Sunday, May 20, 2007

Grrrr.

Normally I try and stay on the bright side of life. I’m happy to say I don’t think I have much to complain about and since whining rarely helps I try to keep any of my minor mood swings to myself. I attribute a lot of this to my Mom’s constant refrain of “Stop feeling sorry for yourself” when I was a teen. However sometimes you just feel like crap and you need to share it. So if you don’t want to hear it, avert your eyes.

I’m feeling pretty tapped out lately. At the core of my weariness is that Noah has finally stopped napping altogether. He hasn’t napped in a week in a half. What this means to me is that I now have NO regular time to myself. I had grown quite accustomed to filling the days from waking til two and then enjoying a little down time before prepping dinner and the joyous return of Mark – now the time between 2 and 5 pm seems to drag on for days. We’ve been having 45 minutes of quiet time – where I set the timer and lay down while Noah plays quietly. The hope was that some day Noah might be so tired that he might just lay down his weary head and snooze – but it has yet to happen. On the upside I guess I get a nice little power nap and he gets accustomed to keeping himself a bit busy. But it just ain’t the same.

Of course the end of napping was just as I predicted it. My third trimester began two weeks ago and I decided it was indeed time to finally stop nursing because some circles believe it can cause early contractions. As I’ve mentioned before I had been nursing Noah at naptime only for many, many months now. (Though if people asked me about it I lied and said I'd stopped quite awhile ago.) The only reason I kept up with it was because every attempt at getting him to nap without it failed. A friend asked me if I've been missing the nursing and the answer is NO – mostly because I know I’m going to be a full-on milk machine in just a few months. I could use the respite. So that's where we are at. No boppy – no nap – end of story.

It also doesn’t help my mood that my body feels wrecked. To compound the standard round ligament pain I’ve been having for quite awhile, yesterday I really hurt myself. Noah took off in the Ikea loading area and I took off at a run to catch him and scooped him up mid-step. The result was crippling hip pain, some contractions and quite a few tears on the way home. Even after a nights rest I was still having problems walking this morning, and the stairs were torturous. My compassionate husband allowed me to spend most of the day in various seated positions and as a result I'm feeling a bit better. But don’t expect me to go on any long treks in the near future. I’m still really uncomfortable in almost all positions and I’ve been having Braxton Hicks contractions like mad. And I’ve got ten weeks to go!

Oh and did I mention we were at Ikea to finally buy Noah’s big boy bunk bed after disassembling his crib yesterday morning. My in-laws made the trek from Jersey to fit the bed in their giant SUV – so wouldn’t you know when we went to get the bed they were out of stock. I was so hormonal and out of sorts that I nearly sat down on the floor and cried. Noah spent last night and probably the coming week sleeping on a full mattress on the floor of his bedroom. At least it will help him transition out of sleeping in the crib while being less of a fall if he rolls out. Of course he woke me up at 4:30 this morning by appearing in our doorway – but that’s to be expected either way.

But you know what gets me through – the laughter. After listening to all my complaints about having pain in my pelvis last week Noah told me his Elvis hurt. Good times. Okay. That's enough of that miserable business. I feel crappy, yadda, yadda, yadda. Back to our regularly scheduled glee as soon as I get another chance to post.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I TOTALLY feel you....my younger one (just turned 3) stopped napping regularly a few months ago. One thing I've found that helps is playing "possum" (pretend I'm asleep too). I nursed him to sleep until he was 32 months old, so believe me, I understand! :) I have had several friends that were able to nurse throughout their pregnancies and then went on to tandem nurse w/out any problems, but I was never that brave. I think my 3 year old would sleep if his older sister didn't keep him so busy during the day...I am looking forward to her starting kindergarten in the fall :) Hang in there - we ALL need to vent sometime or another :)

Missuz J said...

I remember when Sophie officially gave up her nap. I was the worst, worst thing ever for a while--then I got used to it. Also, I totally ruined her teeth by letting her have a bottle 4-ever, because it was the only way to get her to nap.

I hope, hope, hope you're on the mend soon. No more running and scooping Mrs. very pregnant!

juliloquy said...

I'm glad you feel you have the right to complain. We like to scoff at the phrase sometimes allotted to pregnancy: "a delicate condition": There's nothing delicate about pregnancy!

The no-napping sucks and I would have totally cried at IKEA. I hope all is better this week!