This Is What Crazy Looks Like

Can you sense it?  Do you feel it?  Can you see its creepy little eyeballs peering over the edge of my wall of gratitude?  Yep, there it is…CRAZY rearing its ugly head again.  I want to give you a little insight into my mind these days, but let me warn you, it is not a pretty place.  Oh, there are still fabulous flowers of hope springing up all over the place but tangled up in their stems are my vines of crazy.  And what do we know about vines?  Well, they try to take over if we let them.  Most of these fears come in forms of what I should and shouldn’t do while being pregnant, you know being vigilant in assuring that I am doing all that I can to protect this tiny life growing inside me.  Trying desperately to prove that I know how to do this, to prove that I am a good mother, to show the world that if I follow all the right rules (see there I go again), I can really make this happen.  (Can you see the crazy surfacing already?)

First of all, I do all of the things that are blatantly obvious, things that even men know about being pregnant: no drugs, no smoking, no drinking, and no caffeine.  Got it covered.  And just to be extra safe, I started practicing these safety precautions during the “2 week wait” (of course some much earlier than that), before we even knew we were pregnant.  See, I had a drink during that time period with our last pregnancy and a little voice in the back of my mind has always wondered.  You might notice a trend, a little voice in my head wonders things unsolved quite frequently. 

Then there are the things that may not be as well known, but most pregnant women become aware of pretty quickly.  Like things you should and shouldn’t eat.  Did you know you that food like soft cheeses, unpasteurized products, hot dogs and lunch meats are now off the table?  There’s this evil called Listeria bacteria that might not make you feel sick but can attack the baby (or something like that).  A hidden demon of sorts.  Being a vegetarian, I’ve got the hot dogs and lunch meat thing covered, but the definition of “soft cheeses” often leaves me wondering?  What’s safe and what’s not?  I feel like I almost need to own a cheese dictionary because I usually have no idea which cheese is safe and which cheese is lethal.  What if I unknowingly eat the wrong one?  Seriously, we’re talking about cheese here people.  I like cheese.  And, I think I had a salad with goat cheese on it weeks before I had and lost Wyatt, but the doctors say no relationship, but I say how do you rule it out?  If it’s a rule that we aren’t supposed to eat it, it’s obviously been documented to have hurt someone’s baby, why not mine?  Unsolved wondering.  So I figure if cheese isn’t safe, then hell, what is?  So, I have rationalized to myself that I should not indulge in some other things.  I’m pretty sure there is little documentation to support my withholdings in any way, but just to be crazy safe, I’m keeping them out of my mouth…  Things like herbal tea (I’m sure I read somewhere that some kind of leaves could cause miscarriage), honey (well, if you’re not supposed to give it to a child under 1, then doesn’t that include my baby?), tofu (some well intended friend just happened to mention to me, one week after my recent loss, that “studies show” that tofu can contribute to infertility or miscarriage or being crazy).  And there are other things that make me worry: food poisoning, E. Coli, undercooked food, overcooked food….seriously, how can I stay sane?  Ugh, I’m almost determined not to eat anything at all.  But of course, I would worry about that too, see, I purposely only gained a couple of pounds with this past pregnancy/loss (reminder, it was only 12 weeks)and my madness slightly wonders about that as well.  It’s really a no win situation in the food and drink department.  And if you think I’m joking about this stuff, well, these are seriously the things that keep me up at night.  I make myself completely nuts just thinking about all the things that could go wrong, things that I need to do right, the “what ifs” that might contribute to another baby being snatched away from me in an instant.  The wonderings of what I could have or should have done differently. 

Next.  Toxoplasmosis.  Seriously, I don’t even know how I know or remember these things.  I haven’t looked at a pregnancy book for this kind of information since I was pregnant with Wyatt (for reasons that should be quite obvious by now).  I refuse to Google anything these days because I’m afraid what I would find would just feed into my crazy a little bit more (as if).  So anyway, I call this one the “cat poo disease”.  I don’t know much more about it, but from what I remember, if you exposure yourself to cat feces, you could be putting your baby in grave danger.  But I don’t have a cat, you say?  Correct.  But my neighbors have decided that it would be a good idea to have 20 or so “outside” cats just roaming around, and where do they hang out?  On my porch, in my yard and in my flower beds.  So I refuse to garden, weed or hang out in my yard much at all.  This does not bode well for my landscaping or for my husband’s growing lists of things he now has to do because of what’s lurking in my tainted brain.  Sorry hubs, I’m sure the risks are low, but my mind is on any risk alert right now and all are code red as far as I’m concerned. 

Oh, and you should have seen me when I was sick.  I just had a cold, of course it began within days of finding out I was pregnant.  First of all, just being sick makes me crazy.  I had a low fever the last two weeks of my pregnancy with Wyatt.  More wondering.  And, I also refuse to take any medication whatsoever, even if it is deemed “safe”, because what you think is safe now, may not be safe later.  Take Paxil for example, have you seen the class action lawsuits on the telly these days?  Well in one of my early crazy episodes when pregnant with Abs, it was recommended that maybe I needed to take Paxil (super crazy girl).  Of course I refused, knowing that it would only increase my insanity with all the wondering that I do, but it was thought to be safe at the time.  Not so much now.  And then there is even something as benign as Tylenol.  We all know that’s safe in pregnancy.  Hmm, well the last time I asked a doc about it, I heard something come out of her mouth to the tune of “renal failure”, and I’m sure something else followed regarding large doses or some other unlikely condition, but all I needed was to hear was the word “failure” and I was done.  Pray for no headaches because this mad girl is pain killer deficient.  And then there’s the added story about how I went to the pharmacy during this same illness because my eyes were red, watery and irritated.  I went to all the trouble to ask the pharmacist what was safest, I purchased it, came home and left it in the box unopened.  Still.  I mean he said this was probably the “safest”, but he never really said it was “safe”.  Bye-bye eye drops, crazy beat you to the punch. 

And then there are other things that are simply ridiculous that cross my mind anyway.  Can I cook my baby if my shower is too hot?  What about standing too close to the stove when I’m cooking?  When do I need to start sleeping on my left side?  Oh, crap, what if I roll over in my sleep?  I avoid putting my cell phone in my lap, because you know those memes that went around about the cell phones blowing things up when a call came through.  And there’s also the microwave, my lap top, hell, is there something toxic the toaster can emit?  Pesticides, weed killers, household cleaners…keep them away!  Please say you didn’t use any when I came to your house today.  And then Rob just told me something about sunscreen, some recent report.  Sigh.  Add it to the list.  And this is me.  Day in and day out.  I think these thoughts and so much more.  This is just a small window into what my brain mutates into potential toxins these days, a very small window into the things that make me loco just trying to navigate through my daily life.  And I am aware of the notion that it’s very likely that absolutely none of these things ever did or ever will matter.  I am aware, but I can’t let them go.  Because no one can tell me what did matter.  So I’m left to my own devices, I’m left with the wonderings of a madwoman. 

A small part of my brain realizes that most of these things are not rational, most of these thoughts do not make any sense, but in some (crazy) way, I’m pretty certain I need these thoughts.  I’m pretty sure that on some level these thoughts actually serve to keep me sane.  They provide me with some sort of way to feel like I am in control.  They make me think that there is something I might be able to do to control things this time, when I’m pretty sure deep down I know there is very little I am really in control of at all.  But I like to be in control, I need to be in control, I have to be in control, at least in control of something.  So if this is what it takes for me to feel empowered, to feel like I have some say in the outcome of this pregnancy, if this crazy is what I need to survive, then I say bring it on.  (But in small doses please).  I’m sure some of it will wear off as I settle into all this a little bit more.  I’m hoping I soon realize how unnecessary most of my mental tanglings of crazy conditions truly are.  But until then, I guess I am thankful for having something to give me the power that my mind craves to convince itself that I can protect this baby in ways I couldn’t protect some others.  So I will try to ward off the crazy with all my might, but please be understanding that there are just some things that are worth holding onto, rational or not.  Some things I just need to do, to control my life in ways that I’m aware are really uncontrollable.  Some things that truly bring me a little peace of mind and a small amount of sanity in a truly crazy tangled mess of hopeful flowers and fearful vines that is now my current life.  I hope it stays that way.  The alternative condition is what I truly fear the most, it’s how crazy came to grow its vines in my mind in the first place. 

**Disclaimer:  If you are pregnant and reading my blog (first of all, bless you, you brave soul), please consult a physician before feeding into any of my crazy rantings and beliefs, I am certainly no expert in any of these things mentioned above!