Friday, February 5, 2010

IQ: 32 and falling

I am not dead or sad or anything horrible.

I'm just so so sooooo tired. All the time. I get nine hours of sleep a night, and I'm still tired. This makes my writing kind of suck. I've written, oh, four entries in the last week or however long it's been, and scrapped them all because they make ME roll my eyes and gag over the boringness/whininess/stupidness of them. And I'm pretty willing to post just about anything.

People keep asking me how I'm doing. Honest answer:
  • I'm exhausted all the time. *With your first kid, you can nap whenever you want during pregnancy. It's glorious! With your second, you can nap when she naps... maybe. Except that her naptime is the only 2-3 hours of the day in which you can do whatever you want, and why waste that sleeping? Even when I do make myself try to nap, I just lie awake thinking about the fun stuff I could be cramming into my day instead of lying awake in bed. Moron.

    (But really, if I hear, "Sleep when the baby sleeps!" one more time, I might punch someone. That only happens when I'm out of my mind with exhaustion.)

  • All of the muscles in the front of my body from about mid-thigh to my belly button have given up. They are cranky and sore and at least one them screams every time I stand up. This happened with Grace, too, but I thought it was because of those stupid bees that chased me around the front lawn, and maybe I pulled a muscle. No, actually. This just happens. Super!

  • The remainder of my energy is spent feeling guilty about how little attention The Child is getting. The first five hours of the day are endless. She's delightful and beautiful and happy and funny, but I'm too tired to enjoy it. This makes me feel like the most awful mother ever. Especially since, every night after she goes to bed, it dawns on me yet again that I have only a few more weeks of just her. From now on, it will always be multiple children with seven different demands going at once. It seems so stupid that I'm too tiiiiiired (waaaah) to just suck it up and enjoy these last few weeks with her.

  • There are, of course, other, ickier things that I won't go into here, but that most women who have had children know all about. Basically, at the end of pregnancy, everything is squished or stressed, and that causes many different processes to go completely haywire. People, pregnancy is totally freaking bizarre.

    (I am telling you people, when you do get pregnant for the first time, I highly recommend cornering you most honest, crass friend (like me!) and forcing her to tell you all the things that nobody talks about. Nobody talks about them because it's rude to offer unsolicited advice, but I so very much wished sometimes that I had more rude, pushy people in my life. Some stuff is much easier to handle if you have forewarning.

*I actually waited tables until I was 6 months pregnant, then we were fixing up and moving into our house (which was a trash-out, so really filthy and lots of work). It wasn't all cozy naptime. But it was still so much easier for me than this time. I'd go to bed at like 2 in the morning, wake up at like 5, raring to go, and then crash midday for hours. It was weird.

The funny part is that I have it easy. I really do. Pregnancy is a breeze for me, compared to others. Which is why I don't ever give an honest answer. Because it's annoying to hear me whine. It's like when your classmate in high school with flawless skin harps on and on about that single stupid zit that's half hidden in her hairline, while your entire face is blotchy and yuck, half of it so oily its shine is visible from space and half of it so dry you look like you have leprosy (thanks, chlorine!).

So that's where I've been. Tired. And trying to come up with an answer to, "So, how are you doing?" that is neither a lie nor a laundry list of complaints. I think, "Great... for someone who is 36 weeks pregnant!" works out okay. Maybe. Or is that still too whiny?


In less whiny news, The Child is finally starting to walk. Kind of. I mean, little shuffling steps here and there, one or two at a time. For a kid who is just about fearless in every other way, she's extraordinarily cautious about walking.

Earlier today, I watched from across the room as she climbed onto the couch, placed a throw pillow on the floor next to the couch, and then calmly dove head-first back onto the floor (I don't know why the pillow; it didn't look like she was aiming for it). She lay there, silent, for about ten seconds, like, "Oh! Oh my! That really hurt! I'm rather... surprised..." and then the wailing began.

She stands in her high chair seat and dances, will climb just about anything (if she feels like it), but walking? Are you kidding me? I might fall! On my diapered bottom! On soft carpet!


We are going to move her room to the guest room so that the baby can have the room across from ours. The better to wake me up in the middle of the night. I am pretty sure we will have to disassemble the crib to do this. And because I am made of genius, I lost the directions about, oh, 15 months ago.


As usual, there was more, but I've completely forgotten it all. This child has robbed me of the last shreds of my intellect. Once she's born, I'll probably have to just lie in bed all day, drooling on myself, waiting for people to bring me the baby, and then have to have them latch her on properly.

So, instead of writing something fun and interesting not at all related to children, childbirth, or pregnancy, I'm going to end this awkwardly.

3 comments:

  1. I don't mind entire posts about pregnancy. Or being tired. But then, I'm pregnant and tired all the time, too. Maybe that has something to do with it. :) I actually do end up napping a lot when they nap (I worked *hard* to coordinate their naptimes so they'll take an afternoon nap together). I just figure I'll get my alone time in the evening after they go to bed. Thank goodness God made children need more sleep than adults, because imagine if they needed less? We'd go insane. No time to ourselves at all!

    Have you considered having the baby in a bassinet in your room for the first month or two? You can nurse her in bed and then put her right back in it, save you from having to wake up entirely and sit up with her to feed her, then put her back in another room and meander back to yours. It kept me from waking up quite so much, so I got a lot more sleep. I'm a bit jealous that you have a guest room, though.

    Wow, I didn't realize she wasn't walking yet! Funny that she's climbing all over the place but hasn't deigned to walk. Maybe she figures that once she demonstrates that she knows how, you'll actually expect her to do it, poor suffering thing. She might have to walk places holding your hand instead of being carried. Oh, the agony! Much better to avoid it as long as possible. Hmm. Maybe tell her about strollers and shopping carts, just in case that's the problem?

    New babies are hard work, but you'll still have plenty of time to bond with The Child (will the new baby be The Baby?). Can I warn you about one thing? Your little girl will, the first time you hold her after you've been holding your newborn in the hospital, feel huge. Like, you'll swear she gained 20 pounds and turned into a giant *kid* overnight. It's a bit freaky. Where did my baby go? It seriously disconcerted me. But, anyway, in contrast to the new baby, The Child will seem so adult, so smart, so fun and talkative that she'll still get the lion's share of your attention.

    Do you have a baby doll for The Child? I know my older daughter loved "nursing" her doll, changing her diaper, etc. and pretending to be a mommy.

    Also, do you have a good baby carrier? I highly recommend the Ergo baby carrier--expensive, but you can get used ones for a bit less from their website. If you swaddle, it's great because you can swaddle your baby, have her in the carrier, and when she falls asleep you can lift her right out and put her in bed without her waking. But regardless, having a good baby carrier is the key to being able to continue to live life and be active with The Child once the baby is around.

    Glad you finally updated, I've been checking for ages! I love your posts (and no, they're never boring).

    ReplyDelete
  2. We've tried multiple times to have Grace sleep in the same room as us. The first was when she was a newborn, and we thought it would be convenient. The other times have all been on trips, at various stages of her infancy. I don't sleep. At all. Not even after days of exhaustion. I'm the crappiest sleeper ever in the entire world, I swear. :P

    I have a sling and a Moby wrap. I would probably kick a puppy to get my hands on an Ergo. :) I do have a Bjorn, but that's just excruciating back pain after the baby reaches about 11 pounds. Which mine probably will within about a week of birth. Heh.

    Thanks for the tips! Grace already seems enormous to me. I can't even imagine what it'll be like after spending a couple days with the newborn.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kick the puppy, kick the puppy! Craigslist, and/or eBay. It was a huge $ stretch for us but worth it.

    It's true that the carrier REALLY helps a lot with "spending time with the new baby" while still being functional with the old baby.

    Also, I wish my new baby was on a schedule. J was sleepy newborn and I had to wake him to eat, so I've been in control of his sleep/eat schedule since day 1, literally. Since R was colicky-ish, I would just feed her the second she started fussing. Now she does not have a set feeding time, nap time, or bed time. It makes spending time with J more difficult because I can't plan my day.

    On to that - basically, like, ohmygosh, there have been days when I did not hang out with my son, like, practically at all, and he still loves me and is well adjusted. Those were tough days, both for my guilt and knowing that he was probably a bit lonely, but they aren't every day. Think of that and remember it when you get panicky. I was there, RIGHT THERE, like exactly right there stepping on your pregnant toes with my swollen pregnant toes, just 6 months ago. Right down to the pulled muscle (mine may have been a ligament or tendon).

    I don't post to my blog but once a week, ditto on twitter and facebook even, and I am still trying to balance doing work and housework and babies, but I'm just starting to get the hang of it, of ALL the things together. (The first couple months were getting the hang of just two babies and everything else be damned.)

    Here's hoping that you have everyone you need to support you over there, so you can focus on the babies.

    And for what it's worth, when R came, I spent a good chunk of my hospital time aching to see J. I missed him really bad, and as wonderful as a new new newborn is, I didn't have that "omg the old baby's Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge" moment, I begged to see him, and went "omg i want to hold him" when David brought him to the hospital. I couldn't pick him up the first 2 weeks - and I don't just mean the doc said that, I mean I felt the strain and knew better than to actually do it - and it KILLED ME. I was a bit angry at R. But I'm typing all this because I love R, loved her then even though I didn't know her very well and sometimes didn't like how difficult she was, and so if you don't get the "i love newbaby, you are a large monster" thing there's nothing wrong with that either.

    Although i'm not arguing with commenter above - 95% of the people I know did have that reaction. But I didn't and I do love my lil bebee.

    ReplyDelete