rants Archives - Page 2 of 3 -

Pregnancy is an Evolutionary Oops

April 1, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Warning: This is a rant. And I wrote it before this happened, so I can’t even blame it on that. Apparently being pregnant just makes me cranky.

The whole concept of pregnancy was not well thought out.

There are so many things that make evolutionary sense. You know, like opposable thumbs and eyebrows and…stuff like that. And yes, pregnancy is a miracle and all that but why does this particular miracle have to be so freaking hard?!

When I was pregnant with Connor I was a little nauseated and more tired than usual, but I could deal with that by closing my office door if I needed to and coming home to lie peacefully on the couch. This time I’ve been so unbelievably sick I can barely stand it and exhaustion has hit like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I feel awful. And this time I have no office door to close and a new team and a 45-minute commute to and from work. Oh, and a three-year-old.

Did I mention I feel awful?

Maybe it’s just anxiety settling in and making itself at home, but I’m looking ahead to the next several months and thinking This is not going to be good. I hope I’ll feel better relatively soon (please God let me feel better soon) but then it’s just that lull before the wow-am-I-ever-uncomfortable stage that leads to poor sleep. I mean, seriously. Who designed this process?! Being tired right before having a baby? Really?!

(And don’t even get me started on how totally dependent human babies are. Not that I’d prefer we make like turtles and leave our young to figure it out themselves, but shouldn’t there be a middle ground? Like puppies. Puppies open their eyes, learn to nurse and then start stumbling around and falling over their own too-big paws. Yeah, the whole housebreaking thing is a total disaster, but if I’d been in charge of evolution I would have made human babies a little more like puppies in the dependency department.)

Image credit: notsogoodphotography on Flickr

But back to being tired. We go from being tired and uncomfortable to being in pain and tired. Even if you have a relatively easy labour, it still takes time to recover and heal. If you have a C-section, however, you spend the first few days needing significant help taking care of your own baby and then the better part of six weeks healing from major abdominal surgery. And all this while having to take care of a baby and learn to nurse (if you choose or are able to do so), and don’t tell me that’s not painful and exhausting too.

Meanwhile, the male (or any other partner, in fact) has no pregnancy woes (aside from listening to his, ahem, whiny wife) and no part of his body is traumatized during the birth. He doesn’t have to deal with engorged breasts or stitches or bleeding. His hair doesn’t start falling out in clumps. He doesn’t have night sweats so bad he has to sleep on a towel for several months. No, all of this joy – pregnancy, birth, the postpartum period – is relegated to one person in the process and it happens to be the person who is also the one who tends to do a lot of the baby care in the early days.

Like I said, pregnancy was not well thought out.

12 weeks down, 28 to go.

Filed Under: Hard things, Pregnancy · Tagged With: rants

A Serving of Working Mom Guilt, Please

January 23, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’m struggling tonight.

I’ve started a new job, which I love, but I’m playing the Working Mom Guilt Game, which I hate. And tonight I lost.

Last night, after a fun and busy weekend, I stood at the kitchen counter to make my lunch for today. Connor came over and asked me what I was doing. “Making my lunch,” I said. “Why?” he asked. “Because I have to go to work tomorrow.”

And then came the face.

“I thought you didn’t have to go to work every day.”

I hate that face.

We’ve had this conversation several times in the last couple of weeks. He wants me to play with him in the morning or sit with him while he eats his breakfast. I want to do that too. I love mornings with him. It’s quiet, I’m not thinking about all the things I have to get done, and it’s just me and him. But weekday mornings are too short, and more often than not lately he isn’t even up when I leave for work, which steals at least half an hour I’d otherwise get to spend with him. When he is up I inevitably get, “Do you have to go to work today? [sad face]” So as we approach weekends I get to do the “Guess what?!” thing and tell him I don’t have to work. We talk about the things we’re going to do and he gets that excited, I-get-my-mama face.

I love that face.

What I don’t love is the other end of the day when I come home after a day—preceded too often by too little sleep—from a new job that makes my brain tired. When I have spent all day in an office full of people, talking and laughing and working and learning, and my inner introvert just wants to sit in my quiet bedroom by myself for a while.

3-year-olds don’t let you sit in your bedroom by yourself for any length of time. At least mine doesn’t.

So I come home after working to a little guy who wants his mom to play with him, which, as the last thing I feel like doing, induces massive guilt.

Working Mom Guilt.

I’m not here when I want to be and when I am here I spend too much time wanting something else. It sucks.

This is what I missed while I was at work today.

This is especially tough right now because I’m working a slightly longer day than I used to and I work farther away, both of which slice into my momming time. And he’s going to bed later, which slices into my me time.

Nobody’s winning here, people. (And don’t even get me started on all the blog reading and commenting I’m not doing.)

Maybe I’ll get used to it. Maybe we all will. Maybe we won’t. In any case, tonight my working mom guilt came with a side order of the Monday tireds and some irrational, the-toddler-is-chewing-too-loud annoyance and I had to leave the room to take a deep breath.

My mama mug spilleth over, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: admissions, expectations, family, rants, telling the truth

Are you done with this boy?

December 6, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Living in a new house in a new city with no furniture and no routine and a toddler who’s getting bored is fun. Really fun.

Okay it sucks.

I think I officially ran out of patience today. And my husband is sick again, so he’s not the happiest camper either.

I tried to address the situation by taking Connor to the park today to frolic in the snow and build a snowman, but it was a spectacular failure. (Did you read The Snowman Test of Motherhood? I haven’t passed yet.) Between that, a request to “fix” his Lego monster truck 46 times, and one of those million-questions kinds of days, I had had enough by about 3 p.m.

That’s probably when I should have realized going to a restaurant across town for dinner with my mother-in-law was a bad idea. But no! We had a gift certificate and we wanted to go because it’s a place we like. Let’s just say it didn’t go so well, and that’s why my husband and I looked at each other across the table and laughed when this conversation took place:

Connor: “Dad, why did you give me ALL the croutons?”

Dad: “Because that way you’ll have them if she comes back and asks if we’re done with this bowl.”

Connor: “Did you say ‘if we’re done with this BOY‘?”

[Commence smirking.]

What? You would have found it appealing too. At least the salad bowl doesn’t poke other diners and talk in an outside voice in the middle of the restaurant.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: anxiety, rants, toddlers are weird

Life Lessons for the Tired and Lazy

July 15, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

And now for something completely different…

This week has been good, and today has been good, but I hit the burn-out point at about 6:04 tonight.

I’ve been sick for a week now and I’m tired because I stayed up too late last night ~~supporting charitable causes~~ ~~saving the environment~~ playing on the Interweb, and then my darling child got me up during the night and then woke for good at 6 a.m. So it’s Friday night and I sort of have my crankypants on (fleecy pajama ones because I don’t care what the calendar says, it’s not summer!). But I’m in luck – Rach and Sara have a link-up where I can ~~rant~~ share what I’ve learned this week. Which happens to all be stuff I already know but maybe if I write it down I’ll actually learn the lessons instead of continually repeating them.

When I’m sick I need to either sleep or get up and have a shower. Spending half the day in my pajamas actually doesn’t make me feel better.
Staying up late and thinking it’s fine because I don’t have to work and can nap the next day is dumb. Because I don’t nap. So I just end up tired.
I tend to run out of patience a little faster – okay, pretty much immediately – when I’m tired.
I need to find some sort of toilet paper tracking system so we don’t keep having Toilet Paper Emergencies, which result in raiding the house for Kleenex boxes and late-night trips to the store.
I should not take my dog for a walk wearing plastic flip-flops. I’ve done this before and got blisters. I did it again today and have blisters and really sore feet (see above reference to crankypants).
Even when I don’t feel like it, I should pay my child sufficient attention because if I don’t it inevitably results in him throwing things around the room and then tackling me bodily and that, surprisingly, doesn’t make me any more cheerful.

And with that, at 7:49 on a Friday evening, I bid you good night. I’ll probably be asleep before 9, which is a good thing because I have the small boy on my own for most of the day tomorrow for the first time in a really long time so, you know, being tired would be a bad thing.

Wish me luck.

Filed Under: Happy things · Tagged With: lists, rants

A Fine Line

July 7, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Start to cut down, she said.
Just once a day do half
And keep taking a full dose
At midday and in the afternoon.

Okay, sounds easy enough I figured.
I want to come off this
So I found the centre line
Of the little orange pill and

I cut. Small pill made smaller.

But as it turns out there’s
A fine line between a full
And half dose, especially without discussion
Of withdrawal symptoms for this med.

It’s been two days, only two
With the morning dose halved, but
That’s all it took to start
Feeling as though something was off.

If only I had been informed.

As it turns out there is
Also a fine line between off
And on. Between feeling good and
Feeling the good start slipping away.

I’m not feeling good right now
But I’m willing to see if
Things improve, even though the voice
On the line offered no reassurance.

Someone who is supposed to help,
But actually makes things much worse.
That’s it. I’ve made a decision.
It’s the end of the line.

I’m taking a stand now, finally,
The newest in a long line
Of people who have said “enough”.
Enough. I deserve to be heard.

I’ve put my life on hold
For long enough. I no longer
Want the line between feeling “better”
And “not” to be so fine.

[I love Six Word Fridays – this approach stretches my writing style and somehow it’s easier to write stuff like this in that format. Thanks to Melissa for doing this and for all the great prompts. This week’s was “line”.]