You Can’t Pick Them…What A Shame

I truly wish you could choose your inlaws. You get to choose who you want to marry, why can’t you choose the family you’re marrying into?  Seriously!

When I first met Eddie and we started to talk about our families, he always said he isn’t super close with his parents as they are very different from him and he feels like they don’t approve of a lot of the ways he chooses to live life. I didn’t fully grasp his words until the first time I met them.  It was only a quick half hour meet and greet at their house, but I sat there quietly on the couch and listened to his Mom judging the sh** out of women and men who had chosen to do the early start for the marathon that had taken place that morning in their town.  “What is the point of doing the race if you can’t do it in the allocated amount of time and instead are out on the course for 6 hours because you aren’t capable of finishing under the 5 hour cut off time.” Is what she said.  I sat there stunned that she, a woman with her own battle to lose some weight and recover from a bad knee, couldn’t see why people would do whatever they could in order to conquer something challenging in their lives.  Something they never thought they would be able to do before.  Just because a woman is 250 pounds and doing the race, it doesn’t mean that she hasn’t already lost a ton of weight and this race was the goal she kept in mind during her entire weight loss.  But his mom sat there and judged these people.  This was my first warning sign.  It wasn’t long before they started judging their own son right to his face.  “Edward’s resume is stacked with lies just to get the job he isn’t even qualified for.  He’ll never get it.”  3 years since that comment and he has done absolutely everything they doubted him on…and then some.  “Edward you’re getting fat.  Maybe you should focus more on losing weight than your career.”  There are just so many things they have judged him on which only has driven him further and further away from them.  But he still makes the effort to keep them involved in his life.  He tries hard, but when he decides to stop for a bit to see if they will make contact with him and share the effort of the communication, he will receive a passive aggressive text from his dad saying “mother wonders why she never hears from you anymore.”  Well how about “mother” picks up her damn phone and calls or texts him for once??

This weekend took the cake though. Every year our entire extended family goes to a new city and takes part in a running race there.  Every year we invite his parents to join us at the big family dinner the evening after the race.  Every year I question whether they truly want to be there or if they are coming out of obligation because we invited them.  They come and sit there and don’t make any effort with my family, despite everyone being super friendly to them.  My Dad makes effort to talk to them and they blow him off.  I don’t know why.  I will never understand.  During dinner this time, after we were all done eating, his dad leans over to Eddie and says “Edward, you need to cut back on the amount of carbs you eat.  It’s not good for you.”  All because Eddie and I shared a spinach dip with bread for the dipping as an appetizer.  A rare carb indulgence for us.  Eddie just recently lost 30 pounds in 2.5 months all because he cut down carbs and started portion controlling and working out with a trainer.  Apparently those 30 pounds were not enough for his father and instead of praising him on it he felt the need to belittle it and attack him for one meal.  ONE MEAL!!!  It blew my mind when I heard that he said this to him.  Every time Eddie sees them it’s an opportunity for them to attack his weight or appearance somehow.  Eddie has a younger brother who they can’t say enough good things about.  Meanwhile this brother is a lifer in university.  He’s gone back to live with them in their hoarding style house.  He never bathes.  He doesn’t make any effort with Eddie, despite Eddie’s attempts with him.  He has no job.  He has major mental illness that he doesn’t get help for.  He has no drive or passion for anything.  But he is their pride and joy.  Eddie is almost like the son they never wanted but are stuck with.  The only positive to come from this is that it has reinforced Eddie’s drive in life to never be like them.  To work hard at his career, despite them disagreeing with it.  To be the parent that they never were to him.  But the craziest part about it all is that he wants to make a lot of money and his intention with some of that money is to buy his parents a home and assist them in opening up a small cafe (his mom loves baking) if they are interested in it.  I don’t know if this is to give his parents a big F you by proving that he has amounted to be something they said he wouldn’t or what.  But whenever he says what he wants to do I just quietly support it even though I don’t understand it.

I wasn’t going to get started on it, but it feels good to be writing about this and letting it all out so I will say this too. I have no idea what they think the role of being a grandparent is.  They have been around Hunter four times since he was born.  Four times in 14 months.  I get that they live in a different city and visits aren’t aplenty, but there is technology out there to make it so that he sees their faces more often.  He facetimes my mom just about every second day.  He just watches her as she makes faces at him or sings songs to him.  He can’t talk to her.  But weeks can go by before he sees her in real life and there is never any hesitation from him to be with her because he knows her still from those phone conversations.  But this weekend Eddie’s parents commented about how Hunter doesn’t really know them because he isn’t around them that often.  Ok…fair enough comment to make….so why not work on that while he’s in their town?  It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me on how you make a relationship work.  We went for coffee with them on the Saturday.  Hunter crawled around the quiet cafe and played with toys on the floor.  His dad stayed sitting at the table talking about pretentious things and his mom spent most of her time talking to the woman who owns the cafe.  All the while Hunter is hanging out behind her.  All it would have taken was one of them playing with his truck with him for 5 minutes to instill the memory in his brain and create that connection.  Neither of them asked to hold him.  Neither of them asked if they could feed him his snack.  Nothing.  It was like he was barely there.  On Sunday at the dinner they made the comment again about how he doesn’t really know them.  Once dinner was over Hunter was walking (with help) everywhere in a quiet corner of the restaurant with my sister.  They were playing and climbing on things and having a great time.  My mom eventually took over with hanging out and walking Hunter around.  Eddie’s parents?  They ate their dinner, said their a-hole comments to Eddie, didn’t make any effort with anyone else, and then they left.  They left without saying goodbye to me.  They left without even trying to hang out with Hunter.  This is after I asked his dad if he wanted to hold him, he begrudgingly said ok to it, and then Hunter started crying the moment he was in his arms.  Hunter loves people and will get held by almost everyone.  Clearly he was not a fan of the person he doesn’t even know is his grandfather.  But why the heck did they not get off of their asses and spend time with him?  Did they just sit there and judge/be envious of his relationship with his Aunt and his other grandparent and not realize that those relationships were formed by effort?  Or do they think that they only happened just because they happen to live closer to him?  Blows my mind.  We went to briefly see them before we headed back home and Hunter was sort of ok with his grandma holding him, but the moment his grandpa went to hold him he started crying and reaching back for his daddy.  Meanwhile Eddie’s douchebag brother made comments about Hunter being apprehensive about them all.  Well no shit Sherlock!  Wouldn’t you be apprehensive too if someone you don’t know was in your face?  And then they make comments about how, next year when we come for the run, they can watch Hunter while we race.  Uhm….no?  Not until you can show that you’re making more of an effort to know him.  And not until I know that you can take care of him and follow the rules I give you.  Not march to the beat of your own drum.

Don’t even get me started on his dad referring to last Christmas as being a “huge disaster”. This was the Christmas where we invited them to join our family tradition with my side of the family.  Where we bought them nice gifts.  We cooked them a nice breakfast and an even more amazing, huge turkey dinner.  What did they do?  Snuck out of my parent’s apartment right after dinner was over.  Didn’t thank my dad for hosting them.  Barely said goodbye to my mom.  We are racking our brains to figure out why the heck they think it was a huge disaster.  What did we miss from the amazing day that they saw?  I swear the day is going to come where his parents are going to say something that annoys or offends me and my response will be to gather up my son and walk out the door.  I don’t have to put up with shit like that.  Calling an event put on by my family a “huge disaster” when it wasn’t?  Not showing any fucking (sorry for the language.  I’m pissed about this) appreciation for the fact that we allowed them to join in our celebration?  I hold the power to leave and show you that shit like that won’t be tolerated.

Two people have never gotten on my nerves or made me as angry as my husband’s parents. But I have no choice but to tolerate them as long as he does.

Life….with Pictures!

What I wouldn’t give to stay in bed for hours. Just for one morning.  No alarm set, no baby waking around 7 wanting breakfast, no places to go or people to see.  Just stay curled up cozy in bed.  It’s the dream.  Instead, every morning 5:30 rolls around and I’m up and staring at my tired face in the mirror, dreaming about a delicious, sweet, creamy latte.  But now, starting today, I’ve cut daily lattes out of my morning routine because I just don’t need them.  In a short while I will be starting a detoxification “diet” to get my body cleansed to try to help reduce my migraines.  Lattes definitely don’t fit in with all the fruits and veggies I will be consuming.  And lattes will be the hardest thing to kick, not to mention the Halloween chocolates that will be floating around the office soon!  So, now my mornings are just me staring at my tired face in the mirror while sipping water.  *sigh* my new under eye cream for tired mom-eyes can’t get here soon enough.

Life is busy. Life is so insanely busy.  Last night the husband and I were upstairs in our guest room, which was stacked with boxes full of shoes, clothes, bedding, pillows, that we never bothered unpacking when we moved into the townhouse in January.  We had fun hanging out and going through everything.  Deciding what we would keep in the townhouse and what would get put into storage (don’t get me started on my husband’s constant refusal to get rid of clothes he doesn’t wear or fit anymore) so we can prepare our townhouse to start being shown to potential buyers likely within the next week and a half.  We joked around that we must have known this townhouse wasn’t going to be where we would stay for long because those boxes never got unpacked.  I even found a few items of clothing I had thought went missing and I happily added them to my closet for more work clothing options.  We got a lot done in that room last night and the husband hauled off a ton of stuff to storage.  I had three massive storage bags FULL of Hunter’s baby clothes that he had grown out of.  Eddie asked if I want to get rid of them all but I said that I’m ok to sell some of it, but there are a few things that I want to keep because they have memories attached to them.  He wasn’t patient enough to let me go through the bags to prepare for selling, so they all just got moved to storage for the time being.  I can’t believe how much clothing we have gone through in the past year with him.  It’s truly insane.  And just the other day I had to order more clothing for him because he either doesn’t fit what he has or the season is changing so he needs warmer options.  It’s never ending.  I try to buy some items of clothing or shoes second hand but it kind of gives me the heebeejeebies if I don’t know that the clothes have come from a clean home.

Anyway, with the incredibly busy life of course comes relationship challenges. Eddie does not handle the stress of renovations very well.  Admittedly he is doing 90% of the renovations himself and that is incredibly hard to do.  On top of his regular job plus his extra work that he’s doing to become self employed by the end of the year.  It doesn’t give him any excuse to be snapping at me, but he has been.  We have spent the last month and a bit at each other’s throats.  There are good days and there are frustrating days.  It hasn’t been fun for either of us.  It came to a turning point last week when him snapping at me about something finally got us properly talking about how we haven’t really talked much at all to each other in weeks.  It ended up being a good conversation and I feel like we reached a turning point.  Eddie realized that he’s bit off more than he can chew with the renovation and it’s taking its toll on both of us.  So he agreed to hire a tile guy to do the bathroom tiles, bring the kitchen guys back to install the handles on the cupboards, hire someone to paint a huge section of wall that requires scaffolding and bring a plumber in to quickly hook up the kitchen plumbing and ensuite plumbing.  By doing this, it frees him up to do the smaller jobs that are less stressful.  Sometimes it’s great saving money doing renovations on your own, but sometimes it’s better for your sanity to hire someone to come and take care of things.  Because this weight is off his shoulders, I’m finding that we are more light hearted with each other.  We have more to talk about and we are spending less time annoyed with one another.  I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to moving into a house that’s going to require NOTHING to be done on it.

I haven’t shared any photos from life on here for awhile, so here are a few to dump in!

 

Hunter had the honour of being the ring bearer at his Uncle’s (my brother) wedding this past weekend. He did a great job being pulled down the aisle in his fancy new wagon and not tossing the ring box over the edge onto the ground.  He looked so dapper in his little vest and tie.

Bath time cuteness! Censored for the internets.

Since starting daycare Hunter has been a little bit moody in the evenings. We usually struggle through dinner and getting him to eat something, then he has a blast in his bath, but when it’s time to go to bed he gets a little whiney.  I’m connecting it to him being incredibly exhausted after his day at daycare and his shorter naps that he seems to be taking there.  Last night’s meltdown, despite being annoying, was kind of cute too.  Melting down in his big boy fire truck jammies.

And our other “baby” of the family. Our 5 month old puppy, Gracie, helping me do dishes in the laundry room sink while I wait for our new kitchen sink to be installed.  She’s 40% lovely puppy and 60% crazy, annoying puppy!

One Isn’t So Bad Is It?

After Hunter turned 1 year old I started to get the question from people on if we are planning to have a second baby any time soon.  When I returned to work a month ago I saw my boss sneak a couple peeks at my stomach area as though she was checking to make sure there was no baby growing in there.  There are so many assumptions that once you have one baby that you will definitely want two kids.  For some people that is completely true.  They fall in love with having a small baby around and they can’t imagine life with just one child.  Then there is the other side of the spectrum of the “one and done” crowd.

Before getting pregnant I was pretty certain I would want two kids.  My husband wanted two kids as well.  It was the perfect family picture in our minds.  But 13 months into this parenting gig and I am now fairly certain that my life will be complete with just my one little dude and that’s it.  I have agreed to my husband’s request of not making any solid decisions until a few years go by and I get some time to really let the decision simmer in my mind for a bit.  If I told him today that I want a second baby, he would be completely game, but would probably ask to wait another year or so before getting on to that.  He still holds on to his desire to have two kids.  But, being the smart man that he is, he knows that the final decision comes down to what I want.  It’s my body and mostly my life that is affected most by having a second child and it’s my call on it.

I have told a few people that I’m feeling like Hunter will be our one and only and some have been totally ok with my thoughts on it, but others, like my mom, make comments like the following:

1) Hunter will have only child syndrome

2) Hunter won’t have anyone to play with.  Don’t you want him to not need you to entertain him?

3) Hunter deserves to have a sibling doesn’t he?

4) You make such cute babies, why wouldn’t you want to make another cute one?

5) Hunter won’t learn how to share

And so on and so on.  The more I hear these comments, the more I roll my eyes about them.  There are ways to parent so that your child doesn’t have only child syndrome.  Hunter goes to daycare and is learning all about sharing there, and he will learn to share at home as well.  After all, I’m all about sharing and have been since I was a child.  Hunter will have friends that he can play with as he grows up and, guess what?  Kids can learn to play on their own too!  That’s where creativity comes into things.

A quick google search shows me that clearly having only one child is a hot topic.  There is judgement all over the place for people who decide to have one child.  Parents are being called greedy for making that decision for their child (uhm….since when does the child get to decide if he wants a sibling?  isn’t that up to the parents who…you know…create the child?) and that their child will be forever different because he doesn’t have a sibling to hang out with.  There are even google searches of “why do people choose to have just one child?”  It’s like people are so shocked that a couple would make this decision that they actually need to research how the heck they came to the final choice.  What I’m constantly amazed by is that people feel it’s open season to judge/ask about someone choosing to have only one child or no kids at all.  But nobody judges or asks why someone decides to have more than one child.  The same decision making factors go into all three of these choices.  So why is so much focus put on the group of no kids or only one kid?  Why is it an expectation that if you have a kid it means that you should be having another one down the road?

I will admit that the majority of my reasons for only wanting one child are totally selfish.  It’s my life too isn’t it?  I think my reasons are completely valid and mean that I will feel like my own life is fulfilled and happy.  Another baby doesn’t automatically add fullness to life, just like having your first baby doesn’t.  Fullness in life comes from doing exactly what you want, being happy about it and having the freedom to make the changes needed in order to continue with that happiness.  For some it means having multiple kids, and for some it means never having any kids.

What are my reasons?  Well…to put it bluntly…I like my freedom.  Having just one child gives me the balance I like.  I have an awesome little dude in my life who I love so hard I want to squish his little face, but then I also have the ability to leave him with his grandparents or his Aunty and have an evening out with just me and my husband.  It’s harder to convince someone to babysit when it involves two little rugrats.  At least in my circle of people.  I want the opportunity to get my body back to what it was before, or as close as possible to it.  Having one baby wreaked havoc over my body and if I’m having this much trouble making improvements, or committing to making improvements, what hope do I have when I’m exhausted from dealing with a toddler and a newborn?  Speaking of exhaustion…I like my sleep.  I like that Hunter sleeps through the night and has for months.  I know that as he gets older this will change, but that is something I can work with.  For now, I will enjoy knowing that I can get at least 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.  I don’t miss the endless waking up, feeding, diaper changes, crying (from me and the baby) and then the tiredness that followed me around every day.  I want to know that my marriage is a strong one.  Having one child has caused strains on it and we have managed to get through, so far.  Adding a second child will likely cause more strain/resentment/annoyance/stress/you name it with one another.  I know for a fact that it will.  I want to enjoy my marriage.  Some couples find their groove and do really well with multiple kids.  But for me and my husband, I think we both like keeping an element of our independence as well as keeping some one on one time with one another that doesn’t involve a ton of organizing.  I want to travel.  It is doable with two kids, but much easier with one kid.  I want to be the best version of myself for me, my husband and Hunter.  That’s simply it.  I know what the best version of myself is and I know that it would not be there if we had a second child.

Body After Baby

When I was pregnant I got pretty lucky and only had very minimal stretch marks and not a huge weight gain. I rarely used any lotions or potions on my belly to try to keep stretch marks at bay and already had some existing ones that didn’t expand that much.  I didn’t have any weird food cravings or the desire to pig out on all things bad.  First trimester all I could stomach was carbs, so I ate a lot of pasta and bread.  But after the first trimester passed, all I wanted was veggies and fruits.  I was obsessed with carrot sticks and grapes.  With all of this, I thought that maybe it would mean that my body would “bounce back” to being similar to what it was before conceiving.  I will admit, prior to getting pregnant I was in really good shape.  I was going to the gym or running almost daily, I was careful about what I ate and was downing water like mad.  I also had an online personal trainer that helped give me body strength that I hadn’t had before.  My stomach was my own version of “flat”.  I’ve never been a skinny girl.  The last time my body was considered thin would have been when I was about 16 and a competitive swimmer training 8 times a week.  I’ve always been curvy, my thighs have always touched each other, I’ve had hips and a booty for as long as I can remember.  I’m not entirely sure why I was so optimistic that my body would return back to what it was pre baby.  It has never been one to respond quickly to anything.  It has always taken time and hard work to get it to levels I’ve been happy with.

After Hunter was born I lost 18 pounds in one week. 18!  I was so excited!  I had dreams of being the thinnest I’ve ever been because of breast feeding and having nothing else to do but walk every day.  What nobody told me was that this loss is totally normal and that it would stall out and then my body would hold on to those pesky remaining pounds.  That some people do have the magic of breast feeding that makes the weight fall off.  For me, this wasn’t the case at all.  My body wanted to hold on to every single one of those pounds as if it needed them to survive.  I was walking almost daily, but I was also drinking vanilla lattes almost daily because, what else do you do while on mat leave and no one is around?  So of course no weight was falling off as I had expected it to.  I had grand plans of using the gym in our condo building.  I think I went a handful of times before we moved out of the building in January.  My husband got me a spin bike for Christmas and I was convinced I was going to use it daily and burn those calories.  I have used it maybe once every 2-3 weeks since he set it up for me in February.  It sits there in the living room staring at me daily, trying to convince me to get on and ride for a bit.  But I find every excuse in the world not to use it, despite my husband’s big investment in it for me and my health.  While on leave, for about two months I was doing 1-2 days a week of bootcamp.  A Mom and Baby style bootcamp.  It was fun, but it wasn’t that challenging.  Some days were, but most days weren’t.  I also bought a membership to an awesome gym in town and I have remained somewhat consistent with going to it at least twice a week.  The one thing that I have been keeping 100% consistent on in the last few weeks is walking the puppy daily after dinner.  Not just a short walk.  Minimum 45-50 minutes every time and at a good speed to try to tire her out.

With all of these attempts at being active and making (mostly) healthy eating choices, I have found that my body just does not want to let go of the baby weight. I used to think that losing weight was hard pre-baby…but post-baby it is incredibly hard.  I don’t know what it is but it seems post baby the weight is firmly planted around my mid-section and is next to impossible to move off.  I’m not one to join any fad diets or do supplement shakes to help move the weight as they don’t teach me or my body anything about maintaining weight loss down the road.  I need to spend more time focusing on making the right food choices and balancing food and life.  Not downing shakes just to get the weight off.  Since returning to work I have found that it’s easier to eat quite well.  I stop occasionally and get a latte on my way to work, but during the day my foods are all really healthy.  I sit for the majority of the day, so I need to ensure that I’m eating decently to counter balance the lack of movement.

The one thing I meant to say, before I got carried away on this post, was that nobody ever told me about something called a belly “apron” after having a baby. Apparently relatively common in some c-section women.  It’s the belly not shrinking back down to being flatter and, below and around the belly button the belly sags and kind of aprons over.  On top of my body wanting to hang on to the weight around my midsection, I have also been blessed with the belly apron.  It isn’t cute, it makes me incredibly self conscious, I wear pants that are high waisted enough that I can tuck it in and create the illusion of a flatter stomach, and bikinis are likely something I won’t ever wear again.  As the lovely picture below shows me in my super high granny undies with the belly tucked under them (my husband is such a lucky man lol) my stomach, in May (left hand picture) was still quite rounded and where you can’t see is even more sagging going on.  The left picture was just this weekend where my stomach is only slightly less rounded, but there is still the “apron” going on at the bottom.  I feel as though even if I lose all the weight I want to, I will still always have something sagging in that area.  There will always be some left over skin hanging there.  That, without surgery, I won’t have the flatter stomach I once had before.  This is something I wasn’t prepared for post baby.  I thought maybe I would have some wrinkly loose skin around  my waist that would forever be there.  That I could handle.  I wasn’t expecting to have to learn to accept that, no matter how hard I try, I will always have a sagging belly.  I won’t let this stop me from working to reduce it as much as possible.  Because, maybe some day down the road, surgery to remove the extra skin might be a possibility.  Or maybe it will bounce back better than I’m expecting it to.  But this whole apron thing is one of the hardest things to accept on my body right now.  Having a baby messes your body up in more ways than you know.  Everyone talks about stretch marks, or sneezing and peeing themselves a little, or the saggy boobs.  But nobody talks about the damn belly apron!!!

Figuring Out the New Normal

I knew that going back to work would involve creating a whole new routine in my day and finding a new balance with everything. I know that I am only a week and a half into being back at work, but holy crap am I ever tired.  During mat leave I honestly never felt the new parent exhaustion that everyone talks about.  Mostly because I had insane insomnia in the last few months of my pregnancy so lack of sleep was normal for me.  During mat leave I never napped when he took his naps as I’m a horrendous napper.  By the time I would fall asleep he would be waking up and ready to go, so I never bothered to even try.  I managed to get through the year and never actually ever really mention that I was tired, because I honestly never truly felt tired.

But now that I’m back to work, I’m tired. So, so tired.  My day starts at 5:30 and I don’t go to bed until just after 10:00.  I start work at 7:30, work until 3-ish, go and get hunter from daycare, home around 4:40-ish, then it’s a bit of play time with Hunter, giving the puppy a bit of attention, cooking dinner for Hunter, feeding him dinner, getting his bath ready and getting him into it, playing with him while he’s in the bath, getting him into his pyjamas and give him his bedtime bottle, get him into bed, then go downstairs and prep dinner for us, eat dinner, take the puppy for a good walk (sometimes eddie does this though), do the dishes (in the bath tub currently because our kitchen is under renovation), dry the dishes needed for the next day, prepare Hunter’s lunch and snacks for daycare as well as my own lunch and snacks, then upstairs to deal with figuring out what i’m going to wear the next day, take a long hot shower and then fall into bed.  And this is an average day without me going to the gym.  It’s even busier when I do try to fit the gym in. The expectation is that down the road Eddie will start to help out with a few more of these tasks, but we are also in the throes of home renovation with a bit of a rush on it so we can put our townhouse on the market for some time in September and it is Eddie who is doing all of the work.  There isn’t much I can help with so it’s all falling on him.  So I need to continue to cover most of the things to keep everything moving forward as smoothly as possible.  Once the renovations are done and we have the townhouse in selling condition then Eddie can help me by picking up some of the slack.

In the meantime I have to continue on, figure out how to get through the days feeling tired and keeping my brain firing on all cylinders at work. I said to a friend, not too long ago, that I think when returning to the working world after a year of maternity leave, that women should be forced to start easing into it by doing part time work for at least a few weeks to a month, then moving into full time work.  It’s a tough reality to go from having a bit more time on my hands and not having a strict routine to follow, to suddenly everything having to go exactly according to plan or else I’m going to be in bed at 11:00 every night, only to have to wake up at 5:30 the next day.  It’s tough.  It is truly tough.  I would give my left arm to just be able to come home from work and lie on the couch for a bit and watch mindless tv while I unwind.  But that isn’t reality anymore.  The new normal is very different.  I can see why a lot of women don’t return back to the working world until their child is in preschool or kindergarten.  But, part of me wonders if it’s harder to adjust to a new working mom routine after being home for just one year or being home for three or five years?  After 3 years of being at home there would be a new routine figured out and would it be harder to break?  I really don’t know what the answer is on this one.

I think I will feel a lot better when I’m not living in a home that is in a steady state of chaos. Floors ripped up and new tiles half laid down, a kitchen with no overhead light, rubbermade bins stacked all over the dining space and things falling out of them from me trying to find where I put things, a half completed closet in the bedroom, a 90% finished back deck and a small yard totally torn up and basically a dirt patch, a kitchen with cupboards, but no counter top, sink, cupboard/drawer doors, no dishwasher, the fridge is in the hallway and on and on and on.  It’s just one big mess that actually stresses me out every day when I walk into it.  But it’s our current reality.  It can’t be changed at the moment.  We agreed and committed to these renovations.  By the end of the week the kitchen should be completely done which will make my life a bajillion times better.  Or at least that’s what the husband tells me.

The big light at the end of this tunnel is that in December we will have a brand new house to move into. Not a single renovation will need to happen on it.  It’s big, it’s beautiful, and the icing on the cake is that the bathroom will have a ginormous soaker bath tub.  Ohhhh my gooooooood how I miss having a good bath tub!!  Every mom needs a bath tub to escape the world in!  Every day I drive by the house as it’s being built and as I see the progress on it I get more and more excited about walking through the front door for the first time!

I will just keep reminding myself that in time I will adjust to this new normal and, while I may be forever tired, I can adjust to that too.

 

Daycare

After quite a bit of harassing, today I finally received confirmation from the daycare that Hunter will be going to that there will be space for him come August.  We are lucky that I have the job I’ve got as it made it so we were put right to the front of the waitlist for two daycares in the district I work for.  We haven’t had to go through the drama and stress of being on a ton of waitlists for daycares everywhere and not knowing if we are going to get in by the time my 12 months of maternity leave is up.  Thankfully the two daycares both have good reviews and are “affordable”.  I use parenthesis because basically paying for daycare is going to completely eat up my income, so it’s expensive, but not as expensive as some are.

Hunter is almost 8 months old.  Which means 4 months left of being home with him.  With how quickly the last 8 months have flown by I can only imagine that these next 4 are going to go at warp speed.  And…to be honest…internally I’m freaking the fuck out about sending my little boy off to daycare while I go back to do my other job.  I’m freaking out about someone raising him.  About someone else talking to him, singing to him, teaching him things, hearing him say new words before me, possibly seeing him walk before me.  I’m freaking out about not being able to be there to see or control how other kids are towards my sensitive little boy.  To tell him it’s ok if someone is being mean to him.  To protect him.  I’m freaking out about dropping him off and having to turn and walk away from his face, which is likely to be upset that Mommy is leaving him.  Last week I dropped him off at eddie’s work so I could go to my practice, and as I walked away I looked back and saw him leaning forward in his carseat trying to peer around it to see where I was going.  It hurt my heart so bad seeing this.  He now connects that I’m his number 1 person and gets upset when I leave him, even if he’s with his dad, or his grandparents.  I know this is a phase and he will get over it.  I know that once he goes to daycare, after a few days, he won’t get upset about being left as he will know all the toys and new friends.  But the anxiety I feel about having to leave him is huge.  It’s like a pit in my stomach that won’t go away.  I go to bed at night and can’t fall asleep because I’m thinking about it.  I don’t want to go back to work.  I really, truly do not want to.  I like my job, I like the people I work with, but I don’t LOVE it.  I know it’s important that I go back to work and for Hunter to go to daycare to learn social skills and independence.  But I just don’t want to accept it.  We could easily live off of Eddie’s income, but we have always agreed that I would be going back to work no matter how much he’s earning.  It’s fair and reasonable.  But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.  I’ve told him that I don’t want to go back to work and we have had light conversations about it.  I don’t think he quite understands.  He might to an extent as I know he has a tough time going back to work after weekends.  But he hasn’t spent 24/7 of the last 8 months straight with Hunter so, I think it’s a different feeling.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I’m not.  Either way it all sucks and I just don’t want to go to work.

And why would I want to go to work when I have this adorable face to hang out with?

 

More Babies or No More Babies?

You know how when you’re newly married or have been in a relationship for a long time and everyone asks you when you’re going to have babies?  Well…once you’ve had your first baby, almost immediately people start asking when baby number 2 is going to come.  I swear I have heard it more times than I can even remember.  People joke about it, people assume because I have 1 baby that it means I want more, people say Hunter needs a brother/sister.  Just all kinds of opinions from everyone.

But, I will be totally honest in saying that I am about 80% confident I don’t want another baby and 20% not confident in that decision.  This is despite, for years, thinking I definitely want 2 kids.

I know my pregnancy wasn’t considered super difficult by some people’s standards, but for me, it wasn’t easy.  For the most part I hated being pregnant.  I hated the migraines, the nausea, the indigestion, the heartburn, the weight gain, the constant tired feeling, the swelling, the mood swings…absolutely everything except the feeling of Hunter moving around all the time.  Thinking about going through it all again makes me cringe.  It doesn’t sound remotely appealing at all to me.  I know that we got a pretty amazing little dude out of it, but it’s still not enough to make me truly want to go through it all again.

It’s not just the pregnancy that makes me go “meh” to the idea of another baby.  It’s also the tough first 7 months (could be more but so far it’s only been 7 months of experience that I have) that I’ve experienced.  And this is with a pretty amazing little guy who always has a smile ready to go, who is super easy going, who clearly loves his mama more than anything in the world.  I don’t enjoy the unpredictability.  That one day he is doing something a way that I love (like sleep), and the next day it does a complete turn in the opposite direction and I’m left feeling like “wtf went wrong??”  I don’t enjoy the days where I get absolutely nothing done, despite being home all day long, because the little dude has taken up all of my time.  I don’t enjoy the constant questioning of whether something he’s doing is normal or something I should be concerned about.  Now…when I say I don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t mean that I don’t find something every day to find enjoyable about raising my little guy.  That I don’t like every experience I have with him.  That I’m not able to enjoy those days that are unpredictable with him.  I have learned to accept a lot of it and make sure that I take in every moment I can while raising my sweet boy.

I just simply can’t imagine doing it all over again…and by then it would be with a toddler to care for as well.  The thought of a newborn and toddler makes me want to run away and hide where no one can find me.  I know that there are women everywhere who have raised a toddler and newborn at the same time and done amazing jobs at it.  But I just don’t even know if I have the mental strength to get through it.  Almost bi-weekly I have moments where I feel totally overwhelmed with life.  It only lasts a day or so and I get by, but that’s only with one child.  How do people do it with two so close in age?  Those are some strong mamas out there!

Tonight we had Eddie’s parents over for dinner and at a point when I don’t think they realized I was in ear shot, his mom asked him about another baby.  Eddie and I agreed to not have any discussion about it until Hunter is a year old, but tonight I was ever so thankful to hear what his answer was even without me being there encouraging it.  He told them that if we do have another it won’t be for a few years, and even then we just might choose to stick to just Hunter.  That we want to enjoy raising Hunter and see how much of a handful he is once he’s running around and how much we feel we can handle then.  I was glad to hear that even without discussing it, we are on the same page.  Eddie is a realist and he knows the struggles I have sometimes and he knows not to push anything on me that would make me anxious or stressed out.  I swear it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders hearing him say those words.

But, in saying all of this, maybe when Hunter is 2 years old I might decide I massively miss the newborn, tiny baby phase and want another.  But right now…I will just enjoy the moments I have with our first, and our possible only.

Reflections

Sitting here with a glass of wine sitting beside me, the dinner dishes done and time to relax and I just got to thinking about back when we decided to start trying for a baby.  It’s a bit funny to think back on.  After we got married in November 2013 we agreed to wait 2 years before starting to try for a family.  We thought it would be enough time to enjoy being married, do a bit of traveling, find a home that had more than one bedroom and basically just relax for a little while.  We were happy with the decision and carried on with newlywed life.  About 8 months into being married we were at a friend’s wedding.  The wedding was really quite lame, so we did what any responsible people do, and we self medicated with large glasses of wine.  We tried to stick it out at the wedding but the DJ was awful and everyone was more content sitting around talking than bringing the party.  So we left and went home.  We took the seabus (ferry) back to our side of the city and while on that boozey ride home Eddie turned to me and said he’s ready to start trying for a family, but only if I was ready.  Being a drunk girl I excitedly said “of course!” but then common sense kicked in and I said that maybe we shouldn’t commit to anything right then and there and instead have a talk about it when we were sober and thinking a bit clearer.  For the rest of the 15 minute seabus ride we chatted about babies and speculated how long it would take us to conceive.  The next day, when we were both sobered up, we briefly talked about pulling the goalie and going for gold.  No big conversation, no monumental moment.  Just an agreement and then life carried on.

We didn’t tell anyone that we were trying.  It was between the two of us and we didn’t want to hear the “are you pregnant yet?” question constantly.  We just quietly plodded along with it.  Part of me does wish I had told at least one person, because the feeling of doing things unprotected for the first time in my life was terrifying.  Every time it happened I spent the next day worrying and then wondering if that was the successful moment.  I remember confessing this to Eddie when we were for frozen yogurt one hot afternoon.  He said that maybe the fact that I was stressing out was a sign that I wasn’t ready to be moving forward with things.  I assured him that it didn’t have to do with not being ready.  It was just really hard to go an adult lifetime of always ensuring 100% safety and trying to avoid a pregnancy, and now to be accepting of it was just a hard pill to swallow and get used to.

I will admit that our attempts at making a baby were lackluster.  We have never been super “active” in that area of our relationship, but we didn’t step it up at all because we wanted a baby.  We just carried on, business as usual and agreed that we weren’t trying to have a baby, but we weren’t trying NOT to have a baby.  If that makes any sense.  So we basically pulled the goalie at the end of July.  I can honestly say it took about 6-8 attempts until we were successful in November.  And the successful moment ended up happening on our 1 year anniversary of being married.  We went away to the hotel that we got married at and spent a long weekend there.  We ate a lot of good food, walked a lot around the hotel where there is lots of trails and we drank a lot of wine.  The weekend kicked off with the hotel leaving a bottle of wine and a cheese and cracker platter in our room along with a card welcoming us back.  So loooots of wine and food.  On our actual anniversary we really splurged and went to a very high end restaurant where we had an amazing meal, a bottle of expensive champagne and then a bottle of expensive red.  Way more alcohol than I’m used to drinking.  So…once again…drunk Andrea and Eddie were having a good time!  Long story short, that was the night that baby Hunter went from being a thought to a reality.  We make some pretty awesome life decisions when drunk apparently!

Life carried on after that wine-fueled weekend and a few weeks later I got a back spasm.  It’s nothing out of the ordinary as I’ve had a few of them.  I started going to a physiotherapist to help out with the pain.  I think I had visited her about 3 times and on the 4th time she had me lie on my stomach on the table.  I obliged and did just that.  When I lay down my boobs started to hurt.  I thought maybe it was just sore muscles from the gym, but I wasn’t overly convinced on it.  I got through the physio session and as I was walking back to the truck I started to piece things together.  I had some mild cramping going on, I felt a little queasy here and there and I was constantly tired.  I sent Eddie a text and told him I was going to buy a pregnancy test and would take it when he got home from work.  He didn’t respond so I just went and got what I needed.  I was planning to wait until he got home from work before taking the test, but I couldn’t help myself and did it right away.  I set the timer on my phone and sat on the toilet seat and looked at facebook on my phone while I waited.  The timer went off and I couldn’t bring myself to look at the pee stick, so I just kept looking at facebook.  I finally worked up the nerve to look and when I saw the words “pregnant” on it I dropped my phone on the ground and started going “holy shit.  holy shit.  holy shit.”  I just stood there and stared at it.  Eventually I got my thoughts back and called Eddie.  He told me he was about 10 minutes away from home so he would see me soon.  When he came in the door I grabbed the pee stick and kept it behind my back.  I told him I took the test earlier and then I pulled the pee stick out and held it at eye level.  I’m pretty sure it took him a good solid minute to register what he was seeing.  When it did finally register, he looked at me and his face lit up into a big smile and he said “I’m going to be a dad??” and then he gave me a big hug.  And that was the start of it.  We had dinner and I settled in on the couch with my ipad and downloaded the “what to expect when you’re expecting” app and then started looking at baby name websites.  We spent the evening vetoing names while I internally panicked about what was about to happen to my body.

And that was the start of the adventure that is parenthood.  The moment I knew there was a little somebody growing inside of me I immediately went into protective mode.  I read what I could about what I could and couldn’t eat or drink.  I researched stores where I could buy maternity clothes at.  I tried my best to exercise to stay healthy.  But with all of that I kept the biggest secret of my life from a lot of people.  Hardest.thing.ever!!

Now, I often look at Hunter and can’t believe that he used to be the size of a pea in my belly.  That I grew him.  That he is part me and part Eddie.  It’s very surreal to watch him being a little human, playing with his toys and seeing him develop so quickly.  Babies are the weirdest, most insane, most intriguing thing ever!!  Whether all of this is enough to make me want a second one…I don’t know.  I can’t decide at all.  But I’m definitely enjoying the little dude we already have!

Trust? Control?

Last night I did something I wasn’t sure I was quite ready to do….

…I spent the night away from my 6 month old.  He stayed home with my husband.  The man who doesn’t even wake up when the baby is crying in the monitor in the middle of the night.  I went to a concert with my sister.  Normally a concert doesn’t warrant me not going home, but the concert was in a town 40 minutes away from my sister’s place, and my sister lives almost an hour and a half away from our home.  Once the concert got out and we drove back to her place, it was already 11:30 at night.  It didn’t make any sense for me to drive all the way home after, and my husband said he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of me driving on the highway while tired and in the dark.  So he suggested that he spend the night alone with Hunter and I stay at my sister’s place.

At first the thought kind of excited me.  I mean, a night of freedom and uninterrupted sleep!  What new mom doesn’t wish for that?!  But, the more I thought about it, the more nervous it made me.  Was it that I didn’t trust Eddie to take good care of our son?  When I had this thought I felt instantly bad.  Eddie would take a bullet for his son, he hurts way more than I do when Hunter is crying, he loves every second he has with his son.  So why wouldn’t I trust him?  So, no, it had nothing to do with trust.  It had everything to do with me being the main controller of all things baby for the last 6 months.  I’m the person who gets asked what is wrong with the baby when he cries.  I’m the one who is handed him when he’s inconsolable because “he needs his mommy”.  I’m the one who makes the decisions on what foods he’s eating, when he eats, how he spends his days.  I’m the one who buys his toys.  I’m the one who changes 99% of his diapers.  I’m the one who wakes up with him every night. I’m the controller!  It’s my job.  Eddie swoops in on the occasional evening and on weekends and assumes a portion of the care, but I’m still the one in charge.  So to hand off all control of my job was a tough pill to swallow.  As I said above, I can have the baby monitor turned up at a medium volume and when Hunter cries at night Eddie won’t even wake up.  Or else he will pretend he doesn’t hear it.  So I immediately had bad thoughts of Hunter wailing away while Eddie stayed sleeping away happily.  I had no hesitations about the care of Hunter while he is awake.  Eddie showed how well he does with that a few weeks ago when he had to step up when I had 4 migraines in 24 hours and was stuck in bed fighting them.

Once I realized that I have a ton of trust in Eddie and know he wouldn’t have said he will be on dad-duty for a full night if he didn’t think he could handle it, I agreed to the plan.  I did my best not to meddle too much by giving Eddie a ton of instructions or making him have a practice night like I really wanted him to.  I took a deep breath and relinquished some of my baby controlling personality and let him do things his way.  On the day of we parted ways after spending an afternoon together downtown.  He asked me to send him a small email with some basic instructions on how our nights usually go and how he should feed him if he wakes up, since he obviously doesn’t have the boobs to feed the kid!  Then he said to just leave it up to him to have their own time together and for him to have a Daddy routine too.  So I did just as he asked.  A quick email with bottle instructions and nap instructions for the next day if I wasn’t home by then.

The evening went quite well.  I had a great time at the concert, besides falling down 3 stairs that I didn’t see.  Only sober girl at the concert and I was the one person who fell down stairs.  Go figure.  Anyway, I ended up having to stay on my sister’s couch and ended up having a horrendous sleep due to a few reasons, like I’m used to having some white noise in the room and can’t sleep when it’s dead quiet, the dog was snoring, and of course there was my anxiety about not knowing if Hunter was ok or not.  I eventually fell asleep on and off for maybe about 3 hours.  I was wide awake by 6:30 and straight away was texting Eddie to see how the night went.  Around 7:00 he messaged me back and said that Hunter had just woken up and that he had only woken once at 3am and that was it.  The kid wakes up at least 2 times with me being around.  And that’s on a good night.  But with his Dad he just woke up once?  Clearly he was in good hands!

So now, after all that anxiety about it, I feel so good about the situation and now am confident that I can do something like this again and our little guy is in great hands.  there won’t be a ton of situations happen like this one.  In fact, they probably will only happen a couple times a year, if that!  But I know that this year I will have an out of town bachelorette to attend, a grad reunion that we might stay the night downtown for and have the little guy stay with my parents, a no-kids wedding to attend.  So there’s a few things.  With all of those events in mind, I no longer feel the anxiety about leaving the little guy with Eddie or my parents.  I guess last night was kind of like ripping off the bandaid.  I needed to do it.  Give up some control.  And I did it!  Woohoo!!

 

Grrrr

there is nothing more inferioratimg than a baby who won’t stop crying and keeps you up all night long while a husband snores away happily in bed next to you as you sit on the edge, watching the baby monitor, silently trying to will the baby back to sleep while at the same time fighting the urge to smother the husband with a pillow.

Then the next morning that same husband makes jokes about how the baby must have got his morning happy mood from him and not his mother.

Well im sorry husband. I’m sorry I’m not a ray of sunshine sitting on the bed all smiles with my baby who decided that 5:50 is a totally appropriate wake up time despite having been up all night not sleeping. I’m sorry instead I sit there with a scowl on my face, bags under my eyes, hair a mess and feeling miserable after dealing with your child all night while You  slept gloriously through it all and are now well rested and ready to start your day.

That is my prediction of how tomorrow morning is going to go based on the fact that it’s 12:12am and the baby is going on one hour of crying and I can’t seem to find his off switch.

Mom-ing reality for you all.