Maternity leave

In exactly 15 days I will resume my full time job responsibilities as a Crisis Intervention Specialist. I will also be a mom. I have no idea how I am going to do both of these things, let alone do both of them well. Today I layer in bed with Potamus having a mini panic attack that left my heart feeling crippled with fear and my fingers frantically searching the interwebz for part time therapy jobs that pay buco bucks (note: these jobs simply do not exist).

I keep telling myself that it will all be okay, that women all over manage to have babies and work, too. I tell myself that the first few weeks of Potamus’s life was hard, and I cried a bunch, and that this will be hard, but I will get through it, too. But I really feel like I just might poop my pants with fear of this transition.

How will I survive? Will Potamus still love me? Will I still be able to nurse him and have that lovely bond?

Love and loathing

Love and loathing must be cut from the same cloth, they are so similar in intensity. I get caught up in the moment to moment of it all and when the pendulum swings to the dark-side, I wonder what the help am I doing in this situation? When did I want to be a mom, and now that I am here, the trapped scrambling-to-escape feelings come rushing back…predictably strong, like  stormy ocean waves. I am beginning to dread the darkness that falls so early in these winter evenings, as it means feeding on demand in the warm, dimly lit cave of a bedroom with Boof quietly sleeping next to me. The thoughts race again…night has never been my friend, and when I can escape the danger by sleeping I am a good person. And when I am awake, left to my own devices, the thoughts turn dark and scary. And thoughts influence action, and only 16 days into this new relationship, a relationship imbalanced by such brute strength and tiny innocence. He is completely dependent and I both love and resent it. How can I hold such dualities within me? Same how do I keep the shadow-self from hurting my sweet child?

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?