A sledgehammer to November

Potamus stuck his snot-nose hands in my mouth last week and gave me his green germy nose bug, including sore throat, stuffy nose when trying to sleep, and runny faucet during the awake hours. I am so fucking tired that I seriously want to punch someone. It doesn’t help that Boof still has little job prospects and I feel like I am tasked with the enormous burden of providing for my family and still having emotional energy leftover for a whiny snot-nosed baby who hasn’t seen me all day.

I didn’t sign up for this.

In fact, it was my worst fear. Because, after all, I don’t really like children all that much. On any given day, about 95% of the time I am in love with Potamus, but the other times I am pissed that I have to, yet again, deal with his needs.

And I can’t imagine NOT co-sleeping, but my sleeping is for shit, and I can’t seem to find the magic sweet-spot that accommodates both of our needs: his to nurse all night because of reverse cycling and mine to sleep more than 1:30 at a time.

Add insult to injury, Scrummy will not stop peeing and shitting all over the house. But not like “accident” puddles, they are full on puddles marking the corner of the chair, the jumparoo, the high chair, the bookshelf we store Potamus’ carseat on, and the kitchen counter. Pooping in strategic shmeary places, too.

My emotions come leaking out in destructive ways, like wanting to take a sledgehammer to Facebook, as it is the month of sappy “gratitude” posts from all my friends whose lives seem full of “snuggly kitties” and “lost 20 dollar bills found in couch cushions,” and “breathmints,” all making their life so fucking wonderful.

And then, my natural tendency toward depression as the light gets less each day, is supposed to be assuaged by the “end of daylight savings,” which really just means “fuck over your circadian rhythm and spend the next week fighting sleep even more.”

Sigh.

So tonight, I’m grateful I don’t actually own a sledgehammer, and that Amazon doesn’t do same day deliveries…

 

It started as self-care…

As part of my decision to buck up my self-care regimin, I have begun to re-read one of my favorite books: Trauma Stewardship. Reading this in not just a backup justincaseidon’tgetthejobthatireallywant anxiety push, but because it’s good and important to take care of myself ESPECIALLY since I have a young one and still want to work with at-risk youth (even if it means I don’t want to do CRISIS work anymore).

I saw the author, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, in a workshop a few years ago, and found the material to be AMAZING, like aloe vera to a nasty sunburn. So I picked it up, and one of the first things that stood out to me was:

There is a Native American teaching that babies come into the world knowing all that they will need for the rest of their lifetimes-but the challenges of living in our strained, cofnusing world make them forget their innate wisdom. They spend their entire lives trying to remember what they once knew.

This quote stopped me in my tracks. While I had read it before, and even read up and believe in past lives and lives between lives (aka, the soul realm), it really hit me in a different way this time…because of Potamus. He is such a kind and sweet and loving soul. Yesterday I yelled at Boof on the phone, not because I was angry, but because his phone wasn’t working right and he couldn’t hear me. Potamus started crying, like a hurt crying, but like a combination hurt/scared cry and he looked at me like, “what is that noise coming out of your mouth?!”

In a flash I flew back in time to all those conversations my mother would have about my using that tone of voice and how I just couldn’t understand what she meant (or I didn’t want to understand).

But in another instance, today, when trying to get my mother-in-law’s attention in the other room, I yelled again and BAM we had the same crying uncontrollably episode as the day before.

Hmm.

So here he is, sweet Potamus, born with everything he needs to know to navigate the world. All the trust and sweetness and love and innocence. And the world is going to try and take that away from him, and it will be hard and beautiful all the same. But I am learning something…my child is affected by moods…very much so. I’m trying to get ahead of this burnout so that I can learn to deal, in whatever situation I’m in, so that I can calmly, peaceably deal with my baby’s needs.

 

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About a week ago I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. The stress at work had come to a head, the fears and worry about Boof starting classes in a week, the fact that Potamus has consistently REFUSED a bottle for the past 6 weeks (leaving me running all over the county on outreaches and then running back home again within 3-4 hours to nurse him…or having Boof drive around the county following me so that little mister can eat), the fact that I am maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding and am throwing her a bridal shower and bachelorette party…200 miles away, the fact that both of my sisters-in-law are getting married 2 months apart and we are in FULL wedding planning mode around here, the fact that laundry/dishes/yardwork/searching-for-new-job-work has all been pilingpilingpiling up in stacks on the table and in corners and my mind is crammedfullofsomuchstuffthaticanbarelybreathe.

Whew.

 

Who wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown with that kind of stress, really? So I started in on self-care, big time…writing group, sleeping as much as possible, eating healthy, trying to walk…crying. It’s amazing how freeing crying can be, and how I realize that I hold so much stuff in, trying to be the strong mama raising a strong child and bearing the brunt of the bread-winning at the same time.

But then there are these sweet break-in-the-clouds moments, where the sun pokes through and I react, once again, to my kiddos in crisis with the mantra “they are in crisis, i am not in crisis.” For a minute that statement wasn’t true, but for right now it is. I have driven almost 1,000 miles in my new little car and life is feeling back to a somewhat okay balance. Sure that could change tomorrow, but for right now I am learning that a little wobbly balance is okay. And that’s a lesson I’m learning from Potamus.

Today is day 2 of him sitting un-assisted. It’s amazing to think…he will never NOT know how to sit again (barring any major head trauma or amnesia). And today he grew in leaps and bounds, as I got to see him sit, and swivel, and reach forward, and catch his balance with wide-eyed-stare, and look so proud when he didn’t topple over. He’s learning. I’m learning. And it feels so sweet.

Why yes, I am mom enough, thank you!

I could probably write 17 blog posts in response to the controversial Time magazine article that has been splashed about this week. But I’m not going to focus this one on attachment parenting, or extended breastfeeding, or babywearing. It’s not that I don’t have opinions on these things, but I think that the MOST provocative and emotion-raising part of the whole thing, was the title: “Are you Mom enough?”

I am well aware that moms across the country (world?) wonder if they are doing enough as a mom. They are comparing themselves to their own mothers, grandmothers, neighbors, friends, Carol Brady, and the like. I wonder if my lack of interest in motherhood growing up was somehow a protective buffer, so now that I am experiencing life with Potamus, I wander around intersted in exploring my own version of motherhood, without feeling too crazy in comparing myself to others. Or perhaps I am so exhausted that all I can do is what comes ‘naturally’ or ‘instinctively,’ because anything more than that will take too much work (and thought, since my brain is so full up already).

Now I’m not perfect by any means, and have a whole list of things that I would like to be doing better (like less looking at my phone or watching tv at the end of a long day, when I could be staring into my sweet babe’s eyes), but overall I am not so very concerned with my skills versus my friends/neighbor/CarolBrady’s skills in raising a youngster. What makes me sad is that a headline like that really shakes moms up. And we are too awesome to let that happen.

Working mom

Today was my first day back at work. Yes it is a Saturday, and I work again tomorrow. My supervisor had a difficult time finding someone to cover this shift, and since I planned to come back Tuesday, I thought a few days earlier would be fine. And for the most part, I was right. I was backup on-call today, with my partner taking the lead. Fortunately it was a light day as far as calls went, so I didn’t have to go on an outreach. I am exhausted nonetheless, though.

Boof had to work at the baseball game, so my parents came into town to babysit Potamus if the occasion arose. Thankfully it did not, but we will see how tomorrow goes. I filled my day with paperwork and online learning that has piled up since December. I filled the rest of my time with loads of laundry. Potamus was never out of my sight, and I nursed him on demand, but I tried to honor that I was working and let my parents play and sing and rock him to sleep.

Maybe that was the hardest part.

But mentally it was good to get a taste of what is to come on a more regular basis. Fortunately not all of my days are 12 hours on-call, became I am already in bed with potamus passed out next to me. I survived my first day, and feel weepy, even though I didn’t have to lose sight of his sweet chubby cheeks.

This whole working parent thing is overwhelming and exhausting, no?

Juggling Motherhood, Career and Personal Life

As sweet as it was to get Mother’s Day cards this year, I still don’t consider myself a mother…yet. So while I am in the process of becoming a mother, as little “chip-monk” grows (this is what Boof is now calling baby), I am still finding that it is difficult to juggle the balance between almost-motherhood, my career and having a personal life.

It doesn’t help that I started a new job 1 second after I learned about the pregnancy, or that the job is as a crisis-counselor. Granted, this stress is cognitively better than the stress that I was enduring at my last job, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is an easy process for me. And I wonder…at this point I am only balancing the theoretical idea of motherhood, and my career, and life…what will it be like when I am having to do it for real?