Day Two

The aftermath. My husband (!) and I woke up this morning to discover that my older son (8) had thrown up extensively and dramatically all over himself and his bed at some point in the night. This was the result of his consuming 800 cupcakes, drinking as much soda as he could find, and running around with his friends during the post-wedding party. We also had a bounce house which probably did not aid his digestion. We also have no idea where my car keys are (the party was at our house, so it's not like anyone was driving my car).

Once we got everything cleaned up, I headed off to my psychiatrist for our third meeting. At the end of the meeting, based on everything we have discussed over our last few sessions, and after having taken my family history of mental illness and substance abuse, she tentatively suggested that I have been struggling with bipolar disorder. I was unaware of this, but apparently latent bipolar disorder can be catalyzed by hormonal shifts or surges (such as happens after a pregnancy). I am not ready, yet, to discuss my particular story after both of my kids were born, but suffice it to say that a bipolar diagnosis, while surprising on some level, was not completely out of left field.

In many ways, actually, it came as a bit of a relief. There are a lot of things that went on in the year or so after my older son was born, and then again in the first two years after my younger son was born, that were so wildly uncharacteristic for me, and that I have been punishing myself for, that to hear that I may have been suffering from a diagnosable condition made me feel like perhaps I was not the total monster I believed myself to be.

So, there is that and I will be learning more about that at my next appointment in about a week.

The "bad news" (the above was not good news), is that my binge eating is not necessarily linked to bipolar disorder. This means that I will have to address it separately, and that scares me because I worry about time. What if we don't get around to addressing it for a while, and I get worse?

The weekend was not a complete disaster on the eating front. I did not eat well. I did not eat at meal times in reasonable amounts (either too much or too little), but I did not binge. Today was probably a D range day in this regard. I have not eaten much other food, but I did skip out on an in-law family outing (one that, in complete honesty, I would have skipped out on regardless) and came home and ate about five cookies left over from the wedding dessert bar. I am not qualifying this as a binge because it lacked the crazed, compulsive feeling and it was stoppable. I did, eventually, just walk away from the cookies. And, at least for the moment, the presence of the cookie box is not singing a siren song to me.

I am hoping that at my next meeting with my psychiatrist I can get a better sense of the bipolar question, and determine if that requires medication (perhaps not since it seems very distinctly triggered by postpartum and I will not be having any more kids).