Oh please help me stave off the depression before it starts - help me see the bright side here! I can't go back down the hole of despair!

[Threelittleducks]

Dh has just got a new job with full-time hours. It's shift work for a care group and by all means a quite easy-going job, but the hours are funny due to the shift work and he has been doing a lot of late nights/early starts with some sleepovers.

This comes after about a an 18 month period where we were both working part-time.
I have just finished working two jobs, having secured a permanent contract doing something I love on a part-time basis for the moment. My second job was in a bar - very stressful (staff politics), late nights, low wage etc. I was very happy to give it up last month after calculating that we didn't need it. It was really getting me down as the hours were awful and some weekends I didn't sleep due to late nights/early mornings with dc/night-waking dc. Indeed, last month was the first time in a long time where we have felt relief - we both spent time with the DC (aged 2 and 4), childcare was covered (when I was working DH had them and when Dh was working, I had them and there were nice overlaps where we both had them together and spent time as a family).

Now it feels like everything is chucked up in the air - childcare is a mess at the moment, I am trying to cope with the 2dc, full-time housework plus a part-time job and everythinng else that comes with this house (long story - fil's house, needs renovated hugely, everything a state, time-consuming etc). I haven't seen DH for about 2 weeks really except to get ready for the next day and go to bed.

I know I should be manning up and getting on with it, but in reality I am very much struggling. Last time I took on the house and DC full-time I had severe undiagnosed untreated PND which nearly destroyed me. I was in the pit of despair with no way of getting back out. I started the pub job to get out of the house and then before I knew it I was doing P/T there and DH had dropped his work down to P/T for me. I knew I didn't want pub work forever and I had graduated before I had DC, so I applied for my dream job and got it (albeit on a temp basis until recently). I had to hold on to both jobs because of the uncertainty with the temp job IYSWIM.

It's day 6 of 10 of DH's working until he gets a day off and I am completely in control of the reins and it is scaring the holy hell out of me.

Thing is, I was coping. Until yesterday I felt fine - I was relishing the free time alone in the house. With the pub job and the other job I felt like I had no time for anything and now I am able to do all of the things I was craving. And I should feel lucky and I should be grateful that we are both working and that he has a job he loves and is good at and is paid well and I am in my dream job at last. And we have two wonderful DCs.

I think just all of a sudden all of these things that needed to be done suddenly fell on my shoulders and now I feel so pressured and stressed and I can feel my old frame of mind creeping back in and I am bloody terrified because that was NOT a good time. It was awful. I was miserable, I couldn't think straight.

Shit, help me - someone please give me a slap in the face and tell me to get a grip! Plenty of women look after more kids than me in less fortunate circumstances! And I'm going to work tomorrow for a few hours. I'm lucky! I am!

Please someone, shoo the black dog away :(

Why can't I cope?

[amillionyears]

If I have read your thread correctly, and please tell me if I havent, things are now a lot better in your life and less stressful than they were before?
And now you dont feel so great, depression wise?

Another poster on the MN board talked about that a few weeks ago, and there were others who said the same thing, that, sometimes after something has been sorted after a long time of stress and worry, that there then is a problem.

So am slightly bumping this for you.
If no one else replies or remembers it, I will try and find the other thread or poster.