Doubts

I am beginning to regret each time I proclaimed how The Bubby was much easier than The Toddler. At the moment she is about the same. And the tiredness builds up and the doubts pile in and you forget all the good things you can do and do do, and you wallow and rise up for brief instants to joke and laugh and then you settle back in to your rut. And I know this is roughly how I was feeling at the same time with The Toddler.

When The Husband sees me eyeing off his new jumper and then tells me I can't wear it because I'll stretch it out, it's fact. I have boobs (that are bigger than a 14G accoding to 18 year old at the shop yesterday so now I have to go to a specialist shop just to get a damn maternity bra) and he is slim with all his triathlon training. But all I hear is how I'm big and gross and saggy and just shouldn't bother.

When his parents comment that the baby is squirmy, is gassy, is hungry, is getting chubbier and chubbier, all I hear is that I should already know these things and should have fixed them already, why haven't I done that and seen it and know that.

When the baby is being gassy and squirmy and I'm trying to burp her before I feed her, and the Husband asks why isn't she feeding because she was sucking her hand, and of course I try to feed her and she attaches straight away, I feel like an idiot for not trying to guess what I think she is feeling and just do what she needs.

When I can't settle her and The Husband can, and he shows me what he was doing, I feel incompetent.

When he jokes that he is the 'active' parent, all I see is that I spend roughly an hour in every three with The Toddler in front of the tv as I try to feed The Bubby and stop The Toddler from stomping on the dogs feet or opening the fridge or smacking The Bubby. And that it's not really that hard to sit in front of the iPad with a boob out. And all I see is all the ways I don't do enough for The Toddler, I don't show her enough patience or enough fun. When she wants to put away the hand mirror and I'm trying to put her hair up and she cracks it and The Husband says 'just let her put it away' and I don't realise that I was even not hearing what she was saying, and putting it away makes her happy, I question where I have 'been' for the past two years. Like when I am trying to put together all the Mothers Day gifts and she is pulling things off the table and I joke to her 'enough of you! go away!' and her face drops, she says 'away' and she pushes her chair out and walks away from me to the kitchen...

These are things I think about the night after I was up from 1-4am with a gassy cranky baby. When I had four hours of broken sleep, a day of errands with a baby that turned on all her charm and slept peacefully in the carrier and spaced out her feeds to 3.5-4 hours apart. When she has been in the bedroom with me in the dark for an hour, screeching and squirming. When we listen to the soundtrack from the movie from which her name is taken, both of us her crying, my tears doubling for the fact she can't produce any yet. When I find myself putting her down on the bed because it doesn't matter if I'm trying to cuddle and pat her or if she lays on the mattress because she is just going to cry anyway. When I answer her cries with 'enough' or 'be quiet' or 'stop crying'. When I finally admit to myself that I can't take much more of the screeching and find myself shifting her around without the tenderness that a mother should. When I take her out to The Husband and tell him I'm done and I don't know if he can see my face in the dim light but all he can say as he's asking me if I'm okay and to come back is that it will always be hard. And for the first time in as long as I can remember I actually cry myself to sleep.