Did I mention time consuming? I love her to pieces, but I really had no idea just how difficult it was going to be to constantly have another person attached to me. I expected her to sleep more, I expected her to play more, I expected to wear her around the house in a sling, I expected her to enjoy being carried from room to room in a carrier and just be fascinated watching mommy do stuff in front of her instead of with her. I spent months of sleep-deprived nights praying for her to sleep through the night, and now that she does, she makes up for it by not sleeping much during the day and demanding 100% of my attention 100% of the time she is awake.
I am jealous of stories of people going to the movies or trips or just dinner out, and yet I am exhausted after just taking her out for a trip to Babies R Us. Every time I come home from one of these shopping trips, I tell myself I am doing too much, and then the very next day I am either bored to tears or pulling out my hair worrying about the things I should be doing that I can't do because she refuses to let me move more than 2 feet away from her.
I am so busy trying to care for her and myself, yet balance everything else around me, that about the only thing I manage to do regularly is check my email in the morning. I don't blog, I don't Facebook, I don't clean the house, I don't design, I don't read. And yet I read an article about the problems with letting a baby "cry it out" and I'm convinced I am not spending enough time with her.
Lately, I am increasingly sensitive to the mentality that you can do anything, you just have to decide to change your life and *do* it. I am convinced that I need to watch her cues better so I can meet her needs *before* she flips out, but how do I make sure to feed her before she screams for the bottle if I can't even walk away from her long enough to make more milk when she's finally full? I need to eat better to help my overall health and energy levels, not to mention stop the postpartum weight gain, and yet the only food in the house quick enough for me to grab without her wigging out are popsicles and crackers. I need to stop using my laptop in my lap because I am doing serious damage to my back and my wrist in that position, and yet I have no time to clean off any of the spaces where I can use a computer properly.
The only reason our home is not infested with creatures living in our mess and eating our leftovers is because when Eric gets home he spends one hour making sure the important stuff like garbage and dishes and cat litter get taken care of.
I feel like I'm doing everything wrong, giving myself the worst possible care, ignoring the baby too much, and living completely unhealthy and yet… I feel chained to this way of living that is just making everything worse. My wrist is a perfect metaphor for my life right now: I constantly feel like I need 3 hands, I only have 2 hands, but one of them is seriously injured and I keep using it anyway because I have no choice so it doesn't get any better. I can't grow a 3rd hand let alone do enough to fix my injured one, so… how is anything supposed to get better?
No, this is not one of those "life-lesson" blogs where at the end I wrap everything up and say, "but I have a plan so yay!". No, I'm not on the floor bawling my eyes out either. This is just an update on reality, because sometimes this blog needs to be about me and not have any point except allow me to vent.
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