So the good news about this week just gone is that I'm recovering nicely from the op - soreness has subsided and I'm much more mobile and able to do things for myself. The excess glue from around the wound (no stitches this time - some new-fangled superglue instead) is beginning to come loose as the doctor said it would. I was told to rub my tummy well in the shower and let it come off, but to be honest it comes off more easily when it's dry. The bits that come off look like a cross between dead skin and copydex - mmmmmm, nice - and I've started to indulge in slightly disgusting, childlike behaviour by seeing how long a piece I can peel off before it makes me wince.
The bad news about this week just gone is just about everything else. The bf's meagre two weeks of pat leave finished oh so quickly, so he went back to work last week. My mum very graciously took some time off her work to come and stay and help out while I was still recovering. Unfortunately her visit coincided with me hitting the fed up button as the realities of what my life will be like feeding on demand for the next few months begin to sink in and I've just acted like a stressed out bitch to her for the best part of a week.
On a normal day I'm pretty obsessive about keeping my household in good order, but absolute control freakery has taken over since Felix was born (not a new thing - it was much the same after Jasmine too) so in true Monica Gellar style I have been completely and utterly anal about how to handle baby/help me breastfeed/ clean stuff up/ wash things/ stack stuff/ tidy up/place things/ do pretty much anything and everything. I've also been a bit of a Nazi about when to do it. ie IMMEDIATELY. NOW. PREFERABLY YESTERDAY. As opposed to the saccharine world of American sitcom, however, there is absolutely nothing funny about my control freakery, and I am quite relentless in my "requests" for stuff to get done "properly" so I wasn't the easiest person for my Mum to be around. And that's putting it politely.
But what made me particularly snappy and stressed last week was my continuing sense of concern, anxiety and guilt about any negative impact that Felix' arrival into our home might be having on Jasmine. I actually think she's very cool with it all, and is handling the change just fine, so my worrying about it all is taking more of a toll on me than it is on her. In all honesty it's mainly a drama that is playing out in my head and nowhere else, because if I entertain the merest thought that something I am doing might lead Jasmine to feel a bit neglected or left out then it simply breaks my heart, and I can't deal with that feeling. What it does mean is that I try to overcompensate by lavishing attention on Jasmine when I can, which is not very often because I'm knackered all the time, so I expect absolutely everyone else (aka my mum) to be equally focused on her when they're here. This is particularly true when I'm feeding Felix, which is just about always, so instead of feeling calm and relaxed and enjoying it, as I'm supposed to, I just feel tense and edgy and wired about how Jasmine feels seeing me feed him all the time. So I try and feed Felix and at the same time talk to Jasmine or read books with her, which is exhausting and difficult, so when someone else is here, aka my mum, I just end up barking instructions at her to get on the floor and dedicate some quality playing time to Jasmine. Which of course Jasmine doesn't always need and my mum doesn't always want to (or indeed have to) do. And it all just makes me feel more and more stressesd.
Everything came to a head last Thursday. Jasmine had a crappy cold and was being particularly clingy. She gave her cold to my mum and me. I was still pissed off with my mum for no good resason. And obviously I was dog tired, not having got used to snatching a couple of hours sleep here and there to last me through. The bf came home quite tired and scratchy and we snapped at each other over "do you want dinner on a plate? or bowl?". Apparently, I was "nagging" over the plate or bowl question. Which I really don't think I was, but I'm allowing for the fact that I could have been because the thing about being utterly exhausted is that every fibre of your being is so focused on getting through the rest of the day and hoping, praying, dreaming that you might be able to go to bed soon that you have absolutely no grip on what you're saying, how you're saying it or how you come across. And your emotions are terribly raw, and everything seems more intense than normal.
So when the bf said the N word (nagging) something inside just snapped. First I felt super angry, with both him and my mum, for being the two closest people to me and for being right there in the house with me and yet having absolutely no idea about how my life wasn't covered in a rosy, glowing, new-baby-hue, but was more akin to a solitary living hell in which everyone else got time to be normal and do normal things like read books and check email and play games and watch TV and
sleep, but where I was exempt from those rules and just got to look after children, do housework and generally feel like shit.
Then pretty soon after that the anger turned into doubt and a total loss of self confidence. Over the belief that it was probably me and not them, and that I probably
had been acting like a bitch to my mum without her deserving it, and that I probably
had snapped plate or bowl at the boyfried unncessarily and then that appallingly destructive feeling of self pity mingled with self loathing washed over me terribly. And the tears came soon after that.
But they didn't come over dinner, or during Jambeans' bed time because I managed to stuff them back in, but they started flowing pretty heavily as soon as I was on my own - which happened to be when I was giving Felix his next feed. So there I was, sitting alone on my bed, in the dark, holding a two week old baby, and hating myself, hating my life, feeling alone and like nobody close to me understood what I was going through or why I was so miserable, all rounded off with a heavy dose of guilt that my negative feelings were all going to rub off on the bub. I was physically exhausted, emotionally spent, and I remember asking myself "Is this rock bottom?"
Which I guess it was. I felt so awful about how I had been treating everyone, and convinced that I was being a total bitch all the time (which I probably wasn't - it's just that I had no grip on reality) that on Friday I fessed up to my mum, amid yet more tears, about how shit I felt about being a nasty, snappy, bossy cow to her all week and about how I didn't feel in control of myself at all and that behaving like that made me not like myself at all.
And then she did the
best thing - the thing that only mums can do.
She gave me a big cuddle and made it all right again.
So then we had a chat about everything, and she gave me lots of emotional support and I started to feel better about everything.
That's not to say that it hasn't continued to be fucking difficult. My cold is a bit of a stinker and is making it hard for me to sleep even when I do have the chance. And in the few days that have passed since Mum went home I've still found it hard to cope with how desperately lonely and boring breastfeeding round the clock can be (not to mention extremely painful on the nipples).
And when I'm at the beck and call of a small baby who doesn't understand anything than his constant need for food, sleep and new nappies, irrespective of what my needs are, then I have felt extremely resentful towards the other adults around me, namely the bf. And I know that's not particularly fair, but I feel it anyway, and then I waste valuable sleeping time calculating how much sleep he gets a night (ca. 6.5 continuous hours) compared to me (average 4.5 hours in 90 minute shifts) and I hate how still finds time to do his hobbies (ie reading, gaming or tinkering with the pooter) when I still haven't read a Heat amgazine that I bought 4 days ago, and even when I do get round to it then even looking at the pictures feels like a real challenge.
But generally, I do feel better and am beginning to enjoy the new mum thing again and I will get easier.
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