“Vertigo is a type of dizziness felt as a shift in a person's relationship to the normal environment (a feeling that the room is spinning is common) or a sense of movement in space.”

It’s interesting how you can be going along and think you’re fine when you’re not, really.

Over the past couple of days, I was forced to come to the realization that the unusual events of the past few weeks have affected me much more deeply than I was admitting.  Wednesday morning I woke up in bed feeling a little dizzy.  The feeling got worse when I adjusted positions to nurse my daughter (who cosleeps with us).  After several minutes and a few more position changes, I began to realize what was happening, but it was too late to stop the process.  About ten minutes after that, the throwing up started. 

So, a few hours later we were at Urgent Care and a doctor confirmed my self-diagnosis of vertigo.  He prescribed the standard Antivert for it and we went home.

I had a sort of self-awareness moment, when I realized that the reason I had gotten so upset when I realized that I had vertigo again (I had it before, about five years ago) was not for myself, but because I was really worried about how I was going to be able to take care of our daughter.  I was also pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed Caitlin while taking Antivert, which scared me especially because there was no way to know how long this attack would go on.

My balance has shifted, you see.

I’m not the center of my world, anymore.  Not in the same way.

I’m happy to say that I’m feeling better—I didn’t even have to take the medicine today, so it’s looking very hopeful.  At doctors' advice, I did “pump and dump” for two days, but I had pumped and stored milk for nights out and emergencies, and we’ve been giving Caitlin bottles periodically to make sure that she’s comfortable with them, so she’s fine. 

But it really, really upset me not to be able to breastfeed her.  And I think encountering the idea that something might happen that would mean I would have to stop nursing her altogether scared me so much that it knocked me off kilter a bit more.  Worse, the idea that I might not be able to take care of her adequately at all was too terrifying to look at too closely.

But my distress felt out of proportion with the situation.  Or, maybe more accurately, it felt misplaced.  I had a gut-level realization that I was feeling wrong on more than one level.  I’m not saying that I think my vertigo is psychosomatic—the car accident that gave me a bump on the head certainly wasn’t.  But I guess that I felt the vertigo go deeper.

So I tried to work on my vertigo on two levels. 

On the first, I remembered that I’d just been in a car accident and hit my head really hard on the window or something just two weeks ago.  (And the last time I had vertigo, I’d hit my head really hard on a car door less than a week before.)  So, physically, I’d literally taken a beating.

And then I had to accept that the past month or so has felt emotionally similar.  First, I was so upset about feeling that I had to go back to work that I was physically sick about it.  Then, we realized that I could probably stay home for a while, if we rearranged some of our finances, and I was thrilled.  Then, just days later, came the news that Kevin might be laid off at work, which was devastating.  Two days later, Caitlin and I were in the accident, and the car was totaled.

Kevin and I have been working really hard to stay positive, and live in faith that it would all work out well, and things do seem to be going well, now.  But, as I thought about it, I had to realize that I was feeling pretty battered by chaos and fear.

I’m feeling a lot less sure of the ground under my feet, lately.

On top of the normal, humongous shift in my sense of identity just because I’m a new parent, these other things have been really hard. 

I'm moving uncertainly through space, these days.

And I’m not really sure what to do about it right now.  But I feel a little better just acknowledging that.