Please tell me it gets better than this!

A few weeks ago, my rheumatologist started me on methotrexate to help deal with my serum-negative rheumatoid arthritis that flared in a really major and crippling way after the birth of Samuel.

We opted to start with 5mg, and increase by 2.5mg increments up to 15mg, at which point I will be reviewed again. I take it on Friday evenings and yesterday I took 10mg...

Do I need to get used to a life where Saturdays basically don't exist?

The first time I ended up pretty badly wiped out and couldn't do anything but sleep through Saturday morning. I completely slept through Sam's 6am and 10am feeds - damned good thing DH was around because I just couldn't wake up. It was Monday morning before I started to feel normal again.

Second time - I didn't seem to get quite so tired, but I became extremely grumpy and kept sniping at DH. I didn't even want to be around myself.

This time... it's back to the sleeping. I'm usually a light sleeper, but managed to sleep through DH mowing the lawn right outside the open bedroom window. I've been fighting sleep all day, and I suspect I'm going to be in a fairly similar state tomorrow. It doesn't feel like lessening any time soon. I'm also starting to get the nausea setting in with each dosage.

I'll still be increasing the dosage over the next two weeks... but do the side effects settle after a while once you hit the maximum dosage? Or is this going to be my life now - zombie BW in residence all weekend? Is there anything you've found to help with the side effects? My rheumy suggested I take folate tablets and told me to take the 5mg ones, but when DH said we had 0.5mcg tablets in the house, he said they'd be fine... Will the higher dose of folate help with the fatigue/nausea in any way?

I suppose I can cope with sleepy weekends just so long as it eventually helps the arthritis enough for me to be able to do all that I need to do during the week. I'm probably feeling really down about it all today because yesterday was an absolutely dreadful day in terms of the arthritis. Pretty much the worst I've had so far... It's not fun taking 15mg of prednisone (I get muscle cramps if I take too much so I've had to drop from 20mg before I was really ready) and regular dosages of both nurofen plus and panadeine just to try to keep mobile.

BW