That would be the sound of me falling off the fence again, back on the side of I Want Another Baby After All. (Really, you should just stop reading if you're tired of this debate. I'm kind of tired of it too to be honest.)
A few days ago I saw this video while reading Dooce. (I have mixed feelings about her, so I'm whispering her name. That is the subject for another post.) Other women have said these things to me before, namely "it was easier because I knew what I was doing," but for some reason it sunk in this time. These are women who have no vested interest in whether I do it or not, so hearing a totally unbiased opinion helped. (I'm so tired that I initially typed "unbiast apinion," which looks like Middle English. What can I say, it's Try Not To Die Friday.)
So for this very moment, I want another. If I got pregnant this coming month, my due date would be around the end of February, so I'm... ehhhhhsort of not 100% jazzed about the idea of either (A) taking ten weeks off unpaid-- ouch, or (B) going back to work when the baby isn't sleeping through the night yet, like last time. Maybe I can figure out a happy medium, like taking off one month unpaid and going back for the last month or two of school. It's not the six months of suffering I dealt with last time. I'm also worried about putting all this effort into my garden and then being too nauseous to eat anything when it's all ripe in August.
Of course, maybe I should try to actually get pregnant first instead of planning out my maternity leave, since I was so wildly successful at it in the last round...
Hope this made sense. Going to bed.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Bring on another baby!!
That's a joke, of course.
The recent stretch of angelic behavior from her has come to an end. It's been about a week now, since I spanked her on Mother's Day (oh yes I did. Because there simply wasn't a more appropriate day for that to happen).
The tantrums. Jesus wept, the tantrums. Thursday, she threw screaming fits from about 4-7 pm. In and out of time-out, in, out, in, out, ad nauseam. Three hours. At the end of a workday. My arm muscles are getting a workout from lifting her in & out of that thing. Last night, which was Friday, commonly known as "try not to die [from exhaustion] night" in our house, we were treated to another three hours of hysteria which intensified to the point of Nick and I both losing our shit. I finally tossed her into her crib and walked out, and "said" to Nick (it was more like a shaky shrill panic than speaking), "Do not go in there, I don't care if she cries for two hours, I am DONE with her-- do not go in there and prolong this any further."
Five minutes later, she was asleep.
Five minutes after that, I was asleep.
This can't be normal. It just can't. There wouldn't be a human race if this was normal because NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MIND WOULD DO THIS.
And I still managed to wake up at 1:45, thinking about her being an only child and feeling sad and guilty over the image of her sitting alone in the back of the car on long trips. Also thinking about how much of my life is getting neglected because all I do is deal with tantrums and time-outs. Remembering e-mails I haven't answered. Phone calls I haven't returned. Things people need from me that I haven't done, like a syllabus for my summer camp. Progress reports for my students were due yesterday. Didn't do them. And forget about the state of my house. Look down a few posts to that garden one, where I was building that fence? It doesn't look much different from that, it's still all dug up and crappy and unfinished. The neighbors are making snarky comments about our lawn, which shamed me into signing up for a cheap dose of nuclear waste to be spread on it, going against every thread in my environmental conscience. Argh, it kills me! But it looks like something from a Stephen King book.
And it's all. Because. Of the tantrums.
They're over nothing. Example: She sees an orange in the fridge and wants it (this is a whole challenge in itself, deciphering what she wants through her rising-panic babble). Because this orange does not instantly materialize in her mouth, she throws herself on the floor screaming and kicking, hitting the fridge and me on the way down. Time out, during which I cut up the orange. When she calms down, I bring her to the table where her orange is waiting. Something about the sight of the fruit makes her instantly apoplectic. Resume screaming, fishtailing her body and head-butting me in the chin. Time out. I assume she's having blood sugar issues, so someone else (not Mean Mommy) tries to feed her crackers. Her response to this offering sounds like someone is pulling her fingernails off. Lather, rinse, repeat FOR THREE HOURS. Bath? Must have been made of boiling sulfuric acid. Brushing teeth? Kittens will die. And so on.
Part of the reason I can't sleep is looking forward to another day of this. Except today, I don't have work to take me away, like Calgon. I have to spend the whole day with her. We've gotten three hours of tantrums a day, but we've only spent 3-4 hours with her on those days. That's an exhausting tantrum/time-out game for 80% of our time spent with her. Eighty percent.
How do people do this? And love it? I might lose my mind today. I mean, I lost it last night, but got it back with my hearty and satisfying five hours of sleep.
Off to pick my cuticles bloody and wait for it to begin. Of course, now I'm starting to get sleepy again, 45 minutes before Sascha's due to wake up.
(ETA: I've said this before, but no matter how many times I fix the clock on this thing, it still comes up as way off-- even the minutes. It's actually 5:20 am.)
The recent stretch of angelic behavior from her has come to an end. It's been about a week now, since I spanked her on Mother's Day (oh yes I did. Because there simply wasn't a more appropriate day for that to happen).
The tantrums. Jesus wept, the tantrums. Thursday, she threw screaming fits from about 4-7 pm. In and out of time-out, in, out, in, out, ad nauseam. Three hours. At the end of a workday. My arm muscles are getting a workout from lifting her in & out of that thing. Last night, which was Friday, commonly known as "try not to die [from exhaustion] night" in our house, we were treated to another three hours of hysteria which intensified to the point of Nick and I both losing our shit. I finally tossed her into her crib and walked out, and "said" to Nick (it was more like a shaky shrill panic than speaking), "Do not go in there, I don't care if she cries for two hours, I am DONE with her-- do not go in there and prolong this any further."
Five minutes later, she was asleep.
Five minutes after that, I was asleep.
This can't be normal. It just can't. There wouldn't be a human race if this was normal because NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MIND WOULD DO THIS.
And I still managed to wake up at 1:45, thinking about her being an only child and feeling sad and guilty over the image of her sitting alone in the back of the car on long trips. Also thinking about how much of my life is getting neglected because all I do is deal with tantrums and time-outs. Remembering e-mails I haven't answered. Phone calls I haven't returned. Things people need from me that I haven't done, like a syllabus for my summer camp. Progress reports for my students were due yesterday. Didn't do them. And forget about the state of my house. Look down a few posts to that garden one, where I was building that fence? It doesn't look much different from that, it's still all dug up and crappy and unfinished. The neighbors are making snarky comments about our lawn, which shamed me into signing up for a cheap dose of nuclear waste to be spread on it, going against every thread in my environmental conscience. Argh, it kills me! But it looks like something from a Stephen King book.
And it's all. Because. Of the tantrums.
They're over nothing. Example: She sees an orange in the fridge and wants it (this is a whole challenge in itself, deciphering what she wants through her rising-panic babble). Because this orange does not instantly materialize in her mouth, she throws herself on the floor screaming and kicking, hitting the fridge and me on the way down. Time out, during which I cut up the orange. When she calms down, I bring her to the table where her orange is waiting. Something about the sight of the fruit makes her instantly apoplectic. Resume screaming, fishtailing her body and head-butting me in the chin. Time out. I assume she's having blood sugar issues, so someone else (not Mean Mommy) tries to feed her crackers. Her response to this offering sounds like someone is pulling her fingernails off. Lather, rinse, repeat FOR THREE HOURS. Bath? Must have been made of boiling sulfuric acid. Brushing teeth? Kittens will die. And so on.
Part of the reason I can't sleep is looking forward to another day of this. Except today, I don't have work to take me away, like Calgon. I have to spend the whole day with her. We've gotten three hours of tantrums a day, but we've only spent 3-4 hours with her on those days. That's an exhausting tantrum/time-out game for 80% of our time spent with her. Eighty percent.
How do people do this? And love it? I might lose my mind today. I mean, I lost it last night, but got it back with my hearty and satisfying five hours of sleep.
Off to pick my cuticles bloody and wait for it to begin. Of course, now I'm starting to get sleepy again, 45 minutes before Sascha's due to wake up.
(ETA: I've said this before, but no matter how many times I fix the clock on this thing, it still comes up as way off-- even the minutes. It's actually 5:20 am.)
Thursday, May 07, 2009
PTSD, or something like it
Okay, I will admit to being a drama queen by calling it PTSD. I know that's too strong a term, but...
A few days ago, my co-worker brought in her new baby, about two weeks old. Seeing a tiny newborn again brought out an unexpected reaction in me. It wasn't melty desire; it didn't make my ovaries ache. No, it was, uhmm, dread. Fear. I sort of stood there with a half-smile, half-grimace on my face, absentmindedly clutching my chest, asking her how it was going (the answer: hard). I totally didn't expect that reaction from myself. I went bounding down the hall, all excited to see her, and then stopped as though there was some Evil Baby Force Field around it. Cue the tightened chest.
Then last night I started reading Vicki Glembocki's book, The Second Nine Months. I've never read anything that hit closer to home, that described so accurately how I felt when I first had Sascha. She even uses lines verbatim that would run through my head, like "this is my life now." By the time I read the part where she was struggling with breastfeeding and admitted to herself that she was doing this for herself, not the baby, and she got in the car and cried about it? It was too much for me. I went into the bathroom and sobbed quietly, doubled over, face buried in a towel. Her descriptions were so spot-on that they were painful. I'm only two chapters in.
So here I am, still sitting on the fence of One Child Or Two. Seeing that newborn again, hearing that cry... Reading about the isolation and fear and difficulty of the whole experience... I can only compare it to a stint in a Turkish prison. Physical pain (constant, through entire torso, for about two months)? Check. Can't go anywhere, and you don't see your friends anymore? Check. Torture (= no sleep)? Check. Relentless? Round the clock? Feels like time stopped? Check. Don't understand the language (crying) or how to respond to it? Check. Grooming is sorely neglected? Check. Maybe you starve in a Turkish prison, but you feel compelled to diet after you've just had a baby when you discover there's suddenly a semi-deflated blimp hanging onto your skeleton.
Ladies and gentlemen, the miracle of life.
I just don't know if I can do it again. And of course in the book, like in my life, she encounters plenty of women with more than one child who just sigh and go "yeah, it's hard." But hard isn't the word. The English language doesn't have a word for what it is. And if it's the same sort of "hard" across the board, then there is only one conclusion: I suck, and am completely not cut out for motherhood. I want so badly to see the upside of it, to know why other women go back for more (and more, and more). Even now, when Sascha is in a great phase and I'm crazy about her, I'm not sure that I've recouped my losses from the past three years yet.
So do I have another? It boils down to this: two children = short term Turkish prison, long term glad I made that decision. I know I would be glad. One child = short term happy, long term regret. The answer is obvious, I think. But facing that prospect, the short term? Makes me shudder and dread.
But at least I would know to fill my freezer with casseroles this time around.
In other news, I am a single parent this weekend. Nick's grandmother died, and he is flying to be with his family for the funeral for four days. I am sad for their family, but I know it will be wonderful for them to have some time together. There is actually something nice about funerals. It's real quality time. On my end, I'm gearing up for an interesting weekend. I know I can handle it, even if she throws tantrums for four solid hours like she did last night, but it's going to be interesting. I am hoping that there will be a night when she can't sleep and I'll have to take her into my bed for a girls' sleepover. Ahh, that kid.
A few days ago, my co-worker brought in her new baby, about two weeks old. Seeing a tiny newborn again brought out an unexpected reaction in me. It wasn't melty desire; it didn't make my ovaries ache. No, it was, uhmm, dread. Fear. I sort of stood there with a half-smile, half-grimace on my face, absentmindedly clutching my chest, asking her how it was going (the answer: hard). I totally didn't expect that reaction from myself. I went bounding down the hall, all excited to see her, and then stopped as though there was some Evil Baby Force Field around it. Cue the tightened chest.
Then last night I started reading Vicki Glembocki's book, The Second Nine Months. I've never read anything that hit closer to home, that described so accurately how I felt when I first had Sascha. She even uses lines verbatim that would run through my head, like "this is my life now." By the time I read the part where she was struggling with breastfeeding and admitted to herself that she was doing this for herself, not the baby, and she got in the car and cried about it? It was too much for me. I went into the bathroom and sobbed quietly, doubled over, face buried in a towel. Her descriptions were so spot-on that they were painful. I'm only two chapters in.
So here I am, still sitting on the fence of One Child Or Two. Seeing that newborn again, hearing that cry... Reading about the isolation and fear and difficulty of the whole experience... I can only compare it to a stint in a Turkish prison. Physical pain (constant, through entire torso, for about two months)? Check. Can't go anywhere, and you don't see your friends anymore? Check. Torture (= no sleep)? Check. Relentless? Round the clock? Feels like time stopped? Check. Don't understand the language (crying) or how to respond to it? Check. Grooming is sorely neglected? Check. Maybe you starve in a Turkish prison, but you feel compelled to diet after you've just had a baby when you discover there's suddenly a semi-deflated blimp hanging onto your skeleton.
Ladies and gentlemen, the miracle of life.
I just don't know if I can do it again. And of course in the book, like in my life, she encounters plenty of women with more than one child who just sigh and go "yeah, it's hard." But hard isn't the word. The English language doesn't have a word for what it is. And if it's the same sort of "hard" across the board, then there is only one conclusion: I suck, and am completely not cut out for motherhood. I want so badly to see the upside of it, to know why other women go back for more (and more, and more). Even now, when Sascha is in a great phase and I'm crazy about her, I'm not sure that I've recouped my losses from the past three years yet.
So do I have another? It boils down to this: two children = short term Turkish prison, long term glad I made that decision. I know I would be glad. One child = short term happy, long term regret. The answer is obvious, I think. But facing that prospect, the short term? Makes me shudder and dread.
But at least I would know to fill my freezer with casseroles this time around.
In other news, I am a single parent this weekend. Nick's grandmother died, and he is flying to be with his family for the funeral for four days. I am sad for their family, but I know it will be wonderful for them to have some time together. There is actually something nice about funerals. It's real quality time. On my end, I'm gearing up for an interesting weekend. I know I can handle it, even if she throws tantrums for four solid hours like she did last night, but it's going to be interesting. I am hoping that there will be a night when she can't sleep and I'll have to take her into my bed for a girls' sleepover. Ahh, that kid.
Friday, May 01, 2009
What my blog wants to be when it grows up
Oh my god!! I have found my twin!
(Well, another one... recently I contacted Vicki Glembocki, who was on the infamous Oprah episode that got me in 31 flavors of trouble, and discovered a very kindred spirit.)
Through Salon, I discovered this article that hit so close to home that I stopped breathing while I read certain parts. Specifically:
Then, through that article, I found her... Crabmommy. Go there and read her manifesto on the sidebar. It's everything I've been trying to say for three years. I kind of want to throw in the towel right now, because she's doing my job for me.
(Also, she's sticking to one kid. What. I'm just sayin'.)
(Well, another one... recently I contacted Vicki Glembocki, who was on the infamous Oprah episode that got me in 31 flavors of trouble, and discovered a very kindred spirit.)
Through Salon, I discovered this article that hit so close to home that I stopped breathing while I read certain parts. Specifically:
"...a Good Mother wasn’t supposed to be bored and miserable. She didn’t stare at the clock in Gymboree, willing it along with all the power of a fourth-grader waiting for recess, or hide the finger paints because she couldn’t stand the mess. If I wasn’t enjoying myself, then I was a bad mother."Buh!
"It’s the fact of being unfulfilled that triggers our most intense guilt and shame. Because a Good Mother not only sacrifices herself for her children but also enjoys doing it. A mother who isn’t satisfied, who wants to do more, who can imagine more, is selfish. And just as the Good Mother is defined by her self-abnegation, the Bad Mother is defined by her selfishness. "
Then, through that article, I found her... Crabmommy. Go there and read her manifesto on the sidebar. It's everything I've been trying to say for three years. I kind of want to throw in the towel right now, because she's doing my job for me.
(Also, she's sticking to one kid. What. I'm just sayin'.)
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