Frustration....

Seemed to be the theme to our weekend. Camryn was a mess. Jay and I finally decided she was either extremely frustrated with her current situation (lack of mobility) or very bored with her parents since Cade was gone all weekend. Actually, I think it was a little of both. She is so close to crawling, but she just isn’t quite there. When she blows out and ends up on her belly she gets frustrated. And cries….
Then she started pulling up. She can only get on her knees and then she gets frustrated. And cries…
She also discovered books this weekend. She loves to look at the pages, but she can’t turn them herself. Yup, she gets frustrated. And cries….

It was a very long weekend for us. Cade can usually keep her pretty happy, but he was gone so she was stuck with Jay and I. Jay spent a lot of time on the floor turning book pages for her. She would scream when he wasn’t quick enough to suit her. At 7:30 this morning I couldn’t take it any longer. I loaded her up and we drove around until I could take her to Stacy’s. Then she got mad when I wasn’t getting her out of the carseat quickly enough so I could give her to Stacy. I seriously think there was a look on her face that told me she was glad to be back there. The feeling was mutual this morning. There aren’t many days I’m glad I’m a working mom – but this was one of them. I didn’t fell guilty about it because Camryn seemed to be more than pleased when Stacy took her. Jay and I can’t compare to Stacy’s 3 and 5 year old girls for entertainment purposes.

I’ve been having a hard time lately juggling everything, which is completely normal, but I think our infertility is compounding the problem…like it does for so many people who had to fight through it to have their kids. We think when we finally get the baby(ies) that we want so badly everything is going to be perfect. The whole time we are waiting we cringe when we hear other mothers complain about their pregnancies and babies/kids. We cry on the inside because we want that chaos so badly and we tell ourselves we won’t complain if/when our prayers are answered. Sometimes I think as infertiles we feel we don’t have the“right” to have hard days with our kids or have these feelings of “if I don’t get 2 seconds of quiet I’m going to loose my mind”.

We think we have to endure every bit of parenting our long awaited/prayed for children with a smile on our face and happiness in our heart and by golly all of that screaming will not annoy us one little bit. I will be the perfect mother, never once complaining or being tempted to drive past the house in the evening and not stop until I run out of gas. I will never complain about being exhausted, in fact I won’t even allow myself to feel exhaustion. I will get up every hour on the hour at night to tend to our baby with smile. I will want to sit on the floor by them for hours upon end and turn book pages for them without complaint. I will never fell stressed with balancing working and eating and grocery shopping and laundry and exercising and Bible reading with a baby that wants to be held all evening long while she fights sleep by screaming. Constantly.

And then reality hits. And you find that parenting is hard no matter how the baby came to you. This is the 2nd time I’ve done this and I should’ve known better. But I didn’t. And I feel a little guilty because I am having these completely normal feelings of losing my sanity – but I shouldn’t be. This is what I wanted for years. So not only am I fighting with trying to learn new levels of normalcy at home and work, I’m mentally fighting it also. It’s hard.

So for everyone who waited years for a baby (including myself) it is ok to feel overwhelmed. It is ok to need help. It is ok to not have the perfect meal ready by 6pm every night. I would say it is ok to not get to the laundry, but it is pretty bad when someone runs out of underwear or jeans….you probably need to try to do at least a couple of loads per week…It is ok to think that if you hear that song from the toy one more time you will throw it out the window (busy, busy, busy there’s so much do to..you can learn while you’re at play….that’s the current tune running though my head). And if you figure out how to actually feel ok about all the above mentioned stuff let me know. You might have a million dollar idea.  And it doesn't help that about noon I realized I had been in such a hurry to leave the house I forgot to put tonights dinner in the crockpot.  Nice....