No Enchanted Post Box

It’s a sad night tonight. I haven’t been able to fall asleep. Something has been niggling at me in the back of my mind, pressing forward, trying to come to the forefront of my consciousness. It couldn’t shake loose, so I watched Grey’s Anatomy online, which is a surefire way to make me cry. There’s something about crying, even over something completely unrelated, that stills my mind and causes things to rise to the surface that I never expected or saw coming. Things I thought I had made peace with long ago.

Laying here in bed while I type away, my son is sleeping swaddled on my chest. His little snuffling breath is music to my ears. His little twitches and sighs bring a smile to my lips. The smell that only new babies have overwhelms my senses. These things I treasure, imprint on my memory and tuck away in my heart. It’s moments like these that will tide me through teething, melt downs, and sleepless nights. It’s these memories that will be my lifeline through the struggle that is 2. And what I’ve heard about 3 and 4 and 5 and… Well, you get the picture.

What I’m feeling sad about, grieving a bit in my heart is that I don’t have this of my daughter. I have no little snuffling breath memories, no memory of how her head smells. The cooing. The eye contact. Nothing. I feel so cheated, so angry at times over it.

I’m mad at myself for not accepting that I needed help before she was almost half a year old. I want to go back in time and shake that version of me by the shoulders and shout in her face to get help. “You need to set aside your baggage about anti depressants!!!” I can picture myself saying. “You need to hold Aaron’s hand, call Sherry and tell her you want to take her up on her offer for a prescription. If you don’t, you will come to regret it!”

But I can’t. I can’t go back in time. I can’t write a letter to myself and put it in an enchanted post box to send it to my past self. All I can do is acknowledge my loss, accept it and move forward.

I use to think that moving forward was a continuous process. Now I view it as two steps forward and one step back to reflect. Then you take a great big sigh and take two more steps forward. Sometimes more than two. Sometimes it’s five or twelve. I’ve learned I can’t beat myself up about this step back to reflect and try to accept. That will only force me to step back further.

It feels more peaceful now that I’ve cried. My mind isn’t nearly as noisy as it was a few hours earlier. My heart is still sad, but in a much calmer way. I just want to snuggle my baby boy, shed a few more tears over what I’ve lost of his sister, and tuck away even more little bits of him in my heart as my baby.

A Moment of Peace and Silence

Well, relative silence. The radio is playing softly in the background.

Ella and Miles are both napping at the same time and I am holding neither of them! It’s a wonderful, glorious feeling. I got dishes washed, dinner in the crockpot, my lunch made and eaten while still warm. Oh, and used the bathroom BY MYSELF. Truly miraculous, I assure you.

I had a bit of a revelation last night and this morning. By the time Aaron got home from work, I was physically and emotionally at the end of my rope. My responses to any and all situations or questions were way out of proportion and I physically felt drugged. It was horrible. Aaron whisked Ella off to bed and I crawled into my own with Miles. Amazingly enough, he worked through Angry Baby Time with record speed and was out like a light by 8 pm! Instead of fulfilling my desire to stay up and do something for myself like read, knit, or watch tv on hulu.com, I turned off the lights and went to sleep.

This morning, I was able to get up without falling back to sleep for a few minutes. We ran errands to the local butcher shop and farmer’s market this morning, all before 10 am! Dinner is perking away in the crockpot with fresh pork chops and produce harvested locally and I was able to prep it while soothing Miles and involving Ella in the cooking process. The kids were the only ones to fall asleep during nap time, so now I am rewarded with a real lunch to be consumed while sitting down.

I need to remember that meeting my physical needs, no matter how desperately I crave some solo time, always has to come first. If I get enough sleep and eat appropriately, I am a better mom to my kids, a better wife to my husband, but most importantly I am better to myself.

And this picture has nothing to do with the topic of this post, but I find it super cute. I hear Ella calling from the kitchen for me to bring her the salt because she’s cooking. I was a bit alarmed, thinking she might be getting into something dangerous. Instead, this is what I found:

Fly By

Aaron’s putting Ella down. Miles is nursing in such a way that doesn’t require me to hold his head. May this be a regular thing! I’m really tired of having both hands occupied while nursing. It makes it difficult to interact with Ella.

Yesterday was a bad bad bad day. As in, I called a mom in the parenting group who I had never really met (she dropped off dinner for us and that was it) in tears, begging her to let us crash on her couch for a bit since she lives within walking distance of our house. Lots of good friends are within driving distance, but I thought I’d drive the car off the road if I had to listen to Miles’s ear piercing scream from being in the carseat all the way there. Mandy was incredibly gracious and kind and even met me half way to her house to push Ella’s stroller!

I think what made yesterday SO BAD was the fact that Ella refused to nap and I hadn’t slept well the night before. I was yelling at her constantly, Miles was having a horrible day due to the dairy still being in my milk despite being about a week now without it, and everything was rubbing me wrong. Today, Ella actually napped and the boy child and I napped with her for an hour and a half! He woke up then, so I got up with him and she slept for almost an hour after that!

Then Jenn came over, held Miles, played with Ella while I got some laundry going, dinner in the crock pot, and 3/4 of Ella’s toys (that she never plays with) packed away. Even though the living room is still messy, it seems SO much more manageable without all the extra plastic crap strewn around. I don’t mind picking up things she actually enjoys playing with. It’s the things she finds and throws around for fun and fits that kills me.

I even got 15 minutes in the bathroom to shower without anyone knocking on the door.

THAT was more than I’ve accomplished in 4 weeks. I feel so much more emotionally rejuvenated now that I don’t feel like a total slob/bump on a log.

To top it off, I’ve almost made it through the first full week of Aaron being back to work.

Even better, next week is a short week because he gets Monday off for Labor Day!