It Was A Good Day

Yesterday was a good day.

I think it might have been the most relaxed and care free day I’ve had in six weeks.

Before yesterday I had been away from my child for a total of three and a half hours since he was born.

The only time I left the house that wasn’t the Woolies down the road one way or the park the other way was if someone else drove me (thank you c-section). Any walk that went longer than half an hour resulted in stabby incision pain and feeling completely shit for the next day.

I also have not left the house sans baby. Until yesterday.

For the past few weeks I’ve been on a downward spiral. The first few weeks were fine. I was still recovering and getting used to being a mum.

Week three I started to feel pretty isolated. Family would come and visit and we’d visit family, but during the week while Matt was at work I was very much alone 90% of the time.

By the start of week six I was very much feeling overwhelmed and having a bit of crisis of identity as well as spiraling self doubt and mum guilt.

I felt guilty because my milk supply is drying up. Guilty because this is meant to be the thing that I can do. Guilty because formula gets expensive. Guilty that because of my inability to produce enough milk I was costing us money because we had to buy formula. And our little man has anywhere from 700-1000ml a day. That’s 11-16scoops a day. Roughly 104 scoops per tin. Each tin lasts between 6-9days when he’s having just formula.

There was one day in there that I had enough expressed milk for a whole day of feeds. I was so proud of myself.

Nek minnut.

I’ll get maybe one feed worth from a whole days worth of pumps. I know why my supply has dropped dramatically or at least I think I do.

This spawn of mine likes to be fed every 2.5hours during the day. Sometimes I get really lucky and its 2hours. Takes about half an hour to feed him and then there’s burping and changing his nappy etc. About an hour process if he’s being a pain.

I did order some wearable completely hands free pumps so that I wouldn’t be tied to the bed all the time and I’m a bit mad that I won’t be getting as much use as I had anticipated because they actually did make life easier in some ways.

Let me pose a scenario that might draw things together.

You’ve pumped an hour ago and are due for your next pump in another hour. Child is due for a feed in half an hour. You get as much done as you can before the feed, get the pumping stuff ready to go when the time comes.

You sit down with your baby and the bottle and start feeding him, he’s kicky today. Grumpy. Tired. Feeding him takes longer than normal. By the time you’re done he needs to be burped. Ends up falling asleep on your shoulder. Brilliant. You go to put him down so you can pump. The second you move him away from your chest he’s screaming.

So you bring him back to your chest. He calms down instantly.

You can’t wear the pumps and have him on your chest at the same time and even if you could, you’re now leaning back, the milk would leak.

You are home alone. There is no one to hold the baby and keep him happy except the cats and the dogs. He’s a bit little for that.

So what do you do? Put him down and let him scream for 30-ish minutes it’ll take to pump? Or do you let him sleep because he got very little the night before?

I’ve missed a lot of pumping sessions this way. There’s only so many hours in the day to be able to make them up and it gets to the point where I have to choose between pumping and sleeping. Oh yeah…I was meant to eat something…maybe I still have a packet of cookies in my bedside table. Nope finished those at 2am because I forgot about dinner last night.

So yeah…I know why my supply has dropped. But who’s fault is it? Its not his. He’s a baby, I’m his mother. He needed me. It is my responsibility to take care of him. Supply for him. So its my fault.

I’m failing him.

Matt gets home and he’s had a long day, he needs time to decompress, have a shower. Fair enough, we all do.

Then its dinner time and even though I fed the tiny child half an hour ago he felt a disturbance in the force. He’s hungry again. Matt needs to eat so he can go to bed at a reasonable time. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.

I was meant to pump during dinner as well. Fuck.

Matt takes the baby for a bit so I can try and breathe. All I want to do is sit in front of a screen and play something or talk to other adults. But the kitchen needs cleaning up and left overs dealt with.

Baby isn’t settling on Matt. He has a hard chest and no soft booby pillows. Baby is kicking his bellybutton which he hates.

I come in and take him, he calms down instantly.

Why did I even bother? I should’ve just put him in the carrier and gotten on with it. It would’ve taken longer but at least he wouldn’t have been crying for ten minutes and Matt wouldn’t be frustrated.

Now what do I do? Do I go to bed and catch up on sleep or do I strap on the kid and spend a few hours doing something that makes me feel better? He’s going to need to be fed soon anyway I might as well be awake.

Not everyday goes like this. But its pretty damn close. I know how it feels to not be able to comfort your own child. His first few days of life I had no idea what was going on and he knew it too. It broke my heart that the nice nurse could get him settled and I couldn’t. No wonder Matt got frustrated and gave him back. No wonder he opted to do things instead of taking the baby so I could do them.

It just solidified the idea that I should never bother trying to get time to myself again.

And then I snapped.

I broke.

A few people saw it coming. There wasn’t much they could do though until I asked for help. I wasn’t about to accept it if they offered. Everything was fine, I was fine, I had it handled.

Going to my parents for the day and seeing my niece and nephew and sister in law, it helped a bit. I barely had to hold my own child all day, there was a team of people practically dying to hold him for me. I was really grateful for it too. He was still my responsibility though. Feeding, changing whatever, still my job.

Matt thought that having other people hold the baby would help give me a break. It did in a way. Not one that helped me mentally. My arms got a break though.

The weekend came, my decreasing supply finally hit me. I felt guilty for even wanting to be away from my child  I love him, he’s my responsibility, looking down and seeing his gorgeous blue eyes as he stares up at me feels amazing. But for the love of Christ I need to breathe.

That night I snapped. Matt was on a car cruise with some friends. It was a last minute thing and I wasn’t going to ask my parents to baby sit on mum’s birthday. We couldn’t go with him because his car doesn’t have a car seat yet and mine is no fun on a car cruise.

I couldn’t spend another day cooped up in the house.

A very confused Matt came home wondering what had happened to my mental state while he’d been out. He knew I’d been a bit down but thought it was about my milk supply and feeling guilty.

I gave him two options, plan a family day that does not involve being in the house all day, or I’m going to the dog show with my friend and he gets to look after our child.

He sent me to the dog show.

The next morning I got picked up and from 6am to 5pm I had not a care in the world. I helped set up, carefully and against the wishes of those around me because…incision. I cuddled rottweiler puppies and judged the ugly dogs. Its not their fault they’re ugly….I’ll just never own a dog with a torpedo nose…or when fully grown is smaller than my cats. Can’t do it.

I sat in the sun, a mildly poor choice as half my face is burnt, my left arm and the left side of my right shin (how I managed just that one I don’t even know).

I talked shit with other adults, admired the good doggos and got mad when the winner was obviously only picked because they’re a judge themselves or sponsoring the show.

I’m sorry but you cannot tell me that the dog with the shoddiest topline and limped half way around the ring was a better dog than the one with a beautifully smooth top line and ran like a well bred champion.

Do not even try me.

I don’t know a lot of dogs and breeding, but I can spot a lame dog being forced to run around a ring by a shitty owner.

I checked in a few times to make sure Matt was okay, he does it for me, but the whole day I was free of responsibilities. The only person I HAD to worry about was me.

When I got home and held my little man for the first time since his 2am feed, it felt amazing. I had missed his little face and the way he stared at me. I’d missed how he calmed as soon as I held him.

I had had a chance to miss him.

It felt amazing.

For the first time in six weeks, I had had a chance to breathe.

I had felt so guilty for so long about wanting time to myself. Guilty for even thinking that I wanted him to not be touching me or needing me. I knew in my head even before he was born that it was okay for me to need time to myself. But the part that isn’t my brain has been telling me I’m wrong, how dare I need to be alone for a little while.

If yesterday and the reinforcement of a good friend taught me anything, its that I need to have a day off every now and again. I need to have a day where I know my child is safe but he is not my responsibility. He doesn’t need me because he has his father. I need a day where I’m not working on my book or a business idea or whatever. A day where the only thing anyone needs from me is to pass the bottle of diet coke and say when.

I came home yesterday and I was ready to take on the next month of being a stay-at-home mum. I’m on leave until at least March. I wasn’t going to last until then with the way I was going.

I came home yesterday ready to be a better mum than I’ve felt like this past week.

I also came home yesterday to a husband that has started to understand that he can’t do what I’m doing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wanna do what he’s doing. Sheet metal fabrication looks fun and all but working in a giant metal shed…no thanks. I’m good. Its hot, its sweaty and I’m not a fan of being covered in metal dust. I am very appreciative that he does it. He works hard every day.

He still can’t do what I’ve done for the past six weeks. He’d have gone bat shit crazy by the end of week two. Hell he didn’t even last the five days we were in hospital. He looked for excuses to get out of the room. We were home for two days before he went out with his boyfriend.  The man cannot be cooped up in the house.

Today he went to work and I took our son to the doctor for his first round of vaccinations. I was then informed that our doctor had called in sick and no one had informed me. Tomorrow he will go to work and I will once again take little man to the doctor and either way I’m spending the day dealing with a grumpy six-week-old. The next day he will go to work and I will work from home while tending the needs of said six week old. And so on and so forth until the weekend. I might actually remember to eat every once in a while. And when he gets home from work, after he has showered, Matt will take the child and give me time to myself so I can have a chance to breathe.

Because if he doesn’t than that downward spiral I was on is going to happen a lot quicker and he’s smart enough to know that.

Yesterday was a great day.