Depressed Mom

The last month has been really hard.  It's hard because the weather is lousy, and I've bitten off more than I can chew at work.  C works long hours and comes home exhausted.  And the kids are really, really hard.  Mostly P.  He has to test every boundary, every time.  It's age-appropriate and typical, but exhausting.  They say "pick your battles" but everything is a battle -- using the toilet a few times a day, not spitting and hitting, not sweeping everything off a shelf onto the floor just because you want to.

To top it all off, my depression is worse than usual.  I wake up wanting to cry.  All I want to do is stay in my bed where I feel safe, but I can't do that.  I've spent more time than I should in bed while the kids nap, and as a result have fallen further behind on my work.  I feel like I'm drowning.  I'm irritable and get frustrated and tired of trying to parent.  I've pretty well given up on housework.  Every now and then I'll get up the gumption to clean a room, but it gets trashed immediately so my motivation to do it suffers.  Laundry now functions on a "dirty pile/clean pile" basis.

Here are some things that do not help.  I've tried googling articles on parenting with depression.  They all are about studies that show depressed parents, especially mothers, have a negative effect on everyone else in the family.  That kids with depressed parents are more likely to act out and get hurt and struggle in school.  Great! Now I feel cheered up!  That was so helpful!

At church last week our lesson devolved in to our quarterly discussion of how knowing you're a daughter of God should just make you happy, and if you have gratitude for your blessings then you will be happy, and how incomprehensible it is to be unhappy if you have the blessings of the Gospel. I imagine if your brain works normally those things are valid.  But if you're me, you quietly excuse yourself and go hide in the kitchen and cry because nobody goes in there during church.  So now I'm unhappy, and guilty that I'm unhappy because if I were more righteous then I wouldn't have this problem.  Verrrry helpful.  I'm giving serious thought to setting aside the second hour of church to finding a place to hide in the building and just thinking my own thoughts, or maybe writing in my journal.  It sounds less spiritually damaging than class attendance.

I hate February, and I hate March.  I've been promising myself to just hold out through the end of Winter Term and it'll get better, but the work explosion has convinced me that my overburdenedness will carry right through until next term.  And now I'll go grade, which is what I should have been doing all this time anyway.

Feeding a toddler

The key to feeding a toddler, or at least my toddler, is to not look like you're TRYING to feed him.  This is fatal.  I put out a bowl of his favorite cereal dotted with blueberries.  He picked out the blueberries and gladly ate them.  After all, they are not in season and cost something exorbitant, so it makes sense that they're on his short list of approved breakfast foods.  The cereal he rejected and instead elected to come over a and scream at me while I ate.  I offered him a single blueberry.  He screamed at me and ran off, sobbing.  I finished my breakfast.

After having eaten, I tried a few other tactics to feed the little guy.  I tried pouring dry cereal directly on the table, as he was happy to eat a very stale piece of bread on the floor earlier.  Nothing doing.  More screams.  I held up an orange and looked inquisitive.  He made a gesture (from his supine position of mourning on the floor) that clearly indicated that, if that orange came anywhere near him, he would bat it away with all his force.  I held up a banana.  More wailing, but with a slight hesitation.  I peeled the banana and set it on the table, and sat him down.  Screams as he writhed away from it in despair.

So I gave up.  I left the banana on the table and went and fooled around on my phone on a chair.  Soon a snot encrusted one year old appeared, clutching mushy banana and eating.
"Go to the table Freddy."
"NOH!"
"Sit at the table buddy."
"NOH!"
"Go to the table"
"Grrrrrrrrrr"
I picked him up and placed him in his chair.
More wailing.

Meanwhile, the preschooler is adamantly refusing to get out of bed or leave his room.  I don't really mind this, except I fully intend to shut him in there for several hours this afternoon for quiet time, and so I feel slightly guilty that he is choosing to spend his morning there.

What do SAHMs do all day? Fight pointless battles for the good of the children while they strive to harm themselves.  It's exhausting.