Frustrations

I have a confession.  Sometimes I get frustraited with my baby.   Not just a little... a lot!   He is now 4 1/2 months old and usually he's completely adorable.  But since he's learned how to roll over, he sometimes uses that little trick to express his frustration.  If he's sitting on my lap and decides he's not comfortable or isn't happy, he'll arch his back and roll to his left.  It makes it very difficult to hang onto him and is incredibly frustrating when you're trying to feed him. 

At times he's just cranky and it doesn't matter what you do, he's not satisfied.  As his mommie, it's my job to make it better but I sometimes just can't figure it out.  Incidently the answer is usually that he's tired but doesn't want to go to sleep.  But in those 30 minutes or so before I realize what's happening, I can become so stressed that I almost get angry.

These isn't the first times I've been frustraited with him though.  When he was a newborn we had a couple of days and nights when it just seemed like he screamed nonstop.  He has never cried much so this was torture for me.  I just couldn't figure out what was wrong.  After 48 straight hours without any real sleep, I was exceptionally frustraited.  It was at that point that I understood how someone could shake a baby.  Please understand that I never shook him, but I was frustraited and exhausted and I suddenly saw how someone could be driven to that.  It turned out that he had a very upset tummy and switching formulas made a world of difference.  But that 2 day period almost broke me.  At one point I even sat on the couch and cried with him for a couple hours just to let go of some of the stress. 

Then there are the men in our lives... I love my husband dearly.  He is a wonderful man and a great father to our baby boy.  But he's still a man.  Over the last few days we've been working on getting Eli to sleep in his own bed instead of ours.  We want him to start sleeping in the pack-n-play in our bedroom so that we can later make the transition to the crib in his room.  This means that for the first few days I was up 3-4 times a night soothing him.  I typically got him and was out of our bedroom before he started screaming.  I would be up for 1 or 2 hours trying to lay him back down 3 or 4 times during that period.  To say I wasn't getting much sleep would be an understatement.  By the 4th night without sleep, I was at the point that I was HURTING.  I mean in physical pain due to lack of sleep.  My back ached so bad that I had to take a Tylenol to get comfortable so that I could go to sleep. 

About day 3 of this little weekend sleep-routine adventure I began to get irritable.  I would sit in the living room holding baby boy at 2 in the morning and become almost angered by the sound of my husband snoring in the other room.  How dare he sleep when I was so tired?!  Then around mid afternoon on day 4, I was saying how tired I was and he had the audacity to say that he was tired too.  "Ha!" I thought.  "I've not slept a full night in 4 days and you're tired." 

Even my poor doggies have taken some abuse due to my sleep deprivation and frustraition.  I've fussed at them without cause some this week or for shaking their heads and jinggling the tags on their collars as I worried they might wake the baby and disturb the few minutes of sleep I do get. 

Looking back now I know that me being the sleep deprived one was best for everyone.  Baby boy doesn't do well when his daddy tries to get him to sleep and daddy runs out of patience far too easily.  And to be perfectly honest, when my husband fails to get enough sleep, he is so cranky that I can't really deal with him.
As for the dogs, they are natrually forgiving creatures, and I'll have to be sure to bring them a new bone home from the grocery store

My point is this... During the journey of motherhood, I believe that it is common to become frustraited with your children, your husband, work colleagues, everyone and everything around you.   In fact, it is virtually inevitable.  What we can control is how we react to it and how we let it change us.  Take time, step back, and examine the situation.  When I do that, I can remember that this time with my baby boy when he needs and wants me around will be far too brief.  So if I am exhausted, angry, stressed, irritable, and frustraited with the world around me, I can take a deep breath and stop for a minute to enjoy the extra time with my baby boy... even at 2 in the morning.