It Does Get Better

Wil has always been very good about giving me a break especially on the weekend. He gets up with Chase in the morning, gets her into a clean diaper, and spends a few minutes goofing around with our happy baby before bringing her to me in bed to nurse. After we are done, he whisks her away for a few hours of playtime/college football and kindly gives me a few extra hours of sleep. Today I told him that I had a day off and spent all day sewing. I would nurse the baby and handed her off to play with her Papa after we finished. Granted, I was about two feet away, but for the first time I realized that I was completely at ease with the situation. It's not like I didn't think that Wil wasn't an excellent father--he was a natural from the start and this had nothing to do with his parenting ability. It's all about my my own feeling about being a good mom to my baby. Now that Chaster is about to turn 7 months old, I can look back and see how difficult the beginning was and how horribly depressed I was at times. The combination of postpartum hormonal whack, the I-can-do-it-all attitude and the subsequent reality check, sheer exhaustion, and fewer showers than the normal acceptable frequency were all unexpected to me. My pregnancy was such a pain in the rear, literally, and I thought that once the baby came all would be fine again. Everything was fine again but I was too out of it to notice our new "normal." I didn't know how to ask for help even from my very own willing husband. I think about all those months that I spent crying on the couch with our tiny bundle of joy in my arms convinced that I was a horrible mother because I felt everything but joy. Now I want to grab every pregnant first-timer I see and tell them my story, so that they won't feel so alone here as I was. They all are going to have an even harder time than me with their husbands downrange. NOTHING was harder to me than having Chase so far away from our family, but Wil was by my side the whole way and eventually we figured it all out together. I want to tell all these mothers-to-be that I will babysit while they shower. We will sit down to have dinner, which I would bring, together, and I will do the dishes afterward. I will tell them that breast feeding hurts like hell the first few months and it will be very hard. As a reward, they will get to worry endlessly about whether or not their babies get enough to eat. I will tell them that I don't know it all but I never want another mom to go through what I went through to find out that I didn't. I wish someone would have told me all of this. It would scare the crap out of me, but at least I would have been armed with the information. It helps to know that it gets better. One day I wake up and my baby is almost 7 months old. She eats/naps every 4 hours. While she's down for her 2 2-hour naps a day (plus an extra cat nap in the late afternoon), I can shower, eat, sleep, watch tv, clean the house, love on the boys, or do nothing at all and not feel guilty about it. I can ask for help and graciously accept. I can say "I need a break RIGHT NOW" and know that a baby is in good hand. I know that I am a good mother. It really does get better. Now I'm working on becoming a better wife. That's a big project if I ever see one.

P.S. We got our first snow last night. It's freaking cold and I'm not leaving my house until next Spring.