So I guess you can say that life has gotten the best of me over the last five months….
I haven’t wrote or posted for the blog since July and I am not proud of it by any means, but I made a goal to get a blog post up this week and hell or high water I am doing it today as the baby sleeps in her car seat and my older kids play on their IPADS!
My august was eventful with a very troubled pregnancy and it kind of snowballed into my september where we welcomed our new little girl Maci into our already chaotic family, her picture is above isn’t she just the cutest ?(even though she doesn’t like to sleep)?!She fit in great and decided she was going to be a troublemaker just like her brother and sister and start her life off with a nice little stay in the NICU. She is now four months old and I am just starting to get used to the sleep deprivation and the fact that I will live in my lounge clothes until she is in college. She has a milk allergy like her siblings and reflux and we go through about fifteen outfits a day. I thought I knew so much more going into having her then I did with my other two kids who also had health issues, I am learning it doesn’t really matter every child’s medical issues have to be dealt with differently. So we are working on correcting her horrible gut issues one day at a time and I will be writing more on what we are doing to correct it in a later post.
Being a Stay At Home Mom…
I am blessed to be able to stay at home with her and my other two children as well as my boyfriends daughter … In case you weren’t counting that is FOUR KIDS! So I went from two to four pretty quick and I’m struggling to adjust to this new lifestyle. I have always dreamed of being a SAHM, I have had a couple month off here and there when I had my kids but for the most part I always have worked and raised my kids. My boyfriend is very old school and works crazy hours to allow me to be home with the kids and honestly with four kids, sports and doctors appointments I don’t know how I could juggle going into work. So I went into it thinking it was going to be so great, Id get my energy back from being pregnant I would have dinner made every night and things organized, hell I would get back to my gym routine and even get back into my flow with the PTA at the school….I WAS SO WRONG.
A SAHM with ADHD…
I’m a latish 30s, stay-at-home mom with ADHD. I wasn’t diagnosed until my mid-twenties, long after college, long after I had successfully managed a department of people at a retail outlet store with sixty five employees under me.
The mom runs the house, verifies sandwich crust removal, fills out permission slips, and makes sure that kids have christmas PJs for PJ day at school
I’ve got five fingers clinging to a leaking lifeboat plugged together with a new baby, housework, errands, and appointments for four kids. Three fingers desperately stretch out to grasp at the rotting rope of getting my son with Lyme and PANDAS in with a neurologist and the baby in with a gastro specialist, finding (and filling out) the two different sets of medical authorization forms, and scheduling an appointment with my own med manager before my prescription of adderall runs out.
And my oldest son wore plain regular pjs after I drove to four stores to get him christmas pj’s.
Did I mention my washing machine broke with four kids and one in cloth diapers????
Doing the math: that leaves two fingers for actually parenting my children, being available in my relationship with their father, and anything else just for me which includes writing for my blog…also throw in I have a new at home LuLaRoe business I thought would be great to start a month before having a new baby to help out and make some money.
I hear the internet mumbling already, “many women do all of that and work, too! What in the world?”
I know; I get it and that only serves to feed my own inadequacies. before this new baby came I was super mom… ADHD and all!
But deep down inside? Between you and me? It is frustrating beyond comprehensible belief to be stuck forever wanting to just have two days where all of your thoughts, beget your actions, beget your completed lists.
It seems impossible to Lean In without Falling Over. For example let’s get real, below are pictures of my house currently, if you are friends with me you know I am a clean freak, I’m very OCD everything has to has to be perfect or I cant go to bed. I am so in over my head most days I can’t ever figure out what task to start with…I’m overwhelmed and an absolute HOT MESS! It’s okay though,the house will get cleaned, I will get better at juggling all my new hats…RIGHT!?!?
Finally add in a Side order of Postpartum Depression/Anxiety….
So as my life with four kids , a new baby and ADHD wasn’t stressful enough I was one of the lucky women who gets to battle PPD. The Postpartum Anxiety is worse than the depression so for a while I was in denial I even had it.
I’ve struggled with anxiety and with panic attacks since I was nine years old.
At different stages of my life, I’ve struggled to a greater and a lesser extent. And as with many people, periods of stress tend to trigger the periods of anxiety.
But what I hadn’t counted on was having a baby who screamed nearly constantly. Who had major issues with feeding, with sleeping, and basically with just being alive. Who would sleep in 45 minute increments at night, and with whom I could not seem to build any positive memories with, that my friends has been me for four months.
I have felt completely exhausted. Sleep-deprived. On the edge. And so, so full of guilt for the full four months this baby has been on this earth.
The best advice I can give to parents who are struggling with postpartum anxiety or depression and a fussy baby is this: Take care of yourself.
A high need baby demands so much attention and energy, and sucks your emotional and physical resources dry. And if you’re struggling with postpartum anxiety on top of that, it’s a recipe for disaster. This is something I am still struggling with, accepting help…even from a very supportive partner who is more than capable of taking care of our kids I find myself taking over and pushing him away. I tried medicine and for me it didn’t work, I felt like a zombie so some days are worse than others and I have to accept that sleep plays a big role in that.
But accepting I was battling it was my first step and on days like today when the house is a mess and I am so overwhelmed I don’t know where to begin I choose to take time for myself, time to write on the blog I miss so much, to get back to helping others so I can feel like I have purpose other than just being a SAHM.
So if you made it this far in my post I am grateful to be back writing and sharing resources , recipes and an inside into our crazy wonder ADHD filled life. Make sure to comment on any topics you would like me to cover in the upcoming months questions you may have emailed me about and I missed them along the way!
Now to go get those dishes done so I can make dinner…..Wish me luck!
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