The summer holidays are over and the kids are back to school. You can tell because suddenly the sun’s come out, like a big yellow ‘fuck you’ to every parent who’s had to entertain bored kids indoors for the last month and a half.
This year I have to say that it’s gone pretty quickly. Because of the 50/50 childcare arrangement I have in place with my kids’ dad, I have spent three of the six weeks with the kids and the other three weeks trying desperately to catch up on the work I missed while they were here. With a week away in France, even with the outrageously shitty weather the rest of the time it hasn’t seemed anywhere near as relentless as previous holidays. There are definitely some upsides to co-parenting.
However it’s still posed it’s challenges. If you follow my pages on social media – and I expect you do, because otherwise I’m not sure why or how you’d be here – you’ll already be aware that a few weeks ago I decided to go back on antidepressants.
This time I opted for a different SSRI, sertraline.
I had previously written about taking citalopram which I came off over a year ago.
I won’t knock it; it definitely helped me to cope with everything going on at the time. However, I found that it left me lethargic, and after getting into a pretty good routine with gym going (which I have found really positive for my mental health) I really didn’t want to lose my fitness and gain more weight so I thought I’d at least try something else first.
I didn’t talk in depth about why I felt I needed medication, but – for the nosey (or perhaps concerned) among you – essentially my sleep was absolutely fucked. Fucked to the point that I was waking at some point in the night, around 3am or so – which is pretty normal for me – and then not getting back to sleep at all – which is not.
It was hugely affecting me; I had days when all I could do was feel negative, and pick arguments with my significant other for no real reason. I couldn’t concentrate and getting anything written felt impossible. I am – contrary to what you may perceive – generally quite a fun, positive person and I didn’t feel like me.
The night before we were off on our holiday, my nocturnal 9 year old woke me up half an hour after I’d drifted off – probably to tell me she couldn’t sleep, which I just love – and I didn’t manage to get back to sleep until about ten minutes before we were due to get up to leave at 5am. After a monstrously shit week of about 10 hours of sleep over four days, I was desperate.
The crap sleep isn’t a new thing; it’s been going on since before we moved.
It comes and goes throughout the month, but for at least a week per month it is brutal and coping with everything else seems impossible. A few months ago I’d phoned the doctor and asked for blood test, as after a little bit of googling I thought perhaps the shitty broken sleep (and associated low mood) could be a sign of the dreaded perimenopause creeping up.
It’s certainly not impossible. There’s genetic evidence that it could very well be early, and I’m nearly forty for fuck’s sake; it’s going to be here sooner rather than later. However I never had a follow up – that’s the overstretched NHS I guess – and when I finally managed to get through to a doctor to tell them nothing had got better they said my hormone levels were fine (unsure how you measure fluctuation in hormones with one test, but I’m not a doctor…), but they could recommend antidepressants instead.
Rightly or wrongly, through sheer desperation I accepted the pills rather than push for more tests, knowing that GPs are largely clueless about such matters – and I have to admit I’ve been sleeping much better since.
God bless SSRIs; they’re bloody marvellous.
I had one day of real fuzzy headedness, like I was underwater almost, and an evening of the most intense heartburn I’ve ever experienced, but that was more or less it. Fortunately the side effects subsided more quickly than I was expecting and very soon I started to feel on a more even keel. Happier and much more positive.
So there you have it folks; that’s the story.
Whether this is perimenopause or something entirely different, it won’t be long before it’s knocking at my door and I’m not looking forward to it at all.
And, if you happen to be going through something similar, then I urge you to talk about it because fuck me, life it hard enough without unnecessary suffering. The NHS does have a bit of information about the perimenopause (but not a great deal), but I’d welcome your comments, knowledge and experience.