So I am 30 weeks along.
Whoa.
That feels pretty significant. I made it into the 30's. I have no idea how I made it here, but here I am. I mean, once you get up into the 30's anywhere, stuff starts to get real, right?
I've been feeling like... wow, there's so much to do before baby gets here. Starting a mere few weeks ago, here was my big event to-do list:
Spencer's Birthday
Halloween
Nathan's Birthday
Thanksgiving
Cody's Birthday
Christmas
THEN Baby.
Now I've got 2 of those things crossed off, but still. It feels like a lot I need to get through before baby. And, I feel like I've just got to document this in case some day Leah or this baby girl goes back and is like, "How did my mom do it?" I'll tell you: not very well, girls, not very well. I have been STRUGGLING. Not physically, so much. I mean, yeah. Being pregnant is not great. The fact that I can't sleep longer than 2 hours without having to go to the bathroom is not great. The way that my hips BURN after an hour of sleeping on any one side is not great. Gaining weight and feeling semi crummy about how I look is not great. All of that is not great. But it's expected. It's fairly normal. And I know that it'll pass. But the not greatest thing of all has been emotional. I have been a train wreck this time around. I don't know what it is, but I have been feeling SO overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the current life I lead and overwhelmed at the thought of adding a baby to it.
I alluded to it in a previous post, but September was a hole. A deep dark dungeon of difficulty, despair and distress. (But as you see, it has not hampered my alliterative ability.) Nathan's arm was a BIG problem. Nathan's emotional reaction to his arm was a big problem. My needing to counsel and console and comfort (see? You can't keep me down. I'll make a living off of alliterating one day, wait and see.) was emotionally draining for me. Plus, since it's long over and it's not happening again any time soon, I'll also tell you, Ryan was gone for literally half of September. Gone every other weekend, but they were extra long weekends, starting on like Wednesdays and such. Gone for special seminars and conferences and doing extra talks at work even when he was "here" and gone gone gone. I was alone dealing with Nathan and his distress, as well as keeping all the rest of the plates spinning. Soccer, scouts, parties, Back to School night, whatever. Single momming it stinks. I literally had one night where I flipped my lid over something (in hindsight) very insignificant, and I told all the children to go upstairs and entertain yourselves until it was time for bed, and at THAT time, PUT yourselves and Spencer to bed but do not come back down here and do not bother me because I will be in my room sobbing. And this is exactly how it transpired. Bless their hearts. I feel guilty. I felt guilty even at the time, but I truly had lost any hold on my emotional reality and I cried and cried and cried for hours. I took a bath. I calmed down. Ryan finally called from Boston. I started crying again and kept at it for another few hours.
WHAT A MESS, right?? What a mess. And when I think about it rationally, I have no reason to be this overwhelmed. Look at my life. My husband is TRULY nice and very supportive. You know him. He picks up WAY too much of my slack (another reason to feel guilty-like he doesn't have enough on his plate!) He is kind. He is a great father. He is everything, everything I could hope for in a husband and more. I have great children. They have no glaring troubles. I mean, they are kids, but they are awfully nice ones and generally well behaved. We have enough money. I'm not saying we're rolling in it, but I don't feel stress about putting food on the table. We live in a nice house that's big enough for our needs, I mean, what WHAT in my life is worthy of the level of overwhelm that I feel? Hm? NOTHING. So why, why WHY has it been so hard for me?
It's hard for me to get dinner on the table. From the moment the childrens get home from school, there are 1 million things to sign, supervise, do and drive to. Sample day: (just a SAMPLE of a day, but true in every aspect.) Nathan has let me know the night before that he has to have a black shirt and black pants and black shoes and black socks for his orchestra concert the next day. He also has a doctor's appointment that day. I have precisely 2 hours after the appointment to comb the countryside for these items in his giant boy, but not quite man size, and preferably ones that will not break the bank. Leah is set to get home at 4:15. At precisely 4:20, she has to be at a birthday party. Get the black clothes (miracle), get home, get Leah dressed in her princess outfit, get her to said birthday party. Get home. Get Cody some food so he can be to soccer at 5:15. Get Cody to soccer. Get home again. Get Nathan some food so he can be to his orchestra concert by 6. Don't worry, Leah is also supposed to be picked up at 6. Get Cody from soccer at 6:30. Get Nathan from concert at 7:15 (oh, I'm sorry, did you notice that I did not GO to said concert? Yeah. That's right. I didn't go. He said he didn't care, since he's obviously not playing his bass in it, and they're having him plunk the bass notes on a piano. So whatever.) At what point in there was I supposed to make dinner? Oh, don't worry, we had some. I made it in the crock pot before I left for all the morning activities, so it was a matter of scooping it up at the appropriate times for whoever needed calories at the moment. But a day like that wipes me out. And that's not the only day LIKE that. It's not like I picked the only one worst day ever. No. There's always something. More than one something. Get Cody to scouts from 4:45-5:45. Get him to basketball at 7. Have parent teacher conferences somewhere in between. I mean, it's always something. And Ryan does not get home until maybe 6:45, sometimes 7, and about once a week, even later, like 8:30. So all the dropping off and picking up and craziness is all RIGHT HERE with me. (Except one Friday when the kids didn't have school, but I still had a bunch of appointments and craziness and nonsense, and I realized that I had to be across town at the time that Cody was supposed to be picked up from a birthday party. So what did I do? I left Nathan here, set a timer, pulled up the route to get to the kid's house, and said, "When this timer goes off, I want you to walk your sweet self down and pick your brother up from his birthday party. You will then walk home and just wait here until I get back." 10-15 minute walk for Nathan, 10-15 minute walk back for both of them, and it totally worked out.)
And what do I want to do? I want to hibernate. I want to nap for hours every day. I just want peace and quiet and staying at home and sweatpants and sleep. And someone else to make the food for me. All the things denied to me.
I'm hoping it'll improve after baby's born, even though I'm dubious about it because under what situation does having a newborn IMPROVE one's level of overwhelm?? But pregnancy is weird because you slowly transition into a different person, but it's so slow that you don't realize it has happened. It's not like you find out you're pregnant, then boom, you suddenly lose control of your emotions. It happens imperceptibly along the way. And then eventually you find yourself at 30 weeks going, hm. I think if I weren't pregnant I could deal with this a little better, but you can hardly remember what your non pregnant self is like anymore.
Sigh. I don't know. I hope it improves. I think it will. But I just had to put it out there that this is the real truth for right now. I need my daughter(s!) to know that if some point down the road, they're struggling and life is hard and pregnancy and kids and getting dinner on the table is hard, so it was for their mother before them and that they are not alone. I find that we don't often confess to the hard but true things about our lives, and I think this may give others the impression that they are alone if they are struggling. Case in point? Ryan and I fought during our first year of marriage. We fought about all KINDS of stuff. About TV. About spinach. About nonsense. But no one around us was talking about or admitting to fighting. We were surrounded by newlyweds who said things like, "Isn't marriage BLISS? It is SO awesome being married to your best friend! It's like playing house every day!" And I would come home and tell Ryan that we must be the people who are going to end up getting divorced because everyone else is fine. Now that we made it through that and I've realized we're NOT getting divorced and that others were probably having a hard time of it too (some of them, at least), I think I should talk about it. I think I should freely and easily confess that we fought, that we had a hard time, but that's not the end of the world and we're ok now. We're great, in fact. So I think maybe I should confess this emotional difficulty I've had with this pregnancy. Maybe it helps someone else. Maybe it only helps me. I don't know. And I still honestly don't know why it has been this way. I don't know if it's hormonal or if it's a combination of situations in my life or a little of both.
Well anyway. Thanks for listening.
