Right now I am sitting under Shanna’s bed. (She has this one: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10123996) I’m feeling kind of sorry for myself. Noah is asleep. Calli is asleep. I’m interacting with Shanna less than she would like and more than I would like. Noah is sick, again. I feel bad for fussing right now because I really do get a lot of help. I was really looking forward to my bit of down time tonight before going to sleep and now I’m not really going to get it unless I give up on sleeping tonight because Calli will be up no later than 5am because she was asleep before 7. See, normally Noah plays with Shanna for an hour or so while I hide in the office and revel in NO ONE TOUCHING ME OR TALKING TO ME. I don’t get it tonight. Erf.
Right now Shanna is reading me The Dumb Bunnies. I can’t say this is my favorite book. 😛 But she loves it. Thanks Paula and Andrew. 🙂
Obviously I am interacting with Shanna far far less right now than she would like. Ha. …. Now she’s in bed. *phew*
I’m not sure how to even talk about how I feel lately. I have such a ridiculously high amount of shame. I feel like it isn’t ok to ever think about the road not taken. I don’t like that I want to censor my own thoughts. That’s an unhappy situation at best. I’m deeply frustrated lately. I’m so done with nursing it isn’t funny and the idea that I have several more years ahead of me makes me want to cut my nipples off and just hand them over. I’m increasingly feeling done with this ‘being touched’ thing. This is extra hard because Shanna is turbo-clingy right now. She has noticed that Calli isn’t leaving. And that she has to share her toys. And her parents. She’s less thrilled about being a big sister just lately. This is primarily manifesting as her being just a little bit rough… all the time. So she keeps hurting Calli. This is going about as well as you might think. I have these times where I sit around and think, “Man I get the appeal of only children.” And then I hate myself tremendously because I doubt I would have that thought go through my head if I had a son instead of another daughter. 🙁 I have these really intense mixed feelings about Calli. I like her. I love her. I think she is an awesome person, but I feel like a really spectacularly horrible person because I haven’t been waiting for her all my life. I feel like I am not capable of loving her with the same fierce abandon I love Shanna with. You are never supposed to admit that out loud as a mother, right? Sometimes I almost feel like things would be better if she wasn’t here. I don’t appreciate her enough. Hell, I don’t even look at her enough. I cuddle her. I carry her around. Lately she has decided she is ok with being in the Ergo (hallelujah) and she’s on my back for more of the day than she is off of me. I kiss her. I tell her that I love her over and over. I strive for meeting her needs with the same fervor I felt for Shanna. I’m failing. Sometimes I know what she wants (often to nurse) and I have to fight off my own frustration and anger with her because she is asking for something from me. I hate feeling this way.
This is a hard stage. In all kinds of ways. Calli is teething and she’s been sick more than healthy this winter. Shanna is bouncing off the walls with her own difficulty adjusting lately. Noah is pretty absent and withdrawn (he’s got work shit and he’s fried on this baby thing). I’m frustrated, anxious, and bored. If I’m honest that is a way bigger part of my problem than I have any right to. I’m fucking bored. I am so fucking bored I feel like I want to do big nasty self destructive things just to have something to do. Everything is so hard. Between Calli and Shanna I feel like I barely get a chance to complete a whole thought let alone accomplish anything else. I know several other moms in similar positions with ages of kids and they seem to be able to get stuff done. I don’t know how. I’m so jealous I can’t fucking see straight. On one hand I feel like I could get more done if I got off the computer more. But if I got off the computer more I would go many days in a row without talking to anyone but Noah and the kids and I really think that would be a bigger problem. I get more help than it seems like. My mothers helper is back at school and not feeling up to helping, but I have a friend who comes and helps a lot. I don’t know what enough help with the kids would look like. I feel like I am either juggling at least one and usually both children and trying to work and failing or I am shoving the kids at Noah (which often only results in him having one kid) and trying like mad to catch up with work. And by work I mean cooking and cleaning. That is what I do with the vast majority of my ‘free’ time. There is no -me- in my life. I am a wife (read: maid and cook who really should be putting out more but jesus fucking christ I don’t want to have sex) and mother and that’s it. I’m not a person anymore. I underestimated how hard this would be.
I feel like all I have left of -me- is this anxiety and horrible memories. The only part of me that is separate from my kids and housework is this pain. I don’t even know why I hurt like this anymore. Shouldn’t I be ‘over’ it? How can I get over it when every few years I hit this new place of hurting and I feel like someone ripped open a scar and shoved a poker into me. How could my mother not protect me. How could my mother let that monster molest me when I was a baby. How could she continue to send me to him for years.
Oh god. I’m acting like my mother. Playing favorites with my kids. I really don’t know how to stop feeling like I am no better than her. And given how my opinion of her is falling (it’s shocking that there is any where to go) that’s not so good. It’s time to numb myself for the night. I just can’t handle thinking anymore.
*hugs*
if you want them.
Would it help if Nick and I were to come over sometime? We both like kids, and it could give you a little adult interaction. And we’re not too far away. (Obviously, if this would not be helpful, I won’t be offended.)
Give it some thought, and if you are interested I will chat with Nick about it.
In the meantime, I will keep you in my thoughts.
ok…
so, look.
i have two kids. and they’re really great. spectacular, in fact. but when they were little, there were times, when they were screaming and grabbing and needing and wanting-wanting-wanting, that all i *really* wanted to do with them was chop ’em up into small enough pieces to flush ’em down the toilet.
“Where are the kids, dear?”
“Last time I saw them, they were in the bathroom.”
i wasn’t a horrible person for wanting to chop them into little pieces. a horrible person would’ve done it. and i didn’t. but i sure as hell wanted to.
my wife, who stopped all non-baby-related activity to take care of the kids for the first 6 years of their lives was, without a doubt, the single most devoted mother i’ve ever known. she grew ‘way more sick-to-death of them than i ever did. in every picture we have of her from that time she looks like she’s exhausted to the point of losing her soul. possessed, in fact.
she doesn’t like to even look at the pictures from those times because of the memories they engender. she was, no doubt, closer to Lizzie-Bordendom than i ever was. but that didn’t make her a bad person. it just made her normal.
and we weren’t doing any of the family bed or breastfeeding or carrying stuff you are!
there were lots of times when we talked about how easy it would be with only kid (or, better yet, with no kids). on the other hand, the simple of thought of losing one of them -and that was a real possibility when our kids were babies- clutched our hearts with such cold fear that we knew wanting to have only one (or none) was nothing more than the manifestation of frustration and exhaustion.
that’s still my test when i’m tired of their teenage crap and wish i was alone. i simply begin to imagine what it would be like were one of them to leave me and can’t finish the thought without dealing with immediate tears. even typing the previous sentence made me cry.
i love them more than myself,
but there are times
when i really don’t like them.
at all.
parenting kids, especially little kids is fucking horrible hard nasty work. it sucks, so bad. even if you want to do with every fiber of your being it still sucks about 85% of the time. 10% is just bearable. the other 5% you’re sleeping. if you’re lucky. and usually, you’re not.
feeling like you do is part of what happens to you unless you don’t give a shit, or drink, or do drugs, or run away.
Calli no doubt thinks you’re doing a great job. Shanna’s dealing with sharing the unsharable, but she’ll catch on to her place in the world.
Please please please take any reasonable offers of help.
your kids are thriving and learning and growing and eating and pooping and sleeping. for crying in the bucket, be more forgiving of yourself, willya?
Eloquently put, Mr Arbus….
What he said, Krissy.
I’m a phone call and forty minutes away with lots of free time. Call when you want adult company in the week.
Since I don’t have the training or experience to speak to the abuse issue, I’m going to address the lack of -you-.
Yeah. Oh.hell.yeah. But I’m told by people who have 2 kids that it does get better as the youngest gets to two years old. Really, it’s as each kid gets to two years old that you start being able to move out of being Mommy(tm) and back to also being you, but when kids come close you push all your Mommy(tm)time together.
Cons: you’ve got a loooong stretch of Mommy(tm) time and that’s going to burn you out, Pros: you don’t have to transition back and forth between submersing yourself in baby and doing “you” things.
That said, try to figure out what you need to feel like yourself enough to be able to do the Mommy work.
For me, I function best when I can have a hour or two where I’m 100% not in charge of the kid. She naps, which is awesome, but then I’m still at risk of having what I’m doing suddenly cut off and I don’t have the option to do things out of the house. When my husband’s able to give me that time, it makes a huge difference in how I feel about the other 22 hours I’m alert (if not actively doing anything) to L and her needs.
Another factor over here is that the weather has been annoyingly cold so we’re only getting outside if we put on a ton of layers and, even though she’s a little furnace, most days she doesn’t want to go outside. Winter needs to be O.V.E.R.
*hugs*.
oops, guess I should read LJ more often, but I go weeks at a time w/o looking these days.
folks above said it better than I would. kids are a PITA a lot of the time, and it’s normal to get lost for a while. Two so close in age isn’t something I’ve faced, but even with 10 years of gap L & C vie for attention a LOT.
I’m glad you’re getting help.