I had an eye doctor’s appointment on Friday afternoon and now that I’ve had a few days to process, the whole thing was just….odd as appointments to the eye doctors go. I’ve been doing the corrective lenses (be they glasses or contacts) since the 4th grade, so I’ve been to the eye doctor’s a time or three.

Our optical insurance changed at the beginning of the year and my previous eye doctor (that I liked) wasn’t on the new insurance’s ‘approved’ list. Eh, no biggie. So I made an appointment with ‘Large Local Optical Group’ that figured prominently on the approved list and looked toward my appointment with some excitement because it meant getting to pick out new not-yet-mashed-by-someone-else’s-incredibly-thick-forehead frames.

The first part of the appointment went well enough but then the eye doctor started asking questions about if my eyes were dry (which, during the winter, um yeah, hence the only wearing glasses from October until June, again, no biggie) which managed to segue into the eye doctor telling me that he thinks I have rosacea (apparently there’s a dry eye component), something about how my eyelids looked (Huh? They look like they always do…like eyelids) blah, blah, blah, here’s a prescription for an antibiotic, don’t get pregnant while on the antibiotic, let’s see you back here in a month for a follow-up.

Let’s back up for a moment here. Okay, so I’ve never had what would be considered ‘pretty’ skin, I am usually broken out in at least three or four places, and I have always had really super sensitive skin especially on my face, and as much as it would be nice to have model beautiful skin, it doesn’t really bother me that much. I don’t usually wear makeup only because a) a majority of it regardless of brand does irritate my skin, especially during the winter when I am dry dry dry and b) the 10 minutes required for makeup application would cut into my already limited sleeping time. I may break out, but I don’t resemble even a moderate worst-case picture from the Proactiv website.

Going back to the appointment, after the main part of the exam, while I was waiting for my eyes to dilate, I was passed off to another employee to pick out frames (side tangent: why do they always make you pick out frames when you can see the least amount?!) and instead of looking at frames myself, I had to tell the woman what I was looking for in the new frame style and she went off and picked out a bunch of frames for me to try. Out of the 10 she brought me, I didn’t find a pair that was absolutely what I wanted, so they’re having to order some other frames in similar styles from their other locations (they have about 4 sattelite offices in and around the town where I live) and then I’m supposed to go back in about a week when the other frames come in to see if any of the new frames are what I’m looking for. Does this seem weird to anyone else? The whole not getting to walk around and pick out my own frames myself? It just seems really really odd.

So back the the rosacea thing. I did go and fill the prescription, but in big bold letters in the literature that came with the scrip it says that in addition to not being pregnant while taking it, you absolutely cannot be nursing a baby either. Oops. Normally I remember to say something, but I don’t have to go to the doctor (or fill prescriptions) very often, so I completely forgot this go-round.

Originally, I was going to write a post about how I was conflicted because this meant that I would have to actively wean Owen. It isn’t that he nurses all the time anymore, but still often enough that it would probably be tough. That, and this is the part that some might have a hard time understanding, it would be emotionally hard for me too. Although Owen will always be my baby, the only time that he ever acts like my little baby is when he nurses, and as big and tough as my now toddler acts, nursing is a comfort for him. It’s complicated to put into words, but if you’ve ever nursed a baby for an extended period of time, you understand.

I did a little research over the weekend and honestly, I don’t think I have rosacea. Yes, I realize that I’m not a doctor, but after an exceedingly hard and physically painful lesson in my life about how doctors are fallible and make mistakes, I’ve come to understand that I need (as well as deserve) to be an active part of anything medically related that happens to me. That it’s okay to question what a doctor says and that if they are unwilling to accept me as an active and questioning participant in the healing process, that I should find another doctor.

So the antibiotic bottle sits unopened on the counter and I’m going to make an appointment with my regular family doctor to either confirm (like I said, I’m doubtful) or rule out rosacea being an issue. If my family doctor confirms it and the antibiotics are my only option, I guess I’ll have to think more about how that will influence my feelings about weaning (currently leaning to self-led by Owen as I’m pretty sure he’ll wean over this summer) in the long-term.

However, for next year’s eye appointment? I think I’m going to be looking for a new eye doctor practice. Even if it means going back to my original eye doctor and paying out of pocket since he wouldn’t be covered under our insurance. Sometimes peace of mind is worth paying more.

First off, I just want to mention this site. We played around with it on Friday and I laughed and laughed and laughed at some of the submissions. What’s that? I’m easily amused and need to leave the house more? Yes Internet, you’re probably right about both of those points.

Last week was just busy. I had things going for school, work and design stuff too. That and the end of February is when my mother’s birthday occurs, which is usually a hard week for me as well. That almost sounds like my mother is dead, right? She isn’t, but sometimes I often wonder if it wouldn’t be easier overall if she were. Which is probably really really terrible and awful to say (or in this case to write), but it’s the truth.

Let me give you the short version of the story so that maybe you’ll understand a little bit better. I am my mother’s only child. My parents divorced when I was very very young. I’ve never asked either of them when exactly they got divorced because it was always an extremely touchy subject, but from what I can piece together actually happened when I was around 2-ish. I lived with my mother most of the time and there were times when it was really really rough. Other than the fact that we were often extremely poor, my mother suffers from depression and anxiety and made things…complicated. I finally made a conscious decision at 14 to move to Idaho and live with my father’s family because quite simply I had had enough.

Fast forward to the present. For one reason or another (and I’m still not really sure of the exact reason or reasons) my mother has not spoken to me in almost 14 years. I couldn’t even pick up the phone to call her if I wanted to because I have no idea where she is. The last address and phone number that I had for her aren’t hers anymore. She has no idea that I’ve graduated from college, that I’m married and that she has a grandson.

Understandably this is an area of my life that I don’t talk about very much, even with my husband. Some of it is because, yes, it is a very sensitive area and the hurt is pretty much always raw right below the surface. Some of my reluctance to want to talk about my mother is because I don’t even know the words to describe how I feel about it all. For a time in my mid 20’s, I really thought that I had come to terms with it all, but it took having Owen and becoming a mother myself to understand that no, what I had really done was just to push all the feelings down so that I didn’t have to deal with them anymore.

The really crappy thing about repressing things? No matter how hard you think you’ve pushed something down and away (it’s gone! never to come back and bother you again!) is that until you finally realize that you have to deal with it, those repressed things keep coming back again and again. I have tried therapy a few times to see if that would help but it doesn’t seem to work for me. I just have to pull things out, examine them and come to conclusions on my own and on my own time.

Wow, what a Debbie Downer of a post this has turned into, right? I didn’t mean to be so dark and gloomy for the start of the week. Last week, I was fumbling through, sad, tired and tearful. This week is looking up. February, my least favorite month of the year is over and we have moved on to March. There are buds on the trees and Spring is coming quickly.

I hesitate to start off by saying that maybe, just maybe, things went a little easier last night, because you know that if I were to say that (and not that I am), tonight would be an all-night scream-fest. So, uh, let’s just hypothetically say that although there may still have been hours (yes that would mean multiple hours) of crying, there may or may not have been overall less crying. Maybe.

There were, however brief, two different occasions where Owen did eventually wind down enough to…wait for it…fall asleep on his own. Owen may not like the new regime in place for bedtime, but I think that if kept up, we may actually be on the road to an end destination of a Peaceful Evening lasting more than 2 hours (slogan: “keeping your sanity alive since 2006 by reminding you that you were once a real person with outside interests and abilities not involving the whims of a 32 inch dictator”). I will say that yes, this has been really difficult, but I honestly don’t think I had the fortitude necessary to follow through on this previous to the 18/19 month mark. I’m in awe that there are people who can (and do) sucessfully institute crying it out to get their baby to learn to put themselves back to sleep at a much younger age. I am not saying that I think that’s wrong at all–I just would have been a mess if we had tried this with Owen at the 6 month mark.

Amazing what another year of sleepless nights and restless evenings will drive you to.