I’ve regularly whined about how much I hate going to the doctor, to the point where even I get so sick of myself that I’m all “get over it, you big puss-bag,” and today is no exception. Normally, I get all fluttery because I want them to do a specific something for me (up my thyroid meds, give me a script for sleeping pills that doesn’t involve the phrase “benedryl,” slip me a jumbo pack ‘o’ Vicodin on the house just because I looked cute), just something.

I get nervous because I’m afraid they won’t do what I want them to do, and then where will I be? (Control issues much? Short answer: yes).

But today is a new game for me: I have no earthly clue what I want them to do for me. I mean, one of my biggest fears (aside from unwittingly being cast in Rock of Love 3) is that a doctor is going to tell me that I am, in fact, nuts, and since I am going in to the doctor today admitting that I might be, well, nuts, I don’t know WHAT to be anxious about.

I’m not overly thrilled that I will be taking with me today to the doctor, a short, balding chubby dude who routinely craps his pants for fun, but since I have very little choice (the dog has resisted my incessant begging for him to babysit), I’m going to pretend that I’m thrilled about having something to do while I wait. Something like try to contain a kid whose favorite game involves slapping me across the face while he blows spit particulates into my hair.

And is it any wonder I’ve gotten depressed?

Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m going into this with no agenda of my own. Afterall, if I have no good expectations of this, it can’t go that awry, right?

(don’t answer that).

Besides, the worst that can happen is that they commit me to the psych ward, and seriously, right about now, that sounds suspiciously like a vacation. A glorious vacation.

Gah.

Wish me luck.

Probably the hardest thing about admitting to myself that I have a problem (Hello, Al-Anon training!), is not that it’s “a” problem, but that it’s “this” problem. I wish it could be something simpler like “porn addiction” or that disease that makes you pull out your hair (I keep thinking trichamoniasis, which is NOT that disease, but a lovely STD. Forgive me for not researching further), because then it would not be my worst nightmare come true. It would be something simpler, at least for me to handle.

When you grow up surrounded by mental illness, there are a few things that happen to your development.

One, you associate all of the “bad things” that happen to your parent with something unrelated, a bit of magical thinking if I may (and I always may), i.e. Mom is sick because the house is dirty. Of course, this carried over into my adulthood, and maybe I’m not the most fastidious housekeeper on the planet, but my house is usually fairly clean, even on bad days.

Later on it occurs to your childish brain that maybe, just maybe, the reason for her illness is because YOU did something wrong. Kids, apparently have a knack for guilt rivaled only by the Catholic Church. This, too, carries over to your adulthood, and you find yourself blaming YOU for any little thing that has gone awry i.e. it’s obvious (to you) that it’s YOUR fault that the dog crapped on the carpet because you’re such a bad pet owner (and not the more logical “the dog crapped on the carpet because he is an asshole”).

I was once told that this is the way children of alcoholics feel as well, so let’s just give your Aunt Becky a double whammy here: my parents are BOTH alcoholics, too!

And lastly (this is a brief list here), children who have a mentally ill parent become absolutely phobic about turning into this parent (in this case, my mother). Admittedly, no one wants to turn into their mother, because ew! but I can assure you that it’s that much worse when your parent is completely unbalanced and unstable.

WHO would want THAT to be their aspiration?

(Please God, let me turn into someone who alternately screams or cries or looks comatose at a mere change in the breeze. Let me be unable to get out of bed for weeks at a time, and let my kids raise themselves until I can get my medication regime right. Please, please, please, please?)

Not so much fun, right?

So let me assure you that I do mental health checks daily (if not hourly) to make sure that I am not Going Off The Wheels On A Crazy Train, and to check whether or not my reactions to situations (pleasant or unpleasant) are normal enough. Dave informs me that this is one of my better features, as it leaves me pretty stable most of the time. I rarely fly off the handle at minor infractions (real or imagined), I approach (most) fights as logically as I can, and because I am prone to think and rethink issues, I’m fairly level.

Shit, I just wish it wasn’t this problem, y’all. Really, I do.

(is it weird to want to bargain with God to give me an STD instead of PPD? Don’t answer that.)

My first clue should have been when our ice maker went kaput. Now, I adore having tiny ice cubes made by my freezer (or is it by ickle gnomes? I’m just not sure WHAT to believe) just as much as the next person, and I won’t lie when I tell you that this is probably the best feature of our crappy ancient side-by-side fridge.

But when I realized last week that it was broken, I was slayed. Floored. Insanely upset and saddened. I went over it in my mind, over and over, when was the last time I heard it make ice? Why hadn’t I seen that the ice I had been getting was badly freezer burned and stinky? How long had it been broken before I noticed it?

No matter what Freud would say, sometimes an ice maker isn’t just an ice maker, is it?

It seems that after 10 months, I am finally falling victim to post-partum depression.

I considered not telling The Internet (not because I don’t trust you, darling Internet, because I do) what I’ve been going through, and I can’t pinpoint why. It’s probably a mixture of shame and remorse, and when I realized that this was what was keeping me from doing it, I further strengthened my resolve to tell you about it EVEN IF I’M NOT BEING CLEVER OR FUNNY OR CUTE.

It’s not pretty to admit, and Heaven knows, with my genetic predisposition to mental illness, it’s an even more bitter pill to swallow (when I inform you that my biggest fear on the planet is NOT a New Kids On The Block comeback, but is that I might someday turn into my mother, this should clarify it). It sucks realizing that this is something you cannot simply will away (like a food craving) and that you just might need someone else to help you through it.

I hate asking for help. Really, I do.

I could type for the next 36 years of my life about why I hate this so much, cleverly illustrate my posts with color coded charts, graphs, and footnotes, write AND deliver 9,308 Power Point presentations (complete with blinky graphics!) to a billion African schoolchildren, and STILL wouldn’t be done complaining about my dislike of admitting that I do, indeed, need some help.

But today I made that call, against every fiber of my being, and on Wednesday I will be seeing my OB about this.

And one can only hope that his suggestion isn’t warm milk.

After I woke up on Saturday morning feeling like I had somehow died and this was my own version of hell, I informed my poor husband that I had finally reached my breaking point with Alex and his lackluster sleep patterns. I told him that I was now so furious with the Baby that he was going to have to just start crying it out.

And I meant it.

We snared a babysitter and went off to Target to look at all of the gimicky stuff that baby manufacturers produce for people like me, who feel better if they’re doing SOMETHING, ANYTHING to work towards a solution.

I even oogled those baby video monitors for a spell, despite their price, when it dawned on me that I can see the baby with my own two eyes most of the day (and night!) and therefore did not need to watch him on the television. But man, the draw was there.

It was only after we got home with a sleep positioner (c’mon, Becky, HE CAN ROLL OVER! What the hell is the purpose of THAT?), a crib pad (which I had needed for him anyway as his mattress is vinyl and when he sleeps on it, he sweats, which is not pleasant for anyone), several new crib sheets, and a bottle of No Doze (for me, obviously), and I peered none too lovingly at his chubby face and realized that he was either sick or teething because his cheeks were bright red.

And because I am not quite a monster, I decided that Crying it Out was just going to have to wait until he felt better.

As a complete aside, if you do not want to feel badly about yourself DO NOT GOOGLE “CRYING IT OUT.” Most people who write about it on the Internet seem to liken it to child abuse and list all sorts of problems that may or may not be caused by this horrible oh horrible method of parenting.

I’d be hard pressed to call this method of sleep training “ideal” but I cannot get over the fact that Crying it Out is worse than “child abuse” or “suicide.” Besides, I haven’t met a single supporter of the Crying it Out Is Bad camp who has selflessly offered to give up their foray into the Land of Nod to help me out.

(And even as parents, at some point we do need to reclaim our lives, don’t we?)

I guess my own personal motto of parenting (which my husband firmly agrees with) could be called “Whatever Gets You Through The Night (Or Day)” and I can’t feel all that bad about it. I try like hell to be as non-judgmental as possible for people who don’t parent exactly the same way I do, but hell, reading some of those responses to “Cry it Out” on the Internet does tend to chafe a bit and raise my hackles.

(Hmmmm….I wonder if I should come up with some sort of code name for Crying it Out here, because as the Lovers of Vincent D’Onofrio found me, I’m sure the Parenting Police will be following suit and telling me that I shouldn’t have had kids if I was going to abuse them by making them cry at night AND occasionally forcing them to listen to Britney Spears (although not at night).)

Ah, oh well, bring on the haters, I say!

I could use a blog troll here or there, right?

(and under no circumstances should one google “baby slaps face” because I was trying to ascertain why Alex seems to delight is slapping my face as I hold him and when the hell this annoying habit will cease. But all that this search pulled up is a bunch of child abuse articles, NOT parental abuse ones.)

So, for now, I will get up at night with Alex, who has stopped being such an asshole for the time being, and soon, oh soon, Crying It Out must begin in my home. Otherwise I am apt to lose any shreds of sanity I have left (which are few and far between).

When I first met my husband, I couldn’t believe that he didn’t find me hilarious. He hardly ever laughed at me. This went on for so long that I eventually compared the nature of our relationship to Mr. Wilson and Dennis The Menace.

It was then when he explained what a “straight man” was (and no, sadly I am not referring to sexuality) and then I got it. He was and will always be my straight man. He may never laugh out loud unless I catch him off guard, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t laughing on the inside (which, if you ask me is better than crying on the inside).

So, because I am a highly mature adult, I try to spend most of our time spent in public embarrassing him. I spent much of the last part of my pregnancy waddling after him in stores loudly requesting that he get me my nipple cream and hemorrhoid pillows.

He wasn’t even remotely fazed.

I consider every instance that I make him blush a personal (major) victory, so I take most opportunities as they are presented. A simple jaunt through the pharmacy can turn into me loudly shrieking after him to “fill that Viagra prescription so we can get our hump on!” or “Honey, don’t you need some more ADULT DIAPERS? We’re almost out!”

(I do the same thing to my mother, minus, of course, the Viagra comment as she doesn’t have a penis. I think. The results are the same. Loudly rolling their eyes into the back of their head at my teenage-esque antics.)

You might think that this might elicit as much or more shame to me than it does to either of them, but you’d be horribly wrong. I put myself in the other patron’s shoes: who WOULDN’T secretly smirk when overhearing this? There’s a reason that Overheard in the Office is a great website: people like to hear this sort of crap.

Today, for the first time since I referred to my delicate girl parts as “a split wet beaver,” I finally achieved ultimate embarrassment: I made my husband blush (and likely nearly divorce me).

We’d just dropped off a prescription at Yee Old Target Pharmacy when somewhere in the back of the dusty recesses of my memory, I recalled that we needed to, *ahem,* restock on the lube (damn you, lactation!). I gleefully informed my husband of this at top volume from several aisles away.

Rather than turn the other way and pretend not to be That Crazy Woman’s Poor Husband, he trudged down the lube aisle with me to peruse our choices. Once decided, we turned around and headed back to the grocery aisle to continue our shopping expedition.

It was only then when I turned the shamefulness up a couple of notches, when I handed the baby the bottle for him to hold onto (he loves to examine our purchases).

Poor The Daver turned about 57 shades of red and sputtered none too delicately “NO!” as he took the offending bottle of goo away from him.

“No,” he continued his voice jumping several octaves higher, “I will NOT have the baby gumming a bottle of KY throughout Target, Becky. I am putting my foot DOWN.”

I’m smart enough to know when I’ve successfully pushed the envelope to the breaking point, so I conceded and handed Alex a much more PC package of Medicated Chapstick.

As I walked away, I comforted myself by knowing that after several long years of trying, I’ve finally painfully embarrassed my husband once again.

My son, Alex turns 10 months next week. In these past 10 months, despite my praying, hoping, magical thinking, and even bribery (c’mon baby, don’t you want a Mercedes?), we have made almost zero progress in the whole sleeping realm.

I’ve bought any number of sleep books (but have drawn the line at actually finding anything remotely useful in them, although they do make nice coasters), cried, thrown myself around hysterically in an effort to “get attention,” punched several holes in various walls (frustration, not crappy botched remodeling job), and traded nights with The Daver.

I’ve rocked until my feet felt like lead, I’ve nursed until my nipples blanched, I’ve driven around aimlessly with baby in tow until the road looks blurry, I’ve bounced him in his bouncy seat until my hands cramped. I’ve bought such crib gadgets such as a rain forest soother, a fancy mobile, we tried this vibrating thingy that you put under the mattress, all to no avail.

I’ve googled “sleep regression” and “sleep problems” until my fingers turned blue, and have learned that in order to have a “sleep regression” one has to have been sleeping well to begin with.

Ha.Ha.Ha.

I caught myself recently actually thinking about buying this, at $250 it seemed like a bargain, and it was a combination of this ridiculous potential purchase and the fact that Alex decided that 1:30 A.M. last night was a jolly good time to GET UP FOR THE FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT MOTHER HUMPING DAY.

I spent over an hour trying to get him back to sleep (it didn’t work), and when I realized that I was physically seething with anger at my teeny (but fat) dictator, I marched downstairs and informed The Daver that I was so incredibly angry that I didn’t want to SEE the baby again, no matter what, for a long time. That I wanted to FORGET that I had a second son for a night, and should he try to rouse me to help him with the baby, that he would be very, very sorry. To the tune of a set of lost testicles (but whose would go? THAT WAS THE QUESTION!).

When Alex was younger, I tried to let him Cry It Out, as I had with poor Ben, who was born not knowing that his days were not, in fact, nights. That one got old fast enough, and Ben caught on fast enough that he became a great sleeper rather quickly.

Alex was not so impressed. He seemed to get more and more upset by being left alone, and eventually we stopped doing this. I’d like to tell you that things have at least gotten marginally better over time, but that would be a complete lie (but it would sound better than having me tell you that things have gotten worse).

But now it’s time. After almost 10 months of completely disjointed sleep, resulting in anxiety, depression, threatening my spouse with bodily harm AND divorce, fantasizing about suicide, and considering running away, I am hereby (and henceforth) done.

The problem used to lie squarely within Alex (I completely assure you that although this is angling to be my last baby, I promise on all that is holy I am not trying to keep him a baby who needs his momma at all. I LIKE older children better than this whole “needy” crap that babies do.), and I fear the problem has turned out to be within us.

We naively hoped for a change in this sleep shit, and when it didn’t come, we logicated that any sleep was better than no sleep, and that it really wasn’t so bad, this whole getting up every 1-3 hours! It was fun!

(by we, I mostly mean “me.” Dave has a job that requires an attention span greater than a gnat.)

Fuck this noise, I am so completely over getting up all night long.

I’m not pretending that this is going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it sounds a fuck of a lot better than contemplating the least messy (but most effective) way to commit suicide.

Any suggestions? Or well wishes? Aunt Becky is not very happy today.

My darling second born son at the tender age of 9 months has fallen in love.

Not with one of the myriad of toys that he currently owns, and not even with one of the many animals who live with us (although the “dooo-gie” and “catty-cat” are close seconds to this), but with a book.

Now, it could be worse, he could be obsessed with one of the many boring computer books we have knocking around the house, but what cracks me up most about this is that when he first fell in love with it, I explained to him that there were 6 fingers on the hand of the book.

Rather than take the word “hand,” “book,” or even the very complicated “fingers” away from this, he now cries “thhhix” whenever he wants the book.

It’s going to be a loud 18 years.

Later that day, as he was rolling merrily along the floor, behaving like a human vacuum cleaner, I noticed that he was decidedly chewing on something. I figured it was likely a tasty bit of paper or a goldfish cracker, until I realized that he was gagging on it.

I swooped in, picked him up and peered into his mouth. He took this opportunity to regurgitate most of his lunch in a large splat onto the white (white!) carpeting, and it was then that I found the elusive culprit: a rabbit turd.

Now, back when I was eleventy-million months pregnant, Ben and I were perusing our local pet store after picking up some crickets for our gecko and while he tried to persuade me to buy him a scorpion (yeah, right. Over my dead and crusty body will I ever, EVER allow a scorpion to come into my home. You might say that I have a phobia.), I spotted her.

A large bunny was hopping merrily around a cage, desperately vying for my attention. I’ve always liked bunnies, and secretly lusted for one for, oh I don’t know, EVER, but every one I’ve ever seen is just languidly laying around a cage looking boring.

This one, however ugly she may be (and she is), was not boring. She was cute, and she liked me.

In a fit of pregnancy-induced insanity (and probably because my husband was too fearful of me to deny me), we adopted her (she had been dropped off by previous owners who didn’t want to care for her any longer).

Now, aside from knowing that they were fluffy and liked carrots, I had no idea what the hell owning a bunny was about. For instance, I had no idea that their pee smelled like death. Or that they would kick their litter and poo out of the cage when they jumped about. Had I known this, I might not have been so keen on adopting her.

But she’s cute as hell (in a really ugly way) and she loves me to pieces, so I don’t give her much grief for being a damned slob.

That said, when Alex was deciding to snack on a bit of “bunny chocolate,” I was horrified not that he had done this, or that she had kicked the poo piece out of her cage. I was mad simply because I had JUST vacuumed.

Ginger (not the name I would have chosen, but same as my darling cat Peekachoo, she came with it, and answers to it) says that she would very much like some treats, please, as you can see by her massive proportions (again, with the scale on a webpage, you may not get an accurate picture of her massiveness), WE DO NOT FEED HER ENOUGH.

Lastly, this is a photo of the aftermath of the “bunny chocolate” saga. A bath. With bubbles. And a baby that we call “Tons of Fun” and “Chubbs.”

You know, because he’s skinny.

In a drastic measure to realize a childhood dream, Daver had been petitioning for an air hockey table for about a year. I can’t complain about trying to realize childhood dreams, righting what once went wrong, or in my own case, buying my kids the crap my parents refused me. As my parents were hippies, their idea of “toys” consisted of those lovely wooden figures, you know, the ones that you buy in those specialty stores for about a million bucks?

Problem was, I’m not much of a wooden figure person. I longed not-so-secretly for Barbies (not allowed in my house under any circumstance), a Baby Pee-Pee, and most importantly a Power Wheels.

I am sad to report that although my not-so-subtle drip-drip method of acquisition (it’s likened to being pecked to death by an adorable chicken) never managed to work in this case.

So I plan to do what any mature and responsible parent would do, I’m going to buy my kids the one thing that I always wanted and never got (the Barbies and Baby Pee-Pee aren’t really appropriate for my boys, gender stratification and all): a Power Wheels. This is providing, of course, that they aren’t off the market by the time I’m IN the market for it.

Dave is aware of this impending expenditure, and would possibly complain were it not that the deck is now totally stacked in my favor. What on Earth (besides blow jobs) did I do to convince him, you ask?

I let him buy the fancy air hockey table he has been oogling.

It appears as though unfortunately even I am not immune the not-so-subtle drip-drip method.

When I was released this weekend from the purgatory that is getting my eyes examined (for some freakish reason, even though I have to do this yearly, my dread only intensifies with each year. No clue why), Dave and Ben took me over to “see something.” That “something” happened to be a half-priced air hockey table. Dave had used the fact that I love very little more than a good bargain (or a good humping) against me, damn him straight to hell!

There were three models sitting menacingly there, all at half off their sticker price, and Dave knew to start me on the cheapest, which was a full $60 cheaper than the next one up and looked it. It was ugly as fuck. No way is that going into our basement, I said, which happened to be his cue to point out the nicer model. I saw it and immediately agreed: the price was reasonable, the set up wasn’t too hideous, and it wasn’t nearly as HUGE as the highest price one.

I could hear a silent “fuck” pass over Daver’s eyes, as he then hastily backpedaled to point out all of the glaring problems with it. It didn’t have a score keeper computer (so.fucking.what?), it was smaller (good, GREAT!), and the legs looked weaker (there were no legs to be seen on the display).

Turns out, he’d been trying to sell me on option Number 3 and because my eyes were still fucked up from the exam, I hadn’t realized his angle until I had agreed to Option 2.

Option 3 was only about $20 higher than Option 2, which is not a sum that makes me go “Woah, Nellie!” but what I didn’t like about it was that it was so fucking huge. When I said as much, Daver and Ben immediately insisted that it only looked that way because my eyes were still adjusting back to normal from the exam, and because I was hot, hungry, and tired, I finally agreed to Option 3.

Who am I to deny someone their childhood dream?

Turns out that I happen to have “Sucker” written on my forehead, with what a piss poor decision I agreed to.

When Daver dropped us off at home and went back for the table, he realized that there was no way in hell that he was going to fit it inside our truck (which is only midsized), and had to borrow our generous neighbors Suburban.

Once he got it home, he had to enlist the help of ANOTHER neighbor to get the damn thing inside (we live in the world’s best neighborhood. Seriously), and once he set it gleefully up and called me down to see it, I nearly swallowed my own fucking tongue.

We have a finished basement, and the fucking albatross takes up half of one of the rooms. HALF OF ONE OF THE ROOMS.

(I would put a picture here but you wouldn’t be able to see it’s massiveness to scale. One could easily surmise that our basement was teeny-tiny and that the air hockey table was just a normal size, but looked much bigger. This, my friends, couldn’t be farther from the truth).

Now, we hadn’t exactly decided WHAT to do with that half of the room, and although I’d repeatedly petitioned for a Cotton Candy machine to put there, sadly no one had agreed to it, which is why I stubbornly refused Dave’s suggestion of a bar to go there. Besides, when the basement is The Teenagers Lair, I’m assuming that a bar would be the last thing we’d need there.

And to be completely honest, it’s not that it’s so massive (it’s seriously as big or a little bigger than our dining room table, with it’s leaves in) or that it hulks at me menacingly when I go downstairs to do laundry, it’s that someday, when the novelty has worn completely off, it’s going to become a flat storage space. Or a train table. Or a place to sort your dime bag.

Then, eventually, I will have to devise some way of storing it that doesn’t involve putting it on the side of the road for someone else to take, lest I get killed by certain members of my family who, despite the overwhelming layers of dust, will INSIST that they DO play it! Regularly!

Maybe this is the time to tell Dave about the fully functional Hot Dog Cart I bought for our bedroom. I can tell him he’ll hardly notice it’s there, sleeping tenderly on his side of the bed.

The Daver is addicted to workahol. Massively, unabashedly addicted to the stuff. Most of the time, it’s a-okay with me. I’ve never been the type of partner that is needful all of the time, and hell, I should tattoo my forehead with a fat “Does Not Work Well In Groups.”

Besides, he loves what he does, and even if falsely I tried to claim that I had had a change of heart and now “loved nursing” (the career, not the lactation), my whole family would fall all over themselves trying to forbid me to go back to it. Apparently, working a profession I hate is bad for everyone in my family (mainly because I turn into a massive bitch when I’m unhappy).

I’m not sure if it’s the deadly microbes (dramatic much?) merrily playing in my body, or massive hormonal imbalances caused my impending menstrual cycle, but lately I just can’t hack it doing everything by myself.

Too many people (and animals) require me for their daily (hourly) happiness and depend upon me to make certain all of the “i’s” are dotted and “t’s” are crossed, and I am finding it all so very overwhelming.

I suppose, if I am trying to take a shot at rationality, that my illness has brought to the forefront of my brain the reminder that no matter what, my needs aren’t as pressing as anyone else’s.

There’s still Snack Day at school that I have to remember and prepare, violin that must be practiced (and if I am to be painfully honest, taught by yours truly), dirty diapers to be changed, baths to be orchestrated, dinner to be thought of, noses to be wiped, cat boxes to be scooped, laundry to be dried and sorted, cats to be fed, dog to be fed, egos to be stroked, and mail to be sorted.

And this is just a minor fraction of it all.

Such is life when you have kids, oh this I am aware, and most of the time it doesn’t get me down. You roll with whatever life throws at you, try to dodge most of the shit storms, and go to bed knowing that even if you are exhausted, you are happy.

Except when you’re not.

Except when the very thought of what the new day holds makes you want to pull the blankets over your head and try your best to hide from the day, hoping that no one finds you for a long time. Maybe they’ll forget about you!

Alas, like it or not, no one can forget you, because they rely on you, and you alone to do what needs to get done. Some days, this makes you feel powerful: just LOOK at how many plates I can juggle at once! And some days, you just wish that you had backup. From anyone.

Today I feel alone and impossibly sad, and my only saving grace is that I am hoping to wake up tomorrow ready to take on the day and wipe this shit right off my shoes.

Apparently, it’s me.

Rather than bore you with all of the details, and in lieu of trying to write a post which would inevitably turn into “Wah, wah, wah” I will just take a moment to tell you that although I am alive and kicking, I will be spending the rest of the day sitting on my couch feeling sorry for myself. For no real reason.

I’ll be back when I can pull myself out of this.