Overwhelmed

Emma is the poster child for neglect these days. The two teenagers pretty much get what they need because they are pretty self-sufficient to begin with, and have the emotional/social skills to tell me what they need. Connor is almost in the same category, he's just a little more high-maintenance because of his age. But still, he's doing okay because he can tell me what he wants. Sam gets what he wants, because his needs are so simple and being the newborn, he gets a lot of attention. Emma is getting the short stick, because she's two and very busy, but can't verbalize her thoughts and feelings very well. She's lost the cute baby position of indulgence, and has entered the "we expect more out of you because you know better" phase of her life, which really isn't going to go away. These pics tell a little story:

Apr 20th - Emma was so cute, hauling her stuff around in her backpack.

But this picture tells a bit more of the story - getting tired in the chaos of our house, she just curled up on the kitchen table and went to sleep.

Poor baby, one of her main entertainments is to play with the buttons on the dvd player and tv on our kitchen table and watch movies.

Just yesterday, I stayed home from church with Emma, because she had a cold with a green snotty nose that made her ineligible for nursery. Plus, I was feeling exhausted and antisocial, so it didn't take much to keep me home from church. Anyway, although I thought we could enjoy a few good moments to ourselves while everyone else was gone and Sammy was asleep, Emma and I had a sad moment when I was changing her diaper. She was kicking me and wouldn't stop, so I gave her a swat on her butt. Usually, she would cry and want to be comforted, but after a mini-lecture from me, she just took her weepy self to her crib, crawled in, and went to sleep. It just broke my heart, I felt so sad that she's developing this necessary independence because her Mommy just can't get to her very often. She gets attention from other people in the house, but I just feel too distant from her most of the time.

Which leads me to the topic of how I'm doing. I always meant to blog about the two sessions I've had with a therapist, but time got away from me right before Sam was born, and ever since then there's been too many other things to think about. But that's deeper and more time consuming than I want to go into right now. Basically, right now I'm in that place that every woman is in with a newborn - trying to juggle responsibilities, yet also dealing with sleep deprivation. It's completely textbook, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. While I've solved the problem of feeding Sam, now we're into the phase where he's learning how to sleep. The first few weeks seemed to come easy: if you fed him, changed his diaper, cuddled him for a while, he would go to sleep. But now he really fights it all the time. It's an ordeal getting him to sleep, and he won't stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time. It's tough love time, where he has to be taught how to fall asleep on his own, so he can sleep for longer periods of time. It can take 10 to 12 hours to accumulate six to eight hours of sleep for me, so the time I have to do anything productive is really cut down. I'm still mentally slow, but I can tell that it's not hormone dependent anymore, I just need some consistent sleep. Plus, I'm back to studying my medical transcription course material. The extra tax return money is almost gone, and I have no choice but to push myself every day to get done so I can start earning some money. Good grief, we've got five kids now. All of a sudden, it just feels so overwhelming. The house is dirty all the time, I'm tired, I'm stressed about money, I feel like a mediocre mother, and though I love my family, sometimes I wish I could escape into a little rift in time so I could hide out by myself for a week with only me and Sammy to take care of. With everyone in the house, it's just input/output overload. I really miss those two days in the hospital. Sort of makes a girl wish she could run away to a spa for a month after the birth of a baby. But duty calls, and the moths flying out of my pocketbook nix that concept.