Weird place

I'm in a really weird place right now. I don't know how to explain it, other than it's mostly me and not really anything that anyone else has responsibility for.

I've been dealing with anxiety and depression issues for 15 years. I feel like the anxiety is under control, but I question how well I'm dealing with the depression. The drug advertisements ask a bunch of questions about things like frequent sadness, irritability, low energy, fatigue, and weight changes. Coming off a long winter, it would be hard to find many people in Minnesota who weren't experiencing some of those symptoms, so I don't know how much of what I'm feeling is related to the seasons and how much of it is actually me.

To make matters more complicated, my doctor told me that he would want me to go off my medication if I were to get pregnant. He didn't have my entire medical history in front of him when he said that, so he doesn't know that I was on my medication when I was pregnant with Reed, or that I've tried every drug in the book and this is what works for me right now. I explained my history to him, and he backed off on his statement about going off my medication, but he did go on to say that many babies whose mothers take Effexor during pregnancy go through withdrawls after birth. I told him that I hadn't noticed that with Reed, and he said that he sometimes sees those babies have trouble breastfeeding. Great, just what I needed; more guilt. We had trouble breastfeeding and didn't do it for very long, so all I really needed was someone telling me that it was possibly because of something I was doing. As he saw my face crumble, he went on to say that many mothers have breastfeeding issues and that I shouldn't beat myself up over not breastfeeding and I shouldn't automatically associate my difficulties with my medication. Anyway, as we start to discuss having another baby, those sorts of things trouble me. Reed is happy, healthy, and well-adjusted so formula obviously didn't harm him - no more than his frequent ear infections and subsequent hearing loss did, anyway.