Keeping it Together

I'm optimistically calling this post Keeping it Together, so I can pretend that I have a little bit of my life together right now.

Amazingly, I felt better after writing my last post, but even more so after reading the responses.  As someone said to me privately, everyone makes parenting look so easy - it's really nice to know I'm not alone in my exhaustion.

At least one person mentioned delayed postpartum depression (it really is a thing) as a possible issue. It has occurred to me.  But I don't know that I meet the criteria for true clinical depression.  I am actually happy a lot, there are many things I still enjoy.  But I do feel discouraged quite often as well, and like I said, lonely.  And my reserves are so terribly low - just a little misbehavior from my children can throw me for a loop. But still...it's on the list of things to talk to my doctor when I see her in a couple of weeks.

I am working on a few ideas to make my daily and weekly routine a little better - I'll share if any of them end up being really helpful! I already pay someone to my clean house, and Nanny M does a lot to help out. She does occasionally walk Vader for me when I've not been able to, but it is actually one chore I mostly enjoy.  It gets me some exercise and I have a little quiet time outside; once I drag myself out of bed I usually am happy I did.  I'm considering hiring someone to help with a few of the projects around the house - but right now just finding someone takes more than I have time to give.

More than anything, I need sleep.  It is amazing how hard it is to get enough, though.  There are so many things I need to do, and so many things I want to do...I have a hard time going to sleep when I have so much stuff I want to get done.  I'm working on it, though.

In 5 short weeks I'm going out of town for 4 nights, by myself, while my parents stay with the boys. It's a work conference, but I'm going to make sure I get lots of sleep, lots of good food and at least a couple of spa treatments.  I suspect that this long weekend might help more than anything else.

We had a family vacation a few weeks ago that was fun and did a lot to help relieve all the tension I've been feeling about work lately, but it's wasn't particularly restful.  If you follow me on Instagram you already saw all our pictures from our cruise, and most importantly, from the Star Wars day.  I was not as rested before the trip as I wanted to be (and on the first night, in the airport hotel, Zachary pooped on the floor and Finn locked us out of the bathroom in the space of 5 minutes...it was not a great start to our trip!) so I don't think I was as patient as I should have been, but the boys had fun. I know we'll do another one...in a few years.

Hard Days

Before kids, I had no idea it was possible to be blissfully happy and absolutely exhausted and miserable at the exact same time. I have (almost) everything I ever wanted: kids, the career I always dreamed of, a nice house, enough money to travel, and I am so very thankful.  There's not a day goes by that I'm not struck at least once by how much I love my boys and how lucky I am to have them.

But this shit is fucking hard.

I am tired, all the time. I'm more grumpy with my kids than I should be.  My neck and shoulders and back hurt constantly, and so even though I'm getting to bed most nights in time to get at least 7 hours of sleep, I never get a good solid sleep because I hurt. And I end up with a 4-5 day migraine at least once a month. I weigh 15 pounds more than I should.  I hate my hair color. Work politics suck, and I'm not doing a good enough job at keeping afloat with the basics of patient care to be able to be as vocal as I want to be about those issues. I frequently forget to pay a bill or return patient messages or friend's phone calls or to wish someone important a happy birthday or to actually let the people who are important to me know that I'm thinking of them with a text or an email or a phone call because oh my gosh I'm just too tired to even try.

I get home at night and have a few hours with my kids with dinner, a little playtime and then it's time to get ready for bed. Once the kids are in bed I have an average of 90 minutes to do everything else I need to do - walk the dog, do laundry, wash dishes, prepare meal plans, pay bills (why can't everyone allow autopay?), reply to emails - and there's never enough time, so the things I want to do - catch up with friends, edit pictures, watch tv, read a book, write a blog entry, comment on blogs - never get done.

Most surprising to me is how lonely I am.  I have really good friends both locally and far away, I have support when I need it, and yet I'm still alone a lot.  And I know I could ease some of that loneliness by reaching out...but then there's that whole pesky exhaustion and lack of time thing getting in the way again.

It's at this point that I'm sure someone out there wants to tell me to stop my whining, adding: "you asked for this!"

I did.  And I'd do it all over again.  But it is hard in ways that I never could have imagined.

And right now, something has to give.  There's a lot in life right now that I can't change.  But I am going to work on taking better care of myself physically.  I made an appointment with my family doctor to get a physical to make sure that there's no unsuspected health issue going on. I am going to call tomorrow to make an appointment for a massage, and then book every other week massages until my neck and shoulder pain is significantly better. I hate taking extra time away from my kids, but this is something I have to do. I made an appointment (for the end of March, the earliest my schedule will allow) to see someone new to fix my hair color - that won't make my body feel any better, but it sure will make me feel better every time I look in the mirror.

I'm also going to make the time to blog more often.  Even if no one is still reading, it feels good to get everything down in writing.  I'll try not to complain quite so much next time.