Trouble in Paradise

If you had asked me 5 days ago, I’d have said everything was GGGRRRRREEAAT.  What with Rhys sleeping 90% of the day & night, I was in the euphoric phase of falling in love where his craps & cries were “precious” to me.

Well, those days are over my friend!  (Though I am still very much in love with my little guy).

We had a rough 5 day weekend here at the Biskie household, and I am officially overwhelmed with life right now.

My little Rhys has been suffering through some really bad gas.  This means three very unfortunate things: the little ankle-biter wants to be held almost all day, is not sleeping well as he wakes up screeching in pain and is not happy when he’s awake. 🙁

First things first, I’m starting an elimination diet beginning with milk & caffeine.  Hopefully, after I cut those things out my little man will feel better.

My back & neck are killing me.  My breastfeeding posture is terrible and it’s exacerbated by my desire to look down at him while he’s feeding, or hold my neck in a weird position trying to read while nursing.  This in turn is giving me horrible head-aches.

On the breastfeeding front… my little guy is favoring the right side, (leaving the left engorged) & not latching well on the left which leaves it throbbing in so much pain it wakes me up.

I’ve also been struggling with that nagging feeling of sadness otherwise known as post-partum baby blues which makes it hard to want to do… just about anything.  Of course, going on 2 weeks of sleep deprivation is not helping any of these things.

I can’t believe how exhausting is it feeling needed 100% of the time with a newborn around!  I think I had forgotten.  I hate to say it (because I feel like an ungrateful jerk)  but, I feel like need a break from him, though he’s only two weeks old!  Just articulating that makes me feel unreasonable and then sad… again.

Mothering is a hard job, and to all the moms out there: I am SO proud of us.  It’s rough, man!

Though I’ve been sad enough to not want visitors, I need them!  When we get visitors I feel so much better.  Last Thursday, we got a visit from my sweet friends April & Jessica.

Rhys got his 1st encounter with a lady friend…

On Friday night, we got a visit from Ran’s Godparents, Ryan & Joy…

On Saturday, it went a little bit like this:

Feed Rhys for 40 minutes, do my hair & some laundry.  Hold Rhys.  Feed Rhys, clean the house. Hold Rhys.  Feed Rhys, go grocery shopping.  Hold Rhys.  Feed Rhys, clean the house.  Hold Rhys.  Feed Rhys, fall asleep.  Day is done.  I was fairly stressed.

On Sunday, we had a small family party for Ran’s 4th birthday, which was really nice except for the fact that Rhys was screaming bloody murder the entire time. 🙁

When I came into the room & saw that my EVIL cat, Little Jerri Seinfeld was licking the frosting off Ransoms cake before the party even started, I wanted to just break down in tears.

While we were singing to Ransom he was just smiling the whole time.  I could tell he was just thrilled to have 15 people singing the Happy Birthday song to him.  It was cute.  I’ve been excited for him since all the attention has went to his baby brother lately.  Between the Halloween candy, his cake & ice cream, he is sugared out.  Strung out like a crack addict, I tell ya.

Now that the party is over, I feel a bit overwhelmed with life. 🙁 It took many attempts  just to get these last couple of blog posts done!

It feels mildly unfortunate that five things are colliding:

1) needing to clean up the post-party mess

2) all our leaves are falling & Dave will need to spend hours outside

3) Dave’s 2-week paternity leave is over, meaning I’ll be shouldering much more of the responsibilities with cooking & Ransom that he has been taking care of

4) Some of the same family issues & drama I’ve been mentioning for the last 4 months have come up again

5) Rhys’ gas issues

However, the light(s) at the end of the tunnel…

-Dave is trying to shove me out the door to go to Starbucks or something for some alone time which I feel like I desperately need.

-I can keep doing picture blog posts until I have the time & energy & where-with-all to do “real” posts.  (I have a list of 7 posts waiting for me). 🙂

-I have lost 26 of the 35 total lbs. I gained in the pregnancy.  Maybe it’s not so impressive when you consider at least 10 lbs. of that was the baby and 5 lbs. for the placenta & amniotic fluid.  However, it was nice to slide into some non-maternity jeans!

& last but not least… at the end of a very long day, it’s still really nice to snuggle with my little bear…

Ahhhh, back to my fussy baby…