It’s exhausting. It’s tiring. Those are 2 separate things. One has more to do with maintaining your previous schedule along with all the other new responsibilities and the other is just taking care of a newborn, you know?
Triage.
The whole day is triage. From getting up and the 2 of us tag team-ing making coffee and taking care of the baby, getting caffeine started in our veins and figuring out what the kids are having for breakfast (one glass for juice, one for milk if necessary), all the plates, knives, etc. before the kids even hit the stairs. Then getting everyone fed and washed, and gathered back to get dressed for the day, and hoping we get the milk put away before the baby needs fed again (not likely)… then school, snack, more school, and whatever activities take up the rest of the day (mostly legos for the older 3). Repeat for lunch and dinner as well as if anyone has dessert. We run and unload the dishwasher every day, sometimes twice.
The floor rarely gets swept. Mom and dad both getting a shower on the same day doesn’t really happen. We’re doing the best we can to put our best feet forward when we have to leave the house. We’re trying to keep the kids on the best schedule possible and to get things back to how they were before we were gone for a few days. Crazy times, but we’re working it out for everyone’s sake to try and get to a new normal.
Don’t forget laundry. It really is never ending, and the last day and a half I’ve been trying to get Matthew to put diapers in, but he forgot, and we got down to 2 diapers before we realized it– oops! We have plenty of bigger diapers, so we worked it out, but it really was hysterical to realize how many changes of diapers we have and we actually ran out. Never should have happened, but we weren’t panicked at all, and it all was a lesson in hilarity. A quick google search for how to fold in a newborn cover, and we used a ‘flat’ diaper in a larger size to make it through the night.
Something similar happened the other day with burp cloths, I was looking for one and found a pair of toddler underwear instead– it’s absorbent and a decent size, so I went with it, yup, I used those thick toddler training undies as a burp cloth. You figure out a lot of stuff doesn’t matter after a certain point! It’s cloth, it works, roll with it!
Now we’re past the funny stuff, it’s time to get serious, with Casey’s pregnancy I was past insane thinking everyone had some sort of illness or something. I itched all over, my skin was so dry, even my scalp and it gave me the heebie jeebies, let’s just leave it at that and never mention it again, it was AWFUL. It went away post-partum and hasn’t bothered me overmuch since then.
That paranoia was not repeated really during this pregnancy and I am SO thankful for that, but when I got home I was convinced the kids all had something awful wrong with their mouths. I screamed and sent Keeley to bed for rubbing a pillow on her mouth. All the kids were rubbing their mouths on things or putting toys in their mouths, at age 7 and 4, I can not be on board with that, given that the 2 year old still does it, and that’s just a darn good way to spread germs. What older kids *need* to put their mouths on anything? Yuck.
Quite frankly, I felt a bit insane in that moment– all of them had chapped lips, but that was really it. I can tell you that having this sort of anxiety is not fun, and it does not matter how much I *knew* that there was no way they’d all randomly gotten some sort of gross illness, it didn’t matter. I could clearly hear myself yelling and knowing it was crazy– but not able to control it. My husband, having gotten a good dose of this, and seeing me lose it, picked up right away what he needed to do– he got the kids skin healed up after a few days and now you can’t tell that anything would have been wrong. Chapped lips, that is all. But still, when your brain is fighting you for control of your emotions, it’s all you can do not to completely lose your mind.
It didn’t help that after being released with high blood pressure, that it has remained high for a while now. I hope it goes down eventually, I go back to the doctor this week, we’ll see if I need to be on meds or not. Post partum eclampsia is what it’s called. It’s hard to keep calm with so much noise and calamity going on!! Anyway, fingers crossed that it was basically all the ibuprofen I had been taking which can lead to higher BP– (I switched to Tylenol and then just gave up on the meds shortly after coming home).
The plus side is that other than those minor emotional issues, I feel fantastic, I really have not hurt much at all, and gave up on the idea of pain meds fairly quickly. I overdid it on Thanksgiving, but have rested since then and don’t feel too bad overall, this being my 6th abdominal surgery I know a LOT about recovery, and this is 100% the best I have ever recovered and I am so thankful for that.
This coming week brings my 2 week check-up, a 2 week check-up for Mackenna and Casey’s 2nd birthday and 2 year check-up as well as a follow up dental appointment for K to get her 2 teeth filled, and of course, Casey’s party at the end of the week. WHEW! It has been a crazy month and I look forward to December being a bit more relaxed! We’re trying to get as much shopping done online (not that we’re doing a huge Christmas, but still) as we can, and get things here and ready to go, so we won’t feel rushed later on… let’s hope that everything will check out for everyone and that it’s a lot more relaxed than it seems like it should be this week.