I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday. And Lukas woke up on the wrong side of the crib. Our day just did not start out well. He was cranky, which is unusual for him. And I was all sorts of out of it. I couldn't even remember the code to our alarm system. It was that sort of morning. And unfortunately it carried with me throughout the day. I just felt really melancholy and ended up with a woe is me evening.
The tipping point was putting Lukas down to bed. We're still letting him "cry it out", which works in the sense that he sleeps 11 hours straight at night without waking up. But I thought that eventually after a few days I'd be able to put him in his crib and he'd smile at me and fade off to sleep. This has happened a grand total of two times. Every other night he cries, whimpers or screams full throttle for anywhere from 20 seconds to 20 minutes. Last night he was full on screaming for 12 minutes before he dozed off to dreamland. And his crying was too much for me. Eventually (as in 3 minutes in), I started crying too and I just couldn't stop.
Two glasses of white wine later and after a good talk with Mr. Cob on our porch I was fine. And I realized what had been bothering me. I do love my life, I love my baby boy and I love my family and friends. There is very little in my picturesque life that I can complain about. Compared to a lot of people, I know I have no real serious problems. I acknowledge all this and realize that my "problems" are ridiculous in the eyes of someone with "real" problems. But they are my problems, regardless of how small they may be. I realized that my life has changed and that I'm not fully used to it yet. I have this little person who is fully dependent on other me and Mr. Cob to survive. Being a parent does not end, ever. And it's awesome, but it also changes your life. Specifically your social life. I looked through my phone and saw that in the past 20 days only two people aside from my husband and mother have called me - and those two people were returning my calls. I guess friends assume we are busy with the baby, and admittedly, most of the time we are. But it makes me a little sad. I wouldn't change my current life for the world. I just need to try a little harder to incorporate my "old" life into my new one, or accept the fact that I've changed and my friendships have changed, and that's OK.
I also need to be OK with not always being positive. Some days I'm going to be in a funk and rather than beat myself up about that, I need to just roll with it and know that tomorrow is a new day.
Today, I woke up happy. And when I went in to the nursery to get Lukas at 6am, my heart melted. He was waiting for me with a huge smile on his face. I love our morning routine of laying in bed together while he nurses. Before long, he'll be too big and grown up for these early morning snuggle-fests and I'll miss them.
Being a mom is full of ups and downs. The ups, by-far, outweigh and outshine the downs. It's figuring out how to manage the down-days that I struggle with. But like I've said before, I'm not perfect, nor will I ever be, nor am I trying to be.
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