So, recent posts have been about fun, but I have to confess, today was not fun at all. Today was one of the hardest days I’ve had as a parent. Maybe you can relate.
The ingredients for the perfect storm:
To deal with all these factors, I had basically been holding my 25 pound 1-year old in the ergo all day for the past 2 1/2 days. Of course having him in the carrier gives us wonderful bonding/connection time BUT… he is heavy! So, it was wearing me out physically to maintain this for ANOTHER full day today.
So, today involved me holding him in the ergo with occasional breaks where I could convince him to tolerate playing with a toy for a bit (of course only if he was absolutely 100% on my lap. If I even tried to put him 1 inch in front of me, on the ground, he would start to scream). Argh! My patience was getting shorter and shorter as the day wore on. And even though my husband was legitimately sick, it’s still of a rare form of torture to be forced to watch someone spend the whole day in bed while you don’t get even a moment’s break to yourself.
Around 4pm, I was really starting to loose my patience. Physically and emotionally it reminded me of the 12th mile of my last 1/2 marathon (*It was 7 years ago, so the memory is a little faint). My mind was saying “I don’t think I can make it to the end. I’m gonna have to stop and walk”, but another part of me said, “You can do this. Just keep taking it one step at a time”.
On this frustrating day, everything in me wanted to give up and felt way past the “end” of my rope. So I decided to just give up on dinner and nurse him and then hope I could entice him to play for a while, stalling basically until bath time. *By the way, thank GOD for bath time. Some days its the only thing that gets me through tough evenings because he is usually super happy. Well, I was staring desperately at the clock, knowing I still had at least a 1/2 hour till bath time. The only position that didn’t result in CM screaming was for him to be standing up, with me sitting on the floor, and his arms around my neck. Only this time he had decided to take a hold of my hair for support, instead of my shoulder. As he yanked down (not on purpose), I tried to muster out a patient-voiced “Please don’t pull Mommies hair”, while moving his hand. It took the very last ounce of energy I had left and the shear exhaustion sent me into a shoulder-shaking sob. Now, you have to know I have only cried the shoulder-shaking sob like 3 times in my life (that I’m aware of). Hmmm….my husband might say differently. But anyway, I cried for a few minutes. To tell you the truth, it didn’t even feel good like crying sometimes can. It was just a total burst of the flood gates I had tried to keep held together for so many hours.
The end of the story? I made it. I soon decided to do an early bath time so I could get relief from being his 100% source of entertainment, and he went to bed. I hope tomorrow is better. This mommy job can be a tough one!
If you can relate to this, I’d love to hear your story.
Do you ever see other moms at the grocery store or at the library and think, “Am I the only mom that seems to have no clue what I’m doing”? The latest source of this self-talk for me has been gosh darn toddler clothing!
