It’s Not You, it’s Me…Well it Really is You But it’s Not Your Fault

I came to a stark realization last weekend. It was one of those things that had come up before but was not a big deal, until it became a BIG deal. I really should probably not even be bringing this up. I should and AM very grateful for all of my friends and supporters. As a mom, anyone you have cheering in your corner willing to help or lend an ear is a precious gift, but this past weekend I had an abundance of gifts shall I say.

Don’t get me wrong, love and support in any dose is amazing, but the problem is what I need more than that is understanding. You see, somehow or the other I ended up in a situation where I have a child and no one (except for one person) in my close circle of friends and family has kids. The majority of my friends are still living in my old world of blissful (or sometimes not so blissful) ignorance. Everyone says they understand or they know how hard it is but really if you have not spent every moment of every day in my shoes then you do not understand. I do not blame anyone for their lack of understanding or for not having gone through exactly what I have in a day (heck I do not wish most of it on anyone) but certain information does not translate across child/ non-child having boundaries.

Part of my problem this weekend was my own fault, I had over scheduled myself with too many activities yet again and I ended up having to cancel one of the activities but I wish I had said no to more. It’s just that every time I say no, even if I get an “oh that’s ok” or “oh I totally understand” I feel like they really don’t. I give them as good of an explanation as I can: No, I can’t be out past 9pm because I will likely pass out from exhaustion. No, I can’t attend that function with a child because my child does not sit still and that function is a sitting only kind of thing. Can’t afford that, to frazzled for that, that would create extra laundry/ cleaning so, no, pass on that. I mean there are only so many explanations I can give and anything I say fails to capture the true problem that would come about should I give in to a social event or function.

One example of this is a dinner my husband and I were invited to. My husband does not get off work on Saturdays until 5pm which gets him home around 5:30pm. Emma’s bed time is 6:00pm so that does not leave much time for Saturday night outings unless we have a babysitter. I had already reserved my mom/ sister’s sitting services for the next night so that left me sitterless on Saturday night, which meant no dinner but that did not stop my friend from suggesting  a 6:30pm dinner time. My normal response would be to say sorry to tired or that would have us out late, when what I really should be saying to flesh out my seemingly lame excuse is: 6:30pm you say?!?! Didn’t I say she goes to sleep at 6:00pm!?!? Oh that’s right you haven’t spent countless nights perfecting a night night routine so your child does not end up awake at 7:30pm crabby and screaming. Harsh I know, but true, yes.  In the end, I ended up going to dinner with them by myself while daddy stayed home with a peacefully sleeping baby. But this unawareness on a friend’s part was small potatoes compaired to what happened Sunday night.

Before my big Valentine’s date last Sunday with my husband and our other friends, I ended up having a major blow out about the dogs and dog hair getting all over the house. Normally, I am pretty passive about the situation. We have four dogs and I love them all dearly. We always have dog hair all over us. Grand! End of story. Before I had a baby I was even more lax about the whole situation. I would go into work covered in dog hair so often that it didn’t even faze people after a while.  Now that Emma is crawling and eating everything she finds on the floor, I try to keep a dog hair free zone in at least part of the house. That mission coupled with my (sweet but judgmental mom) coming over on Sunday to babysit left me determined I was not going to let dog hair inhabit my living space for several hours if I could help it.

Enter my fun-loving, child-free friends, who have 3 dogs and are just as if not more avid dog lovers than my family. Well it only took minutes for the dog hair to fly, after I had asked them to try to take it easy with the dogs, but I should have known. It was madness corralling the dogs outside and horror of horrors; my friends started to pet the dogs! The actions of which resulted in dog hair on the floor.

Ok maybe we need to back up to how I have not had a mommy break that lasted longer than an hour or two before passing out at night in a long time, so I was on edge as it was. Does that make my actions excusable? Maybe just a little? Well anyways a moment I’m not so proud of happened and I yelled at everyone. I lost it. Even though I had tried to explain to my friends what the deal was, they still had no idea, no clue. It was more than just the few hours I had spent cleaning the house for that day. It was the culmination of countless hours of cleaning before that and the lack of sleep and the trying to nurture a clingy child who doesn’t let me go to the bathroom and the endless hours of guilt while I am at work when I would rather be at home so maybe I could have a better handle on the cleanliness of my house or the care of my child and on and on and exhaustingly on.

Once again, I do not want this to be seen as complaining. I really am not trying to have a pity party.  I want it to be seen as a therapeutic moment where I vent about feeling somewhat alone in all of this. I have no one who is calling me up to share a diaper explosion story so I can combat theirs with mine. I want that so badly but more than that I want people to understand why I am limited in what I can do physically, mentally, and socially so they don’t even need to take a moment to question my motives or go OH OK guess it’s a mom thing. Instead of awkwardly stumbling through what they picture to be my difficult life scenarios through their heads, I want them to just KNOW what I am going through. I need them to give me a firm OK or GOTCHA, YUP been there and leave it at that. But for now maybe they want to try on my sneakers. I wear a size 9.