Oh Yes, There's That...

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that there are some aspects of the third trimester that clearly revisit the first. It seemed at the time that when there was a brain-growth spurt, my various symptoms were at their worst, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some of them have been coming up again, now when the brain is starting the spurt that lasts until the critter is, what, five? So the unholy trifecta of exhaustion (daytime sleeping), insomnia, and depression came back for a few weeks. (Luckily however, no nausea!) And from what I've read, antenatal depression tends to arrive in the first and third trimesters. So, right on schedule, about 34 to 36 weeks.

The sucky thing about the depression is that it's hard to identify at the time (when you're the one inside it), and it's hard to separate from physical symptoms (depression is always physical in some aspect, anyway). I usually don't realize what's happening until either it's reached its ridiculous crescendo and is about to abate, or sometimes not until afterwards, in retrospect. Like now, I can definitely say that I had quite a bit of depression that first trimester, but at the time I just felt generally miserable in every possible way.

So it kind of crept up on me this time, until the night last week when I was sobbing and snorting over my piles of data. Then it was clear that this was an abnormal mood for me, not just an end of the normal continuum of crankiness. I'm not normally a very sobby person.

Of course, that extreme meant that it was about to break, like a fever. At least that's how it works for me; I don't know about you-all. So I feel a lot more normal the past few days. Although I've still got intermittent insomnia, I'm not fixating on life worries while roaming the house at 3:30 a.m., but eating several bowls of wheat cereal and reading Alice Hoffman novels instead: a much healthier activity.