Original threads here:https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/972b3a/i_want_to_be_either_hospitalized_or_dead_but_my/https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/97y8d5/update_home_from_psych_ward/The intensive outpatient thing the hospital set me up with was a bad match. They put me with this guy in his sixties who has limited experience with postpartum depression patients, because that's TOTALLY who depressed, suicidal women in their thirties want to talk to about whether to stop breastfeeding, I guess. I told him I was concerned it would be a bad match and he didn't even try to convince me otherwise. I have an intake appointment set up with a program specifically for postpartum depression, but in the meantime, I'm mad at my husband.Back before we had any kids, he always said he'd get a vasectomy when we were through having kids. Now that we're at that point, he's having second thoughts. We're what's derogatorily referred to as "cafeteria Catholics" and he's finding sterilization to be perhaps a bridge too far for him personally. While I understand that and I don't want to coerce him into reproductive decisions, I'm also mad. I had to have two major abdominal surgeries, two bouts of postpartum depression, and one trip to the psych ward, and now he can't do this so I don't have to spend the remainder of my fertile life living in fear of getting pregnant again? I could get my tubes tied, but I don't want to get my tubes tied. I have enough scarring on my reproductive organs already, thanks. This shouldn't have to be solely my responsibility.We're currently on vacation with our two daughters and my parents. (Yes, this is how I'm spending part of my vacation.) Last night he stayed up until two and the previous night he stayed up until four. This is a longstanding problem and I'm so fucking sick of it. He even brought it up to the therapist he used to see and the therapist said he had to want to change. It makes me enraged. Sure, go ahead, sleep in, you're on vacation! It's not like you have to wake up at 7 to breastfeed a baby, right?Prior to having children, being female had about as much effect on my life as having blue eyes. I wasn't ever sexually assaulted, I wasn't ever discriminated against, my only experience with sexual harassment was from a group of girls, I had uneventful periods, I was pretty much the only person I knew who didn't hate anything about her body. Now I feel like I've morphed into some cliched nagging wife from a bad sitcom. Now I spend my time breastfeeding my daughter and doing "mom things" all the time. Now I have weird back fat and larger breasts that are totally out of alignment with my image of myself. (I'm bisexual and I used to like looking slightly androgynous if I wanted to.) Now I feel like all I *am* is female.I was talking to my therapist about my suicidal thoughts and the first thing she brought up was the effect it would have on my family if I killed myself. Because that should be my first thought, right? How *everyone else* would feel without me, because *that's* what matters. I'm a mother, so everything is about my family now. Nothing is about me anymore, I guess. Nothing. Not even my own life is about me.I don't have a career. I don't get to choose to go back to work because there's no work to go back to; my professional degree and license are in an overcrowded field that I've never earned money in. I don't have friends. I've spent my whole life feeling different from other people for one reason or another.I find it very hard to believe that I would be an irreplaceable person to my husband and kids. My husband is nice-looking and makes a six-figure income. There would probably be loads of women who would love to swoop in and be a stepmother to his poor, adorable daughters whose selfish mother couldn't realize how wonderful they are. Well, news flash to any potential stepmothers: I do realize how wonderful they are. That's why I hate watching the effects I'm having on them.My almost four-year-old would probably forget me eventually, like she forgot our cat who died. My baby daughter would be mad because there would be no one to breastfeed her anymore, but that's probably it. The only people I'd really be irreplaceable to would be my parents. I'm their only child and they spent the better part of a decade trying to have me.On the other hand, they had me through artificial insemination. (Yes, I'm the biological child of both of them.) Maybe I wasn't really supposed to have been born. Maybe I'm some kind of cosmic defiance who wasn't really supposed to have existed in the first place, and I've already lived thirty-two more years than I was ever supposed to get.Everybody else is at the beach now. I came back with the baby because it was too hot for her and I guess I'm the obvious person to have to go back. Yay, vacation.I intend to be around until Friday when I have the intake appointment, but after that I'm making no promises. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2C6Qsje
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