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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Craving Connection

It's been a while.  Mostly because my free blogging time has been not-so-free lately, and also because I've been in this space of having too much to say and not enough energy to get it all out.  Even now, sitting here attempting to write this, I find myself exhausted at the idea of having to organize my thoughts into something coherant.

There's been a lot going on in my life.  Aside from the normal trials of child development moving forward at a lighting pace, the rest of my personal life seems to be in constant turmoil.  I don't have a family that one might consider easy.  At best, one could call them challenging.  Lately, challenging has morphed into daunting and there's really no end in sight.  I guess it would matter less if I stopped feeling like it was my responsibility to try to hold the pieces together sometimes, but I can't seem to turn that switch off in myself.  Outside of that, my immediate family life has been in some turmoil that has me a bit off balance.  Truthfully, there's been turmoil for the past four years, but things kind of came to a head lately and while pieces of the issues seem resolved, there are other pieces that are just out there stinking up the place like dead fish.

All of this has left me feeling......alone.  When I think about it, I've felt really alone for years now.  I've craved connection with people for a really long time, and it seems that every time I think I find it, it falls apart.  I had a friend I was close with for a long time, and then things fell apart when it sort of became clear that she didn't understand my life at all no matter how much explaining I tried to do, and that the impression was that the turmoil I experience was somehow something I fed off of.  Something I wanted for attention.  That is, quite frankly, not the case at all.  So that fell apart.  I put my energy into a new friendship with someone I thought I could confide in, only to be told that I "needed more therapy than I could afford" and again criticized for having the audacity to actually share my life with someone.  Felt close to another friend only to find that there was some betrayal of confidence going on that I didn't appreciate, and I pulled back from that.  With life circumstances keeping my husband at arms length from me at all times, and no other real friend connection that I feel like I can trust, I just feel.....alone.  And it's hard.

The truth is that I find myself wishing I could call up my mom and cry for an hour and pour all of my feelings out so they stopped being so heavy to carry around, and that she'd tell me it'll be ok and that she loves me, and try to offer some encouragement.  But that's not the mom I got.  That's not the life I lead.  I don't have anyone in my world to offer that level of unconditional love, and it's hard.  It's hard to accept, and it makes me rage at the universe when I'm struggling like I have been and there is no one who will look at my rusty edges and say "Hey, I've got some oil for those...." instead of  "Stay away from me, that's sharp and I'll get tetinus".  The truth is, it hurts more than anyone can know.

I keep reading blogs from other people, and a lot of them I find ridiculous and self important, but I keep seeing these themes of lasting and genuine friendship.  I keep seeing these women who love each other's children and hug each other when bad things happen, and who give advice when troubled times hit, and for the first time in my life I find myself craving that.  Weirdly, I want a mom friend.  Not like, a mommy friend, because I'd have to choke her in a matter of minutes, but a mom who is like me.  A mom who is realistic and who will just say "Yeah, that shit sucks, huh?  Sometimes kids are assholes" or who won't think I'm a terrible person when I say that I'd kill for a weekend to myself.  Sure, I left my daughter with family while we went on vacation, but "vacation" in my world still means getting up at 6:00 a.m. and cramming so many activities in that you aren't sure when there will be time to eat.  It meant traveling with other people.  It meant work.  What I want is a weekend that is totally open to just do whatever I want.  To sleep in until the shocking hour of 9:00 a.m and then wake up and do whatever I want to do without having to take anyone else's opinions or needs into consideration.  I just want two days to be leisurely.

But, more than that, I want someone to connect with who makes it safe and ok to say those things.  I want the safety of pouring myself into someone else without fear of consequence, or having to worry that I'm somehow bogging them down with my life and my presence is a burden.  I want to stop feeling so utterly alone in this space I occupy.  I feel like I've become a vessel for everyone to pour their bad energy into and I've been carrying it around for so long, and it's becoming heavy.  It's like Frodo carrying that stupid fucking ring into Mordor.  I'm dragging it along, trying to save everyone around me, all the while feeling like it's a weight no one can truly carry alone.  I need a Samwise Gamgee.

I need someone who isn't afraid to see all of me.  Sometimes I'm so tired of hiding.

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Functional Exhaustion

Everyone tells you that you'll be exhausted when you have a newborn.  They talk about interrupted sleep and nights of no sleep at all, and you sort of get to mentally prepare yourself for that.  It was pretty hard for me because my daughter would wake up to eat every two hours, which meant two hours after she started her bottle, not two hours from when she finished it.  She often would take 45 minutes to an hour to finish a bottle, which meant that by the time I was laying her down again I'd be lucky to have 30 minutes of sleep before she'd be awake for another bottle.  It got to the point where I'd hear her cry and have actual literal panic attacks.  The first few weeks were pretty rough there.  We fell into a bit of a rhythm after that, but she didn't make the first two weeks very easy.

The thing is, after you get out of that newborn stage, everyone seems to think that the exhaustion ends.  You get to sleep at night, so you are all good again.  I think that might be the case if I was a stay at home mom who just had to worry about keeping home life together, but since I'm a working mom, it seems like the exhaustion just keeps on going.  Sure, my sleep isn't (usually) interrupted, but I work a demanding job that exhausts me mentally and sometimes emotionally during the day, and then I go home and I just keep rolling through the list of work that I have to do to keep life running.

On any given day my life looks like this:
6:15 - wake up and get dressed for work
6:30 - get baby medicated, packed up and ready to go to grandma's
6:40 - Drive to grandma's and drop off baby
7:05 - Arrive back home.  Walk dogs.  Make husband's lunch.  Fill my water bottle.
7:25 - Leave house
7:50 - Drop husband off at work
8:00 - Arrive at work and put out fires all day long for clients.
4:30 - Leave work (notice there is no lunch break between 8:00 and 4:30)
4:45 - Pick husband up from work
5:00 - Drive to pick up baby
5:40 - Arrive to pick up baby
6:00 - Arrive at home, unpack baby, medicate her.
6:05 - Do dishes, which typically includes unloading the dishwasher that was run the night before, washing any hand wash dishes that didn't get done after dinner, dishes people used during the day and didn't wash or unload the dishwasher to be able to re-load their dishes in, and washing bottles so that I can feed the baby.
6:20 - Feed baby
6:35 - Put baby in jumper and start dinner
7:05 - Finish dinner, serve to family
7:25 - Begin cleaning up after dinner.  Load dishwasher, wash dishes, wipe down counters.
7:45 - Entertain baby, who is now fussy due to being tired and near bed time.
8:00 - Start bath for baby (this is only on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the week)
8:30 - Final bottle of the night (typically fed to baby by my husband, but I usually make it and get her prepped for it).  While bottle is being given, I often check laundry to make sure we don't need to do a load of baby clothes, refill diaper bag with supplies, check clothing in bag to make sure it's weather appropriate, get everything prepped for next day.
8:45 - Baby goes to bed.  Sometimes this is just putting her in and closing the door, sometimes it's a bit more complicated because she rolls over and cries about being rolled over so you have to go roll her back.
9:00 - Baby is typically completely asleep.  I can shower.
9:30 - Sit down for some down time to watch tv for a bit.

So, basically, at no point from 6:15 a.m. until 9:30 do I have ANY down time.  It's like running a marathon all day long, every single day.  And this isn't even to imply that my husband does nothing.  He helps out.  He feeds her the bedtime bottle.  He entertains her while I cook if she's unhappy in her jumper.  He walks the dogs after work and before bed.  But, this is still my day all day every day.  Most days, I just wish for more help, because by the time my daughter goes to sleep I realize I've spent a total of maybe 15 minutes with her since I got home from work.  There isn't time for reading stories or playing with her.  And, this is just my day to day which leaves out SO MANY things around the house that still need to be done.  We have 4 pets.  Those pets shed like crazy.  On an ideal level, we need to vacuum daily.  On a realistic level, it happens maybe once a week when I get so disgusted by having the baby covered in dog fur whenever she touches something that I can't handle it anymore and vacuum everything.  Dusting happens on weekends, typically if we're having people over and I'm embarrassed for them to see the dust layers in the house.  My husband does laundry on Sundays, aside from any baby laundry I may wash during the week.  My bathroom is a nightmare.  I've needed to reorganize my pantry for over a month now because everything is a giant mess.  My husband has kept up with yard work, but has had no help with some of the stuff we've wanted to get done because I'm busy trying to keep things running on the inside of the house.  Our basement needs mopped daily due to a sick cat, but that doesn't get done.  And when we get to weekends, I'm just tired.  Like, deep down into my bones tired.  I avoid being home on weekends, because being home makes me feel like I should be working on projects and more cleaning, but after a week of all of that, I just don't want to spend my weekend that way.  I feel like I spend a week working non-stop and then I get to spend a weekend doing more of the same and it's just really exhausting.  I also hate working on cleaning and organizing if it's just me doing it.  I feel like the job is too big to do alone most of the time so I'm discouraged before I even start.  It's so much more motivating to have someone to help, because it makes it feel like you could realistically make some progress.

There's also this piece of me that has a hard time because I feel like all of the things I do throughout the week are to take care of the people around me.  I keep the kitchen clean because everyone needs clean surfaces to eat off of or to prepare food on. I cook dinner to take care of my family.  I feed the baby to take care of my family.  I do dishes so I can cook dinner again later to care for my family.  I spend each day taking care of everyone around me and sometimes I wish I had that same sense of being taken care of.  Sometimes I wish that I didn't have to worry about just not doing something one day because someone would see it didn't get done and step in to do it.  When my husband was working late one night on a project for one of his classes, I knew he wasn't going to get to finish the laundry he started.  I finished all of it, folded it, ironed his work clothes and did everything short of putting everything away because it was late and the baby was sleeping and I didn't want to wake her up since she was still in our room.  No one asked me to do that.  But I saw that he wasn't going to be able to, so I took care of it.  I didn't ask for any special praise or credit or anything.  I just did it to help him, so he'd know he was taken care of when he couldn't get to things himself.  Quite often, I don't feel like people notice when I'm struggling and no matter how many times I say "I'm tired", it doesn't seem to sink in that it would be nice to have some help.  When people step in and help out here and there, like loading the dishwasher of all of the cooking prep dishes while I plate up food, I ALWAYS thank them.  I always go out of my way to let them know it's appreciated.  But it doesn't happen very often.  I've even outright asked for help.  We've asked my older daughter multiple times to handle dishes because she needs to contribute to the household more, and that works for a week or so, and then she just stops doing it.  I come home to her dishes all over the counter, or in the sink, and I clean up after her because clearly asking for help isn't actually a lasting and effective thing.  Saying it's her responsibility doesn't change the situation, and I can't just leave things until she notices and has to do them because I have to have those items to be able to cook and provide for my family.  I can't just leave them filthy because then I can't feed people.

So, that leaves me here where I am.  Functionally exhausted.  I can still get through my day, and everyone still gets taken care of, but I feel like I get worn a little thinner all the time.  I feel like I get closer to breaking.

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Monster Kisses

Sometimes I'm surprised by how much my daughter notices, particularly when I think about how she's only 6 months old.  She knows favorite songs and gets more excited when we sing some than others.  She likes specific toys.  She recognizes people when she sees them.  The other day I went to pick her up after work and my husband wasn't with me like he usually is, and she spent a good amount of time looking behind me and all around the room and it took a minute before I realized she was looking for him.

But the cutest thing happened the other night when I was reading to her.  Required back story here is that we've been reading to her since she was probably a week or two old.  It seemed to calm her down, and she seemed to like looking at the pictures.  We've gone through a good deal of her book collection over the past few months.  I'm a book person myself, and I like book quotes.  When we were reading Where the Wild Things Are, I did all of the things the Wild Things said in a monster voice.  Then, at bath time I got in the habit of using the monster voice while I was drying her off.  She has a variety of bath towels and they all have hoods that look like animal heads, so as I dried her hair and the animal head looked like it was eating her face, I'd say "Oh, please don't go, I'll eat you up I love you so!" in monster voice and then I'd cover her face with kisses.  Over time she started to think it was really funny and she'd get a huge smile any time I started the line.  It just started becoming part of our bath time routine and sometimes if she was in a mood during the day I'd say the line and she'd start smiling.

The other night I was reading the book to her for the first time in several months and I got to the part where Max is leaving the island and I said "Oh, please don't go, we'll eat you up we love you so" in the monster voice and she smiled and looked back at me, but as I turned the page she started to lean in toward my face with her mouth open like she was trying to kiss me.  I thought I was imagining it so I did the line again and she did the same thing.  Then I handed her off to my husband and he tried and she tried to do the same thing to her.  He laughed and said "Well, don't kisses come after that line?  You forgot her kisses!"  It was, undoubtedly, the most adorable thing she has done to date.  I can't even handle it.  I just love her.  I love that she knows monster voice comes with kisses, and I love that she's trying to kiss people now.  I love that she's paying attention to notice all of these things and she's learning patterns and routines.  She's such a smart cookie.

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The Milestone Path

It's been a while, and there are so many topics I want to write about.  Everything from the politics of parenting, to observations of other people and their children, to emotional terrorism, and a variety of other things.  Look for those in future, I suppose.  Today, though, today I want to write about milestones.

From the moment you get pregnant, your life seems to be measured in milestones.  Checking off that first trimester and emerging from all of the issues that come with it (if you had any) and breathing a little easier as you get out of the danger zone.  First ultrasound, first announcement to friends and family, that long awaited gender reveal, life being ticked off week by week until you hit that calendar date you circled in red as the light at the end of the tunnel that you'd be done.  Then the milestones shift.  They stop being your milestones that you track and start becoming someone else's.  They are the milestones your baby hits, and you watch closely to make sure the list is getting ticked off.  Can he/she do this or do that at the appropriate age?  Are they ahead of the curve on some things?  Are they behind the curve somewhere else?  Should you start to worry about this or about that?  You make a list of things to ask about at the next pediatrician's appointment.  You check off the list to reassure yourself that yes, everything is fine.

Right now I'm standing on the precipice of a different milestone.  As of next Friday, my daughter will be 6 months old.  Half a year.  It doesn't seem like it's been that long.  I don't mean that in a weepy sentimental "she's growing up too fast" sort of way.  I mean it in an actual timeline way.  It doesn't feel like 6 months has passed.  She's gone from tiny snuggling newborn to wiggly infant with personality and preferences, and it's been kind of awesome.  It has also made me think about some things.  A year ago, we were just telling our family and friends about her impending arrival.  A year ago, I was growing and incubating a human.  I have a hard time really thinking back on that because it honestly feels like it that all happened to someone else.  Again, I don't mean that in the context most people do when they make that statement.  I don't mean that she's changed me so much that last year I was a different person than I am now.  I'm still me.  I just feel like all of that happened to someone else.  Even while I was pregnant, I felt like it was all happening to someone else.  I never connected with being pregnant.  I never felt this deep connection with the baby.  I never made statements like "I'm already just so in love" because the truth is, I wasn't.  I feel like that whole portion of my life was an out of body experience where my brain and the rest of me weren't really connected.  I didn't marvel at her movements.  I don't miss them now that they're gone.  Pregnancy was something that happened to me, not something I participated in.

That said, parenthood has been a total opposite.  Parenting is something I participate in.  It is something that feels real.  I'm in it.  I'm there.  I don't miss her kicking me as a fetus but I do miss her smile when I haven't seen her for a while.  Now she isn't an abstract.  Now she is a person, and that feels so much more important.  I didn't do amazing and important work by growing and birthing her.  I could have done that in a coma.  I'm doing something important now when I'm taking care of her and keeping her safe and loved.  It's probably not the most important thing I'll ever do, but it is important and I'm usually pretty good at it.  Six months has taught me to love her, to appreciate her, to understand her.  Six months has taught me how to be a mom.  Six months has helped me learn how to be me while still helping her learn to be her.  Six months went by fast.  The next six will go by fast as well.  But that's ok.  I'm always ready for the next milestone.  I don't mourn what I loss as she gets older, I celebrate what she's gaining, and so far she's turning out to be pretty cool.

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A bit of truth

If I'm being honest, I love my daughter.  I love her probably more than I let on to others.  I love her gummy smile and the fact that most of her face is dominated by these huge beautiful eyes that spend all of their time taking in everything around her.  I love that she's a little pig who loves nothing so much as she loves eating.  I love that she's developing preferences.  I love that she's loves her jump jump, and that she likes going on walks.  I love that she keeps learning new things, and that watching her learn about life is not at all sad for me.  It's exciting.  I love that she's smart and curious, that she is beautiful and funny, and the sound of her laugh is one of the best sounds in the world.

And, if I'm being honest with myself, I think she loves me too.  Sometimes she leans toward me when someone else is holding her.  Sometimes I come over to where she can see me and she smiles.  Sometimes I sing to her after bath time and she grins and kicks her feet because she's so happy.  But my favorite, my absolute favorite thing, is that lately she just seems to want to stare at me.  There are often times when I'm feeding her and she stares up at me and just grins, like she's so happy to see me.  Yesterday, I was feeding her and she kept reaching up gently and running her hand along the bottom of my hair, eyes smiling as she touched it, then she'd pull her hand back and do it again and sigh, and I melted.  Sometimes I think that she might love me just about as much as I love her.

And I'm ok with that.

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