Finding Balance

If anyone is still out there at all I promise I'm not dead.  I'm just a mom.  I thought this would be a great place for me to have to vent and discuss things we're currently going through in our home and all kinds of things, but right now it's just another thing that isn't getting done. 

Today I find myself struggling to find balance.  You see, I'm not a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM).  I'm a full-time-and-then-some working professional mom.  I love my job and I really don't think I'm cut out for the SAHM lifestyle (though there are times when it sounds lovely).  However, I'm sure that this is definatley one of those grass being greener on the other side scenarios. 

In any event, this week I'm a little hormonal (read PMS-ing) and I've fallen into the trap of becoming a Mommy Martyr.  I believe we all fall into that mode from time to time, but I know that I personally have a high propensity for getting there.  I've always been one of those Type A personalities who wants to be everything for everyone and be perfect at it.  But none of us are perfect and no mom to a 7 month old baby has time to do everything on the to-do list. 

Let me walk you through my normal day. 

• 5:00 am: Leap from bed and throw the alarm clock through the wall (I hate that stupid thing).  Let the dogs out to pee, take meds, and begin getting dressed for the day.
• 5:20 am: Check the clock and notice that 20 minutes have passed and you still haven't fixed your hair.
• 5:30 am: Finish fixing hair and makeup, throw on any work-appropriate clothing you can find in the closet.  Wake up husband (the 1st time). Go to the kitchen to fix lunches.
• 5:40 am: Lunches ready to go.  Wake up husband again (2nd time).  Do some other necessary housework.  (fold laundry, empty dishwasher, start supper for that night, pick up toys, etc.)
• 5:45 am:  Make sure/Wake up husband again (3rd and final time ususally).  Let dogs out again. More housework.
• 6:00 am:  Make sure husband is finally in the shower.  Finish up any last little chore I can before getting baby up.
• 6:10 am:  Get baby up, changed, dressed, and ready for daycare. 
• 6:20 am: Remind husband that it's almost time to go.  Play with baby and take baby to play with hubby for a minute while hubby finishes dressing.  Let dogs out to pee one last time.
• 6:30 am:  Running late... just now leaving house when we should have left 5 minutes ago. 
• 6:35 am:  Drop baby at daycare, stop and get gas (if needed), drive to work.
• 7:20 am:  Arrive at work (45 minutes from home).  Realize that I still haven't eaten breakfast.  Go to breakroom and warm up some of the oatmeal I keep stashed in my desk. 
• 7:30 am:  Finally at the desk and eating breakfast.  Check e-mail, calendar, and get settled in for work.  Workday may be super busy or not (varys day to day).  Inevitable that there will be some stupid person to deal with.
• 12:00 pm:  Finally time for lunch.  Grab my brown-bagged lunch and eat while working.
• 4:00 pm:  May be finished working or may work up to another hour.
• 4:30 pm:  Typical time to head home.  Drive for 45 minutes.
• 5:15 pm:  Pick up baby from daycare and head home.
• 5:30 pm:  Get into house, let dogs out to pee, change out of work clothes,  fix supper while trying to play with baby who has now missed his late afternoon nap.  Recruit hubby to play with baby for a few.
• 6:00 pm:  Supper is ready.  Hubby eats while I attempt to eat and feed baby at the same time. 
• 6:30 pm:  Clean up supper while baby plays in high chair. 
• 6:40 pm:  Baby is screaming and tired of the high chair.  Leave dishes for tomorrow morning, wipe baby's face, and get started on bathtime. 
• 7:00 pm:  Baby's bath is finished, Now it's time for a diaper, PJs, and playing in the floor with baby.  Sometimes I can fold some clothes or something during this time too.  It all depends on how happy baby is.
• 8:00 pm:  Almost bedtime for baby.  Settle in on the couch with a bottle and a book to read to him.  Rock baby to sleep.
• 8:45 pm:  Baby has finally settled down and gone to sleep.  Take him to bed. Then pick up any toys so that dogs don't eat them, put remaining bottle in fridge, let dogs out to pee.
• 9:00 pm:  Hubby goes to bed and I hop in the shower.  (It's more efficient to shower at night than to have to spend time drying my hair in the morning). 
• 9:20 pm:  Shower is done.  Turn off lights and fall into bed.  On a good night I only wake up and check the baby monitor 3-4 times.  By 4:00 am I'll be waking up every 20 minutes checking the clock. 

So you can see that there is almost no time remaining in my schedule.  I could try and do with less sleep, but if I don't get at least 7 hours a night I'll be sick at the end of a month (and there really isn't time for sick).  But all-in-all, I just don't have the time to get everything done.  It's not even close.  I'm learning to let the housework go as much as possible.  But sometimes, having a dirty house just makes me crazy and I can't let it go.  Then everything starts to build up until I explode. 

So that is where I am now... all built up and ready to explode.  Last night the baby blessed me and fell asleep on the couch at 7:15.  I put him to bed just after 8.  Wow... I got a whole hour back.  I jumped into action and went to clean the kitchen.  Then hubby comes into the kitchen and starts messing with me.  At first I couldn't tell if he was just aggrivating me or trying to turn me on.  I probably snapped at him and told him to go away too quickly but I was already feeling stressed. 

You see, typically, while I bathe, feed, and play with baby he sits at the computer or watches TV.  Now that is bad enough.  I already feel like I'm doing everything and don't have a minute to breathe yet he has time to surf the web aimlessly.  But at least he's present in the room and if I need something I can ususally get him to bring me a bottle or a diaper or something.  But last night while I did all my running around, he stayed on the phone in another room.  So I was really on my own with no help whatsoever. 

But back-to-the sexing me up part of the story.  After I put the baby in bed I ran to try to get some things finished up in the kitchen.  Then he comes in apparently trying to sex-me-up.  Part of me probably knew what he was really after (and it was just sex-type things for him).  To further complicate our situation, I can't take any form or birth control due to the hormones in them.  So it's either a condom (which he practially refuses) or careful timing (which means we can only do it like 1 week a month).  That means we have like no sex life at all (at least I don't).  Hubby still feels that he should get "special treatment" to satisfy his "problems" from time to time.  That is no fun for me and really just feels like sucking another 20-30 very unpleasant minutes out of my day.  So to say I'm not thrilled when he requests that is an understatement. 

So last night after I snapped at him a little too quickly, I got the cold shoulder and spent what could have been an hour getting more things done or catching up on sleep appologizing and promising "special treatment" tonight.  Now today, I'm more stressed out than yesterday and dreading going home.  I feel resentful toward my husband for adding one more item to my to-do list.  I have fallen deep into the Mommy Martyr pit of despair.  The fact that we can't actually have sex very often leaves me feeling less like a loved wife and more like a cheap prostitute, mostly because by the time we can enjoy the real thing Hubby is so revved up that he doesn't take the time to make love.  It's more a wham-bam-thank-you-maam. 

So how do I plan on pulling myself out of this abyss?  Well I'm not quite sure yet.  Part 1 of my plan involves me making some attitude adjustments.  I can't let myself stay in this pit and I'm the only one who can do something about it.  I hear that working out can relieve some of the stress so I'm going to go try to spend 30 minutes on the treadmill this afternoon during my lunch break.  Part 2 should probably be a nice long talk with Hubby about how I'm feeling.  I have lots of trouble doing this and he has even more trouble actually talking about his feelings.  But what I want is to get everything on the table so that we can begin to address the issue.  I haven't quite figured out what Part 3 needs to be, but maybe Hubby and I can figure that part out together. 

In the meantime... I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are?

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.

Things I didn't really know until I got pregnant.

Congratulations! For better or worse you are now pregnant and within just 9 (more like 10) short months you'll be holding your little bundle of joy in your arms.  But before you witness those first breaths and count fingers and toes you have 10 long months ahead of you and multiple reality checks.  So with that, I present the following list of things that I didn't know until I actually became pregnant.

1. Pregnancy is a 10 month process.  -- We always hear about pregnancy being 9 months.  Well that is just plain WRONG.  Pregnancy is 40 weeks (starting from the first day of your last period).  Counting 4 weeks a month means that is take 10 (not 9) months to grow a baby.  Did you know this?  "Wait! I only signed on for 9 months.  Is it too late for a refund?"

2. While pregnant, a woman's sense of smell is on the same order of magnitude as the nose of a blood hound.  -- I first suspected I was pregnant while walking through the grocery store.  It was a Saturday and the store had a nice old lady dispensing free samples of some new frozen food they were carrying.  I smelled this food and my stomach immediately decided to reject the breakfast I'd eaten 3 hours before.  At first I thought I was crazy because I couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from.  5 aisles over, I finally ran into the food cart.  At least I wasn't crazy but I was very, very pregnant. 

3. Your due date is only as acurate as your record keeping. -- When I went for my first prenatal appointment I was asked the first date of my last period.  Well, I'm usually pretty good at writing that down, but the one month I forget happens to be the month I got pregnant.  When the doc asked for my date to compute my due date I had to guess.  When we had a first ultrasound a couple weeks later, it showed I was a week and a half behind what I'd estimated.  I spent the entire pregnancy with two due dates a week and a half apart.  It was anybody's guess.

4.  Being pregnant is not an excuse to eat anything and everything.  -- It turns out in the early weeks of pregnancy that you only need to consume about 300 more calories than normal to adequately nourish the child.  Eating way more than that will just result in excess weight gain and (if you have the same doctor that I do) lectures from your doctor. 

5.  Keeping something like that a secret is hard work.  -- Given everything that can happen in those first few weeks, hubby and I decided that the pregnacy would be our little secret until we were 3 months along.  Well that was a tough thing to do.  When we'd go eat dinner with my folks and I refused a glass of wine I had to say that I was dieting (not pregnant).  When someone's lunch at work would turn my stomach, I had to make excuses to step outside for relief.  I had to avoid being moodier than normal (or at least showing that I was moodier than normal) and I had to battle those evil hormones daily.  We ended up sharing the news sooner so that we weren't announcing our baby at a family member's wedding but while we were keeping things under wraps it was hard.

6.  The world doesn't stop just because you're expecting.  -- Expecting a child does not give you a free pass to lie around and do nothing all the time.  You'll feel like that's all you want to do, but that isn't how life works.  You still have to get out of bed in the morning and go to work.  You still have family functions, holidays, housework, laundry, and possibly other children to manage.  Oh, and don't forget that you now have to plan for there to be another person living with you in a few months.

Consignment Sale Shopping

These kiddos are expensive!  In addition to all the diapers and formula and doctor bills that we're buying our little man is going through clothes like nobody's business.  Seriously, we wear an outfit a couple of times before we've outgrown it.  It's just plain rediculous how fast they grow at this age. 

Given how fast these little babies grow up, I don't see any reason for purchasing new items at $10 an outfit.  I can get clothes that are in wonderful shape and are gently used at the local consignment sales that typically happen twice a year.  I went today and spent $40 and ended up with 13 clothing items, 3 Dr Brown's Bottles (normally $20 consigned for $8), a dishwasher basket (new $3, consigned $1), a sun screen for the car window (consigned for $1), and a new summer hat to keep the sun off of little man's face for just $2.  I estimate that if I'd purchased all of this new I'd have spent about $96.  So I consider today's haul a good day. 

While shopping today I realized 2 important things...
1.  I should not be buying more clothes in BabyE's current size.  I should be buying a size or two ahead of where he is now so that he will actually get to wear the clothes that I buy. 
2.  I've been to 4 sales so far this spring and gotten a thing or two at each of them but I haven't yet shopped on a 1/2 price day.  This habbit has seriously got to stop!  If I'm looking for something special (a new pack-n-play, a swing, a high chair, etc.) it's worth the extra to get first pick of the loot.  If I'm just looking for clothes and other things we might need in the future I can wait until the half price days to shop.  In the future, I may pick one sale each fall and spring to go to on the first day and get the things we really need and a few cute outfits.  All the other sales I will limit myself to half-price days only. At the larger sales there will be plenty left on the first 1/2 price day and I'll save way more. 

In my area I can find 10 consignment sales that won't be too hard to get to every fall or spring.  I'll probably actually make it to less than half of those but I have every opportunity to think through and actually get what we need without having to buy retail.  These sales are spaced out over roughly a 4 month period each fall and spring so managing to get to the sales shouldn't be a problem.  I'll consign items at one or two of the sales that I decide to shop early at (probably the smaller sales) the others I'll just drop by on the public shopping days.

If you're expecting a baby or already have one, you've got to check out some of these sales.  There are great bargains that can save you some cash and we can all use some extra cash in our pockets.

Deciding to Make a Baby

So you and your significant other have decided to make a baby.  Are you sure that you've thought this one through?  Yes, babies are lovely little things and the thoughts of counting those tiny fingers and toes can make all of us get a little giddy with excitement.  But... have you imagined the day that you go home from the hospital?

What's it going to be like on that first day when you find yourself in an empty house with just Mommie, Daddy, and Baby?  Yes, I know it's going to be blissful... you picture yourself rocking baby gently while he sleeps.  Yes that might happen, but eventually baby wakes and wants food, PRONTO! Now you and hubby are in a house with a screaming, hungry, baby.  "That's easy!" you say, "just feed baby."  Okay but baby is a newborn and your milk hasn't yet come in and you can't afford formula and baby isn't latching well and you were up all night trying to feed the night before and all he wants to do is scream.  In fact, he's not even attempting to nurse. 

Odds are the events that I've just described will happen to you at some point in the first few days that baby is at home.  We've all been there and we all know that at some point it is likely to happen.  If you are considering having a child and you haven't thought through and accepted this reality, it's time to do so. 

And while we're talking about realities, let's discuss money.  My hubby and I are both very well paid professionals.  We have nice steady jobs that we feel secure in with great benefits.  And yet, I'll freely admit that our finances were not nearly as prepared for baby as we would have liked.  Babies somehow cost more than anyone can possibly imagine.  We spent hundreds (not thousands because I'm cheap) prior to baby's arrival to prepare the house and a nursery.  Then there were hospital bills, doctor bills, and don't even get me started on how expensive diapers and formula are.  If you can't afford to double your grocery bill to afford diapers and formula, you too are not financially prepared. 

Oh, and don't forget in that budgeting for baby to set aside costs for daycare or be able to give up one person's income.  Daycare in my area can range from $300 to $1200 a month.  I live in a fairly low-cost area too so I can't imagine what daycare costs would be in urban areas.  In some cases it really is more economical for one parent to stay home than to pay for daycare. 

Now don't get me wrong, my baby boy is worth every single penny I spend on him.  I'd take a second or third job if necessary just to support him.  I love him and there isn't a single thing I wouldn't do for him.  I've learned to cope with his very occasional screaming fits and how to soothe him when nothing else will.  But at one point I was just sitting on the couch crying with my baby because he was crying and I didn't know what else to do.  If you are considering making a baby, you'd better think through the items above or you may find yourself in a very ugly situation. 

Welcome and Prepare Yourself

Hello there, World?  How you doin'? 

While taking a shower the other day and contemplating the fact that a certain completely clueless someone in my life is now expecting her first child I had this idea.  Really, the idea is an idea for a book, but I don't have time to write a book right now so for now this will just be a blog.  My idea is to document all the ugly beautiful truths about motherhood from creating a child to pregnancy to labor and delivery to parenting daily and on and on.  This may take a lifetime to write. 

I've been a mom to my first baby, a sweet wonderful little boy for almost 4 months now.  In that time I've been blessed beyond measure by the presence of my little boy.  Motherhood truly is beautiful.  But let's face it... it's an ugly job too.  There are poopy diapers, screaming fits, extreme guilt, spit-up, and exhaustion (and that's a good day).  I'm convinced that sometimes people like my clueless friend look at a beautiful pregnant woman or hold a newborn baby for 20 minutes and think that it is all just wonderful.  Well it is but it's not always so easy. 

My goal is to tell the straight-up, honest-to-goodness, no-holes-barred truth - the good, the bad, and especially the ugly.  Moms out there currently in the throws of experiancing pregnancy, a newborn baby, or toddler tantrums can find a place here to vent, commiserate, and laugh at ourselves.  We all know life is crazy and we'll all be a little better off if we can take a step back in our exhaustion and laugh at ourselves, each other, and our clueless friends who think mommie-dom is all pink and blue cupcakes.  Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a wild ride.