms of utilizing all the available blog technology to my advantage because...I'm terrible with computers/websites and taking the time to learn everything overwhelms me and I'm defeated before I even begin but...nonethless I am still going to write, even if my blog looks like stick figures compared to every other blogs being perfect portraits.

Today, I was and still am very tired (almost beyond tired point now where just feel like crap but body is somehow still awake in overstimluation).  Our daughter was up all night due to her croop cough waking her up and she did not take any naps longer than 40 minutes today, she is miserable, I feel terrible. 

Also, when I'm tired, my mind is like a chicken running around with his head cut off (poor analogy I know but again...I'm tired) and it's less tolerable than days where I get a decent amount of sleep.

My husband and I have been watching the new Robin Hood with Russel Crowe (incredible)  in between naps and I love watching it but...as with all action packed movies, it increases my anxiety and need to check if available on our daughter.  For example, when archers hoist their arrows at castle walls, climb them and start an explosion with some type of tar like substance wrapped into a ball of black fabric I see the same exact thing in my head happening in our daughter's room so I check to make sure no archers have entered our "castle" to blow up our daughter's room.  Each time something highstrung occurs, (which I love love love action films), I automatically want to check on our daughter because I see it happening to her and that is painful.

Also, as I was rocking her to sleep this morning for an attempt at a nap, the sun was coming into her room so well even with the blinds drawn that the details of her face and skin were almost "over" observeable (if that makes sense) and it seemed like she had a protrusion coming out between each eye, like a tumor, or swelling frontal lobe????  I stared at it in a panic for half an hour and really wanted to research it when I put her down but...I did NOT!!! because researching medical information on the internet when you have no medical background for someone like me is treading on dangerous and inevitable panic attack ground where I would spend the rest of the day imagining how my dialogue would be between discussing how it felt to lose my daughter to a swollen frontal lobe or maybe a thrombosis?????? and what kind of ceremony I would hold for her, if I would take off and live in a shack on the beach with my husband because being around here would be intolerable.....instead, I sat with it, I'm still concerned but I did not do any internet research!!!!

Shine,
Andrea

September 28, 2010

So, today I decided to blog my experience as a first time mother who struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Our daughter Aubrianna is 10 1/2 months old.  Already, discussing Aubrey at all on the internet brings me a lot of anxiety because I am putting "my daughter out there" in the internet world where potential threats to her safety exist...ughgh, am I sure I can do this????  Talking about my OCD is not the issue here at all or people knowing about my mental struggles but exposing anything about my daughter and my intense love for her makes me feel very vulnerable to anyone who might try to target and hurt her, it's really hard to write this now, wasn't anticipating this new exposure opportunity.  So, here I find myself, vulnerable and opening Aubrey up to vulnerability as well.....YUCK!!!!! 

In this same moment while experiencing this awful feeling...I have torn off two new layers of skin on my poor right thumb with my right index finger, "pointer" is a master at  thumb skin pick-n-peel with over 18 years experience. 
And I have contemplated for the hundreth plus time today whether or not I am a bad mother as my husband offers to put our daughter back up to bed after I had been rocking her for 30 minutes and decided to take a ten minute break to work on this blog (how Narcissistic and selfish of me....)

So, since he is still upstairs with her and she seems to be getting sleepy (don't worry I have the camera baby monitor turned on and right in front of me as I glance down at it every .5 seconds),I will continue writing even if my mind is telling me now on broken record...."You should be upstairs not Travis, your baby girl is sick (she has laryngitus at the moment with a croop cough) and she needs you! you are going to be judged and punished for this somehow..."

But, let's get to the my daughter is sick part (please note writing "my daughter is sick" made me worry that I would somehow give her a terminal illness and that I should erase immediately and rephrase with something more neutral and "safe," as another layer of my poor thumb is scraped away by Dr. Pointer (oh yes, by now he's received his S.D. : skin pick doctorate)

On Friday my daughter felt warm so of course I took her temperature throughout the day where it maintained a 98 or something degree until I took it in the evening (around 5) and it said 102 (Oh shit, we need to get the ER ASAP I thought and then that somehow I should have known she had a fever all along so...if she develops brain damage from this it's totally my fault)  with my more practical (but also first time father) husband beside me, together we opted to call the on-call doctor instead who told us to just keep an eye on her and if her temperature rises to call back in the meantime give her tylenol and a bath (okay...I do trust the doctor but my OCD tells me that the tylenol is going to give her liver damage and I should research some other way to ease her fever...oh and teething pain and a bath my cause her body to go into shock)
Needless to say her fever went down and waxed and waned throughout the night (as a fever does and should...fighting an infection) and she slept through the night, I did not of course as the reality of finding her limp body in the crib seemed closer than usual tonite than a night where she did not have a 102 degree fever (again, "her limp body" is another exposure and now I'm afraid I'll find that tom. morning having wrote it now). 
Her fever went away the next day but Sunday evening she seemed to be hoarse and Sunday night she had a cough (which I already knew was probably croup...sp???) and she was up in discomfort a lot during the night so on Monday I called the doctor first thing.
She was given a diagnosis of Laryngitus (sp?) and Croup (totally my fault she has this, I should have done something more to prevent her being sick) and she was perscribed Predisonal  less potent liquid form of prednisone I think....a steroid help her breathe).  Well...I was perscribed Prednisone once for a rash given to high of a dose....and I went bonkers for two days so, I am in a panic!! Do I give my daughter the medicine that the doctor perscribed or not, is this OCD or my instinct????  Maybe he misunderstood what she had???  Should I tell him I had a bad mental reaction from a steroid?????  I didn't tell him that....now what?????  If I give my daughter this steroid, maybe it could alter the chemicals in her brain (since she is already at a predisposition to develop anxiety) and exacerbate any type of mental illness she was already predisposed for????  But if I don't give her the medicine and her cough gets worse what the heck do I tell her doctor..."Well...I know you went to medical school and have been a very good and respected pediatrition for many years but....my 27 year old self with absolutely no medical background felt that the steroid was unneccessary and could cause more harm than good?" 
After panicking in my mind for an hour I call my sister who is a pharmacist for resassurance (I know BAD...but I was tired and just wanted a quick fix relief) who told me it was perfectly safe (if you are a good intending person who is reading this and does not know about OCD and how one opinion can plant a weed of a thought in my clustered mind and you disagree with the safety of this medicine please please please refrain from telling me, you will be doing me, my husband, and most importantly my infant daughter a grave disservice). 
So, that's what I have for tonite, daughter is still awake so I am going to take over and comfort her,