So lets talk depression(come on you all knew it was coming its in the name of my blog so it was bound to come up)
It’s not fun I’ll tell you that but add into the mix kids..kids who wake at the crack of dawn(just joking earlier than dawn) and you’ve got yourself a pretty bad situation.
I’m not going to sugar coat it because I don’t think anything good comes from that.
The struggle is real just getting out of bed in the morning when you are depressed let alone having to be the primary carer for kids. It feels almost impossible to look after yourself when you’re going through dark times let alone look after and try and keep alive tiny humans.
Generally speaking having depression means you have less patience and by that I don’t mean getting frustrated waiting for little Jimmy to put on his shoes while you’re running late for that specialist appointment you’ve waited months on the waiting list for.
I mean you go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds..I mean he was singing the Wiggles song in the car so loud you swear the windows were shaking but you clinched your jaw and smiled, he took so long choosing what flavor chuppa chup he wanted that now the line to the check out is longer than the wall of china.
No no..I’m talking about the adorable moment he had trying to be all independent pouring his milk into his cereal bowl that most parents would celebrate, but the fact that he spilt most of it on the bench was the only thing you noticed and sent you into a rage that you’d later feel terrible for.
The old saying of’ the last straw that broke the camels back’ comes in to play here when you keep on smiling through all the frustrating things that have been happening around you but as soon as the most minor thing happens you fly off the handle faster then a seagull swoops a chip at the beach.
The worst part about it is the guilt you feel afterwards when you’ve calmed down and replay in your mind the look on your kids face when you completely overreacted.
My youngest may not understand all too much but I am honest with my oldest and tell him I shouldn’t have become so angry and Im sorry if I scared him.
The other part I find almost the hardest is the anxiety. Having depression doesn’t mean youll have anxiety but most of the time they go hand in hand.
For me it’s a bit like the old ‘what came first the chicken or the egg?’ What did I have first anxiety or depression? It’s a mystery but I’m putting all my money on anxiety.
I remember when I finally got my son out of hospital after three months (remember he was sick, you read about it in my first blog? Stay with me now) I was always thinking people were staring at me thinking he isn’t strapped into his pram properly or he’s not appropriately dressed for the weather outside or just looking at me thinking wow she’s a young mum.
When he became older and was a toddler he would play up at the shops(like any toddler does) to me it felt like this. Imagine being so worried about giving a speech to your whole class and you finally build up the courage and get to the front of the class just to realize you forgot to put clothes on that day. Yeah that’s how I felt when I was already freaking out about people looking at me and then I had this kid screaming and having a tantrum on the ground drawing more attention to me than if Kim Kardashian(or someone more noteworthy like Ellen DeGeneres)
I was always so sure my boys were just being kids and had no control over their emotions or that my anxiety made their behavior worse when we were out(kind of like when an animal can sense your fear) my boys could sense my anxiety(the beads of sweat on my forehead were a dead giveaway) and they’d decide to make my day hell. I’ve only started to realise now that my boys having special needs and more to the point sensory processing difficulties, would have made taking them to the shops pretty overwhelming for them with all the lights, noises and people(not to mention the many aisles of toys that they didn’t understand they couldn’t take home) so now that I think about it you’ve got me freaking out over a tiny teddy dropped on the ground because im having anxiety and sweating more than if I was competing in a triathlon and then you’ve got my kid who is overwhelmed by all the stimuli including the newest Wiggles guitar they’ve just spotted and of course want but I know they’ll break it before we even reach the car park. I’m not great at Maths so I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure that equals one hell of a horrible experience.
Before I had kids I would see parents out and about with their kid wearing one of those leash back pack things and I remember it was always so rare to see (like one of those pink dolphins in the Amazon) but you’d see it and you’d stop In your tracks admiring its beauty, no not really but thinking who in their right mind would do that to their kid. What they can’t control their kid and it was the only way to get things done?
The day I changed my judgmental uneducated opinion was the day my son got away from me and ran across the car park. Right then and there I knew they weren’t lazy or cruel. They were parents that loved their kid and didn’t want them to get hit by a car or lost in a shopping Centre.
I honestly wish I could’ve sucked up my pride and given zero f*%’s about what people thought of me and my parenting. Instead of avoiding the shops or wrestling with what can only be described as a toddler shaped crocodile into a pram I would’ve let my kid have the freedom to walk with me while having the safety of knowing they weren’t in any danger.
But it’s exactly what they say when they tell you parenting is a learning curve. We literally have no idea what we are doing when or even how we are doing it. The early days are basically a blurry trial and error phase where you must keep a tiny human alive while functioning on the bare minimum of sleep and wearing baby vomit stained clothes (don’t worry the vomit stains then turn into vegemite stains after about a year which goes really nicely with a randomly placed fruit loop in your dirty hair)
I think it should be a legal requirement to have at least three friends in your circle that have had babies before you to give you the raw, honest unsugar coated version of how to get through.
Depression or not, parenthood is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.
Don’t ever be ashamed or embarrassed to reach out for help when you need it.
Fit your oxygen mask first before helping others.
Your kids don’t care that the house is a mess or that you haven’t folded the washing since the start of the year (what? They’re clean) They just care that you’re there. There to cuddle them when they scrap their knee and there to celebrate their wins big or small.
We’re all doing amazing, don’t ever forget that.
BB
xx
Parenting-with a side of depression 