so i woke up yesterday morning at 5 am with really sharp eye pain and a very bloodshot eye. my first thought was….oh crap…how the heck did i get pinkeye??? but when i showed it to the husband who normally tells me in a very calm doctor tone that whatever it is i’m freaking out about is not that serious and can be handled with sleep and lots of water, he told me to go right away to urgent care. i stopped freaking out once i got there as i knew someone would eventually take care of me and once i sat in an uncomfortable hospital chair, i started dozing in and out of sleep as i waited to be seen. at one point while i was waiting, i realized that i was feeling relaxed as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. as i sat trying to figure out why in this situation, i would feel a sense of happy calm, i came to the realization that it was because i was baby-less. it didn’t matter how long it took for the doctor to come, but just being out of the house without evelyn guilt-free, knowing she was in good hands, made me feel relieved and happy. it wound up being a 3 hour urgent care visit to find that a part of my cornea had been scratched, but i oddly found the 3 hours just the refreshing break i needed.
so the past 2 weeks has been tiring. we just got back from a drive up to see my family in the bay area and it was so wonderful to be able to spend the holidays as a family with e but she got sick during the trip, had a bad case of some sort of rash that made her entire face itchy that involved another doctor’s visit, and was waking up during nights when she had been such a solid sleeper before, oh and developed some sort of diaper rash that required a 3 hour pharmacy wait to pick up cream. i know…not too horrible and it’s pretty typical parenting stuff, but add this to recovering from a cold myself, and also having the husband having a busier work schedule without a break on the weekends, and i just felt a bit beat down this week.
sometimes taking care of a baby and being a stay at home mom feels so much less hectic compared to working as a frenzied high school teacher. i don’t have to get ready and leave the house at 6:30, don’t have to worry about how to make high school level chemistry interesting to 200 students who mostly don’t give a darn, and don’t have to be on my feet and run around all day and lecture for five hours at a time. i look at evelyn sometimes and think….thank you dear baby for giving mommy a break this year as i exist in yoga pants from morning to night. but other days like the past week, it gets to me. the level of work may not be as physically demanding at home taking care of a baby, but i realized there isn’t a break when you’re a stay at home mom and it’s really tiring in many different ways. from the moment you wake up to the moment you lie down to go to sleep, and sometimes during the middle of the night, you are always dialed in as “mom” and you are constantly thinking of and taking care of someone other than yourself. i can’t say good bye to my coworkers and take off my school i.d. badge leaving behind my role as “teacher” as i happily leave the work parking lot at 4pm to freedom.
this being said, the husband is pretty great. i don’t know how he does it but he goes 12-14 hours to a demanding job and comes home and tries to take over as much as he could with the baby duties to give me a break and all this without complaining. he still helps out around the house with the dishes and laundry and i really can’t imagine doing this whole parenting thing with anyone else. i realized even more just how much he helps out and how he does such a good job in giving me a break during the past 2 weeks when he wasn’t able to do as much from a busier work schedule and also from bad back pain–i felt so exhausted without his usual helping out. and i know…i’m lucky. i have a beautiful little girl who brings so much joy to our lives and i’m so thankful for this year to stay at home but yesterday, i discovered that there are some days when i’d consider a trip to the urgent care a relaxing break from being a mom to just being normal self-absorbed clumsy me. 🙂
PAULYESTHER 