At least I have useful diseases...

Several weeks ago, Lillian mentioned in passing that in addition to postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, there is also a lesser-known disorder - postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder. Though at the time Chris joked, "How will we be able to separate that from your typical OCD?", it's turned out to be not so much a laughing matter. Though I only have a very, very mild case of it - I don't pull the car over twelve times during a trip to make sure Gwen's carseat is still buckled, for example - it's still having a definite impact on me. Or, to be more honest, on all of us.


The form it takes is much like my (again, fairly mild) typical OCD - I like things to be tidy. (I told you I have useful diseases.) There is a phrase on that website that describes me perfectly: "Constantly trying to keep things in perfect order and organized because you somehow feel that if you can just get organized you can get relief". Unattainable dream, of course, and no matter how organized I get the relief escapes me. When things aren't tidy, I can't think straight. I feel the walls closing in on me. I get really snappy and miserable. Babies are cluttery creatures, and my least-favourite baby-related activity - nursing - requires me to sit immobile and stare around the room at all the clutter. When I have a break from nursing, I don't want to spend time resting or bonding with my daughter. I want to clean up the damn mess.


Most of the time, this works out okay - after all, it's not such a terrible thing to want the room to be tidy! But once in a while it overwhelms me. I feel resentful of Chris for contributing to the clutter instead of helping me. And I completely cannot relate to those who advise me to "relax" and "just let the housework go". Those two concepts are mutually exclusive, to me.


Now, let's be honest - I am not a great housekeeper. I never vacuum, never wash the windows, and clean the toilets only when I absolutely must. So truly, I am not talking about the white-glove treatment here. I just want to be able to see more than a square inch of space on the coffee table, you know, instead of it being littered with used bottles and magazines and books and used burp cloths. I think most people want the same thing. The difference is, until I accomplish that goal, I feel physically uncomfortable being in the room.


This is all exacerbated by the sheer number of hours I spend at home these days, mainly 'trapped' in one room. Some days the endless cycle of it all really gets me down. These tasks are never finished, and so I can never take pride in a job well done. And, you know how it goes. The more mundane your tasks actually are, the more magnified their importance becomes in your head, so that you can convince yourself your existence isn't utterly meaningless. Chris is already urging me to try and figure out a way to deal with this, because it's only going to get worse when Gwen is a toddler and starts really making messes.



And to be honest, in the days since I truly accepted that I Have A Problem, it's gotten a bit easier. I can detach from it a little, and tell myself that just because I'm not cleaning the mess right now doesn't mean I won't clean it ever. Making sure the room is tidy before I go to bed - which takes only 5-10 minutes - means not only that I start the next day on the right foot, but that throughout the time leading up to the evening clean-up, the pressure's off: I know the room will be tidy soon, I don't need to fuss with it now.

Anyway. I'm on it. I'll get through it. It's not as bad as it could be, and I'm sure it'll pass.

But in the meantime, clearly there are still Issues.

Upcoming Travels

I may be crazy. Or, put it this way - if I'm not now, I might be by the end of all this.

This Saturday is Gwen's first SCA event! As this may mean nothing to most of you, I offer the following explanation: This Saturday, we will be sitting in a large field in Port Alberni, after having risen at some ungodly hour, dressed the baby and ourselves, and driven for 90 minutes to get there. With only a gazebo-style tent for protection from whatever weather is thrown at us, I must do all the typical mothering things I usually do all day from the comfort of my own home: feeding, diapering, entertaining, soothing to sleep (without the swing, ACK), keeping Gwen appropriately warm/cool, and so on. All while dressed in medieval garb, or in this case the closest thing I could find to medieval garb that would still allow me to nurse.

Oh, and while I'm sitting in the field, there will be armoured fighting and rapier combat and other things to watch, not to mention, I'm sure, a steady stream of people in medieval garb commenting on how loudly my baby is able to cry. "She's got her mother's lungs!" they all say, thinking it's the first time I've heard that comment.

So, after a potluck 'feast' on Saturday (and dear God, I have no idea what we're going to bring to that), we'll pack up the car and head back home, hopefully arriving by 10pm.

Sunday, in addition to the 6.5km walk dictated by my half-marathon training schedule, I must do laundry. And on Monday, I must pack. Because on Tuesday, we leave home again, this time for a four-day trip up to our family's float cabin on Powell Lake.

Repeat all previous notes, except read "sitting on a cabin deck" for "sitting in a field" and change "people in medieval garb" to "my parents".

No, in all seriousness I am really excited about that trip. My parents haven't seen Gwen since she was about a month old, so they are in for lots of surprises. And I'm sure they'll have more to say than commenting on how loud she is.

We come back from that trip next Saturday evening. Sunday will again see me doing laundry and Monday will again see me packing, because we're not done yet. To complete the triumvirate of travel, Gwen and I are going to the Lower Mainland the following Tuesday through Thursday, mainly to meet the amazing Ira and congratulate his incredible mother. (Well, I will congratulate her. Gwen will issue her congratulations in the form of drool.) I even decided, based on the unexpected arrival of the Canada Child Tax Benefit, that I can afford to take my car to the city, which simplifies things a great deal (no need to detach the carseat base and stuff it into the stroller for a walk-on ferry trip). Also, no need to pack light. Heh.

With all this travelling, though, I am getting my head around a few things. The very first time I travelled with Gwen, which was to Powell River for a baby shower and a visit with my parents way back in early May, I was completely gobsmacked when I realized that I had to pack for the baby as well as for myself. This is because I am not so very good at packing for myself, and I always forget something. To extrapolate a list of what this tiny new person, who came without the ability to speak for herself, might need for a three-day-trip, seemed impossible. But with each trip I'm getting a little better, and with these upcoming travels I've actually developed a checklist of what Gwen needs if she's going to be away from home for more than a few hours (of course I have).

She's actually quite the well-travelled little girl, and we are oh-so-lucky that she seems to take the upheavals in stride. In her three short months of life, she has already done the following:
- Trip to Powell River at 3 weeks old (4 days, 3 without Chris)
- Trip to Vancouver at 7 weeks old (And I remember thinking when planning this - "Pssh. Seven weeks old? I'll have this mothering thing totally down by then.")
- Trip to Victoria at 12 weeks old (3 days, entirely without Chris)

People Don't Know. They Don't Know!

Title quote is from "Reality Bites", said by Janeane Garofalo, who plays a GAP employee, after she uses a fancy shirt-folding device to pretty up a display table. People don't know. They don't know! This quote comes to mind after I have spent 2 hours today going through digital photos and figuring out which ones I want to order to fill up Gwen's (first) photo album, as well as selecting and cropping a bunch to go in some photo frames we had lying around. AND I went to Michael's earlier today to buy frames for the prints we're going to get from our professional shoot, and a scrapbook for those as well.

People don't know. They don't know!

This doesn't even count the time I'm going to have to spend, probably on Friday, uploading pictures from the second half of July into my Facebook and Flickr albums.

Not to mention the time it's going to take me to put all these pictures, once printed and procured, into the frames and albums and so on.

People don't know. They don't know.

I now understand the old saw about how the second kid's baby book never gets filled out. Just one more reason to be grateful we're only going to have one!

Video - Gwen Rolls Over

On a much more cheerful note, here is a video of Gwen rolling over - taken yesterday. The weird camera movement at the beginning is due to me sitting down while holding the camera. Enjoy.

Seller's Market

I just spent another half an hour calling around to a bunch of daycares in Nanaimo. And getting laughed at. Sigh. When I call and say I'm looking for a space for next April, the bigger centres laugh and say, "You're only calling now?" And the smaller home-based ones say, "You're kind of early, aren't you?" Yeah. These are the people I'm dying to give my child and my hard-earned money to.

My favourite is a centre right near my house, whose manager told me when I called: "We have a 4-page waitlist. I only accept names on the first of the month. I start answering the phone at 7:30am. Good luck." I felt like asking exactly what was so awesome about her centre that had her feeling so arrogant. Does she bathe the children in water blessed by His Holiness the Pope? Does she feed them pure organic food harvested by tiny fairies? WTF? Obviously, we are not on the waitlist there.

Another waitlist we don't appear on is the centre with whom I had the following conversations.

Conversation #1 - about 2 weeks ago
Heavily Accented Woman: Hello, (Name of Centre)
Me: Hi, I'm looking for a space for my daughter for next April. She will be a year old. Can you tell me what your waitlist is like?
HAW: Actually, you have to talk to the manager to get on the waitlist.
Me: Okay. Is she in?
HAW: No.
Me: Can you tell me when she will be in?
HAW: Well, she takes a lot of holidays in the summer, so really I have no idea when she will be in. But you're welcome to call back, maybe after the 20th.
Me: Okay, bye.

(Wasn't it nice of her to make sure I knew I was welcome to call back? Because without a gilded invitation, I might not have figured that out. Anyway, I called back today.)

Conversation #2 - today
Youngish Woman - Hello, (Name of Centre)
Me: Hi, can I talk to your manager?
YW: Um, you're looking for Leanne?
Me: I don't know her name. I'm just looking for the manager.
YW: Okay, um, hang on. (muffled, to co-worker) Um, there's someone on the phone looking for the manager, and I have no idea who that is.
Heavily-Accented Woman: Okay. (to me) Hello?
Me: Hi! I'm looking for the manager.
HAW: Well, she's on holidays right now. (what a surprise!)
Me: Okay, can you tell me when she would be in?
HAW: No, I actually have no idea. But you're welcome to call again [so we can continue to be completely useless sources of no information whatsoever].

Seriously. And these people laugh at me.

Another place I called was actually incredibly organized, right down to asking me what days and hours I would need care for. Which, of course, I don't know, because I have no idea what kind of job I'm going back to in 9 months. If it weren't for the fact that I've already figured out I'm not the stay-at-home-full-time type - yeah, that only took three months - I'd give up the whole thing and throw my hands in the air.

I hate seller's markets. Especially when I have no clear idea what it is I'm trying to buy.