adjustment period

I made it through 3 weeks so far. Being back at work is not what I thought it was going to be. I mean, the workload, the people, all that stuff is still the same. I really thought I was going to get a sort of mental break from being at home with the girls, and by association, I would be able to dig my personality back out from under the motherhood pile. This is silly now that I look back on it because my personality has never really gone anywhere; I’ve just added some new dimensions to it, namely dedicated mother.

As for the mental break, I don’t feel refreshed or free at all. I just miss Avery and Hayden terribly. The first week was by far the worst. I was crying every night after the girls went to bed. Coming back to work created such a deep sense of loss that I truly went into a sort of mourning period. I just kept agonizing about all of the time I am going to miss with them now. Hayden has been having a hard time with me being back too. I have been sneaking out of the house in the mornings so that she won’t see me. The husband tells me that she doesn’t cry for long after I leave, but when I come home she will not let me go. If she sees me walk in the door I can forget about going pee and getting changed out of my work clothes. She will scream and cry until she is in my arms.

I know this will get easier for Hayden and for me. Avery has accepted that I go to work now and she gives me a kiss and tells me she loves me before I leave. When I come home she bounces over to see me with a big smile on her face, ready to tell me about her day. I think going to pre-school three days a week has helped Avery to be apart from her father and I, and in turn she has been able to deal with me going back to work a lot better than she would have a few months ago.

Of course, my husband being home with the girls has made it a lot easier for me to leave. He was able to trade all of his day shifts for the year. We won’t have to worry about daycare (save for the few evenings a month when my girlfriend looks after the girls at her house for an hour while the husband leaves for work and I return home) until next January. I am looking into getting a nanny.

The guilt I assume will never go away. This is just something I am going to have to accept. I don’t know what is harder: staying home with the kids or working full-time. I know my patience was running thin towards the end of this maternity leave and I was looking forward to getting away for a bit, but now that I am working I feel even more stress trying to get everything done and then I am short with the girls anyway. And boy do I ever feel shitty about that. I am away from them all week and then I feel like a terrible mother if I lose my patience with them on the weekend.

Hayden is still waking up 3-4 times a night so I am definitely sleep-deprived, which I know contributes to the lack of patience.

Anyway.

There is a lot going on, not just as far as the girls’ development, but of course with family and friends and all that good stuff so I will make sure to explore these subjects more closely in the next entry. Until then, I will put my head down and work until the hours pass and I can be home with the girls again.

mish mash

I’m finding it harder to concentrate at work these days. I can’t seem to motivate myself the way I used to. Perhaps this is because I know that I am not coming back after my maternity leave this time. I’ve flip-flopped on this a couple of times. Some days I realize how lucky I am to have such a great job within a 15 minute commute from my home. I worry that there will not be a position open for me in a few years time should I decide to come back. Technically, and legally, they only have to hold my job for me for a year. I know that they would take me back if something was available when I wanted to come back but there is no guarantee that there will be something and who the hell knows where we will be then anyway.

As much as I like my job, I do feel like it is a waste of time. I leave the house by 730am and I am gone all day until 430pm. I really miss that time with my daughter and she misses me. I sit behind a desk all day while my daughter plays, learns, laughs, bonds with other people (which is important, I know) but I miss a lot.

This morning as I sit here listening to the twit in the cubicle next to me scrape at the bottom of her empty yogurt container as if she hasn’t eaten in months (just buy a bigger yogurt next time), and delete yet another e-mail forward from the crazy cat lady who I now call “silent thunder” because she smells like farts every few minutes without making a sound, I am thankful that I get to stay home with my children. As “productive” as one might feel at work, I still think being home with your kids (and being happy) is the best way to spend time.

The egg is kicking away. Avery is finally weaned and I can say, very proudly, that it was on her schedule, and we took as much time as she needed to do it sensitively and compassionately. At night, instead of nursing her, we curl up in the bed and read a book. Then she snuggles into me and we stare at each other and whisper “night night” about a hundred times while she smiles at me and plays with my hair. Finally she closes her eyes and I feel her body relax and she is asleep. It is heavenly.

I got an OB the other day. She is a woman (yay!) and came highly recommended so I am hoping I’ll like her. She is going to be the person cutting me open after all so I hope I’m comfortable with her. I see her at the end of this month.

That’s it for now. Next time I update will probably be about my BRAND NEW FREAKING DIGITAL CAMERA that I am getting thanks to my husband and eBay. We managed to get it for $500 less than retail. I am finally going to have a decent camera. Things just keep getting better!

poo

Well, I must admit that returning to work has gone exceptionally well. And I’m going to be honest: I am enjoying being cloistered away in a little office, free of interruption (other than occasional office fucktard who comes to complain to me about some nonsense or to ask me how my weekend was) drinking my Starbucks – sorry – FINISHING my Starbucks while it is still warm. Oh the Googling I have been doing! You see, when you come back after maternity leave, in an office comprised of 90% women, everyone leaves you alone to “get adjusted”. I have nothing to do. This is heaven.

Mind you it’s not all roses. Avery is still waking up MANY times overnight. She has got to be the worst sleeper in the history of sleepers. Yesterday she had a 25 minute nap and then was up being her usual spastic self for the rest of the day until I finally wrestled her to sleep at 8pm, only to have her wake up half an hour later so that I had to spend another 20 minutes putting her back down. When I came out of the room, husband was beckoning me to the living room with a glass of red wine and an interesting documentary on the TV. As I crept quietly towards him I must have stepped on 18 strategically placed toys. I say strategically placed because I am convinced that she leaves these toys on the ground in the exact path we take to put her to bed. I picture her methodically dropping them as we carry her off to the bedroom as if leaving a path of stones behind her to mark her trail in the woods, knowing that mum and daddy will wake her up when they slip and fall or kick some noisy toy and start it singing and then she will be able to come out and play again. I managed to escape this fate last night. This is not usually the case.

At least she has started walking a bit by herself now, which makes life more interesting for her and helps us get more of her energy out. We have also taught her to say “poo” and then make the requisite grunting noises which accompany the process. Because we use cloth diapers, we have to dump her poop into the toilet. One day, when she was doing her usual screaming and writhing around on the change table, I decided to distract her by showing her what had just come out of her bum.

“Look,” I said. “Poo!”

I repeated this a couple of times until she finally said it. Then we cleaned her up, marched into the bathroom, and flushed to poop down the toilet while Avery yelled “BYE!” over and over. Now she tells us right before she goes (most of the time) which is fucking amazing, I think. Then she bears down and it is one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

On Saturday, the husband and I were at a hardware store. I was keeping Avery distracted by walking around with her while husband went to get something. We turned the corner where there was a bathroom on display. Avery tightened her grip on my hand and then started RUNNING towards the toilet screaming “BYE! BYE! BYE!”

It took us ten minutes to get her away from it.

I hope this means that the toilet training will go smoothly.

the size of watermelons

Today is my second day back at work from my maternity leave. Yesterday, if you can believe it, I was too busy to post. Instead of a long, weepy post about how much I miss Avery (and I do, in such a horrible, soul-draining way), I’m going to try to be a bit more upbeat.

Let’s start with the title of this post.

1. I have not stopped breastfeeding Avery. She was fine yesterday as she mostly eats solids all day anyway. I had no idea that missing one or two small feedings (or what I thought were small feedings) in a day would result in giant porno boobs. When I got home last night she nursed for like 20 minutes, just on one boob, while the other one leaked. Luckily, she nursed a few times last night and the engorgement went down on both sides. The problem now is that my tits appear to be confused and just keep producing. All day and all night. I just went to the washroom here and caught the side profile of myself in the mirror. The size of my breasts is ridiculous…so much so that I am actually feeling a little self-conscious about it.

2. Speaking of the mirror in the washroom here – my ass looks fantastic. Really. I put on my favourite black work pants this morning and I have to admit, things are looking pretty good.

3. Holy shit, my job is boring. I totally forgot about that while I was away.

4. I am already sick of the mindless, soul-sucking, eye-rollingly annoying, vapid conversations the women around here have with each other. I don’t care if the dress you are wearing to the party is “Bordeaux” coloured, or that the engagement ring your douche bag fiancé gave you is a “princess cut”. Please stop interrupting me while I am trying to get caught up on very important celebrity news on Perez Hilton.com

5. Hello again Internet. I’m back and I am going to enjoy hours of mindless Googling, uninterrupted by a whining 1 year old.

6. No one cool or interesting sits near me anymore.

7. I hope I get pregnant this month.

Why Do I Bother?

Why do I bother talking to idiots? Why do I insist on torturing myself this way? The flu shot clinic is here in our building today and of course all the women are nattering on about who will get their shot and who won’t. There are the usual morons who claim that they won’t get it because, and I quote “the flu shot actually gave them the flu”, which is, as we all know, impossible. You are being injected with an inactivated vaccine, which is a killed virus. Hence, it is impossible for you to get the flu from it. They tell us this every fucking year. It’s on the news, on television commercials, on posters around the city, it’s everywhere. So the loudmouth (the god-loving loud-talker who has dealt with almost her entire divorce over the phone at the office and now everyone here knows every detail of it) is standing beside me at the photocopier and another woman in the office walks by and asks her if she is going to get her shot. She says, “I don’t believe in the flu shot. If I’m gonna get it, I’m gonna get it. I don’t care if I barf everywhere.” So I turn to her and say “The flu and a stomach bug are two different things. You don’t throw up with influenza. And if you don’t get the shot, and you get influenza, you can pass it on to other people who really cannot handle getting sick.” This is the woman with a terminally ill mother who she looks after. HELLO?!?! Why would you risk passing the flu on to her? She shrugs and restates that she does not believe in the flu shot. I guess jeebus will protect her.

On the pregnancy front, I seem to only want to barf my guts up in the evening, which now leaves the days free and clear for food consumption. Excellent. Though I must say that most things are totally unappealing to me. Just for the hell of it, here is a small list of foods that make me want to gag until I have no organs left in my body:

Coffee
Tomato-sauce based pasta meals
Garlic
Garlic and parmesan flavored rice (husband cooked it one night, I discovered how disgusting I found it)
Anything with curry
Pickles (ironically enough)
Chicken, prepared most ways
Tuna

There are other foods that I can’t eat but they don’t come to mind right now. I’m all about the peanut butter and jam toasted sandwiches with a glass of orange juice right now. And I’m a big fan of Cheerios for dinner. I actually wouldn’t mind if my appetite didn’t get much better throughout the pregnancy. I really do not want to gain very much weight. I figured I would set the limit at 25lbs. I’m still exercising and I did lose a bit so far with being sick. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up being a big fat cow. Yay.