How am I doing?

There are ups and downs. There has been a lot going on. Today, I’m trying to catch up on my schoolwork.

There are times when my pain is really bad and it causes some really intense anxiety. I was feeling bad about my anxiety when I realised that for the past couple of years I have been going through a lot of stressful situations. No wonder my anxiety got worse. My poor nervous system was put through the wringer. It’s going to take some time for it to recover. And I am still dealing with the hormonal fallout of stopping breastfeeding. That can take up to 3 months to balance. I realised that I just get anxious about things that I care about. If I frame it like that. It is not so bad.

I’m glad that I didn’t end up like my mother. I feel like I’m coming out of the other side of the postpartum difficulties. My whole life I was terrified of becoming her. She told me over and over again that I was just like her. I was terrified of having children because she said that it made her become the way she was. I was terrified of being like her after having a baby.

I can understand the difficulties that she had better now. But we responded to them entirely differently. We are two different people. Perhaps if I hadn’t actively sought out to become different from her my whole life things would have been very different. I’m glad that I was able to treat my boy with nothing but love and care which is what he deserves. I think he’s happy and a teensy bit spoiled. Just in the right way.

He has toys that help him to practice standing now. The new challenges are that he cries when he does get what he wants and if I try and stop him from doing something that he wants that could hurt him sometimes he bites me. He’s after power cables. So far I just say no, drop it, leave it alone and good boy when he drops it and move him away and I either ignore or say no when he bites. He also tries to pull on the curtains. Anyway, advice is much appreciated.

I think that I might have to practice being more assertive. The dogs tend to test me. I am not as firm as my husband or sister.