God, sometimes I hate being a women!

For a bit of background, I was put on the depo injection at 15 years old, after trying the pill for about three years beforehand. I found periods unbearable at a young age because of the combination of hormone symptoms and my disabilities.

I always found that my periods were rather severe. Bleeding would happen every other week, I would always become anaemic from blood loss, pass out and generally be debilitated from the pain of cramps. Hence why from a very young age after hitting puberty, my family and the doctors decided to try and stop my periods using birth control.

Now I have come off of all birth control in order to try and start a family with my partner. I was warned that it could be that my hormones would react the same as they used to or it could be better. There was also a chance due to how long I’ve been on the depo that my hormones may never return normally- but that’s a whole different story.

What I have found has happened for me is that they have come back just as I remember them.

So since Christmas I have been having periods every other week again, and wow have they been HEAVY! I haven’t passed out from them, however I do have another condition that causes me to black out so its hard to tell. But oh the PAIN!

I am having to take my morphine, constantly have a hot water bottle strapped to my stomach, and am still snapping at everyone!

Doctors will be called in the week I think as this is ridiculous.

So my question to any of you who have had the depo is did your cycles get better? 

Currently I have only ovulated once since December that I have caught on test, but my last cycle was 25 days which is at least a touch more normal. Just praying for this one to finish in the next few days and will then start the ovulation tests again.

What other posts would you like to see about my trying to conceive journey? I am hoping to document most of it, as I feel like it would both be interesting for you and exciting for me to write. Not to mention the help it may give to other people who are coming off the depo after a long time, as there really isn’t much useful information out there about it.

While the title of this may be a touch misleading, stick with me and allow me to explain because I feel like it will make sense.

MY  NHS subscription for Slimming World ran out at the end of December, leaving me to think long and hard about whether or not to continue. Within the twelve weeks that I attended group, I managed to lose little over half a stone- now I know that it isn’t a great amount, however, with my health conditions its very hard for me to lose weight. So I was pretty happy with that weight lose personally!

When I came to think about it I felt that I could put the £4.95 a week to better use for my health than just spending it to continue on at group. So that’s the decision I made, I stopped attending group and have signed up at my local swimming pool and plan to start swimming once a week instead.

Now there is another reason why I decided to stop that I would just briefly like to talk about.

Although the consultant was absolutely wonderful and lovely, I really could not praise her enough, the rest of the group I found to be quite cold and isolating. I do believe that this was quite a lot to do with just bad luck of the group and time that I chose to go to, however it was still very off putting. It was mostly older women, and I would spend most groups sat on my own. If I tried to make conversation then it was very quickly shut down, and if I ever made any suggestions during the group itself then no one ever seemed to have a comment, unlike if others made suggestions. I just felt so unwelcome and alone during group, that it made me just not want to stay.

With all that being said, the plan itself really did seem to work for me. It was simple, and reasonably flexible which works for me who hates to be confined to rules.

So for that reason I have decided to continue on with the plan itself, just this time I will be doing it from home- meaning I need to buy a set of scales! I will be weighing myself once a week, and keeping a track of it. Honestly I feel that this is going to be a lot better for me, as no more awkward interaction, and it opens up the money to allow me to do some swimming.

What does that mean for my slimming world posts? Well I will be continuing them every now and again, a bit like I have been now. I am hoping to post some of the recipes I come across that I do myself, and hopefully do some recipe reviews from both the slimming world website as well as the pinch of nom books- that I now finally have! Of course, I will also update you with my progress from time to time.

Have you ever tried a weight club? What did you think of them? What weight loss methods work for you?

Since I’ve moved in with my partner, I have lost sight of any and all organisation. Looking after my home, and building the future has take priority to the point that I think I lost myself a little. The blog was the first thing to go, but I think now I am ready to do all I can to get it back. Back to posting 3 times a week, every week, and giving myself some focus.

Although in every possible way, this move is exactly what I wanted; I see the love of my life every single day, and we are moving forward to set up our own lives, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been stressful. Actually its been incredibly stressful, and I’ve been really struggling with it at times.

I am not one to deal well with pretty much any form of change. Consistency is most definitely my favourite thing, but I appreciate that change is necessary in order to move forward for the better. It is so frustrating the fact I know this, and yet change still scares the life out of me.

But lately not all the changes have been for the better. I have had a bunch of new health issues, some of which have changed my life forever, and that is a very hard thing to wrap your head around. I will talk more about these over the next few weeks, but finding out that your body is uncapable of something you’ve based your life goals around is a really tough thing to come to terms with. I will talk more about this in a post in the future.

So I am now on the path of seeking help for my mental health. More help than just medication- which is all the doctors seem to be able to offer me. But while I wait, I have realised that I need to be doing more to help myself; and that starts with me making time for the things that I get a sense of achievement from. Starting with getting the blog back to a consistency that I am happy with, and starting back at university.

Fingers crossed that I can get my head straight and organised from now on, as I feel that this will really help me in the long run of things. But I guess we will have to wait and see.

I still don’t really feel like I’m an adult. I now live with my partner, we have our own home, our fur babies, and have to do everything for ourselves now. Yet I still don’t feel like we (well at least myself) are competent adults. Everything still seems so hard and complicated and completely out of my abilities.

This feeling of being overwhelmed is just making me really rather stressed. I hadn’t realised it until the other night when I was laying in bed (with Ash snoring as always) not able to sleep and then my brain went into overdrive.

The main pinpoint trigger for my stress lately has been because of trying to sort out our universal credit claim. Going into this move we thought that I would be able to carry over my disability benefits and just change the address, however we were only told otherwise about a month into having moved. Because of this we have gone almost two months with only having Ash’s wage (which isn’t great).

Although I can understand that they have to make applying an official process, what I don’t feel like they take into consideration is that the process is a lot to handle for those with mental health issues. Although we have been going through the process for about a month now, we are only just starting to get some idea as to how much we are going to be entitled to.  This has really been a stress to me as I have not known whether we are going to reasonably be able to afford to live alone.

I just briefly want to mention the  nightmare we have been having with citizens advice over these last two months. We have both grown up being told that when you are an adult, and you get into a situation where you don’t know what to do, you can go and get free and accurate advice from The Citizens Advice Bureau.

We did exactly this when we started to realise that we were going to have to make the switch to Universal Credit. After waiting for over an hour, we got to see the lady. We explained the situation, I took all of my benefit paper work and my medical certificates.

After we finished explaining she went of to talk to a colleague, as she ‘didn’t know about this’. She openly said that to us, and that wouldn’t of been a problem if she had come back with any advice from the colleague. But instead she came back and said go onto the citizen advice website and then follow the advice on there. So basically, she was useless. We had already looked online before we decided to go and talk to Citizens advice, so we had already done this.

In the end we had to just bite the bullet and apply for universal credit even though we were still unsure about whether this was the right thing to do. Its only been through doing the application and going through the interviews that we were advised by the assessment people that we should of gone a different way through the system and we then wouldn’t of had to jump through as many hoops. We also wouldn’t of had to go through two months without any support.

I guess what I’m saying is that there is no problem going to Citizens Advice for help when you get yourself stuck in life, however its not all its built up to be. They are only human, and often they don’t know the answers. I just wish they wouldn’t then point you to their website which you have most likely already looked at, as if you don’t have a brain cell and hadn’t already used your own common sense and had a google to try and work it out.

But anyway, that is it. I just felt like it needed to be said as that too often the benefits system causes way too much stress for those of us that already have mental health issues. In this time I have had to up both my anti-depressants and my anti-anxiety medication. I will be doing a bit of an off load post in the near future that will talk about the health issue impacts and some other things.