The Family Fork

Well, it's Saturday. It could be Thursday for all I know. I haven't left the house since MONDAY! Holy crap! Pretty much this week has been a little stressful. Not the entire week, but by the end of it.... It seemed like a huge long week. Ardyn is much fussier this week than the first two. Instead of almost never crying, she's having her fair share of fussy times. I have dealt with much worse babies, but much worse babies I could at least get away from. Of course now I get to feel that postpartum guilt that comes with wanting to get away but knowing that I can't get away and then feeling guilty that I could even think about getting away and its like a vicious cycle. I know that she's always happy when eating. I know that she's happy 39% of the time if you are holding her. And I know that if you put her down, she's happy 20% of the time. This week it became excessively harder to get dressed. It became excessively harder to eat a meal. It became excessively harder to pee. Only a mom can tell you what it's like to hold one a baby, trying to shush her, and peeing at the same time.

Yesterday and Today she seemed to have more meltdowns than usual. Last night my stomach was hurting me and I looked like the walking dead, and this was after a two hour nap from 4-6pm. The best part of my week was when my mom came over last night and helped. She held Ardyn while I took all the maternity clothes out of my closet and folded them. Then I fed her and mom hung up all of my regular clothes from out of totes. Then mom held her again while I hung all those clothes in the closet, and cleaned out the bottom of my closet, revealing three things that have been missing since 1991. Okay, not really, just since about 3-4 months into my pregnancy. Most important was the discovery of my pre-maternity underwear, neatly packed in ziplocs and in a large garbage bag. Second important was the finding of my FAVORITE maternity shirt, that went missing about 4 months into pregnancy never to be found again. And it was in a GYM BAG in the bottom of my closet. Yeah. What's up with that? As if I went to the gym while 4 months pregnant and accidentally left my shirt in there. What? So anyway. It's found and now I don't need it. Next time.

Mom also brought over supper last night, which was fabulous. She watched the baby and took her into a far away room while we ate supper (as she screamed every 3 minutes) and then we cleaned up our mess, washed mom's dishes, and unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher (FINALLY!)

I was sad to see mom go but it was time for us all to go to bed. Then of course when the baby finally fell asleep around midnight or 12:30, I couldn't sleep because I was so stretched thin, worn out, pissed off, and mentally unstable. I ended up curling up on the couch next to Evan and sobbing until I couldn't breathe. Nothing like that to freak out your husband. Ugh. And even though I know he doesn't completely understand... it still felt good to get it out. And good to let him know that sometimes I feel completely alone. Like someone grabbed my arm and drug me on a sinking ship and said "here you go... now you are captain! " and when I started to buck up and look around, I realized that the ship is sinking and there are no crew. Just helpless passengers all looking to me for their every need. I'm not saying I want to get off the ship (although it may cross my mind from time to time that at least 1 hour of time on land might help me get my bearings) But I am saying that I need at least one passenger to be like co-captain. One passenger to go back to where we were two weeks ago and take the initiative to be a decision maker. So eventually, around 1:30, I was able to lay down and try to sleep. Then we were up at 3:30, 4:30-5am, and then 7:30, 8:30, and 9:30 when we got up for the day and the meltdowns began again. I enjoy the hour or two, first thing in the morning, before she gets cranky. She eats, she smiles, she coos, she looks at me adoringly... and then the fun begins.

Today she had various meltdowns until 11am when she had her first "nothing will make me happy" meltdown while we tried to eat some brunch. Then after I fed her again and got her calmed down, she fell asleep, and we ALL fell asleep, for what seemed like an extremely short-lived nap, that probably lasted about an hour. She woke up in meltdown mode with gas, and that continued for another 2 hours, during which I was lucky enough to get a long bubble bath and shave... and Evan walked her and shushed her and tried to keep her calm. If the crying got to me I would just put my ears underwater and pretend that I was Meagan instead of mom. When the bath was over, I felt like a much more sane person. Just 45 minutes to not be the sole caretaker does wonders. But it's like a game of Hot Potato, she got tossed my way to feed her and then Evan disappeared. Luckily she was calm after eating, and lay on her pillow sucking a pacifier and swaddled to high hell (Happiest Baby on the Block you know?) while she watched me get dressed and dry my hair. She loves the hairdryer.

The one thing that has been keeping me motivated the past two days is the plan of going "out to supper" tonight. We invited my parents to grab BBQ uptown or go to Mineral to the Wagon Wheel. I was so excited to be going somewhere with someone... and then mom called this afternoon and dad isn't feeling well and they don't want to get the baby sick... so now we have no plans. Evan and I were going to go by ourselves but he is worried that the baby will have a meltdown while we try to eat, so once again I am doomed to the house while he takes off on his merry way. He tells me to "take Ardyn and go do something" and I take that as an invitation to deal with an "out in public meltdown" without his support. While that sounds like an entirely good time to me, I decided that I would be better off blogging and eating two pieces of marble cake with kick ass frosting that mom brought over. It has been in her freezer since the baby shower. Yum.

I considered (and really still am considering) taking Ardyn for a walk in the stroller but I don't look forward to the drama of putting her in her car seat, especially when she hasn't been in it since Monday... and the drama of a meltdown 5 or 10 blocks from home where all I can do is walk back the way I came while she screams her head off. Everywhere I look I see sinking ships. Now that's positive, isn't it?

On a side note, something I loved about growing up with my parents? Whenever there was cake... there was a fork in the pan. Yep. A community fork. Instead of dishing out the cake onto a plate, we would take the lid off the pan, remove the community fork, eat the piece or piece-and-a-half of cake that we wanted, and put the fork back for the next person. Instead of a clean cut mark between the pieces of the cake that were in the pan, it was a jagged little cut made by the tines of the family fork. Some folks may think that is germy and gross, but we loved it (well, dad and liz and I did, I don't know about mom.) That's how we did things. And in the spirit of that, I am totally leaving my fork in this cake container, for later.