It's Better To Face These Kinds Of Things With A Sense Of Poise And Rationality

Whenever I want to write about something that I think makes me look crazy I'm afraid to. I don't know why. Not very many people read this. And no one who knows me even knows this blog exists. I guess I'm afraid this will come around and bite me in the ass some how, someday.

The past few weeks at work have completely sucked. It's been really stressful, which I can generally handle, but on top of that the fact that I have to spend 6-8 hours a day standing in pretty much the same spot has been killing me. My legs and feet really hurt afterwards. Let me say that I am a complete wimp when it comes to pain. I cannot tolerate it at all. When I get off work I can barely walk and it's difficult to climb the stairs (I live on the second floor of my apartment complex). It's gotten to the point where I start freaking out and crying and getting really upset about an hour, hour and a half before I have to go to work most days. They're not like fullblown panic attacks (and believe me, I know those quite well), but I can feel the potential for these episodes to develop into panic attacks.

Sometimes I would purposely show up to work late in hopes of getting sent home or suspended. It's gotten so bad that I started imagining things I could do so I wouldn't have to go in to work. Bad, dangerous, drastic things. Like purposely tripping and falling down the stairs so I end up in the hospital.

I tried explain the pain and how much I hate it and dread going to work to my midwife. She said that unfortunately, it doesn't qualify as a threat to the pregnancy and I can only go early disability if it is a threat to my pregnancy. I was afraid of telling her the things that I've begun imagining. I didn't know what to do. Finally I told my mom what I was thinking and feeling, and she told me to quit, that we would find some other way to get me on early disability. I called my boss and told her I wanted to quit and explained why. She told me not to come in that night and asked me to come back the next day and talk to the main manager and see if we could work something out, considering my leave date is only 3 weeks away.

I still didn't know what to do. I was afraid to talk to the main manager, and I need the money. I couldn't just go on unpaid leave. I decided to try calling my midwife again to tell her the way I was feeling, thinking that anything would be better than going back to work. I had to leave a message and didn't want to explain it all to the receptionist, so I just asked for her to call me back regarding my maternity leave. She didn't even bother calling me back, and when the other receptionist called me for a completely unrelated reason, I asked about it. She told me the same thing that the midwife told me yesterday. I just started crying and told her everything, and she said she would get the midwife right away and explain the situation to her. So she did, and they called the main doctor, who approved early leave starting today. I guess they realized how urgent it was, because they called me back within 20 minutes and told me that it was approved and I wouldn't have to go back to work.

I am so incredibly relieved. I don't know how I would have made it for another 3 weeks. I don't think I could have.

I don't know why this is so hard. Why is pregnancy so incredibly awful? I've hated it from the moment I found out. It only seems to get worse. Is it going to be this bad after the baby is born? Do I just suck at life?

--dragon Read more!