Bed Wetting and Self Love

       

   

Before I start this post, I just want to say that I don't in any way post this stuff in order for anyone to feel sorry for me.   Some of it is pretty sad.  I post this for two reasons:  1.  By putting it on my blog, I somehow process and release the information, which is very healing.  2.  That maybe someone else will read it and find another piece to their puzzle.  

I recently read an article by the AMAZING Dr. Ben Lynch, about bedwetting being connected with the MTHFR mutation.  Needless to say, it blew my mind and really brought me a sense of peace.  I was a bedwetter.  This is a stigma I have carried around my whole life.  I wet the bed until I was somewhere between 7 and 10 years old.  It was embarrassing and a huge pain in the ass.  My mom never made me feel bad about it or anything, but I knew it was crappy to have to clean it up every day.  I just absolutely had no control over it.    I had a plastic mattress protector.  Staying at friends' houses just didn't happen at that age.  I can remember one time, staying at my cousin's house and basically being awake all night because of worrying about wetting the bed.  This was another thing in my life that separated me from everyone else.  I never, until a few days ago had any idea why this happened to me and not everyone else.  I speculated that maybe I was molested as a child but just didn't remember it, because bed wetting is a way that children protect themselves from getting molested.  I even went through therapy to dig down and see if anything ever came up.  Nothing ever did.  I also speculated that maybe because I am sensitive to wheat that eating wheat when I was a kid made my bladder more sensitive.  I do think that is true, but I think it has more to do with my homozygous MTHFR A1298C mutation.

So Dr. Ben Lynch wrote this about how bedwetting is related to MTHFR.  He said that the Central Nervous Systems of people with the MTHFR mutation (and I'm sure especially with someone who has double mutated copies of the gene) does not develop at the same rate as it usually would.  Slow methylation has affected my development since birth, and probably even before!  And holding your pee all night is controlled by your Central Nervous System.  So if your Central Nervous System isn't fully developed, you won't be able to hold your pee all night.  When I read this a giant light went off in my head.  Oh!  I get that!!  And what followed, which I totally wasn't expecting, was this wave of such gigantic, immense compassion and love...........for myself.  I suddenly felt myself totally protective over myself, like a loving parent.  It was the most awesome feeling.  It was another one of those things that explained so much and put everything into perspective.  It was sort of like if I had no thumbs, and struggled throughout life trying to pick things up like everyone else does without concern.  And suddenly I realized, OH! I DONT HAVE ANY THUMBS!! I have struggles a lot throughout my life and every single thing seems to be linked to my mutation(s).  When everyone else is skipping through life with smiles on their faces, I am sitting over here with some weird ailment, trying to look like nothing is wrong.  Trying to act normal.  At the beginning of my health journey I had a couple of dreams about this.  One was where I went to the doctor because I had a giant hole in my chest and the doctor was like, "oh, that's not that big of a deal.  You will just have to live with it."  And basically, quit being such a baby about it!  In the other dream I was frying my own heart in a frying pan, thinking to myself, "well, I can't put it back now, it is half cooked!  And how am I even functioning with no heart?"  Weird dreams.  But they were about trying to be normal, like everyone else, even though some very large things were going wrong.  

Well, my nervous system has always been compromised.  When I was a little kid, my grandpa told me I used to just shake all the time.  I can sort of remember it.  I had insomnia as a child.  I worried all the time.  I can remember at about 11 years old feeling depressed.  It just got worse over the years.  If something stressful happened my whole system was wrecked for days.  And then I put myself into stressful situations like working in a Psychiatric hospital!  What was I thinking??!  Then at around 45 years old things started getting bad enough that I really was losing my grip.  You might wonder why I waited so long to get help and address these things.  Truth is, I went to a lot of doctors and had a lot of tests, that all came out normal.  I went to the doctor about being dizzy all the time.  I went to the doctor about being tired all the time.  I went to the doctor about being depressed and having anxiety, and about having such bad menstrual cramps that I thought I would die.  About having cold hands all the time, about having heartburn, about having allergies.  I thought someone would link all these things together and realize they were all somehow connected.  Never happened.  Western medicine has done nothing for me.  Seriously, nothing.  The minute I started getting anything close to better was when I started seeing a Naturopathic doctor.  And addressing my issues from the roots, not just trying to fix the symptoms.  It is a long road and I'm not nearly done, but I am definitely on the right track.  I just want to throw out there that the things I have talked about on this blog are NOT NORMAL and nobody should have to just try to live with them or feel like they are being a baby by complaining.  Yes, you will probably have to pay for a Naturopathic doctor out of your own pocket if you decide to go that route.  And there will be supplements you have to buy also.  And you will feel guilty for spending the money on yourself.  But each of those things have been so important in this journey, and have contributed to my foundation of self love that I am building.