Hungry, angry, lonely, tired

Have you heard of the HALT theory? I’ve only read about it relation to child rearing, and in an effort to not research anything further than I have to (I have a paying gig for that, yo), I’m just going to share the gist of the article I read. Basically, if you’re kid is upset for some unexplained reason, maybe he’s crying uncontrollably over a dropped cookie when you know he has no problem eating food off the floor, you can apply the HALT theory to figure out what’s really wrong. To do this, ask yourself, could he be Hungry? Is he Angry? Is he Lonely? Or is he Tired?

The idea is that once kids are beyond the baby phase, when you can rule out a dirty diaper as a possible cause of alarm, you can try HALT. Sometimes when CJ’s 18th fall off the couch results in tears, I just need to pull him onto my lap for a little snuggle time and he’s fine. Sometimes he needs an extra snack, or an earlier bedtime. But find a solution to HALT, and all is right in your preschooler’s world again.

I think the HALT theory applies to adults too, and even more intensely to pregnant women. When I’m hungry I get snappy, and Chris can do nothing right until he puts food in my belly (when I’m hungry I’m also incapable of producing an acceptable snack for myself). When I’m tired I’m unreasonable and while not as mean as when I’m hungry, I know if I don’t get a nap in I’ll be crabby for the rest of the day.

Today after work I was home by myself for an hour watching Lifetime Television for Women (The Client List is, rather unfortunately, a new guilty pleasure of mine) before Chris walked in the door with CJ. And the second he did I pounced on him (well, yelled, from my perch on the couch). He wanted ham for dinner, fine, but why wasn’t he making it? (Remember, I’m incapable of cooking at this point.) Didn’t he realize how hungry I was? That he had a child to feed who was hungry too? I yammered on in a similar vein, yelling more at the TV than my bewildered husband, until Chris started the painstakingly slow process of fixing dinner (the au gratin potatoes were first MIA, then once found, took a whopping 24 minutes in the microwave to cook).

Yes, I was hungry tonight and yes, I was probably tired, and both of those things contributed to my anger. Maybe I was lonely. I find I like being alone these days but maybe deep down I missed my family. Whatever it was, I think my anger was a cry for help. I was lashing out at Chris because I couldn’t find the simple words to say, “I miss you, talk to me.” Or “I’m sad, talk to me.” That, and I really WAS hungry.

My theory is that applying the HALT theory for adults is a nice quick fix, but it usually means there’s something deeper going on, like there was for me tonight. So the next time your friend or wife flips out over the fact that you plugged the food processor into the wrong plug (see month seven of my last pregnancy) ignore the crazy and ask what’s wrong. Go one step further and ask what you can do to help. Make her tell you, because she won’t want to at first. And then do what you can to make it better.

She’s baaaaack…

I hate introductory posts. Or explanatory posts. Or any post that isn’t witty, insightful, and hilarious all at the same time. I hate them mostly because when this blog gets turned into a book (HA!), it’s these types of posts that really break the flow of the thing, you know? Blah blah blah I was living a great life over the summer but for whatever reason, I stopped blogging. Blah blah blah it turns out blogging was THERAPEUTIC for me, yes, THERAPEUTIC, and taking the time to put words on this website is actually what kept me sane all those months last year. Because now, now that things have HAPPENED in my life, now that I have a new job and a baby on the way and I’m out of that limbo place and into something real, things are much, much harder. Things that used to be easy, making dinner, playing with CJ, heck, even taking a shower, are now monumental tasks that it takes an incredible amount of help and motivation for me to overcome (OK, I don’t need help in the shower, but let’s just say it’s been at least six weeks since I shaved my legs, and I went swimming last weekend and DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE my hair growth until after I was done and drying myself off).

So, in lieu of taking meds that may potentially harm my baby—wait, that sounds bad. If you have depression and need or want to take medicine during your pregnancy I think that’s GREAT! If it’s what you need and it’s what you and your provider have discussed it will most likely be what’s best for you AND your baby in the end. But I…I, am more of an oscillator. I like to think about things, like, for a really long time. And if I don’t want to do something, I like to think about it for even longer. So long, in fact, that I wasn’t ready to talk about my potential need for depression medication til week 26 of my pregnancy. And let me tell you people, week 26 is the beginning of the third trimester, and the third trimester is too late for my best friend Zoloft to join me in my creation of new life.

So, blogging it is. And I’ll maybe talk to someone about how I’m feeling, IF I can get up the nerve to send her an e-mail. Her e-mail was on her card. Weird, right? Like, can I e-mail her at 4 AM on a Sunday and ask for an appointment? Is that appropriate? Hi, you’ve never met me, but I’m so depressed I feel I can no longer handle carrying this child and I’d really like to talk to you as soon as possible, thanks! But I don’t know, I’ve been out of the therapy game for a while so maybe this is what it is now. (Even so, I think I’ll e-mail her on Monday, during regular office hours, when she can be expecting such ridiculous things).

All this is to say, we’re hitting this newfangled form of my depression from two avenues—blogging and talk therapy. If this doesn’t work and I can’t make it to 40 weeks, Zoloft it is.

Not all of my posts will be this depressing, I promise. And I’m going to leave my posts from last year up here, because besides that OTHER introductory one I did (chronicles of my overexamined BARF), I think they’re just fine. So enjoy the five posts I have in the archives and maybe I’ll get something new out here sometime soon. If not, you know where to find me—at the drugstore picking up my prescription for Vitamin Z.