Hey, world. It's me. Ready to take on my agoraphobia and live my life again.

See, I have this rash on ma face. Thought it was eczema from eating gluten back in June. A little hydrocortisone here and there and I thought it would go away. Well. It didn't. And it got worse. The lighting, crappy camera phone, and faux lazy eye does not begin to do this justice, but you get the point.

Here's a better example from the interwebs:

So I finally went to the dermatologist. Turns out I have this thing called Perioral Dermatitis. 90% of patients with this......disease? are woman 20-45 years of age. "Scientists" are not sure what causes it and they're not really even sure how to completely get rid of it. "They" think it might be the fluoride in toothpaste. Ha. My dermatologist? Kind of came off as a jerky idiot on the matter. Every. single. question I asked was met with "the pamphlet will explain that". Turns out the pamphlet was like, "sooooo we don't really know." Awesome. He prescribed an antibiotic to take.....for 2 months. How in the world can that be healthy?? But I was desperate. So I went to pick up the prescription.

$261 to fill that prescription, with pretty decent insurance. No way was I dropping that much on pills that would probably cause more issues than they solved. So then I fell into a depression, out of which I am coming a week later (sorry, Danny!), and hopped online to some great forums to find out that the antibiotics route usually just becomes a cycle. That never ends. For years. No thanks.

I also found that the earthy, voodoo juju, crunchy path is usually the best. I eliminated soaps and beauty products with sodium lauryl sulfates (SLS) and sodium lareth sulfates (SLES). (SLS and SLES basically just make your soap sudsier. So you "feel cleaner". Even though it doesn't actually make you cleaner. In my case, it makes my skin irritated-er.) The rash got worse for several days while my face went through steroid withdrawal (from the hydrocortisone) but after a strict regimen of probiotics every afternoon, diluted apple cider vinegar on my face twice a day, a yogurt mask at night, and a few honey masks, my face is looking better than it has in MONTHS. And it's been YEARS since I was this obsessed with my face. Annnnnnd I also fired that doctor from my services. The fact that these treatments are working suggest that the cause of PD has something to do with the flora in your gut being amiss (the gluten catalyst) combined with yeast issues on yo face. Perfect storm. For some ego-shrinking and confidence shattering PD.

Lessons learned:
- Trust "modern medicine" even less.
- Firing doctors is really easy - just don't go to them again.
- I am way more vain than I thought.

An explanation of my smirk when you declare how absolutely amazing being a mother to your newborn is.

In the last 3 months, I have 9 friends who have had babies and I personally know (at least) 15 women that are pregnant right now.

That’s a lot of babies.

I am genuinely happy for my friends. I love to bask in their big-bellied glows and hear their birth stories.

But.

I am glad I am not one of them.

Among the 25+ women I have mentioned, there are 6 who were pregnant around the same time I was pregnant with Ava. That means I am officially getting passed up in the baby-making department. Initially, this thought made me feel a little bit of pressure and incited panic and shock. After mulling it over though? I am totally okay with it. This is not a race and I am not superwoman.

Like I said, I do love reading my friends’ birth stories. Well, ¾ of their birth stories. I hang on every word while they rehash the dilating, the contractions, the insane, indescribable pain, the pushing, and that amazing relief when they get to meet their teeny, tiny humans. It’s after that they lose me. They’re generally sharing their stories a week or more after they took place and by then are incandescently happy with their babies. I know they are sleep-deprived and probably still in pain but they are happy.

I didn’t feel that way with Ava. I loved being pregnant (one plus to being an amazon – it wasn’t as uncomfortable for me as it is for a lot of women) and I loved her actual birth but after that….?? Instead of being exhausted, happy, and a little scared that I was responsible for another human being, I was exhausted and devastated. I spent a good portion of my time alone wither her sobbing. I bawled the whole time my mom was at our house thinking about the day she would leave and I would have to take care of this kid all by myself. It was like I had a giant, ugly monster sitting on my chest, squeezing all the happiness out of my heart. I loved my baby but I mostly felt an obligation to keep her alive more than an overwhelming urge to love her. I had moments of happiness and contentment but they were few and fleeting.

It was clear, after weeks of weeping and being unable to feel spiritual comfort, that something was terribly wrong. I made an appointment with my OB (I loved my OB). When he came into the examination room to see me, he took my baby and held her. He commented on how beautiful she was. Then, he looked up at me and asked me how I was doing. I had a hard time answering through the tears streaming down my face that I was trying so hard to hold back but all I said was, “not good.”

I wasn’t prepared for this. I hadn’t done any research on it while I was pregnant and I was such a naturally happy person that I thought I didn’t need to. But everything in my life aligned to create the perfect storm – Danny was in his final and busiest semester of law school so we never saw him. Ava was a seriously high maintenance baby with acid reflux and a need to be older and busier than she was. We couldn’t figure out the breast feeding. I was trying to adjust to being a mom while being a hormonal mess. My body was done. Everything was out of my control. I was out of my control.

My OB prescribed Zoloft. I’m not really sure how much it helped. I know I should have had a follow-up appointment or seven but my insurance was up 6 weeks postpartum so I didn't. The meds generally made the horrible thoughts go away and allowed for more joyful moments but the monster on my heart was still there. He kept squeezing, turning my devastation to anger. Unfortunately, I unloaded most of that anger onto my sweet husband (who I’m pretty sure was wondering what the heck he’d gotten himself into). I was medicated until Ava was 8 months old and my body decided it was done with the meds (sudden weight gain).

I adjusted. I finally fell head-over-heels in love with my baby and couldn’t get enough of her. The ugly monster stopped squeezing my heart and let me breathe again. But then he relocated to my head. He nestled right behind my ear and taught me the fine art of negative self-talk. I constantly told myself that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, attractive enough, that I wasn’t worth a thing. That thought process? caused so much marital strife because I usually interpreted everything as an attack. It was Tiffany vs. Danny, not Tiffany and Danny vs. The World. The PPD pretty much dissipated by last January but the negative self-talk habit still lingers.  

I am working on it. I am working on everything. Our job and living situation did a 180, in the best of ways last May, and it threw me out of my catatonic indifference to the quality of my life. I mourn the loss of my daughter’s infancy and the fact that I was unable to enjoy her during her littlest moments. But I have to move on. I am moving on. Danny and I can both breathe and think and laugh again. I feel as normal as I think I will ever feel. The ugly monster is tucked into the recesses of my subconscious but he isn’t gone. He will never be gone. Depression like that leaves scars. And broken parts. And unshed tears that surface at a memory you can’t completely bury.

So my baby train is on a different schedule than everyone else’s. And you know what? I don’t care. I don’t need my own tiny baby to hold right now, not when there are so many around me already. One day, that may change. Heavenly Father will slip some forgetfulness into my morning smoothie and I will want another one. But that day isn’t today and it isn’t tomorrow. 

It is finally Danny and Tiffany and Ava vs. The World and I just want to enjoy it for a while.

Seriously?

And so along with gluten, my body has started rejecting refined sugar.

Brilliant.

Feeding my body just got harder. Again. 

It's starting to become clearer...

I am a pretty open person. And by pretty I mean very. I have no problem talking about things that a lot of people don't or won't. Why? It's kind of just my personality.

I am surrounded by and related to some pretty private people. I don't mean to make these people squirm by my candid conversations, I just start talking and before I know it I can tell I have made someone uncomfortable and, in their view, "overshared" (the fact that I get little adult interaction during the day only exacerbates these situations (see:verbal diarrhea)).

So if my talking about post-partum depression or weight gain or various pet peeves makes you squirm? Then you need to be less sensitive. Less squirmy. At least when talking to me. I will do my part and warn you when a potentially uncomfortable subject is about to be discussed. We call these "squirmy subjects".

Squirmy subject of the week: my weight.

If you had told me in elementary school/middle school/high school that I would be open about my weight I would have LAUGHED IN YOUR FACE. I don't mean open in the sense that I am going to tell you how much I weigh, no no no. I just mean open in the sense that I will talk about my struggles losing and maintaining weight, working out, and eating well. IT IS THERAPY SO STOP WITH THE JUDGEY FACE.

I have already opened up about my current quest to lose the weight my anti-depressants help me put on in an alarmingly short period of time (20 pounds in 1.5 months with no change to diet or exercise. hmmmmmm). I have been pretty frustrated with the fact that I have been making some big changes and I cannot get anywhere. So I just stopped stepping on the scale. I have not stepped on the scale in about a month.

I did go to the doctor this week to get my thyroid checked. So I had to get weighed. And guess what. I LOST TEN POUNDS!!!! Wooooooooot. FINALLY! I also had an epiphany as to why I'm not losing the weight as quickly as I'd like.

They tried to draw my blood at the doc's office (his office is in a hospital). She felt both arms for quite a while, stuck me twice and couldn't get anything because my veins were too small, and ended up sending me down to the hospital lab. I chugged 16 oz of water on my way over but I guess that didn't really help. The tech decided she was going to have to draw it from my hand. Now, when this lab tech, who draws blood all day every day, had to call the most senior lab tech over to do it because she's "better at it", described me as "extremely dehydrated" and made me sit there afterward and drink more water......I realized that drinking water needed to move up my priority list.

It needs to go before laundry and dishes.

I know.

I sat there and thought about the fact that I couldn't remember the last time I drank a whole glass of water at one time. Sad. And unhealthy.

This probably also explains the fatigue I've been feeling lately. Time for more water.

Week 5, 12, 7011...

No idea what week I'm on. I moved. And then unpacking took forever (only 3 more boxes!). I continued with my diet (kind of) but wasn't able to take time out to go for walks. However, I would say that moving and unpacking boxes, drilling, assembling furniture, and numerous shopping trips (one to IKEA with a full cart and a full furniture cart AND a screaming 9 month old who refused to be in the cart any longer)? All good workouts. It's not as if I've been sitting around on the book of face all day (because I'm not a depressed zombie anymore). And I've also had to remind myself to eat meals, which means I haven't been bored-eating. Bored-eating is the woooooorst.

So I can safely say I think I should have lost some weight by now. A pound? 5? Just a little bit? No. Nothing. Not. one. pound. lost. Do you realize how demoralizing that is? It's not fun to be doing the best you can and have that not be anywhere close to good enough. Sigh. I wish I were one of the many women whose baby weight just melts away.

So. Change of plans. I had a nice long conversation with a good friend who also happens to be a professional in this area. Fitness is her life. We decided that I should just do it. Just get the gym membership. This way I can get a REALLY good workout in the water without killing my feet AND I can have a little mommy break from the cutest baby in the world for an hour a day. Both of these things will be goodness for my body, for my sanity. NEEEED MOOOOORE ENDORPHIIIIIINS. Hopefully with these forces combined......I can look like captain planet.

Week 4 ....starting to get somewhere

Miles walked: 5
Pounds lost: 3

Slow and steady wins the race, my friends. Slow. And. Steady.

Week 3

It occurs to me that I didn't do an update for last week. Probably because it was a bad one.
Miles walked: only 2.5 booooo
Pounds lost: none. I don't even want to talk about it. Finally got that scale. Yikes.

Week 2

Miles walked: 7.5
Pounds lost: .....gettin' that scale today...

Week 1

Miles: 7.5
Pounds lost: still need to invest in a scale. Let's saaaaaaay 2 pounds. For my self-esteem.

Lu-huving the daily exercise. Makes a momma happy and productive.

Because fat clothes are depressing

Hello.

I am starting a new exercise/diet regime. I shouldn't say diet because that implies pre-made dinners, juice cleansing, or magic pills. When I say 'diet' I mean that I am seriously cutting out the crap in my diet (most of it, anyway). This really won't be much of a problem because I am gluten-free so that cuts out 95% of the junk.

The exercise? That part will be interesting. I will have to battle the feelings/reasons I have avoided anything super athletic my entire life. Contrary to popular belief, I have a certain amount of athleticism but because I have steered clear of sports and opted for music most of my life I just don't have the skills others have. Sports made me uncomfortable when I was younger. I was self-conscious of my body (for real) because I was taller than everyone else and had feet and arms and legs comparable to those of an orangutan. I felt awkward in my own skin. And then I got a little pudgy and it just got worse. And sports hurt. I thought I was just a wimp. Fast forward to high school when I got 2 stress fractures in my feet during "Singin' in the Rain" and I had to get all these x-rays done. Turns out the bones in my feet didn't form correctly in THE WOMB. Tarsal coalition, it's called. This combined with my ridiculously high arches and gnarly foot circulation equals LOTS OF PAIN WHEN I DO NORMAL THINGS EVERYONE ELSE CAN DO WITHOUT PAIN. It all started to make so much sense..... the hatred of running, not wanting to jump out of the swing while it was still going at recess, etc. IT WAS BECAUSE I AM DEFORMED. There is nothing really that can be done about it, I just have to work with what I have. I have been advised (several times) to stay off of treadmills and told that I shouldn't run. Low impact/no impact exercise is where it is at. It puts the lotion on the skin.

So.

That really puts a damper on what I can do to lose the baby weight clinging tight to my hips. It would be ideal to just go outside and run a mile or two but alas, this causes much pain. Yoga? Pilates? Ideal for one workout. But then my body is all "I'm a cripple, remember? Stop trying to be Madonna and quit with the down-ward facing dog thankyouverymuch. Ouch." Swimming? Perfect. Always. But I don't have a pool and I'm not paying the local YMCA $38.00/month to use theirs. So I think I'll just have to power walk. This will still be uncomfortable but it's better than nothing. Ava will enjoy this too.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I need to have some sort of accountability. Danny is gone too much and I have too little willpower to police myself. So. I turn to you, snoop bloggy blog.

I will be documenting the miles walked and the pounds shed. That is all.

Crossing my fingers....