it's been a long time coming

three years, really. a month after my eldest was born i let my WoW sub lapse and barring the odd month here and there where i tested whether i could go back, i've finally resubbed and upgraded to the newest xpac. oh and i've reverted back to ignoring most initial capitals. suck it up, grammar nazis.

i have a toon on an RPPVP server (fun so far, only been ganked once), and i'm relearning how to hunter before picking which realm (and thus which faction) to use my boosts on.

WoW is a kind of mindfulness exercise for me, it seems. i can just zone out whilst questing, as i know most of them like the back of my hand at these early levels. just keep questing, just keep questing.

i'm a PVE gamer on a PVP realm, so i hate seeing those multicoloured bars pop up on my screen, means fight or flight response is triggered and that's kinda the opposite of mindfulness. so my new approach is "whatever" and go log an alt until the ganker gets bored of corpse-sitting. it's just a game, there's nothing life or death about being ganked (ironically enough) to warrant being stressed over it. how long this takes to go from logic to automatic response is anyone's guess.

This must be a new record.

It's been almost a year since I last blogged here. a YEAR!

In that time, we've moved house (twice), bought a house and another car (the old car is off the road, but still counts, right?), been on holiday with the kids (never again) and little me here has done their first set of accounting for HMRC only to be told that I didn't need to worry about it til the middle of next year. Oh well.

I've also had meds increased and added to, got me a slight case of Grave's with the symptoms of the other kind of auto-immune thyroid business, and put on a shedload of weight that I really could be doing without. Then again, it IS winter and I need the insulation. Ha.

So I suck at Blogging. I was a crappy pen-friend, too.

Updates on this life...

Biggest is at Daycare 2 days a week and is LOVING it.

Littlest is trying solid foods, but it's a scary process because apparently he has food allergies, too. Still a boob monster which means he HATES being more than 2 minutes away from me. This is a difficult time for everyone who holds him who doesn't happen to be me.

The Grups are stressing about the upcoming house move. We have to compile a list of the people we need to contact to inform them of our upcoming change of address, organise switchovers of services, yadda yadda. And then there's the actual packing. The house is so full that there's nowhere for the packed boxes to actually go...

This is going to be a bit of a process in and of itself. We are trying to get rid of all the small baby things as we have pretty much decided for now that this is it for us. Two perfectly adorable little boys will do for the time being, and may just be all we create in terms of progeny. Come on, pregnancy hates me, the sleep deprivation is pure torture, and until Daddy learns to breastfeed the first year is kinda crappy for everyone but the baby (see statement about littlest, above). Getting rid of crap we don't need, that no longer fits, that is surplus to requirement.

Oh, and we will be getting a dishwasher. SCORE!

How does the Placebo Effect work, then?

I feel human.

For the first time in about 2 months, I actually feel real. For the first time in about 10 months I've gone a week without yelling in *whispers* rage. 

I have to say, I didn't realise how widespread the whole post-partum anxiety/rage thing was, until I read a blog post about it one night. The next day I made a doctor's appointment because seriously - it was at a kind of crisis point. I shared that post around Facebook on a number of closed and secret groups, and my oh my the responses it got... so many women identified with it. It was a surreal moment to realise that this... whateverthefuck I had wasn't actually just me and my old illness (whateverthefuck THAT is either, they've still not decided), it was a thing, you know, a recognised actual thing that people get, that people get through, and that people get over.

So anyway - I'm now on some pills. they're SSRIs and they're supposed to take anywhere from 6-8 weeks to kick in. But I'm actually doing ok on them after 1 week. I suddenly have my patience back. I've not shouted in anger. I'm a little less anxious. My husband has noticed a difference. My father has noticed a difference. I dare say even the kids have noticed a difference. I'm doing a little more and not berating myself for not doing as much as I think I ought to. Shit's getting done, bottom line.

But... 1 week... that's a bit soon. This whole PPD thing doesn't just resolve like a lanced boil overnight, either. So what gives? According to Dr Google (and articles like this), the Placebo Effect can still take place even if the patients are aware that the drug they are being given isn't a drug, but a fake. So in my case, I believe that there is a kind of Placebo Effect going on whereby I am feeling better and am able to function better almost immediately, even though the drugs themselves haven't had time to work on my serotonin reuptake rates.

Here's hoping they have kicked in by the time the Placebo Effect wears off.