Tuesday, January 19, 2010

It's a mommy thing...

Its been said that you can really change as a person without even noticing..I personally thought this was alot of nonesense- till i've started noticing it happening to me.

I was the woman who woke up each day, went through the routine of getting ready and frittered my day away at work, who would wander through shoe stores lusting after the newest patent leather heels with the kind of desire an teenage boy has for the girl next door.

Then the day came that I breezed right past a sale of luxurious heeled boots in favor of finding a deal on a pair of trail shoes....that's when it hit me.
I had changed.

I now look at my closed full of heels and think...when am i going to wear those? My cashmere sweaters sit and mock me, after all I am not in a financial place where I can afford to dry clean them every time I get food/spit or other non-mentionables on them.

My hair which I once spent ages on, now gets thrown back in a ponytail or set in place by a cheap plastic hair band, hoping that today will be the day I manage to get it washed.

Leisurely 2 hours lunchs have been replaced with 3 min meals, often consumed standing, or eaten with one hand with child in the other. Thankfully cherry tomatos are one of my favorite things, as I seem to eat them by the bucketful.

Indeed life has changed, I can't sleep in, my legs getting shaved is a special event and I spend more time feeding everyone else,then I do myself.

But i'm happy. Quite honestly we are not wealthy and the struggle to figure out the demands of work and child care looms, but for now, I'll take my payment in smiles.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Things not taught in school

After getting over the initial shock of being pregnant.. and by initial I mean 3 weeks... I soon started to realize that all the websites in the world could not prepare me for what was about to happen.

I had read that morning sickness can go from mild nasuea to vomiting and can happen at any point in the day- what I didn't read was that your body is capable of vomiting all day every day for 3 months.

That was me. I had a stronger relationship with my toliet then I did with my now husband for those 3 months. Often I wonder where is the real description of morning sickness- I'm pretty sure I never heard it described as a 3 month hangover in health class!

How about the statement that you will feel fatigued.... FATIGUED?!

I once fell asleep sitting on the toliet with my head back against the wall.. I would need a nap after brushing my teeth and the very thought of sitting up some mornings was all I could manage- before a sudden dash to throw up.

No one told me that I would experience super smell,be defeated just trying to put on socks, have to avoid the meat aisle for 4 months or just how damn hard it gets to wipe yourself after peeing!

No one tells you that you will miss seeing your feet, that more then once you'll have to pull over to pee in some woods or that complete strangers will find it acceptable to touch you, comment on your size or ask if you intend to breast feed.

No one tells you that your hormones will be so out of wack that you will love your husband one minute, and hate him the next. Secrets are kept about sudden lightning flashes of pain that shoot out your vagina as your child bounces his head off the nerves leading to your cervix...or how your obstetrician will actually refer to you as having cankles!

Being pregnant is not something I think I will ever get used to. Everyday you are faced with a new challenge, assulted with another ridiculous comment or reminded of the way things used to be.
Its hard.

Being pregnant is battling a war sometimes and often not enough people realize this, or give it the respect it deserves.

You sacrifice a lot for your child.. you have vitamins to take, blood to be drawn, countless doctors appointments, food charts, blood sugar tests, supersized elastic pants and if thats not bad enough you have to give up sushi and booze for 9 months!

.... no one should ever question that you love your children.

Finding out

Pregnant.

That's what the two little pink lines on this merciless pee stick yelled at me, as i sat on the edge of my tub staring at it.

Pregnant.

I had never really thought about being a mother, nor had I ever been one of those woman who dreams of the day when she would feel her first kick or rock her baby.
I was happy being a woman who never considered the cost of a new pair of leather boots or never thought twice about ordering out more then a couple times a week. I was happy and enjoying time being part of a couple where my biggest responsibility was deciding that the laundry needed to be done.... at somepoint.

It seems that life had other plans for me.

Its sounds almost selfish to feel as i did when i found out- that my life was over. After all like my now husbands sister.. children is not something everyone has such an easy time acheiving naturally- and most certainly not while taking birth control!

By all rights I should have been happy... but I was more terrified then I had ever been. We had just moved 18 hours away from all our family and friends to start a new life in a wonderland of play not to mention chewing up most of our savings to do it.

I remember feeling a flood of emotions... fear, worry, saddness and resentment. Harsh emotions to associate with the fuzzy pink images of these happy times I would always see on television.

I struggled feeling I was the worst woman on earth for not being excited about this brand new baby...every book I looked at had images of loving mothers, happy families.
Not once did I find someone who was willing to vocalize the fact that babies change your life - They take away your freedom and they turn the world as you know it upside down.

No one wants to say that, to sound unloving or heartless, but none the less its true.
I love my baby... i care for him all his waking hours, but that doesn't mean I still don't miss those care free days.

This Blog is not a fairy tale interpretation of what being a mother is like. This blog is about the struggles and reality of what being a mom entails, because far to often reality takes backstage to fairy tales.

This my storey.