Anxiety

I've had the adrenaline rush. To be expected. I've also had the cute moments that make me tear up and the frustrating moments that make me want to cry (though these have been few and far between). Also to be expected. What did I not expect?

Anxiety attack:o/ Today was our first planned trip out of the house.

You see...here's me finally admitting something...I'm still in school (eek!). I KNOW - I wasn't going to do this semester. Just SHUSH for a moment. I'm taking two online science classes. I don't necessarily NEED them, but I didn't want to load myself with heavy history courses, but I DID want to stay in school. Pregnancy, birth, recovery be damned...I can do it. I knew I could before, but a lot of people tried to talk me out of it. However, I didn't want having a child to become an excuse over and over again not to go back. If I took the semester off I can see myself saying, "Well, not in the summer b/c now I want to take her to visit relatives" and "Not in the fall with the holidays and traveling with a baby" and in between it all, all the growth she'll go through that would make me want to say "not right now." So, instead, I stayed in school to keep the ball rolling! Seriously...I suck at science classes, but these two are ONLINE and practically second grade science - if I don't pass, please take away from high school diploma, thanks!

Not a lot of people know that I'm in school. Mainly because I didn't want to get talked out of it again. And then afterwards, I didn't want any fuss being made about "How's school going?" everytime I cared to have a conversation with someone who was concerned about me being a full-time mom, a part-time nanny, and a part-time student. I have complete faith in myself and I have a wonderful support system who helps me manage.

SO...now that that is out of the way...I was due to take a test last Thursday for one of my online classes. The exams are the only time I have to go to campus. But, due to a recent birth, I was unable to attend. My professor is really awesome and told me I could take it in his office at a later date, so to get it out of the way we set up a meeting for Monday afternoon. Shawn would drive me, I'd take the test, we'd come home.

About 11 am I start to get VERY anxious. You know when your mind says there is NOTHING to be freaking out about, but your horomones are haywire and it makes your tummy flip and you feel on edge? That was me. I think it happened for 2 main reasons:

1) It's the first time out of the house with my baby since we came home from the hospital. I knew everything was fine and I didn't want someone to come over and watch her while Shawn and I ran out...that would've made my anxiety worse b/c I wanted my baby with ME. However, the event of getting her into a warm cozy outfit, making sure her diaper bag was ready to go, thinking about taking her to the campus. It really was NOT a big deal and I KNEW this, but my body still was saying FREAK OUT!!!!

2) The test. Let me tell you that I KNEW this test would be easy. 71 questions of true/false and multiple choice. It doesn't get much easier! I had watched the short videos, which were pretty elementary, and I reviewed the print out study guides he prepared for us. I knew I would pass and more than that, do well. However, something about taking a test made me really nervous and anxious.

I found myself breathing deeply to calm down and I tried to eat something. It wasn't until I popped a piece of gum and we were on our way that I started to chill out. And afterwards, the feeling went away completely. Shawn said that it sounds like anxiety might be one of my main post-partum characteristics and he's probably right. I tended to suffer them during my periods, too. It's just something I'll have to keep an eye on.

Oh...and by the way...I got back my test grades, one for each class since I also had to hand in an exam via e-mail for my other class by midnight on Sunday

Environment Science (e-mail exam) 100%
Insects & People (campus exam) 87.5%

Yea...I'm pretty darn happy about that!