Being a mom can make you, literally, a crazy person

Lately I've been feeling isolated.  I go to work, I come home, I care for my family, I watch a bit of tv, I clean up the house, I go to bed.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  My job isn't really a place for tons of socialization and lately it's been really nuts there.  So, that leaves me with attempting to socialize in other ways, which aren't always the best ways to reach people.  I have defaulted to text messaging people, which is such a garbage way to communicate and socialize.  But, it's kind of all I have right now, so that's where we are.  Unfortunately, because of who I am and all of the history I have in general with like....life, when there's little response from people via text, I start to worry that it's because of me or something I did.  I'm used to people having a short shelf life in my world.  A year or two, if I'm lucky, and then something will happen and I'll destroy it in some way and that'll be it.  On top of that there's the added factor of me now being a mom and worrying that all of my friends don't really want to be around me or talk to me anymore because I've becoming one of those obnoxious moms that I hate.  I feel like I've worked so hard to keep too many things from changing since my daughter was born.  I've tried to maintain weekend gatherings as we once did, to coordinate lunches/dinners/get-togethers as I always have.  And yet, here I am, alone most weekends, desperately texting friends for some sense of connection that I may not even deserve.  And this isn't isolated to just one or two friends.  This is like, all of them.

I think some of this is related to the fact that over the past couple of months I've learned a lot of things I wasn't previously aware of that have colored a friendship I thought was pretty solid and close.  So now I feel like I'm kind of down one friend, and the rest of them are busy with their own lives and it just feels like there's a distance growing.  I can't even blame them for having their own lives.  I'm glad they are all doing so well!  I just can't help feeling like life keeps moving on without me.  Like being home with my daughter, who I love dearly, is also pulling me away from people I care about.  Or pulling people I care about away from me?  I'm not sure.

The point is that in all of this isolation, I've become the thing I've never been, and something I've never wanted to be.  Suddenly I've become the high maintenance friend.  The one who has to be reassured that she's still wanted, or secure, or whatever.  I actually texted my friend last night with a pathetic "Are we ok?" message that today I'm both embarrassed and ashamed of.  I'm so irritated with myself for falling into that trap of thinking that I need to chase people and attempt to force them to talk to or like me, even when there's no rational reason to think they don't in the first place.  Being isolated, spending all of my time with an infant who I love to death but who also causes my life to have a different focus, has also made me into a strange insecure being that I'm not used to being most of the time.  I'm so legitimately afraid that choosing to have a kid has made everyone in my life push me away or distance themselves from me that I'm doing things that may be leading them to do just that.  It's just.....it's so hard to turn off those voices in your head sometimes that no matter how much you try, it's still there.

I've tried so hard to remain who I am.  To not become just someone's mom.  To keep up with friends and family as I've always done.  I've exhausted myself with trying to do it all and the fact is that I can't control how people treat me in these situations.  The reality is that now I am someone's mother.  and I can't change that any more than I can change my birthdate or the color of my eyes.  It's a part of who I am, and I need to stop shoving it aside and ignoring it for the sake of others.  I still don't want it to be the central focus of all of my conversations or social interactions, but I have to stop hiding away from it as if it doesn't exist in certain circles.  The reality of my life is that it looks like this now, and I can't force it to look differently just to please others so either they find a way to accept the new view, or move on from it.  That's so hard for me to accept, to be honest, but there it is.

So, that's what life is like in my head now.  Mom life can make you a nutter.

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How Do You Measure a Year?

One year.  12 months.  52 weeks. 365 days.  8,760 hours.  525,600 minutes.  A year.  So much can happen in a year.  People can get new jobs.  People can buy a new house.  People can move away.  New friends can be made and lost.  And your baby can grow up.

A year ago, I had a tiny, totally helpless little baby who could rest comfortably in the crook of your arm.  A year ago I bought a preemie outfit because my daughter was so small that newborn clothes swallowed her.  A year ago I almost didn't have that little baby because of complications.  A year ago I was sliced open, and stapled back together.  A year ago, I became a mom, and I struggled with everything that simple title encompassed.  A year ago, the world turned upside down.

Now, here we are a year later, and I have a little girl who is moving swiftly toward more and more independence every single day.  The helpless baby is gone, and a toddler with preferences, thoughts, and opinions is emerging.  My baby who fit in the crook of your arm would rather do anything but be held in one place for any amount of time.  She's on the go, and she has no intention of stopping for anyone.  The sleepy infant has been replaced by a girl with personality and humor enough to spare.  Today, that tiny baby who needed us for everything is no more, and it happened so fast.  A year seems like such a long time, but it also can feel so short.  To quote my homeboy Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it".

At the end of the day, a year is a blink in the big scheme of things, but that first year feels so significant.  It feels important.  You go from waking up every two hours to feed a crying baby to sleeping through the night with a toddler who is just as content to be asleep as you are.  You go from bottles to baby food to just including your kid in your daily meals.  It feels big.  That much change in such a short time feels big.

A lot of moms cry because their babies are growing up and need them less, but I've never been that mom.  I love watching her grow up and be more independent, and there really isn't a piece of me that wants to keep her small for longer.  I didn't get emotional over any milestones.  Then, as I was putting her to bed on her birthday, I started crying and I couldn't stop.  Not because she grew up.  Not because she was older and wouldn't need me as much.  I cried because we both made it.  A full year, and we both came out on the other side just fine.  More than fine, honestly.  I cried because when she finished her bottle she reached up and hugged me and buried her face in my shoulder, because after a year she still wanted me.  She wanted me to comfort her.  She didn't hate me.  That is so foreign to me, to go a full year and have people still love me.  I cried because I did it.  I survived that first year.  I survived the sleep deprivation.  I survived the self doubt.  I survived the surgery and the pain meds and the recovery.  I made it to the other side and I'm still able to say that she's fabulous and I love her.  Even when she drives me crazy.  Maybe I cried because I always wonder if I'm capable of really loving anyone.  Like, even people I love and care about drive me to be frustrated with them and need space from them, or I'm driven to complain about them to other people and it makes me question whether I really love them if I can so easily be driven to frustration, but I honestly love her.  I cried because after all of the doubt and the questioning, I'm not too bad at this mom thing so far.

It's been a year.  One crazy, chaotic, ever-changing year.  We made it.  Bring on the next one.

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If I had it to do over again

Looking back to this time last year, I've been thinking about the whole pregnancy and childbirth thing.  I keep reading blogs from other people who are having babies in the near future and I find myself wondering if there are things I'd want to do differently if I had it to do all over.  Like anything, hindsight is 20/20, and I know that if we were to have another kid at some point, there are a lot of anxieties I wouldn't have to deal with.  I wouldn't have to constantly question whether I was cut out for this, because this past year has proven that I'm ok at it.  Not the best, probably, but certainly not enough to cause her any permanent psychological damage just yet.  Those are things that only experience can really help you settle, and while I'm sure that if we were managing another kid, I'd be worried about my ability to handle two kids at once, I don't think I'd be as distraught over whether I could be considered "good" at this.

There are things, though, that I think about as I read other blogs or see other people's photos and wonder how I'd handle differently if I had it to do again.  I think, first of all, I'd be less focused on proving to everyone that it was no big deal.  The first time around, I was really committed to not losing my identity.  I didn't want to be "the pregnant lady", even in private.  I was so focused on it that I was on the edge of just pretending it wasn't happening most of the time.  I didn't get excited about anything.  I compartmentalized all of it.  The pregnancy things were firmly in a box that was labeled "Do not open" in my brain.  Looking back, I sort of wish I had appreciated the first time she kicked, or the times she was wiggling around.  I just put those things in the box in my brain and walked away.  My fierce need to not romanticize the process also robbed me of my ability to appreciate it.  I'll never be that mom who says things like "Sometimes you miss them kicking around in there", because I honestly don't.  But, while it was happening, I wish I'd acknowledged it and appreciated it since I don' really intend to do it all over again.

I'd probably be more willing to talk about things a little more if I did it over again.  Again, I was highly focused on keeping everyone at arms length.  I didn't want to be the whiny pregnant lady.  I didn't even want my husband to view me differently.  I think, looking back, it would have been ok to talk about a few things every once in a while.

I'm also not sure that I'd be so focused on hiding the whole thing if I had it to do over.  I hid everything from everyone at work for as long as humanly possible.  A few people knew, but very few.  I didn't talk about it.  I tried to wear clothes that hid everything as much as possible.  I was really unhappy with the whole body image thing that came along with growing a human, so I didn't want anyone to notice or talk about it.  It was like they were highlighting all of my insecurities.  Looking back, I still don't love how I looked while I was pregnant.  I don't think I'd ever be that celebrity mom flaunting her little baby belly for everyone who wants to see it, but I do think I might handle it a little differently.  I refused to buy maternity clothes last time, and largely I didn't need them.  But, I think if I did it again, I might be willing to buy a few pieces that made me feel pretty.  I think that was my big problem.  In trying to hide it and whatever, I just felt gross and frumpy.  I bought oversized cardigans to wear over a few select tops so that I wouldn't have to worry about sweaters, and now I have a hard time convincing myself to wear those cardigans because I associate them with being frumpy and unattractive.  I think if I'd dressed in a way that made me feel pretty, despite being in a physical state that made me feel the opposite of pretty, it might have helped.

In the aftermath of actually having a baby, I would have slowed down and taken the time to appreciate that I had a baby.  Our first days home were a blur of medications, exhaustion, visitors and activities.  I think, in retrospect, I probably should have slowed down.  Again, it all comes back to being highly focused on keeping everything the same, even though life had changed.  The house had to be cleaned.  The dishes had to be done.  The laundry had to be done.  I had to get up and get dressed and be a normal human every day.  I had to keep moving.  As a result, I lost a lot.  I lost the appreciation of how new she was.  I lost the times when she was content to just be held and loved, and now I have a girl who grew up to never want to snuggle.  I won't get those early days back when she would have been completely happy snuggling in with me.  I also didn't give myself enough time to ease into my life.  I didn't expect to be as rocked by the hormone crash as I was, so I found myself on the verge of tears for no reason multiple times throughout the day.  Did I take some time and give myself some space?  No.  I pretended it wasn't happening and entertained visitors and went to family gatherings and pushed myself further than I really needed to.  I remember there was a moment when my husband's whole family was over and I was sitting on the couch trying desperately not to burst into tears, trying to smile and participate in conversation.  What I probably needed to do was step out and let the tears fall.  I needed to just let things happen, but I kept fighting for control and in the end I don't really remember much of the visit because I sat there uncomfortably trying not to sob.  As much as I wanted to show my daughter off to friends and family, I think maybe I needed more time.  I think I needed to give myself the space to breathe and actually feel normal again instead of pretending that everything was normal.  And, maybe, I could have let the house get messy.

I also fell into the trap of people asking if they could do anything to help out, where I would just smile and say "Oh no, we're fine thank you".  Would it have been better to say yes?  Absolutely.  It would have been nice to have someone cook dinner, or do the dishes, or vacuum, or do the laundry.  It would have been amazing.  But it would also have been admitting that I didn't have everything under control, at least in my mind, and I couldn't do that.  I look back at the few kindnesses we accepted, like my friend bringing over meals for us to keep in the freezer so we didn't have to cook for a few nights, and that was an immense blessing.  The problem is that when you ask "Is there anything I can do?", it puts the burden of asking for help on my shoulders, and I can't bring myself to do that.  It's not who I am.  I'm the sort of person who needs someone to say "I'm coming over in an hour to do your laundry and look after the baby while you nap.  You don't get a choice".  Taking away my say in the matter is part of what forces me to accept help.  It's so hard for me to admit when it would be nice for people to do nice things.

So, here I am, a year later, reflecting on how I might do things differently if I had to.  I don't think I'll get a chance to do things differently, since I don't plan to have more biological children, but maybe some day I'll see someone who is a lot like me, who wants to keep things as normal as possible just like I did, and I can offer some words of wisdom.  Or maybe this is just for me to reflect and understand that it's ok to admit things are changing sometimes.  And it's ok to want help.  I think my big lesson here is to understand how to find a balance between the way my personality is wired to handle things and the way I wish I would have handled them when I look back.  I hope I don't have as many times in this next year where I think "I wish I'd spent more time appreciating her as she is now than washing dishes".

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With a grateful prayer and a thankful heart

I guess the title of this post is somewhat ironic, since I'm going to be writing about how hard it is for me to be thankful this time of year.  This year, in particular, it's rough.  But it seems like the holidays bring a heaping dose of bullshit pretty much every single year.  There's always turmoil somewhere, whether it's in my family or my husband's family, but it's always somewhere.  There's always a blow up with someone.  Some war or feud going on.  Something that makes you wish that you lived on the side of a mountain and could ignore everyone.  My husband's uncle actually did that, incidentally, and sometimes I wonder if there was a wisdom in that decision that I had yet to consider.

The sad thing about this is that I love the holidays.  Truly.  I love the music and the decorations and the opportunity to see people you don't see often.  I love the generosity that comes out of people.  I like gift shopping.  I like going to the mall with crowds of people and finding gifts.  I like all of those things that other people hate.  And somehow, despite all of the turmoil that goes on just outside my door or on the other end of my phone, I manage to love the holiday more and more every year.  I dread the onslaught of BS that comes with it, but I love this season.

That said, I have a hard time being thankful at Thanksgiving.  Most of the time I just look at the life I lead and think "Other people don't deal with these things...." and it makes me feel frustrated.  It makes me feel like everything crazy happens to me because I somehow deserve it.  Or it's my fault.  Intellectually you can know it isn't your fault, but it's hard to keep that feeling from gnawing at you every time something ridiculous happens.  Where my friends will be going to lovely holiday dinners with their families and everyone will chat and get along and probably watch some tv together, I'll be bounced from house to house, trying to manage the rounds and trying to minimize damage as groups of people collide with the force of an A-Bomb in my life.  Love is hard sometimes, and lately I find myself having a hard time finding a whole lot of it to spare for some people.

The nice thing is that when I close my door and don't answer my phone, I have this lovely nuclear family that is all happy and healthy and safe this season.  I have traditions that kick off this Friday and carry through the weekend.  I have love and joy that radiates through my house during this time of year.  I have a beautiful little girl to start sharing these traditions with, and the most beautiful thing about all of this is that while I stand at the front line of the nonsense, I can shield her.  Her life will not look like mine.  Her world will not look like my world.  She will grow up with only a vague awareness of what goes on in the world I grew up in.  She will know love, and happiness.  She will know stability and understanding.  She will grow up in a life that sometimes I wish I had gotten myself, but that I'm lucky enough to provide for her.

So I guess that's enough to leave me with a grateful prayer and a thankful heart.

Well....if I prayed.  But the heart part is accurate.

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Balance - Is there such a thing?

Lately I've been struggling with balance.  I have these weird hangups about things.  Like, I love my daughter and I want to spend time with her, but I also am faced with a million other things that need to be done all the time.  I'm not one of those mom's who is like "Oh, the house is a mess but that's just how it is, I'm a mom".  Lately, it's been a lot of "The house is a mess because I just don't have time to get to everything" and that makes me crazy.  But, more than that, it means I spend a lot of time in the evenings trying to make any sort of headway.  That means less time spent with my daughter during her awake hours after work.  That feels crummy.  Leaving dishes dirty, or carpets unvacuumed, or clutter everywhere also feels crummy.  So, I don't know how to balance it.  And as much as I want to play with my daughter while she's awake and then work on things after she goes to bed, I find I have a finite amount of energy and I am just tired.  At some point it just becomes too much.

The tired is another issue that needs dealt with.  I'm starting to worry that it's related to something medical and not just chasing a 10 month old, because no matter how long I sleep, I always wake up feeling like it wasn't enough.  I wear down easily.  I am back to getting semi-regular headaches that last for days.  There are some other things going on as well, so that's going to be addressed in the near future with a doctor, but still....I don't think I'll ever just not be tired.  I feel like I've been tired my whole adult life.

So, I find myself trying to balance chores with baby time.  Saturday mornings are ours.  I wake up with her at 6:30 and I don't do any chores until she goes down for her nap.  She gets her bottle, we play on the floor, we eat some snacks or some breakfast and then she goes down for her nap.  The tv doesn't get turned on.  I try to leave my phone on the counter so it's just me and her, and I hope that makes up for the lack of time during the week.  Thursday nights are also ours.  My husband has class so I don't work on dinner until after she goes to bed because he's not home until late.  So, I feed her something quick and easy for dinner and then do a quick pick up of the house and vacuum really fast, then the rest of the night is with her.  It's very nice, actually.  Sometimes I wish I could spend all nights just hanging out with her and eating dinner really late, but that's not the reality of things.  But, it's at least two nights that she gets some solid mommy time.

I have an issue balancing my needs with her needs, though.  I still haven't figured that one out.  When we're not working, my husband and I have her pretty much 100% of the time.  I take her grocery shopping, or out to run errands.  If I need to run errands that would be faster and easier without her, I wait until she goes down for her nap and leave her sleeping while my husband works on homework.  That's about the only "me time" I get.  A stolen hour here or there.  Sometimes I do just want to have an afternoon to go to a movie or to get lunch without having to tote a baby along.  But the thing is, I don't feel like I have a right to get that.  I feel like I can't complain that I don't get enough time with her during the week and then dump her with a sitter on weekends.  That seems wrong.  The one time we've gone out to a friend's house lately without her, we put her to bed before we left so someone just had to sit at the house and make sure it didn't burn down.  I feel like not spending time with her when I have the opportunity would make me some sort of hypocrite.  Sometimes I wouldn't mind the break, though.  Sometimes it would be nice to just have quiet, and to not worry about whether I brought enough snacks to keep her happy etc.

And maybe that's part of this constant tired feeling.  Maybe I just don't pull myself away enough.  I know it's not a "fun" thing, but my husband gets several hours every Thursday night when he's in class that he doesn't have to think about her or chase her.  He just gets to handle himself and this one thing he has to focus on, and sometimes I wonder if that's a little bit nice.  That even though it's work, it might still feel like a break.  I don't know.

Yesterday I cried, because I feel like the last couple of weeks I've been having a really hard time.  I feel too tired, everything seems like too much work, I can't force myself to really care about anything I should be caring about, and it's just such an out of character way for me to feel.  It's not me.  And I worry that I'm losing some sense of me.  But, I cried.  After bottling everything up for weeks, I broke down and cried to my husband and then apologized for crying because I don't feel like I have a right to be having a hard time.  I feel like it makes me selfish.

So, here I am, wondering if balance is really a thing people achieve, or just some sort of unattainable mystery we all delude ourselves into thinking exists.

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Working Mom Struggles, and How Not To Relate

So, at the risk of sounding like one of those "It's so hard for a working mom" whiners, I have to say that being a working mom can sometimes suck.  After I went back to work I had a really hard time the first few weeks because I felt like I had just started to get good at being a mom and then I had to give it up to go back to a job that I felt like I sucked at, working for people I didn't think gave a crap whether I was there or not.  It was not an ideal situation.  But, I'm the breadwinner in our family and I knew I wouldn't be happy being a stay-at-home mom for the long term anyway.  So I ripped off the band-aid and went back.  That was hard.  It was hard because I dropped my daughter off at my mother's house at 6:30 in the morning and often didn't get back to pick her up until 6:00 at night so I wasn't even home until 6:30, and when she goes to sleep at 7:30, that makes life rough.  I felt like I never saw her or spent time with her or did anything she needed me to do as her mom.  I started feeling like my mom was stepping into that role instead of me, and that hurt.  A lot.  I tried to make the most of my time, but it wasn't a lot of time and I had other responsibilities too.  I had dinner to cook, and dishes to wash, and dogs to walk, and a house to tidy and it wasn't always enough time was never enough time.  Never.

A friend was talking about how she just doesn't get enough time with her daughter and she really needs to capitalize on the time she has.  Then she told me she's working a total of 20 hours a week.  So.....that's at least 20 hours more than I get with my kid.  Forgive me for not sympathizing too much with your struggle.

Another is a teacher whose work day ends at 4:00 every day, and who gets summers off entirely to spend with her daughter.  So, again, not really relating to your situation.

The bottom line is, it's difficult for someone who gets 5 hours total with their child during the week to hear anyone who gets the luxury of significantly more time complain about their lack of time with their kid, or to be able to be sympathetic and act like I relate.  Because I don't relate.  I think those people are terribly lucky.  I envy them.  They don't know how good they have it.

The small bright spot is that with my husband's "career change", I'm no longer tethered to his work schedule so I'm able to come into the office earlier and leave a bit earlier during the day.  Now instead of leaving at 5:00, picking him up, getting stuck in traffic and not getting to my daughter until 6:00, I get to leave at 4:30 and go straight home.  Most days I'm home by 5:00, and he picks my daughter up after work because he gets out earlier, so by 5:00 we are home as a family most nights.  That gives me 2 and a half hours with her.  Sure, I still have to fit dishes and dinner into that time frame, but it gives me a little more flexibility and I get to see and spend time with her a little more each day.  I'd love for it to be more time, and I definitely wish it had been this way earlier on so that I didn't miss so much of her tiny baby months, but I'll take what I can get.

But people who get significantly more time with their kids probably shouldn't commiserate with me over how crappy it is.  You don't really get it.  And you're probably going to piss me off.

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Drifting

One of the things that sucks about becoming a parent for the first time is trying not to let your brain go to bad places when patterns start to emerge.  When you spend less time with friends you start to think "Is that because they don't want to be around me because of the kid?" and even if that has nothing to do with the situation, it's hard not to go there immediately.  Or, when people start to drop out of contact you wonder if you're now the obnoxious mom and no one wants to spend time with you.

In the past 9 months, a lot of things have happened.  My daughter is awesome, and she's doing all sorts of awesome things.  I love spending time with her, and I love watching her do new things, but I feel like it's all come at the price of other pieces of my life.  I feel like everyone around me has become distant.  Some of that leads to this weird need for some sort of connection that I talked about before, but it just goes deeper than that.  I have a friend who I used to talk to pretty regularly and see at least once a month.  Now she's busy all the time and I don't talk to her much at all.  It shifted pretty sharply after I went back to work.  Like, my daughter was a hot commodity for a quick minute and then everyone got bored with her and perhaps tired of me and ended up breaking away.  Now, if I try to get people together, most suddenly can't come, or if they can they stay for like an hour and then disappear.  It sucks.  I noticed it first at my birthday where half of my guests left before 8:00 p.m., if they showed up at all.  Contrast that with my husband's pre-baby birthday where everyone left at 2:00 a.m. and had a great time.  No one had to leave early for my birthday.  The kid was handled, everything was fine, but everyone was just.....gone.  Even one of my good friends, who I happen to work with, barely talks to me anymore.  He went through some stuff with his ex girlfriend a while back and I felt bad for him as he agonized over things and I wanted to be the person who would listen when he needed it.  But then, when that sort of ended, he drifted away as well.  I feel like I am at a point where I serve a purpose for people and once it's over, I'm not needed, or worse, not wanted.

I don't really talk to anyone anymore.  That's not an exaggeration.  Like....anyone.  Every time I try, I feel like I'm some sort of nuisance to whoever I'm talking to and they are just trying to get rid of me.  Conversations are brief if I have them, and it's really depressing.  Some of that is my choice, since there are a few people I'm keeping at arms length right now due to bad history, but for the most part it's just everyone else being wholly unavailable.  And, to be honest, it makes me really sad.  Like, I'm half crying as I sit here and type this.  I keep feeling like I'm there when people need me, but right now I've got some shit going on and no one is around.  At least no one I'd like to have around.  Though, I guess it wouldn't matter since I'm terrified to talk to anyone about anything at this point anyway, for fear of pushing them further away.

My husband took a temp job that has him completely unavailable all the time.  I haven't really talked to or had any help from him since he started it, and my weekends are spent alone.  It's like he was my last scrap of a connection, and even that was tremulous since he was always on edge due to his job and most of the time I was afraid to talk to him because he hated everything, but as long as it was just something generic like a tv show or the kid, we could at least chat.  Now that's gone too.  Now, it's just nothing.  A vast expanse of nothing and I'm lonely.  I'm lonely and I'm sad.  I find myself desperately trying to connect with co-workers who don't really have any interest in being bothered at work, and then the feeling of being a nuisance deepens.  So now, I'm just here.  Drifting around, wondering what I did wrong, and whether my worst fears of losing all sense of self and connection after becoming a parent are suddenly happening.

I'm basically torn completely down, and I wish someone wanted to help me collect the pieces and build them back up.

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