The last few weeks have been crazy.
Work.
Home.
Emma.
And I think I've got it pretty easy since she's such an easy and good baby. I get almost 6hrs of sleep a night. Sure, it's actually broken into 2-3hr chunks, but we are up, eat, and go right back to sleep. I don't think it is a lack of sleep that makes it all feel so hectic, though.
I'm THE primary care-giver to all living things in our house. I oversee the pets are fed, watered, pottied; Hubs may do the grunt work for some of it, but generally at my "request". I pay the bills, do the shopping, etc. Add onto all that working no less than 40hrs/wk, feeding a darling daughter, keeping on top of her clothes and diaper laundry as well as our own, trying to make sure there will be something for dinner, and trying to keep up our stock of expressed milk.
My typical day goes as follows:
- Wake up for the day when the Boy leaves for work at 6:30a and feed the babe
- Get dressed while she's still milk drunk and sleepy
- Put her bottles for daycare in a cooler (her diapers and wetbag were re-stocked in her daycare bag the night before)
- Eat something, make a lunch and pack snacks, pump and accessories
- Feed, water, and corral the pets for the day while we are gone
- Feed and change Em one last time and load her daycare bag, my pump bag, purse and carseat all into the car.
- Drop baby off and head to work.
- Work 8-10hrs, work in 2 pump breaks/snack/lunch into my unpredictable schedule.
- Head home and feed the pipsqueak upon my arrival.
- Possibly make, but at least eat dinner
- The next 2 hours are spent doing bills, email, prepping bottles and diapers for the next day, pumping again, cleaning bottles and pump parts, (a bit of computer free time), dessert/snack
- Get ready for bed, last evening feed, and turn in until our 2a-ish meal, followed by the 5a meal
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I don't know how women with multiple little ones are even remotely able to function. I don't have a clue as to how women that have twins, triplets, etc survive it.
I love the time I get to spend with Em, but the evenings after work seem too short and her too sleepy. Mornings are just too hectic for real quality time, which is probably why we stay in bed until the last minute! Returning to work definitely has made me more appreciative of the time we do have together. Those 8 weeks home had me yearning for a "break" and me time. Now, I seem to be watching the clock at work, counting down the minutes until I'm able to leave and snuggle my munchkin!
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Random Run-down #3
Yikes! Has it really been practically 3 weeks since my last post? Somebody smack me around a bit and get my butt into gear here!
There hasn't been a whole lot to say about any one particular thing so I'll just do a quick rundown with some bullet points.
I hope everyone else out in blog land is doing at least ok if not great. I'm still reading and rooting for you all! Take care and hold onto hope!
There hasn't been a whole lot to say about any one particular thing so I'll just do a quick rundown with some bullet points.
- Life is still a bit frazzled here. Lil sis has moved out, but my dad is still staying with us ~3d a week. That will soon be changing, as my parents are under contract to buy a house less than 10min away from us, but likely won't close or move until after Thanksgiving and into December.
- Holy moley, I'm 30w pregnant! Some how the 3rd trimester crept up on me... just over 2mo and hopefully, we'll be bringing home a baby. I've also started the every 2w appt at the Ob's office. I wonder if they'll be doing a growth scan and all these other things I hear other women talk about their practices doing?
- It's freaking getting cold! It is too early for lows in the 30's and frost/freeze warnings here! I shouldn't have to turn the heat on in October! The cooler temps have been nicer for sleeping though.
- Speaking of sleeping, I wish I could. I need to learn how to fall back to sleep anytime I wake up for a bit at night. Taking 20-30min to drift off again each time is getting old, fast.
- The baby shower the SIL is planning/throwing for me with help from my mom and lil sis is less than 2w away. Not sure how I'm feeling about it... I'm kinda starting to have to resign myself to people fussing over me... The following weekend is the shower for the friend who had the surprise pregnancy due 2w after me. It will be her 4th shower for this child. Does that seem absurd to anyone else?
- I've made it this far without any random stranger(s) touching me or the belly. It's only been in the last month or less that people in line places, etc seem to realize and comment on me being pregnant. Let's hope the hands-off continues for the next 70d or so.
- We have still not done a thing for the nursery. Actually, I take that back. We picked out the 2 main color swatches, not just color group. Glid.den's Fresh Guacamole and Beh.r's Pastel Jade. That is the extent of our progress. Someday we'll clean the room out, actually paint it, and maybe even put some furniture in there.
- The little tyke is a mover and a shaker. It's a bit surreal (and freaky) to watch my abdomen contort like it does. Thankfully, I have a polite fetus that doesn't wake me up at night with movement or kicks to the ribs (at least not yet). Now if only my hips would be as cooperative...
- We are 95% complete with the deck. It is all built and railings are up. Just need the slats put on the step-side rail and to finish staining it all. At least it is usable and such now. Maybe I'll take a pic of it and post soon, if I can talk myself into to doing so without the project being totally complete...
- We started childbirth classes 2 weeks ago at the hospital I'll hopefully be delivering at when the munchkin decides it's ready. It's an interesting collection of people in our class to say the least. I apparently have over-researched all this stuff, because I often feel like one of the few people there that seem to know what things are, what terms mean, and all. Oh, and there is 1 other couple out of the other dozen that are waiting to find out gender as well. Coincidentally, they are also C and C W. That just tickled me!
I hope everyone else out in blog land is doing at least ok if not great. I'm still reading and rooting for you all! Take care and hold onto hope!
Sunday, October 2, 2011
I'm No Superman
No woman is an island (even if are feeling like you are large enough to be one).
It has taken me 28yrs and 6m being pregnant to realize that, sometimes, even I can't do it all. I still try. Oh boy, do I still try!
Asking for help has never been easy for me. It always feels like I'm admitting defeat. That I'm incapable of doing something. I know a large part of this is due to frequently being underestimated in my abilities by others. How on earth could a small, little female like me be able to do (fill in the blank) ? So I overcompensated. to show them that not only CAN I do it, I can do it better than they can. This worked well for me for a good number of years. Plus, this kept others from not meeting my exacting standards for things. If there was one thing I could say I honestly hate, it is having to go behind other people to do thing correctly or to fix their half-effort attempt.
It has taken me years to relinquish control of several household chores to the Hubs. Call me crazy, but I use to prefer to do all the laundry, dishes, 90% of the household cleaning, all because our definitions of clean were... different, to say the least. Slowly, I let him help where and when he offered. Mostly because I ended up not having time between going to school full-time and working about 30hrs to do much of anything at some points. A semi-clean house was miles better than a not clean house, right? Eventually, I put him in charge of a few chores and he was openly welcomed to help with anything else he wanted to do around the house. There was no way I could keep up with keeping things clean between the 2 of us, the 2 cats, and the 2 (adorable) fur explosions we call dogs while working ~50hr a week.
Queue pregnancy.
The 1st trimester, I was so worn out to be much good at anything. That and the constant nausea prevented me from doing any chores that had even a slight odor. The Boy was stellar here. Sure, our house wasn't spick and span, but it was passable and liveable. Once the nausea and utter fatigue passed/lessened, I was back to doing more. (I'll admit here that I didn't pick up all the things I was doing before. Hey, it was pretty nice not having to do all the cleaning and sitting around instead).
The 2nd trimester, I've been more involved. Not just with household cleaning. I've been back to helping with all the projects around the house, doing more at work. It feels great to have energy to do things, even if I tend to overdo them just a touch. I no longer feel delegated to the sidelines.
Except, that's where people keep putting me or at least trying. Now that I'm "noticeably" pregnant, sure people are nicer to me and are offering their help left and right, but they are also pretty quick to try and prevent me from doing things. Oh no you don't! I may be pregnant, but that doesn't mean I'm disabled. I can still do lots of things, even some manual labor. For the most part, I just have to modify how I do thing. However, there are things that I admit I can no longer do at all (Goodbye, heavy lifting and repetitive bending over). But all their objections and coddling has kicked my "I'll show them" overcompensation into overdrive.
Exhibit A: The last month of my life - At work, things have picked up for me. I have had the usual lab work, no problem, additional (and time demanding) tissue culture for a collaborative project, and that manuscript/paper I've been making figures for and writing. At home, I've been involved as much as I could in the demo of our old deck, the construction of the new, larger one, and all that goes with it. The build ended up being more involved and took longer than we initially thought. Now that the platforms are fully constructed, we've been trying to work on the staining and railing construction, when the weather decides that it isn't going to try to wash us all away. I haven't had a weekend off this whole month. The one weekend where I wasn't doing work or home stuff, we hit the beach for a impromtu family reunion of sorts as Hubs' brother and family flew in for a week from California. We hadn't seen them all in about 2yrs, and hadn't meet the youngest niece at all! While it was tons of fun, I wouldn't call staying in a house with 8 other adults and 5 kids (4 were under 4yrs) super relaxing.
Oh, and I've forgotten to mention that my younger sister is still staying with us, and now my dad has started his new job in the area, (but due to his several days on and off schedule that makes it difficult to rent a place cost-effectively and older vehicle) stays the night at our place as well on work nights.
In the last 2 weeks, I've made next to no progress on that paper writing. I had to keep pushing back when I said I'd hand it over to the boss. It was defeating me. I didn't want to give into it, so I kept struggling. Add in crazy hormones to that frustration and you get an awesome meltdown. I realized, between my snotting and sobbing over failing at everything, that I just have taken too much onto my plate. I just can't do it all. At least, not right now. If I wasn't in my current "condition", I could probably make some serious progress staying up later and pushing myself a bit more. Right now though, that isn't a viable option. I sleep poorly as it is, so all the rest I can get is desperately needed. It just isn't healthy or a good idea to strain myself that much at the moment. I wouldn't be the only one suffering.
What's a Type A, over-achiever to do? I squeezed into my big girl panties and sucked it up. I met with the boss man and let him know that I'm not getting anywhere on the paper due to not having time outside work hours and no time during them without letting other work suffer. It was a bit of a relief, but I still almost cried. He was super understanding and asked if I wanted his help with the paper. He didn't want to take it away from me as he felt I should have ownership of all aspects of that project. But if I wanted, he would be willing to finish it for me. Part of me still felt like a failure, throwing in the towel. He understood that too. He's a classic over-achiever as well. He did admire my choice of self and family over work a bit. Apparently, if he could go back, he would like to change how often he worked instead of spending more time with his family.
I know this is just the start of me needing to let things go and start asking for help more regularly. It's creeping into all sorts of corners of my life. More and more, I've had to ask the Boy for help getting up from certain positions and to carry things that I previously could. I know I'm going to need a lot more help with little things and big things as time ticks by and I get bigger. Oh and definitely if/when the baby comes.
It's dawning on me that just because I can't do every little thing myself, it doesn't mean I'm incapable or worthless. Just human. And pregnant.
It has taken me 28yrs and 6m being pregnant to realize that, sometimes, even I can't do it all. I still try. Oh boy, do I still try!
Asking for help has never been easy for me. It always feels like I'm admitting defeat. That I'm incapable of doing something. I know a large part of this is due to frequently being underestimated in my abilities by others. How on earth could a small, little female like me be able to do (fill in the blank) ? So I overcompensated. to show them that not only CAN I do it, I can do it better than they can. This worked well for me for a good number of years. Plus, this kept others from not meeting my exacting standards for things. If there was one thing I could say I honestly hate, it is having to go behind other people to do thing correctly or to fix their half-effort attempt.
It has taken me years to relinquish control of several household chores to the Hubs. Call me crazy, but I use to prefer to do all the laundry, dishes, 90% of the household cleaning, all because our definitions of clean were... different, to say the least. Slowly, I let him help where and when he offered. Mostly because I ended up not having time between going to school full-time and working about 30hrs to do much of anything at some points. A semi-clean house was miles better than a not clean house, right? Eventually, I put him in charge of a few chores and he was openly welcomed to help with anything else he wanted to do around the house. There was no way I could keep up with keeping things clean between the 2 of us, the 2 cats, and the 2 (adorable) fur explosions we call dogs while working ~50hr a week.
Queue pregnancy.
The 1st trimester, I was so worn out to be much good at anything. That and the constant nausea prevented me from doing any chores that had even a slight odor. The Boy was stellar here. Sure, our house wasn't spick and span, but it was passable and liveable. Once the nausea and utter fatigue passed/lessened, I was back to doing more. (I'll admit here that I didn't pick up all the things I was doing before. Hey, it was pretty nice not having to do all the cleaning and sitting around instead).
The 2nd trimester, I've been more involved. Not just with household cleaning. I've been back to helping with all the projects around the house, doing more at work. It feels great to have energy to do things, even if I tend to overdo them just a touch. I no longer feel delegated to the sidelines.
Except, that's where people keep putting me or at least trying. Now that I'm "noticeably" pregnant, sure people are nicer to me and are offering their help left and right, but they are also pretty quick to try and prevent me from doing things. Oh no you don't! I may be pregnant, but that doesn't mean I'm disabled. I can still do lots of things, even some manual labor. For the most part, I just have to modify how I do thing. However, there are things that I admit I can no longer do at all (Goodbye, heavy lifting and repetitive bending over). But all their objections and coddling has kicked my "I'll show them" overcompensation into overdrive.
Exhibit A: The last month of my life - At work, things have picked up for me. I have had the usual lab work, no problem, additional (and time demanding) tissue culture for a collaborative project, and that manuscript/paper I've been making figures for and writing. At home, I've been involved as much as I could in the demo of our old deck, the construction of the new, larger one, and all that goes with it. The build ended up being more involved and took longer than we initially thought. Now that the platforms are fully constructed, we've been trying to work on the staining and railing construction, when the weather decides that it isn't going to try to wash us all away. I haven't had a weekend off this whole month. The one weekend where I wasn't doing work or home stuff, we hit the beach for a impromtu family reunion of sorts as Hubs' brother and family flew in for a week from California. We hadn't seen them all in about 2yrs, and hadn't meet the youngest niece at all! While it was tons of fun, I wouldn't call staying in a house with 8 other adults and 5 kids (4 were under 4yrs) super relaxing.
Oh, and I've forgotten to mention that my younger sister is still staying with us, and now my dad has started his new job in the area, (but due to his several days on and off schedule that makes it difficult to rent a place cost-effectively and older vehicle) stays the night at our place as well on work nights.
In the last 2 weeks, I've made next to no progress on that paper writing. I had to keep pushing back when I said I'd hand it over to the boss. It was defeating me. I didn't want to give into it, so I kept struggling. Add in crazy hormones to that frustration and you get an awesome meltdown. I realized, between my snotting and sobbing over failing at everything, that I just have taken too much onto my plate. I just can't do it all. At least, not right now. If I wasn't in my current "condition", I could probably make some serious progress staying up later and pushing myself a bit more. Right now though, that isn't a viable option. I sleep poorly as it is, so all the rest I can get is desperately needed. It just isn't healthy or a good idea to strain myself that much at the moment. I wouldn't be the only one suffering.
What's a Type A, over-achiever to do? I squeezed into my big girl panties and sucked it up. I met with the boss man and let him know that I'm not getting anywhere on the paper due to not having time outside work hours and no time during them without letting other work suffer. It was a bit of a relief, but I still almost cried. He was super understanding and asked if I wanted his help with the paper. He didn't want to take it away from me as he felt I should have ownership of all aspects of that project. But if I wanted, he would be willing to finish it for me. Part of me still felt like a failure, throwing in the towel. He understood that too. He's a classic over-achiever as well. He did admire my choice of self and family over work a bit. Apparently, if he could go back, he would like to change how often he worked instead of spending more time with his family.
I know this is just the start of me needing to let things go and start asking for help more regularly. It's creeping into all sorts of corners of my life. More and more, I've had to ask the Boy for help getting up from certain positions and to carry things that I previously could. I know I'm going to need a lot more help with little things and big things as time ticks by and I get bigger. Oh and definitely if/when the baby comes.
It's dawning on me that just because I can't do every little thing myself, it doesn't mean I'm incapable or worthless. Just human. And pregnant.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
ICLW and falling behind
Sorry to be an absentee on the 1st day of ICLW, but work has been kicking my butt this week. If this is your 1st time dropping by- Thanks so much for stopping in and checking me out! I could do a new post that sums up our TTC journey or I can just link you back to these 1st 2 posts I did that gives you the whole run down up to last month: The last 10 months, part 1 & part 2. One of these days, I'll figure out how the heck to make a sub-page on this here blog that will have all this info nicely outlined. Until then, you have to read through my posts!
On to the 2nd part of this post title! I'm falling behind! Not really, just not as far ahead at work and home as I'd like to be. I'm sure it doesn't help when things are added onto my plate and I have to deal with them immediately, putting of the things I had initially planned on doing. Hello, Type A! Major problem there. I don't like my plans being disrupted! Things should get better by the week after next as a co-worker returns from maternity leave so I won't have to be covering for her share of the work any more.
As for home, if anyone has a spare couple of hours they'd like to come and help me clean, paint, and do one of the other kajillion things on my to-do list for the house, come on over! I've been pretty good about letting these things slide the last several months, but I think with my parents impending visit this weekend, I'm feeling more pressure to whip the house into presentable shape. If only I could direct the small amount of motivation I have towards that and work, rather than baby stuff...
I wrote a comment on Mel's post. Yeah. Don't tell my boss, but since we can access gmail at work for calendar purposes, I've been using that and the google reader to keep up-to-date on peoples posts and such. We aren't allowed to check many "outside" sites or do things non-work related. I can't help it though. I'm desperate to know if so and so got their test results or if there was 2 lines on whose-it's preg test, and how protocol A is treating XYZ and who is having what symptoms in their 2ww.
I will admit something else while I'm being so open. I've been filling my time with all these other peoples' lives to distract me from the omnipresent and overbearing shadow of TTC that I'm sure the rest of ya'll know fairly well. Getting wrapped up in those goings-ons keeps me from having to focus on my own. I do genuinely care about all your stories/lives, and I feel a bit selfish to be using them as distractions, but I can't seem to help it. I hope that ya'll can forgive that!
ps- Still waiting for confirmation of O, but I'm pretty sure I'm in my own 2ww now and will be needing ya'lls bright and shiny posts to keep my attention from myself.
On to the 2nd part of this post title! I'm falling behind! Not really, just not as far ahead at work and home as I'd like to be. I'm sure it doesn't help when things are added onto my plate and I have to deal with them immediately, putting of the things I had initially planned on doing. Hello, Type A! Major problem there. I don't like my plans being disrupted! Things should get better by the week after next as a co-worker returns from maternity leave so I won't have to be covering for her share of the work any more.
As for home, if anyone has a spare couple of hours they'd like to come and help me clean, paint, and do one of the other kajillion things on my to-do list for the house, come on over! I've been pretty good about letting these things slide the last several months, but I think with my parents impending visit this weekend, I'm feeling more pressure to whip the house into presentable shape. If only I could direct the small amount of motivation I have towards that and work, rather than baby stuff...
I wrote a comment on Mel's post. Yeah. Don't tell my boss, but since we can access gmail at work for calendar purposes, I've been using that and the google reader to keep up-to-date on peoples posts and such. We aren't allowed to check many "outside" sites or do things non-work related. I can't help it though. I'm desperate to know if so and so got their test results or if there was 2 lines on whose-it's preg test, and how protocol A is treating XYZ and who is having what symptoms in their 2ww.
I will admit something else while I'm being so open. I've been filling my time with all these other peoples' lives to distract me from the omnipresent and overbearing shadow of TTC that I'm sure the rest of ya'll know fairly well. Getting wrapped up in those goings-ons keeps me from having to focus on my own. I do genuinely care about all your stories/lives, and I feel a bit selfish to be using them as distractions, but I can't seem to help it. I hope that ya'll can forgive that!
ps- Still waiting for confirmation of O, but I'm pretty sure I'm in my own 2ww now and will be needing ya'lls bright and shiny posts to keep my attention from myself.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)