Tomorrow Paul goes back to work and I don’t think I can find the proper words to convey just how terrified I am at the prospect of watching T alone for nine consecutive hours.<\/p>\n
This “being a mother” thing is still sort of a work in progress for me. I never expected myself to be a natural mother and I did not disappoint. I’ve never been great at taking care of, well, pretty much anything. In fact, on most days, taking care of myself is a bit of a struggle. This is why in college I often went for days surviving on potato chips and Coke. If it weren’t for Paul there is a very good chance I would still<\/i> be living off of that diet. <\/p>\n
The only reason I managed to raise a cat is because cat’s really don’t take much effort. Food in a bowl and scoop the litter every so often and you’re basically golden. <\/p>\n
Babies, I’m learning, are not so simple. (Don’t worry, this was not a shock to me). <\/p>\n
I’m going to be really honest here and admit that there have definitely been these intense moments of frustration (and exhaustion) when he is screaming and screaming and part of me sort of wishes I could just let him cry and be someone else’s problem. <\/p>\n
I do always feel appropriately guilty for thinking it after he settles down though, if that makes it any better?<\/p>\n
And the worst part of it is, my kid isn’t even that tough of a baby. When he’s crying there is almost always something you can do that will make him settle down almost instantly. But sometimes whatever it is isn’t so obvious and takes a bit of figuring out (like the time he was super congested and just needed someone to suck the snot out of his nose for him). The other worst part of it is that I’m not even that<\/i> sleep deprived by new parent standards. I am just really<\/i> sleep deprived according to my own pathetic standards. <\/p>\n
I don’t know why that bothers me. Like, who cares if I’m not as sleep deprived as other people and I still feel physically exhausted all the time? I guess it makes me feel like I can’t really complain about it or something? Now that we have a night nurse I’m pretty sure I’d get zero sympathy. <\/p>\n
So anyway, Paul is going back to work tomorrow and this feels like a major problem to me because when it comes to T, Paul has been the one sort of figuring everything out. I am very timid about everything with T. At first I was afraid to dress him because I thought for sure I would pull out one of his shoulders or kneecap or something so Paul dove in and figured out how you dress a 5lb miniaturized human. Then there were the saline drops for his nose. The idea of having to drop these drops into my son’s TINY nose holes left me paralyzed with fear. Paul just did it. Sure T had saline drops all over his face but they were also in his nose. <\/p>\n
I guess the difference between Paul and I is that I overthink everything. I am usually paralyzed by fear of somehow hurting T, whereas Paul just sees it as, something has to be done, so he does it. <\/p>\n
Since I have yet to snap in the carseat or even learn to buckle T into his carseat, it’s a pretty safe bet that we won’t be taking any car trips without daddy this week. <\/p>\n
Tomorrow is the day where my true mothering abilities will be tested. <\/p>\n
And I have a bad feeling about it.<\/p>\n
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