Guilt

ryan is almost 4 years old. he is off the charts for age, weight, and verbal skills. he knows his letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and most letter sounds. we're working on reading - at age 3. he is an amazing little boy and shows absolutely no sign of prematurity. yet i carry a large amount of guilt with me regarding his birth. during treatment, i tried to tell my story - and couldn't get through it without crying. the main theme - my body failed my child. i wasn't able to take care of him when he was inside of me and i wasn't able to take care of him for the first 26 days of his life. my first act as a parent was to fail. is this completely unreasonable? certainly. i have heard countless other preemie moms say the same thing and each and every time i have told them that there was nothing they could do differently and they didn't fail. yet i hold myself to a different, unreasonable standard. i have a new therapist that is helping me work through these things. i really thought i was over it - i thought i had processed every aspect of premature birth, but apparently not. i'm working with rose to not be so hard on myself. as a side note, i have also realized that i'm pushing ryan. he is so smart and i want him to accomplish everything he can. i forget that he's 3. i see how i treat other kids his age and i know i treat him completely differently. i know he can do things, but i fail to consider that he has the attention span of a 3 year old and gets frustrated easily. so i am also working to lay off the little man and let him be a 3 year old.

Post OCD-treatment Musings

i ended the program at the end of august. i have been planning this post in my head ever since. the program was very helpful. am i cured? no. will i handle the next round of stomach flu without issue? probably not. but do i have a better understanding of why i am the way i am? definitely. i am a control freak. i do not take kindly to being in situations that i cannot control. the past few years have been the ultimate challenge to maintaining control. we underwent infertility treatments. we sold our house in an awful market. i have a three year old. but the biggest slap in the face was ryan's birth. i had no control over when i was going to bleed, how much, where, etc. i had no control over keeping my son safe. and that is what pushed me over the OCD-edge from a phobia to full on OCD. how do those differences present? i'm not just scared when someone is going to get sick. i'm constantly thinking about it. questioning. worrying. i can't read a facebook status update about a sick kid without getting anxious. and it was beginning to take over my life. ryan gets annoyed with me for asking too many questions. given how many questions that kid asks, that's saying something. so about halfway through, we realized something (which makes me thing of knuffle bunny when "TRIXIE REALIZED SOMETHING"). the reason the exposures weren't causing me any anxiety was that the vomiting itself wasn't the problem - it was the loss of control that came along with it. i don't know when, where, how long, who, and to what extent the stomach bug will take over our family. sound familiar? i thought so. we changed my exposures to include situations where i wouldn't have any control - michael blacked out the expiration date on the milk. i didn't ask where we were going. i didn't double check the diaper bag. and it caused anxiety. brilliant. next up - anxiety. does it suck - definitely. will it hurt me - nope. it's just uncomfortable. like running. it's uncomfortable, but in the end run it will be good for me. each time i do it, it will get easier, to the point that someday it won't hurt. how does this help? it is a lot easier to reason with yourself when you know why you're freaked out in the first place. i believe the revelations we made during treatment, combined with the mindset that anxiety is just uncomfortable, plus the ability for me to take my "emergency pill" (clomazaphan - which is not at all spelled correctly) will make the next bug a bit easier. only time will tell.

That's pinteresting! - magnet wall

I adore pinterest. I love that lots of other people have great ideas and there's a website set up for me to steal them. Pinterest makes me a better mom. New recipes, new decorations, new organization. Love it.

So today I finally got around to hanging our magnet board. Ellen absolutely loves the leapfrog magnet things and i was sick of having them on my fridge.

We originally used magnetic primer on the chalkboard wall, but nothing sticks. So on to plan B. Pinterest suggested a car oil drip pan. $5 for a magnet board? Sign me up!

We bought it a few weeks back, but I finally had the chance to hang it.

Sent from my iPhone

That's pinteresting! - magnet board