welcome to my hormones

Day (and I had to count on my fingers to work this out) five of Synarel and apart from an attack of the major fatigues on day one, so far so good.

My understanding of this drug is that while its role is to scare your ovaries into playing possum, its initial effect is a "flare" in ovarian activity, which would explain the initial fatigue and the irritating feeling that my entire self existed soley to drag around the enormous undercarriage I felt I was suddenly sporting.

Which is WAY more than you needed to know about me.

Now I'm entering the dried Up Old Prune phase of the drug's effect, so am conflicted as to whether I'd rather be playing bingo or lawn bowls. Side effects are limited to feeling fluttery on the inside, like my heart is quivering instead of beating, fearing the atrophy of the same undercarriage that felt SO LARGE the other day, and having my skin feel weird below the surface. My scalp tingles too, the freak me out factor of sais being surpassed only by my fear that it will only get worse.

And now for an aside which will give me the opportunity for a whinge: if you know me at all, you'd also know that my hair has been falling out for around six or seven years, so hair tingles freak my aforementioned shit right out. It's left me with a receding hairline when women aren't meant to ever lose their hairline, they're only supposed to thin all over the top of their heads. Which I also have, as well profuse hair loss on the temporal region that was so severe it needed micrografting. OHYESI'MSO GORGEOUS.

My hairloss has, in all honestly, almost destroyed my self esteem.

The MASSIVE amount of hair I lost three months after Daniel was born has never replaced itself, and as I'm one of the lucky ducks who loses hair after a general anaesthetic, I had three big sheds last year too, so my hair is looking pretty fucking scary right now. The last anaesthetic I had was in July, so following the three three three rule (three months after the event your hair will fall and will continue to do so for three months, after which it appears dormant for another three, which is when you start noting the regrowth) anyone normal person would now be coming out of the apparent dormant phase and would be noticing the beginnings of singnifcant regrowth. I, however, am experiencing another shed that is related to I Don't Know What The Eff, which commenced some time in December. The post partum shedding did me a fabor though, and made me realise that rather than being freaked out about the amount of hair I was losing, I needed to appreciate the hair I had left. I mean, if I had as much hair now as I did three years ago, I'd be stoked, but three years ago I was fuh-reaking out about my hair! my god! etc. That's not to say that my hair (or lack of) is not the thing that affects me most of all. It is. I hate anyone looking at me, so I hate leaving the house because every day is a bad hair day and I feel like everyone is looking at me, or more specifically, my patchy hiarline - but if I let that fear change my behaviour, I'd never leave the house at all and additionally, I'd never stop crying. My job - and my personality - requires that I interact with people regularly, and while the question is always on my mind "can they see my bald patches?" , if they can, they probably think I can't because I always appear to be cool and confident and positively hirsute.

ANYWAY

That's the synarel update. It's going well, and the major symptom is that it makes me talk about mah bald spots.

Probably because the scalp tingling is like a constant reminder that my follicles are like time bombs.

Fortunately, the inner heart trembling feeling isn't freaking me out, which is amazing considering that only a couple or four years ago, I had panic attacks that were both heralded and caused by this exact same feeling.

I've come a long way, baby.

And after owning my current mobile phone for, like, almost two years, I've finally worked out how to email image and video files from it to myself.






Hollie just hangs around in his arms like someone has removed her skeleton and her independent thought patterns. Daniel carries her around until he realises that cat fur stuck to his hands freaks him out.

Today was a bit of a red letter day for daniel too, as he went to the gym creche this morning wearing a pair of big boy pants ("BIH BAH PAHS!") under his jeans.

I'm totally not pushing the little guy into being toilet trained. When he turned two, I began removing his nappy when we were home. He never had an accident, but he also hung on until nap and bed times. Then I began putting on DVDs and he'd sit there all day mindlessly peeing and pooping until I realised that, as impressed as I was at all the potties full of varying excrements, he wasn't really learning anything, so on went the big boy pants. Daniel had one (ONE!) accident before realising, "Ack! Feels icky!", and that he could pee in the potty if he took his pants off first. Most often, I need to help him, but once or twice he's surprised me by walking proudly through the house, pantsless and carrying a potty full of wee to the bathroom for disposal.

He's been getting mixed messages though when it comes to being either fully trained or even just a little more trained than he already is, as he wears pullups at daycare, nappies or pullups when we go out, and real underwear when we're at home. To see if he's ready to take it further, I really need to give him some consistency, and I need to trust him because he's showing me he's ready by knowing the difference between weeing willy nilly (no pun intended) when wearing one thing, and controlling his weeing when wearing another.

Toilet "training" suggests his toileting is guided by my wants. That I'm training him. It's not and I'm not. If anything, he's training me. I've simply explained things to him and provided the opportunity, and he's showing me he's ready to make some changes to what he's always known.

His (facist) daycare centre want him to be totally trained before I can deliver him to them in underwear, which I think is ridiculous. How is he supposed to learn how to be fully dry if twice a week he's wearing pullups that he pees in?

It's annoying as I pay them to care for my child, and because money is exchanged, I should be able to tell them "this is how it is". it's not like they're doing me a favour by volunteering their time, you know? Their argument is that it's a hygiene issue, and mine is that if I can hear Daniel say "weewee, pawtee!", then because it's their job to look after Daniel, they should be listening for him to tell them too, instead of telling me it's a hygiene issue that I need to be aware of.

I figure that if he has an accident, it's their issue because Daniel is dry 100% of the time when at home.

ON the other hand, the gym creche = LOVE! Unlike his daycare who see this time as being problematic, they were happy for Daniel and his underpanted state - and they were really busy this morning too, wiht three of them and about a billion kids milling around. He was with them for around 45 minutes and they took time out to take him to the toilet, and kept an eye out for any signs he might want to go again. I took him again as we were leaving, and he got all excited like he had done with them ("WEEWEE!! TOYWEE!!") even though he didn't actually do anything either time he was there.

In the end, dude was dry for almost four hours as his nappy came off at 9am this morning, and we went to the gym at 11. We nipped in to the store at around noon, and got home sometime after 12.30, which is when the dude sprung a leak. We were at the front door too, and his potty was only five feet away and on the other side.

I reckon the morning out was a success though, not a failure, because seriously, four hours dry? Even I can't do that.