Yesterday, whether it was wedding mania or baby's growth catching up to me, I was completely exhausted before noon. All morning long the bone-weariness of pregnancy weighed me down, making movement slow and thought difficult. When I stood, I felt too tired to walk. When I sat, I felt too tired to get up. When I laid down... but I was afraid to try that, because at that point there's no return. When I had to move, I crept up the stairs like Frodo climbing Mount Doom, bowed almost double from burdens and fatigue. It was bad.
So all afternoon the kids binged on episodes of Phineas and Ferb and Hole in the Wall and ate cold hot dogs and chips and kept the three-year-old alive while I lay half-conscious in bed and didn't even care. Not only did I not care, I was grateful for the technology that produces dumb game shows and processed meat products that don't need to be heated. But it did make me wonder about next school year. If I'm this tired at not-quite-four-months pregnant, how will it be during the school year at seven months? Eight months? Nine months? How am I going to teach these children when my head is too heavy to think? How can I run this household when I can't move?
Many plans flashed through my head, each worse than the other, but eventually I had to go with the one that made the most sense: I just went to sleep. When I woke up, I hadn't solved these problems, but Darwin was home and making dinner for everyone and the downstairs had been picked up.
So, Moral #1: don't try to make big decisions about the future while you're completely incapacitated. Moral #2: Daddy will fix everything when he comes home.
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8 comments:
Third lesson: life doesn't have to move as fast as we think it does.
Rest.
Rob
Thank you. I am in the exact same boat and it is always nice to know that I am not alone :).
Maria
Moral #1 is a lesson I have to keep re-learning. It should be on my wall somewhere.
Me, this weekend: Hooowww am I going to manage all of this?
I still don't know but I feel better about tackling it!
I need Moral #1 tattooed on my forehead. Backwards. So I can read it in the mirror.
Don't be so hard on yourself. I know my brain functions much more clearly towards the end of pregnancy. At four months, I can barely keep up with the days of the week. At eight months, I may not be able to move, but at least my brain is functioning again. Somewhat.
Have I ever told you about what my family calls the Summer of Hotdogs? Mom was pregnant, I think with Joanna, and she spent pretty much the whole summer laying down in her darkened bedroom in between visits to the bathroom. We spent the summer doing pretty much whatever we wanted, eating hotdogs for almost every meal. My sister Mary, who was maybe 10 or 11 at the time, was in charge of packing the car so we could go camping on the weekends. Rachel was older, but she had a summer lifeguard job, so she wasn't around. Not only did all of us survive, but I remember it as a pretty good summer. Also, this is how Mary began acquiring her rather astounding organizational skills. So, you know, there could be a plus side. And maybe in fifteen or twenty years Eleanor will start throwing Shakespeare costume parties.
http://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/dont-diy/
Anon, I wasn't going to comment on it, but this quote from that link has been gnawing at the back of my brain all day:
Since the Second Wave of feminism, women have been attempting to solve that problem by either going to work outside of the home, having their husband help with the housekeeping, or both. But traditionally, women had help from other women, not from their husbands. We’re essentially trying to turn our husbands into our aunts, and then we’re all disappointed when we end up married to the kitchen bitch.
I am so very grateful when Darwin, after a long day at work, helps out by washing dishes or straightening up or making dinner for me that it would never cross my mind -- ever, not in a million years of marriage -- to think of him as "the kitchen bitch", and anyone who can even casually refer to a husband that way is not writing an article for which I am the intended audience.
It's fine that you don't read The Atlantic. That phrase was a reference to Atlantic writer Sandra Tsing-Loh's term for the husband Ms. Loh ultimately divorced.
But you still need moar help, we all do, that stay home and raise children.
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