Maternal aphasia: Week Fifteen

In case I forgot this, with babies things can turn on a dime. My sweet little sleeper is still a sweet little sleeper, but he has been doing so in his own crib almost since the moment I wrote the last post. One morning I finally got tired of waking up groggy with Abe's increasing weight on my sternum, or else patting down the blankets making sure he didn't wind up under them, and we cleared all the crap we'd been storing in his crib away, and I put him down, swaddled, for a nap. And it worked. And then I put him down for another one later that day. And it worked. And basically he loves to sleep in a crib.

The only problem is: me. When he wakes at night, I have done what I've always done, the lazy thing, which is bring him into bed, latch him on, and fall back asleep as soon as possible. Which leads to what I described above: groggy, backache, panicked search for baby. Last night, for the first time, I made an effort to stay awake. The sum total of my strategy was waking Josh up to ask him for his Blackberry to play with. Apparently access to the internet can keep me awake for an hour at a time, which was the length of the two wakeups.

Well, there may have been a bit of adrenaline rushing too. See, I've had this cold for two weeks? And a bad cough the past 5 days? And yesterday evening I finally saw my doctor. When she listened to my breathing for more than the requisite amount of time, giving me breaks in between breaths "so you don't pass out," I started fearing the worst. Yup, I've been struck down with pneumonia again, left lung this time. I got it in my right lung on Halloween 2008, wound up in the ER. This time, luckily, the fever/chills have been minimal, which means I have "walking pneumonia." Which means I can sort of function, but it totally winds me to do so.

This afternoon with both kids was the first since my diagnosis (I have yet to get my chest x-ray, as the machine was broken at the place I was going to go this evening). I kept praying for rain so Jonah wouldn't feel so bad about not going outside. No dice. Then I prayed for the phone to ring with a playdate fallen from heaven. No dice. What I got instead was increasing angst from Jonah about not going outside (though never actually verbalized) and finally, the pièce de résistance: my big boy, who is learning to use the potty, wedged himself inside a closet door and peed on the floor there. Thanks, buddy. That was around 4:30 pm, and I decided I couldn't possibly go on, so I tearfully summoned Josh home from work early. Things had settled somewhat by the time he got back, but I had to put Jonah back in a diaper, which I regretted, and the yelling match we'd had with each other after the closet incident woke Abe up from his attempt at a nap.

I felt like a huge failure. Most days I do. Because I'm supposed to have this figured out by now, how to engage the baby just enough to hit all of his milestones on or before schedule, while at the same time doing all of the great things I'm supposed to be doing at home to help Jonah with his various fine and gross motor skill delays , still allowing for time to just goof off and have fun and enjoy being a mom (and then exercise and eat right). I'd say I get the goof off/enjoy time about 10 minutes a day, max, and the rest is either logistics, threats aimed at getting day-to-day tasks like putting on shoes accomplished, answering the same question 30 times in a row, or changing diapers. Of course, there are hugs and kisses all day, and Abe pretty much will smile at anything, so I try to make the most of those moments. Still wasn't enough to save my health this time around.