Notes from the Trenches

It's been a couple weeks since my last freak-out post, and things are going all right. The baby is eating (nothing from a spoon! Spoons are evil!), mostly finger food that we prepare for her in little bite-size morsels, and formula if we mix it half-and-half with breast milk. Looks like I'd better keep up the breast-feeding for a while. I'd like to give it up - I'm tired of pumping and lugging my breast pump around and keeping track of how long it's been since I pumped or nursed last. It is a royal pain. I can't even stay overnight at my company retreat because I need to go home and nurse. But she won't take formula straight, so I have to keep going for a while. The important thing is that she seems healthy and energetic - despite being so underweight. She laughs, plays peekaboo, crawls and pulls herself up all over the place, loves going for walks, loves watching the guinea pigs. She's a joy.

Meanwhile I'm crashingly tired, all the time, and longing for a vacation. I'm still working half-time at the office, and working from home the rest of the week and lately, both days on the weekend - and it's so, so hard to do work from home with a baby. I never realized. I thought it would be, if not a cakewalk, at least something I could manage comfortably - just stick the baby in the playpen, pour myself a cup of tea, and sit down at the computer. I didn't count on the fact that I would have to stop what I was doing approximately every 5-7 minutes, more often if she's having a "high-maintenance" day, and tend to her needs. I have to focus like a hawk in those few minutes I get after she's been handed a new toy or some Cheerios, or is down for a nap. And I have to draw on reserves of patience and unflappability beyond what I ever thought I had, the whole time I'm trying to work and care for her simultaneously. I feel achingly envious of moms who don't have to work while they're home with their babies - who can devote all their energy to taking care of a house and child (a more than full-time job in itself, that really does take all the energy you can give to it!), or who have time to read or volunteer, or go out and meet other moms. There are moms groups in our neighborhood but I don't have time to find them. Sometimes when people call me and want to chat during that golden hour of her naptime every afternoon, I feel irrationally angry at them - don't they know how valuable that time is, how it's maybe my only opportunity to get my work done by the deadline unless I want to stay up until 2 am?

I keep telling myself that things will get better, this is just a crunch time. As soon as I'm done with the current project, I'll get a breather. Then I can finally do things like my taxes that have been piling up needing my attention. I'll have at least three or four days before the next project comes in. And in the larger scheme of things, this is just a hard time because she's so little and needs me so much. In a few years, I can sit her down with a book, or drop her off at a friend's house for a playdate, or send her to kindergarten. I'll look back on these early days and feel proud of myself for getting through it. :)