(Most of this was written in the very wee hours of the morning, while rocking/nursing my baby who just won't sleep easily.)
I'm not really a terrible mom, but a few circumstances have coincided and I feel like the ultimate failure.
I should be able to take care of two kids, especially when one goes to daycare most of the day. But the nights have been hard. Little Gwendolyn has a tooth coming through, but she also misses her dad. When she sees him, she snuggles in and goes to sleep fairly easily. When she sees me, she sees MILK and that's exciting, and why on earth would anyone want to go to sleep rather than constantly nursing on mommy.
I started some anti-depressant medication about a week ago. It has started to help me a bit; for a few months, I had been feeling like the world was composed of shadows, gloom, and unceasing sadness. That wasn't such a good feeling.
But the medication also makes me tired. The first few days were bad, but it's getting better. However, I still just feel like my brain is heavy and foggy. I've been trying to press through it, but it's hard. I can't stop the medication because I was going down a very bad PPD pathway, but I don't have the luxury of sleep to help my body adjust.
My husband is out of town, at a conference. He's too important to modify his schedule. His is (mostly) our only income, too so I shouldn't complain. But I do, because I'm tired and beat-down. He didn't even use up all of his paternal leave or all of his vacation days this calendar year. Because he's too busy.
He's excellent at his job. He's excellent with the kids. He has tried hard to help me. I just want more.
My 3-year-old hasn't been too bad. He's gone to sleep without many issues. He has woken up at 3 or 4 am and come into my room, but will go back to sleep without too many issues.
The baby is cutting teeth, and I imagine that it's hard being seven months old. Especially with a terrible mom who tries to feed her and play with her and rock her but is sometimes just too tired to do much more than put the Jurassic Park Theme on the computer and cry while she rolls a ball with her infant and prays that the baby will take a long enough nap that I can grade and write and sleep. The nights have been the worst--awake for hours at a time.
I'm not really a bad mom, but I am struggling.
