Flutter,
There's no need to make me feel more guilty. It's been 4 days since this happened and I have never in my life felt so ashamed, so disgusted with myself. I absolutely know how big the baby is and what stage of development it is in. This post is the first time I have ever told my complete history with alcohol to anyone other than my husband. I have never asked for help from anyone regarding my drinking. I have always tried to deal with it by myself.
I guess I am a high functioning alcoholic because other than some embarrassing moments I have never hurt anyone or myself because of my drinking... that is until now. Now I hurt an innocent baby. You don't think I hate myself. There's no way to make me feel lower than I do right now.
As for my priorities, I have been very actively trying to improve myself and be the best parent I can since I got pregnant with my first. I actually ended up quiting my very high paying successful career to be a stay-at-home mother. We have had to make many adjustments in our standard of living to accomadate this. No one who knows me, including my husband who knows even this alcoholism secret, would say I wasn't anything but a good mother.
I guess I am just going through a process of finding out how very unable I am to control myself when I drink. After my son was born I tried to control it. You don't know how many changes I made in my life to make myself a better person. For almost 2 years I only drank on Saturday nights. Given, of course, I pretty much humilated myself every Saturday... I did things like go to weddings and when everyone else sat down to eat the meal, I would be the only person still on the dance floor... When children came out to dance with me, I accidently knocked one down with my wild dancing. Talk about embarrassing!
When I started realizing that I couldn't contain myself to only 1 night a week anymore... I kind of half-consciously decided I needed to quit but I didn't know how. So when my husband said he wanted another child, I agreed. Like I said, I quit smoking after the first pregnancy... I was thinking that I could use these nine months of sobriety to analyze myself and figure out how I can achieve permanant non-drinking.
I clearly fell off the wagon in the biggest way possible... I did so because my head wasn't right. I don't know what is wrong with me. I hate myself. You don't think I know what my mother and grandmother think of me?? You don't think I know clear well why they have every single reason to be scared. For all they know, I do this all the time and I don't have a conscience about it.
I don't know if I can handle confronting anyone else about this right now. Just talking about it on this message board is hard enough. What tests could my OB run at this point to determine if there was damage done? I think all that would result from me telling her would be that she would judge me and hate me... and every week I would have to see someone who despised me. I couldn't handle that... I imagine I would just get more and more depressed. Maybe this is what I deserve. But in my experience, I don't make positive changes if I wallow in depression. I can't be a good mother if I am in that state.