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August 19, 2002
Ramblings
I figured I should update my blog since my last entry was less than stellar. No, The Husband never really explained the comment although after not speaking to each other for a record duration we finally sat down and talked. It is so hard to be both mother and wife, father and husband. I think for The Husband & I are roles are so morphed because we are home together all day everyday. We never really stop being mother and become wife and husband together--we never get that opportunity. Yea, we know we need to make it but, frankly, with a child like The Daughter, we never even have 5 minutes to be husband and wife. We realize we need to work on this and simply stay up later or find some other way and that's our comittment to each other. Last night we lit some candles, poured some wine and just talked for nearly 40 minutes. We haven't done that in.... years.
Fair warning... what I'm about to write will win me bad mommy of the century award in nearly 95% of the eyes of those parents who read my blog. I don't care. This blog isn't about parenting, it's about me. Save your debate for your own blog should you feel the need to discuss how horrible I am. This week I left The Daughter for the first time overnight. I work part-time, as most people reading this know, and my contract states that I will be in the office 3 full days a month and work exclusively from home the remainder of the time. Well, I've never lived up to those 3 full days. Before The Daughter was born, I went up to the office (which by the way is 1.5 hours away via plane) once a month on an overnight trip. This was never a big deal since The Son stayed with The Husband and he wasn't nursing. When The Daughter was born, I made a deal that I wouldn't have to travel for the first year of her life but I couldn't get much more out of it than that based solely on her "nursing status" since, well, most people don't give you much leeway after a year. Since February, I've had to go up 3 times and each time we've spent $500 extra just to take The Husband & The Son so that I could nurse The Daughter periodically through the day and, obviously, be with her at night. Basically, the expense of traveling up there canceled out any money I actually made from working during that time. With this trip, well, since she is night-weaned, we just couldn't justify the expense nor did we have it since we just refinanced our house in the same week. We decided that I'd go by myself. I modified the trip so I was leaving late Thursday and came back early on Friday. I have to tell you though I was a mess. An absolute shell of who I am. My stomach was in knots, I felt like I would puke most of the day. The Daughter did fine.. in fact, she did better at night than when I am with her - only waking once and The Husband put her back to sleep. I, on the other hand, with my one evening to sleep "through the night" watched the clock turn from 10 to 11 to 12 to 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 when I finally passed out from sheer exhaustion. Talk about hell. I'm still not sure how my boss feels about the fact that I skipped out of work 5 hours early to get home but I just felt I had to do it likely more from sheer exhaustion than anything else. Much to my amazement, however, The Daughter has slept through the night twice since then and last night she woke only once and put herself back to sleep. So I'm left wondering - was one night all it took? Then again, perhaps I should find some wood to knock on.
Posted by shanti at 5:18 PM | Comments (13)