Mixed Emotions

The past few days have been a balloon of hormonal emotions that finally popped yesterday.... Tears from an unknown source began rolling as I tried explaining to my husband my thoughts and feelings. He probably thought I was crazy.... I tried pinpointing the cause of it all and it just seemed like it was little bit everything over the past couple weeks all rolled into one. Not working, thinking about how much I miss going to work (yea I said it, I miss going to work), feeling guilty about thinking of work with my newborn son laying in my arms, feeling guilty that I am not helping "provide" for the family at this point in time, feeling guilty that all I want to do is sleep because little dude is on a 3 hour eating schedule which means mommy is up every 3 hours to feed our little chubster. :) Being emotional due to lack of sleep.... One would say boot camp is difficult with the stress they put you and your body through. Having a newborn can be much the same as going through boot camp. Think about it. They run you ragged on little sleep, if you have fire watch, otherwise you get to sleep 5-6 hours straight. (Unless you sneak your writing material in bed to catch up on letters or study or do rack PT to get in even better shape.... Yea, I did all of those). Then there is the stress on your body. Pregnancy and birth and postpartum all have these stresses on shaping your body for birth and delivery and then after the shape your body is in causes you to immediately stress on getting it back to the way it was before the baby bump. Yes pregnancy, birth and postpartum can easily be compared to boot camp, and then some (as it does not end at the 3 month mark, it never ends, for as long you are alive you will always wonder, stress and worry about your little ones no matter their age). I know this just from seeing my mother, father, grandmother stress over each of their children and children's children....
 
I need more sleep.... I need to stay awake to feed the baby... I need to lose at least 10 more pounds but am so damn tired that even walking to the bathroom seems like a damn Olympic event to me, hahaha.... In which case I'd get a gold medal for for the obstacles I have to cross in the middle of the night to get there:  squeeze by baby bassinet, feel my way around the corner of the bed because that shit hurts when you catch your quad on the corner or your toe on the foot of it. Scoot feet along to feel for dogs and then carefully step over and around them, feel for next corner of the bed, feel for corner or dresser, then bathroom door, shut door and turn on blindingly bright light and then relief! lol Gold Medal earned indeed.

Ok, back to mixed emotions... The hubby went back to work on Friday. I was a wee bit jealous of him... Then I felt guilty for being jealous of him going to work and me staying home. That's when my emotions started to go haywire for most of the weekend. I found myself in bed for most of it, feeling a bit depressed and only getting up and out to take care of baby and Jake and his friend who he had begged earlier that week to have a sleepover with. The hubby was wonderful, he cleaned the entire house and would check in on me to see how I was feeling or if I needed anything. I kept thinking about going back to work and talked to him about me being on the fence about it. Of course this conversation made me bust into tears. I know that he would be well cared for at the child care center on base, but it would be by someone else, and how much of his growing would I miss? Would they know what each cry means? What each facial expression stands for? That just because he spits the bottle out the first couple times and makes a disgusted face doesn't mean he won't take to it and eat..... Would I be able to take breaks to go there and feed him from me rather than the frozen breast milk I have already started saving up just in case....? My eyes well up with tears even now just typing about it.... It was nice with my first man-child. I worked from home from the beginning of the pregnancy until he was 1 1/2. I was able to bring in a good amount of income and I felt I was doing my part on helping provide for the family. Now, though, I have a career away from the home and it is something I'm not sure if I am ready to give up for the time being. The husband says he supports whatever decision I make, but really wants me to stay home... He even stated he thought I was willing to do to what it takes for having a baby, including not going back to work.... That one hurt, but he was right.... Sigh.... he even made a not so subtle statement about when he went on his run he saw a group of mommy's out there with their babies working out and had their strollers for runs or walks.... He knows how badly I want to "automatically" be back to prepregnancy weight. I am only 10lbs away from it, thank the Lord for breastfeeding! He is such a health nut, one would question how we mesh so well.... I send him to the gym and eat cookies or chips while he's off working out... hahaha.... Actually it is nice with the breastfeeding and still eating (almost) like I'm still pregnant.... Hungry all the time!!! I started back last week on a website for healthy eating and exercising that I have been frequenting since 2010. Hopefully that will be able to get my butt a bit more motivated to do what needs to be done. They had a really good article on there about how stress can be the route of evil with weight gain or lack of loss.... Stress has always caused me to lose too much weight... 125 looks way too skinny for this 5'7 gal. I'll be happy to be in the 130's or mid 140's again. Nice warm weather would be helpful motivation also. I have been drinking so much damn water too... Which has been very helpful with producing mass amounts of milk and has been the culprit of waking up to soaked through bras/pads.... Lay a towel down, feed baby immediately and then go back to sleep, no time to worry about milk matted sheets at 3am. Oh the infinite joys of motherhood. :)) Must catch some Z's while little man is still sleeping :) Until next time!