Zoloft and a Surprise Ultrasound

I think I may have had some form of PPD/PPA with my son. It wasn't the obvious form of PPD they warn you about in the hospital. I never had thoughts of harming myself. And I NEVER had thoughts of harming him. I had what I thought was the "baby blues" which they tell you is normal and nothing to worry about. But in hindsight, I'm not so sure. I was constantly worried I was doing something wrong. Worried my son didn't love me. Worried that he deserved better than me. I cried a lot. Aside from the exhaustion from being a terrible sleeper, my son was terribly fussy. What was I doing wrong? Why couldn't I calm him? Don't moms know how to settle their own babies? Why was this so hard? Why was I so bad at it?

PPD? PPA? Or normal first time mom thoughts with a cranky baby?

No one is exactly sure. But I can tell you that my life like this with my son went on for months, not weeks. And I'm already starting to have the same anxiety about the arrival of baby brother. Sure, I have hopes that because I've been there and done it before that a lot of my anxiety and fears will be gone. But I also think about a baby crying around the clock, sleeping in 20-30 minute increments and my palms start to sweat. Add in a fairly high maintenance 3 year old and I start to feel close to a panic attack.

So we are going to try to be proactive and put an end to it before it starts. My midwife called in a prescription for Zoloft that I can start now. As a general rule, I don't love the idea of being medicated. But I don't want to spend most of 2013 the way I spent most of 2010. My kids deserve more and so do I.

That was the first part of my 34 week appointment. The second part was much more fun. My uterus was apparently having a long BH contraction when my midwife was trying to confirm if the little guy was still head down and she could not get a good feel of him. Her guess was head down, butt on the upper left and feet on the right. But she wanted a quick ultrasound just to be sure. We had just had an ultrasound with MFM on Thursday, but I wasn't going to complain. Ultrasounds in my doctors office are way less formal than at MFM. The equipment is not quite as fancy. They can't do extremely technical measurements. But they can see the obvious stuff and keep an eye on what's going on inside. And holy moly - this was way cooler than I expected. 1) Little guy is still head down - YAY! 2) He is "sunny side up" - meaning facing the wrong direction. Not a huge deal, but it will be a more painful and difficult labor for me if he does not roll over. 3) He has a lot of hair?!?!?!? Um, what??? She showed me all the fluff on the top of his head. It may just be fuzz and it could even fall off before delivery - but I was NOT expecting this. My son was bald, bald, BALD for well past his first year. It surely doesn't matter - I just assumed baby brother would be bald too. But I LOVE babies with hair, so this is a cool thing we learned. 4) He was practicing his breathing and/or swallowing while we were watching him. And he must have stuck his tongue out at least a dozen times. Yet another AMAZING thing to see. And pretty darn cute if I do say so myself. He just looked so remarkably "baby like." Which is not something that I'm used to thinking from ultrasounds.

I can not believe how close the end is getting. I also can not believe how much I still have to do . . .