I am 42 and recently went to the doctors as an habit a few symptoms such as can't lose weight, mood swings and fatigue. He's down a couple of blood tests which came back normal as expected as they were done during the day. On an appointment to discuss he said the symptoms of peri menopause and depression were similar and he saw me as quite an anxious person and do i think I'm depressed.
This shocked me and I've been thinking about it since. He said it's not right to feel like you're in a treadmill. He wanted me to have a good 5 days away from the kids (14,11,5) with my husband to see if it made a difference and if it was depression or hormonal.
Now our problem is we have no help. We both came from dysfunctional families, I had a mum and he a dad. My sister isn't local and I've never got on with and his brother is not local and neither of us would trust him with the kids. His dad never did anything to help and died 3 years ago. My mum lives 10 mins away but is totally selfish. We only get 2 offers of babysitting a year (our birthdays, mine is in June and we used it 2 weeks ago as first time she could fit us in but it was only due to a last minute change to her plans) she also recently decided to move over 2 hours away and in her reasoning for moving we didn't come up as a worry of not being near the kids.
She has never had my little one over night so we haven't had a night together in over 5 years. She blows it's half term this week and wants to come over on an evening that suits her but not me as I'm going out with mum friends and it's because she needs help with something not to take the kids anywhere.
I don't have a good relationship with her and feel quite resentful. I hold it together around her but feel so cross at how she can't see that we need support. She's always the first to expect our help but if we ask for something it's always a problem. One comical example is I planned, shopped, paid for, cooked Xmas dinner as per usual but she rang 4 days before and asked if she could bring anything and I said I'd forgotten crackers - straight away oh no I don't have time to get those - she lives opposite Tesco. So I had to trek out to that very Tesco, 3 kids in tow to get them. She then turned up on the day 2 hours late with 2 crackers that she'd found (2 crackers not 2 boxes ) for 6 of us.
We have had to be so independent and have had so much loss (our parents walking out on us at crucial times) that we struggle to open up and trust other people and don't like to impose. I don't have anyone that could have my kids for 1 night let alone 5.
Im stuck - I don't know what to do now - it feels good to have an anonymous moan - I guess I'm looking for some suggestions I feel quite low and can see the problems but not a solution. Excuse any typos I have an eye issue that just cropped up to add to it all!