Babble

I'm tired, exhausted really, to my very core. Every emotion that I feel is real and it's raw and it's hard to process. By the time I am able to process what may have triggered or caused me to feel that way, I am on to the next emotion.

I’m tired of trying to do it all, knowing I can’t do it all, but being unable to stop trying to do it all. This has been a struggle for me since the day Theo entered this world. The media (social and otherwise) is so good at plastering all of these "amazing mom" articles and pictures everywhere, making it LOOK easy. It's not easy, and those people they are talking about are rich and have paid people helping them.  

I’m tired of not knowing what I need when someone says “How can I help?” OR maybe more accurately, being too stubborn to allow them to help.  

I’m tired of knowing I am on a never-ending quest for perfectionism and appreciation and self-worth and value. And guess whose idea of perfection I am striving for? My own. My own ideas and expectations. I tell myself I need to do everything because I'm the mom, and that's what mom's do. But it doesn't have to be that way, and it shouldn't have to be that way so what do I continue to make it harder on myself? All great questions. The answer? Anxiety.

I have never in my entire life experienced exhaustion the way that new mom exhaustion has hit me. I am longing with every fiber of my being for a full night of sleep, or at least several uninterrupted hours.  Months and months of disrupted sleep makes life HARD.  It makes me forget who I am even am. I'm like a robot going through the motions. The only feelings of joy and happiness are in the morning with Theo and when I see him after work. That sucks. There is so much more in my life to be happy and joyful about but all of that is masked with irritability, brain fog, sadness, anxiety, you name it. And I hate even acknowledging how hard things have been because I (WE) wanted this life. We wanted to be parents and we love Theo more than anything in the world. We say we want to have more than one child and sometimes saying that makes me feel guilty. If I am THIS tired and things are THIS hard now, why would I want to have another baby and start this all over again? Because I know it will get better. If there has been one consistent piece of advice that I have gotten it has simply been "hang on. It gets better" and that has come from some mommas I know who didn't have such easy going babies. So I will continue to hang on, by a bobby pin!

I give and I do and I give more. I give everything that I've got into being a mom and what I need to remember is that my feelings do not dictate who I am.