Going Off The Deep End – Maternally Insane

Oh Krista from Not Mommy of the Year, let me count the ways I love you:

1 – Your blog header rules with a vicious amount of awesome
2 – Your writing style kicks my ass
3 – You say and do things like I do, and give me a (sometimes terrifying) glimpse into my future
4 – You are just all sorts of fantastic!

This post is a real treat everyone. This is honesty, this is real, this is one of those posts you’re going to read and “uh huh, uh huh, uh huh” all the way through it. It gave me shivers because I KNOW this feeling. Well, to the extent that I can know it without yet having gone back to work (thanks again to the Canadian government). The baby who takes forever to get to sleep and wakes up in only 30 mins, the inability to eat or shower, the horrible guilt you feel when you snap. I know it all too well. I know what I thought I was going to do, baby on my hip, flawless multitasking. And I now know that the vacuum has not been used in, well actually I don’t know how long it’s been but it’s been fucking long.

In any event, without further adieu here she is. When you’re done leaving her comment love here, visit Krista over at Not Mommy of the Year, and tell me that isn’t the best header you’ve ever seen? I DARE YOU!

WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND, GOING OFF THE DEEP END

I chose this. I wanted her. This was my dream.

Sort of. You see in my dreams, I had a beautiful baby on my hip, a great job, a sexy husband. In my dreams, I balanced it all perfectly. People do this, right? Women have jobs and adorable children, fulfilling marriages and still brush their teeth every day. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I thought as a spectacular mutli-tasker that I could handle it.

Then, the baby came and I realized that figuring this all out, well, it wasn’t going to come easily and I certainly wasn’t going to look good doing it. When she was a newborn and I was home on maternity leave I could easily go all day without eating or showering. All of a sudden I was ON 24/7. There were bottles that needed to be fed, diapers to be changed, soothing to do. There just didn’t seem to be time for anything that wasn’t baby related.

Finally, I sort of adjusted and started to figure it out. Started making time to shower and even put on makeup once or twice and left the house. Just in time to go back to work. And my days became a hot mess of trying to parent and still have my shit together at work. The mornings consisted of trying to get myself ready and out the door with a baby in the house. A baby who woke when she wanted, ate a different times every day and had explosive poops that required outfit changes for both of us. At work, I was struggling to keep my head above water now that my ability to work well into the evening was gone. And at night it was a whirlwind of early evening naps, a fussy baby, bath time and bedtime.

I was teetering on the edge of sanity. On a tightrope. In heels.

I wanted so badly to look forward to weekends. To use that time to cuddle with the baby I missed during the week, catch up on ‘me’ time and regroup with my husband. Instead, I spent my weekends fighting with my child to nap. One especially bad weekend it seemed that all I did was try to get her to sleep. 45 minutes of rocking, cuddling, singing or walking would earn me a 20-30 minute nap. Do you know what you can do in 20-30 minutes? That’s right. Not a whole hell of a lot. She woke up cranky because she was still tired but I couldn’t get her to go back to sleep.

Late that Sunday afternoon, after two long days of fighting with a five-month-old, 15 pound, bald baby. I put her down so I could get something to eat for the first time that day and she screamed bloody murder. The next thing I knew the head of lettuce that was in my hand was being thrown into the door of the refrigerator and I screamed. I mean I really screamed. I’m fairly certain there were four-letter words involved.

And then I cried. I felt awful. I had just yelled at my baby like she was a disobedient teenager. I scooped her up and hugged her, smothered her face with kisses and apologies. I took a deep breath and took her upstairs where I put her in the swing while I took a hot bath. When my husband came home a few minutes later, I must have still looked pretty rough. I told him what happened and he took her downstairs, giving me a few more minutes to pull myself together.

After that weekend, I took a few days off of work to get serious about putting C on a schedule. It may seem selfish, but I had to get my weekends back. I had to have a well-rested child so I didn’t lose my damn mind in the course of 48 hours. My plan turned out to be a massive failure because although she napped, it was because she came down with a virus the exact same week. See? Epic failure, again.

I stuck with it on weekends and finally three months later, it seems to have worked a little. But I don’t know if it was my stellar (sarcasm) parenting or just the result of an older, more active baby.

I’m trying to enjoy the weekends more, to recognize that these moments – the bad and the good – aren’t going to last forever. I’m trying to not rush C off to naptime because I want to catch up on work. I’m learning to take deep breaths when she screams at naptime and enjoy the moments when she does fall asleep in my arms. But the balance? The ease of the life that I dreamed of? It’s still not here. But that’s OK, because the moments that make up my reality are even better. Sometimes I just need to be reminded.

Tagged as: Mommy Crazy, Mommy Guilt, Sleepless Infant