Keeping It Real

I was inspired by a fellow blogger's post today about how there's so much pressure on moms to act like they have their acts together. In an effort to show the dark underbelly of new motherhood (and no, I'm not referring to my stretchmark-riddled underbelly), I'd like to do a post about the things that have just plain sucked.

First off, my relationship with my husband is suffering under the strains of new parenthood. The reality is that being a mom is a crap-ton of work. I know that and almost any other mother out there knows it, but I'm not always sure that husbands can understand it. To compound matters, I'm chronically horrible about wanting things done and expecting my husband to read my mind. It's not really that I expect him to be able to do that, it's more that I refuse to be a nag. Sure, I could straight-up ask him to watch James every Saturday from 8 am to 10 am, thus granting me the supreme luxury of sleeping in, but that would involve nagging him and I'm so afraid to do that, so I suffer in silence until I reach my breaking point.

Said "breaking point" this week involved me getting up in the wee hours of Sunday morning, feeding James who apparently thought that 5:30 am was an appropriate time to become uber-alert, complete with smiles and cooing. Cute, right? Well, not with so few hours of sleep under your belt. I kept wishing that Brett would hear the baby and come spend some time with him so I could sleep. He never did and I ended up attempting, through tears, to read James a story.

I just got the book "Babyproofing Your Marriage," in hopes of dealing with some of these issues. I did tell Brett that I simply need more help. Oddly enough, I'm also looking forward to being back at work because it seems like an equalizer. If we are both working full-time, there's no reason we can't both help equally with house and baby care.

Some snippets of suckiness:

• I have internal hemorrhoids from the baby and have not been able to have a peaceful bowel movement in almost three months. I went to the doctor yesterday and began a four-step process of having them fixed.
• We've had sex just once since the baby was born. It didn't hurt, but my boobs stared spewing milk partway through. If you want to feel unsexy, try gaining twenty pounds, having stretchmarks everywhere, and leaking bodily fluids onto your partner. This explains why we've only done it once.
• My grandma is in the hospital dying right now. She's been in and out of the hospital for the past month with congestive heart failure and liquid-filled lungs. We finally decided to just keep her comfortable and let her go.
• I go back to work in just one week. I love my job, make decent money, and frankly live a lifestyle that requires my income. That doesn't really make it any easier to imagine being away from my little man for 10 hours straight.

I know this all sounds kinda crappy, but I do want to keep it real. As fantastic as motherhood is (James slept 8.5 hours straight the last two nights, by the way), there are some crappy times.