And Then It Hit Me

With each passing day, the more it sinks in that this is our reality now. He's here to stay, and I'm in charge of him. He depends on me. 

Being a parent is hard, y'all.

Toward the end of my pregnancy, everyone was all up in my face about "Is he here yet?! Aren't you excited?! Are you in labor yet? Aren't you ready for him to be here?! Are you in labor? Why aren't you more excited?" It took a lot of energy not to tell people to STEP OFF.

Truth be told, out of everyone, I was the MOST okay with him chillin' inside me for a little while longer. I was scared shitless to actually *have* him, but I also knew that a big change was coming. Sure, you never know what it's like until you're actually in the thick of it, but I knew whatever it was, it wouldn't be easy.

Let me be clear; I LOVE LOVE LOVE this little boy. So much. His smile could melt the hardest of hearts. But every time he's crying in the middle of the night, it gets a liiiiiittle bit harder for me to muster the energy to fling myself out of bed. I'm just so tired.

Around 9-weeks-old, he started "sleeping through the night," which meant WE slept through the night, and I thought our sleep situation would be sunshine and rainbows for a while. SILLY STEPHANIE. Try a month, tops. Schedule readjustments (him needing an earlier bedtime) sprinkled with some growth spurts meant REGRESSION, and back to waking up 1-3 times every night. One of my biggest challenges with this right now is that for some reason my brain keeps going a mile a minute, even if I'm dead tired. I'm losing precious minutes of sleep just because I simply can't stop thinking.

Aiden's only 4.5-ish months old, but sometimes I can't help but feel like I'm already failing. There are days when I'm just so run-down that I feel like I'm not being a good mother, or a good wife- I didn't hold him enough, talk to him enough, didn't do those dishes, left him too long in the activity gym, dinner isn't ready, tried to get him to sleep more than he might need because I need to sleep. That last one makes me feel like a jerk. 

Ultimately, I think I really need to force myself to go to bed earlier, and get out of the house more. I'm sure I'm not doing myself any favors by staying in the house a lot of the time. We need a change of scenery. It'd be good for both of us. It has to be.