Shame

I hate shame. I've spent so much of my life feeling it. Sometimes I felt ashamed of myself but more often then not, I felt ashamed of things that I had no control over - my mom's drinking, my overall home life, growing up in foster care as well as other things too numerous to mention in this particular post.

What I really hate is when I feel shame because of something that I've done. I hate being ashamed of my own choices. So, instead of sitting here feeling bad, I'd just rather confess and move on. So here goes...

I've been smoking. Some of you know, some of you don't. I've been having one on the way to work, and again on the way home. Sometimes I have one on break at work before or after lunch. I've been having a couple after supper or before bed. I convinced myself that I wasn't 'really' a smoker again because I wasn't going to keep doing it, I'm under a lot of stress...yadda yadda yadda. Bottom line is this...I've been smoking and making excuses for it and I'm not going to do it anymore.

I had my last cigarette at 3:15 pm on Wednesday. As far as I'm concerned, it is my LAST one. I want to be able to celebrate this, but found that I could not because I was too ashamed to admit to friends and family that I was smoking again in the first place. According to what I've read, confession is good for the soul so that's what I figured I'd do.

Brad quit smoking too, 2 days, 9 hours and 50 minutes ago. I'M SO PROUD OF HIM. I'd like to be proud of myself too, so I figured a clean slate is the way to go.

Here's what will help me to be successful: Please no condemnation from anyone that I was smoking and nursing a baby. I feel enough guilt already. Please help me celebrate my success and leave it at that. I need to get over feeling guilty about smoking and move on to being proud that I made the choice to quit.

To head off any questions about why I would do such a thing in the first place, just a little background. We have a new baby, well...not so new. He's three months already. Anyway, new baby in the house = stress. Duh. Anyone who has had a baby knows that. Also, my son has had a couple of what are called "Apparent Life-Threatening Events" Go ahead and look it up if you'd like. Basically it's this: Roll over to check on your baby and find what appears to be a cold and unresponsive infant. Pretty scary...ya. My way of dealing with stress is to cry or to smoke. I did lots of both. (Jamie is fine and we're hooking him up to monitors when he's asleep at night. For more info, feel free to contact me. I can give more detail and send your an invite to our Facebook group that goes over the details of our experiences.)

I looked it up and the recommendation was that I should continue nursing even if I could not stop smoking (breast milk is so much better for baby than formula) as long as I was smoking less than a pack a day (I think on my worst day I only had about 10 or so) and as long as you don't smoke in the same room as the baby. I didn't smoke around him and did it outside (except for two incidents in the car - one when I was lost in the TC and it was WELL below zero temps and one when we almost died because of an idiot driver cutting us off, again in below zero temps). I never smoked in the house or while holding him. I never WOULD.

Anyway, that's my confession. I was smoking and now I've stopped. Now I need to work on losing the shame and gaining the pride in my accomplishment. Wish me luck!