I’m going to take another blog post, another day, to be really real with you guys. I had another hard, shitty week. Not for the same reasons, but crappy just the same. I’m felt less alone this week, but another hard week, and when I started writing this it was Thursday if that gives you any indication of where this week is at.
I haven’t been getting much sleep. And I know a lot of people are going to think “well you have a newborn so that’s to be expected no reason to complain”. The thing about that though is, he’s been sleeping. He’s been sleeping really well actually (knock on wood). I however have not been sleeping well. The past week or so the baby has been having 4-6 hour stretches of sleep with me, more often than not, having to wake him up to eat so that he doesn’t get dehydrated or overly hungry and hurt my nipples. I mean, good for that guy that he gets to sleep though am I right?
So I haven’t been getting sleep and then on top of that, I had my service wide exam on Wednesday. For those who don’t know what that is, (I’m expecting that’s most of you), it’s a test you have to take that ultimately determines if I get promoted (advance) to make more money. So I had this test on Wednesday that I had to study for. I had studied a lot before maternity leave, but obviously hadn’t really had much time to after the baby arrived. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I kept trying to study to no avail. I really tried, but it is incredibly difficult to do when your husband has homework, your two toddlers decide to alternate between screaming and sitting next to you asking endless questions, and you have a hungry and sometimes grumpy baby that doesn’t like to be put down. On top of that one of those days, an incident with a woman in the CG getting masted came to light that really tore me for reasons that I probably shouldn’t get into and probably shouldn’t even bring it up at all but, it really upset me and made my week worse. Anyway, the less I got to study for my test the more stressed I became about how I would do on Wednesday when the test day rolled around. Then Tuesday Joe managed to distract the kids for a little while in the guest room/playroom so I could study. That made me feel really guilty though so I couldn’t focus as much I wanted to, but I tried. Baby Joey was also cluster feeding on Tuesday topping the day off with over 3 hours of feeding when he usually averages a little less than 2.5 hours of feeding. I also had my postpartum appointment that day which I guess was good because my doctor is awesome and I got cleared and then went on my merry little way. I tried to study again Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning but didn’t really get much done. The good news I guess is that I feel like I did ok on my test, especially considering the handfuls I was juggling.
We also decided this week to completely cut out TV for the kids, so they’ve been decidedly more rambunctious and rebellious. It has made life harder to not be able to just toss them in front of the TV for a break sometimes, and we aren’t those parents that are completely against screen time, but it needed to be done. Let me explain. Mark is OBSESSED with TV. He wasn’t playing with toys anymore, wasn’t doing his learning activities, didn’t want to play outside, and didn’t want to sleep. He just wanted TV. It was at a point where he would wake up at 4 AM just to sneak out to the living room and watch TV and he wouldn’t stop watching all day despite us turning it off he would just turn it back on. He’s a very intelligent child so it was time to knock that off and we have to do things with him full swing one way or the other or he doesn’t get it. So we decided it was best to just take a break so maybe he can get out of this phase and back into what he used to enjoy doing. It also opened up a door for us to spend more actual quality time together, sit and talk to each other, really enjoy each other’s company, have fun, and have some family time. I’ll also admit that Mark’s Netflix usage is really annoying because he feels the need to pick a new show every 20 minutes so my “continue watching” list is like 12 pages long.
Anyway, while I was relieved my test was over on Wednesday night, we had a couple of incidents that really put a damper on that night. First off, I was exhausted and have been getting terrible headaches for weeks with no medical explanation, though I think it’s probably due to the lack of sleep. So I’m at home, tired and relaxing with the kids while Joe is shooting golf balls in the garage. Marks starts acting all crazy, not listening, and pulling dangerous stunts off the couch so I yelled at him, which made the baby start screaming bloody murder because his poor little ears couldn’t take the sound. So now I’m feeling bad for losing my cool when Rose accidentally smacks the baby in his soft spot while flailing her arms around. Now he’s crying harder, obviously, and I’m feeling like the worst mom in the world. I call Joe back into the house and start going through my mental checklist of steps to makes sure the baby is ok. His eyes are dilating fine, he stopped crying, he seemed completely normal and fell back asleep within like 5 minutes unfazed, but then I touched his soft spot to check it. It felt really caved in to me so I immediately called the doctor who pretty much told me he should be fine, babies are resilient and to just feed him and keep an eye on him. I tried to feed him and he wouldn’t eat and his soft spot really just didn’t feel right to me. Now I’m panicking, I’m crying, I’m the absolute worst mom alive. I set alarms for every hour and a half all night to make sure he was ok and not getting dehydrated. He was fine, but I was absolutely exhausted come Thursday morning.
Thursday morning rolls around and I got like maybe an hour of sleep after everyone woke up before Mark decided to stomp around outside my bedroom door to wake me up and then I got greeted with a child wanting a boob. I went through all day exhausted despite having three large coffees. By Thursday night around 8 or 9 PM, I really was just not feeling well. I was feeling really weak and ended up having a slight fever of 99.7 before bed. Really just not doing great but waking up every few hours to feed the baby anyway, obviously because he still needs to eat and breastmilk shares antibodies so I hear so it was important for me to know he was getting my antibodies while I was sick. The next day I felt really sick and was in bed until about 8 or 9 PM again and Joe was on his own for the most part, at least with the older two, the majority of the day. Luckily by bedtime, my fever was gone and I was feeling pretty great, aside from being tired, again. But a special thank you to whoever got me sick ( I don’t this person or their name) in the one time that I left my house and didn’t wear a mask so that I could take my test without having fogged up glasses (we were like 4 feet apart and were allowed to take off our masks for the test so don’t yell at me I’m literally so cautious all the time except this one occasion so that I could see). What a great time. Great people.
Friday wasn’t a great day to start off with so I guess being sick was just the icing on the cake. See, we lost my grandpa on that day 15 years ago and I always take it really hard. It’s a sad day for me. A day I still mourn on. A day I think too much and cry too hard. So being sick really just topped it off for me. Friday just really sucked. I knew going into the week it was going to suck, but it was obviously worse than anticipated.
When Saturday rolled around I was hopeful that I would have one good day. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. I don’t want to discuss but it just wasn’t a good day for me. I ended the week tired and just completely ready for the week to be over. I’m glad that I had Joe to hold my hand through this one because thankfully that’s all I needed this time. Here’s to this week to come being better I guess. Here’s to no incidents, more sleep, and just an all together better week. And if you too had a bad week last week, I hope this one is better for you too. Whether a good or bad week last week, I think we all deserve a good one this week. A relaxing one.
Much love and much luck,
Your exhausted motherhood introvert
