Baby, Baby, Baby (One Month Ago)
Part 1: Baby, Baby, Baby (Six Months Ago)
Part 2: Baby, Baby, Baby (Four Months Ago)
Right, this is pissing me off now. I haven’t solved the baby problem by writing things down at all. In fact, I think I may have made the situation much worse, and much more complicated too. When we got the all-clear for dementia, we discussed things. We know that he has a mental health condition that affects our lives — his, mine, his son’s — but if it wasn’t dementia, it meant it was more than likely going to be something treatable. Something that he could take medication for. Medication that would, hopefully, keep things nicely diffused enough to go through pregnancy, hormones, labour, and then actually being parents.
A few months after we got the dementia all-clear, we then got confirmation that he had been incorrectly diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he is/was/has a borderline personality disorder. I’m still learning the correct terminology. Bear was given new meds, a rollercoaster we’re in the middle of right now, but things are getting better. We still have bad days, some of them really shitty, but the good days are there, bigger and brighter and better than ever. The days when all we do is laugh are the best days of my life. Even when it’s over nothing, anything, the stupidest things in the world; the sound of his laughter instantly lights up my day. The sight of his smile makes it impossible for me not to smile in return. I hate that he can do that to me. It makes it tough to stay pissed off at him for longer than an hour or two.
But, see, all of a sudden I have these NEW things to think about. Not that schizophrenia was any different/better/worse, obviously.
But, is borderline personality disorder genetic?
*Googles*
Yep, could be hereditary. Bugger.
Is it a good idea to have a baby with a man who has multiple personalities? Bear has so many of them I can barely keep up most days. He’ll swing from normal to angry and then to sobbing in my arms in the blink of an eye, and it’s a real rollercoaster that’s unstoppable once it starts. We gotta go through the whole experience, start to finish, ticking off every extreme emotion on the list, before the fog clears and the sun shines again. It’s absolutely exhausting. Is it really a good idea to bring a baby into that kind of environment?
We’ll be absolutely fucking skint if we have a baby. This is the biggest factor — the thing that worries me the most. We’re just about managing things okay. I’m the breadwinner. He doesn’t like that but also doesn’t seem to be able to do much else about it. He tries. He really does try. But … Well, there’s always something. And I guess it’s just easier for me to be the breadwinner. I like working, for a start. I’m a workaholic. I hold my hands up to that. I’m always working on something. Always. (Just ask Bear, he absolutely fucking hates it.)
But, well, he’ll need to figure out a way to do BETTER if I do get pregnant someday. He’ll need to pick up the reins because I just won’t be able to keep up with the kind of workload I’m on right now. The idea was for us to BOTH to work like crazy for a year or so, not socialising, not going out and wasting money, not buying junk food frivolously, etc. (Okay, we did the junk food thing a few times, but we have been really good!), putting by as much money as we could to get a nice, big place, with a beautiful garden that I can grow vegetables and stuff in, and enough money in the back to just not worry. I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be not worrying every month.
Well, it seems like only one of us got the work-hard memo.
That’s bullshit, I’m lying.
I’m not the only one who got the metaphorical memo, but his work spells seem to be short, sharp bursts, and they also seem to be few and far between sometimes. He’s having a hard time, I know that. I see it. He’s keeping his anger and emotions under control. I can see the vein pulsing in his head even though he’s stopping the words from falling out.
Plus, we’re both self-employed and you know what that’s like. Tough. Shit. All the bad words; that’s what it’s like. It’s fucking horrendous one month and then brilliant the next. Or, rather, fucking horrendous for six months and brilliant for three days. That’s pretty much what my life is like. I’ll work with the same clients for six years, with them paying in 24-48 hours each time a project is completed and approved, and then, out of the blue, they’ll start taking over a week to respond to any of my emails. Then, when I do hear from them, it’s so sketchy and vague. What’s up with that? Nothing changes my end, so what changes from theirs? And, what makes things worse, is that the time between completion and project payment is getting longer and longer and there’s absolutely no communication. I get a, “Sorry, must have missed this.” when I chase things up, and that leaves me in an even shitter place. We’ve been working together for so long, we don’t even have a contract anymore. How long do I wait to send a follow-up? Has he even gotten my email? If he missed the last one, does that mean he missed this one?
It just reminds me of how vulnerable I am, and how stupid, and how quickly things can go very wrong. Like last month when three of my big-amount clients failed to pay me, two of them disappearing off the face of the earth, and then I needed to chase up almost all of my other affiliate, etc. payments. I ended the month about £1000 down and still wasn’t sure I’d ever see any of the money.
“Oh, the date changed. Did you get an email?”
Clearly not, I chased up an unpaid invoice that apparently isn’t even late yet.
“Sorry, we always pay at the end of the month.”
They’ve paid on the 7th of the month every month for the last two years.
“Yeah, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, I’ve just got a website crisis to deal with.”
We’re friends on my personal Instagram and I think he’s forgotten all about that. I don’t use it much. He was out drinking the day and night of the apparent website crisis. He posted a few times and hashtagged #dayoff. This was after making me work on the project all night, the night before, and promising an extra 10% plus payment the next day to compensate. He took 15 days to pay and ignored all of my emails the entire time.
All of this shit happens at the same time too. It won’t just be one crisis a month or something like that, all the crises in the world will happen at the same fucking time. It fucks me. Like, I budget. I need to budget, I’m not rich. I’m sure Sky will be fine with me paying my internet bill a few weeks too late, just because I decided to go out on the lash instead.
#dayoff
How am I meant to cope with all of that crap and have a baby? Especially when it feels like I’m managing the financial side of things a *little* more than I should be at times? Will Bear be able to pull it out of his ass when I need him to? I think he probably can and will, but there’s that tiny seed of doubt and now I can’t shake it off.
I think I’ve overthought this so much that I’m now actually talking myself out of it. I think I’m going to talk myself out of it forever. In reality, when I’ve really needed him to, Bear can and actually does pull it out of his ass. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. I’m going to run off and take a chill pill. It’s very obvious I need one. I’ll come back when I’ve talked some sense into myself.
When/how did YOU know you were ready to have a baby? And did you go through all of this shit?
Medium time reader, 1000% lurker.
Is he doing DBT? As far as I understand, DBT skills work the best for BPD. I have a different dissociative disorder, but I’m sure if I bothered with diagnosis BPD might be one of the labels they gave me.