Anyway.

The title of this post refers to both the state of my house….and me.

Let’s just say that out of the two our abode is in far less of a state.

How do you translate the endless to do lists into proper action before you are overwhelmed and at the mercy of anxious procrastination yet again? 

Is routine- not just for the kids- for yourself a good thing?  How do you make it work? What activities do you schedule?

If you want to start on changing your diet and exercise habits…where do you begin and how do you actually motivate yourself into moving beyond ideas into action?

If you know that breastfeeding and cosleeping are leaving you so stressed and sleep deprived that it is affecting your parenting to the point where you feel almost disconnected from it all and yet you can’t stomach weaning and controlled crying…what do you do?

Help please…….

It has been four years since I’ve last had my body to myself- and in some of that time I have been both pregnant and breastfeeding- and I’m completely. burnt. out.

Breastfeeding is proving to be challenging. Again.  My littest ‘un is making it extremely difficult to achieve my goal of a minimum of twelve months of breastfeeding thanks to the fact that she will only feed at sleep time, wrapped and in  the dark of the bedroom and has been this way for months.  As if trying to fit life in around sleeps isn’t freaking hard enough (and something I have been dealing with for over five years now) I feel completely housebound by this arrangement.  Little miss won’t feed when out, and won’t sleep without a prior feed, even though it is the dummy that she actually falls asleep with.  My anxiety levels go through the roof.  When we are out we are usually at least half an hour from home. You get the drift.

Don’t even get me started on the monthly breastfeeding strikes around the time of my period, and the several days of expressing to get it all back on track. 

In spite of this I already feel guilty that I am not capable of considering feeding until two and beyond like I did with Evie because I truly believed she was my last baby.

The lack of sleep is getting to the stage where it is no longer tolerable.  Immyjim still wakes in the night and ends up in bed with us because I am too bloody tired to resettle her in her cot but then I end up not getting quality shuteye thanks to the rolling and space hogging baby.

The net result is I am the snappiest most unenthusiastic mother I have ever been…and that’s saying something. I yell at the slightest non provocation.  I am constantly irritated and always on edge.  I am so unmotivated and feel almost disassociated from my husband and kidlets.  I wonder where my sense of humour has gone.  I am eating crap in an attempt to boost my energy levels and am now the fattest I have ever been. And for someone who was once on the brink of an eating disorder this is very confronting.

It’s revolting.

And although my rational brain knows some of the steps that I need to take to get out of this vicious circle (ie get baby to sleep in her own cot, probably even in her own room, consider- gasp- weaning, me time, exercise, meditation, a return to part time work blah blah fishpaste) I am too emotionally drained and guilty  to know where to start.

Sorry for that internets, even I can’t handle the sound of my own whining.  Don’t get me wrong, I adore my family and appreciate that I really do have a charmed first world life.  I do however need to make some positive changes so that I feel more like myself again and can then be a much more positive and engaged mother and wife.  Especially to my two oldest kidlets, both extremely bright, one very intense and who desperately need a calm and responsive mother who can meet their needs.

And here’s the dumb thing.  If given the opportunity to add to our family (and it isn’t an option, but still) I would do it in a heartbeat.  What is wrong with me?!

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

PNFFS, in case both you and the mental health professionals didn’t know, stands for Post Natal For Fark’s Sake.

And it as exactly as it sounds.

I am tired. I am anxious. I can’t focus.

I go from loving to monster mama in three nanoseconds flat over the most trivial of things.

There will be no wife of the year prize for me either.

Don’t get me wrong, I love and adore my kidlets (and I would write you a lovely blog update post if the thought didn’t stress me out) and the amazing husband. It’s just that I am a bundle of uneasy nerves.

Is it the sleep deprivation? Hormones? The stress of parenting solo from pre 6am to post 6pm? Lack of vigilance when it comes to unhelpful ways of thinking?

I don’t really care what the cause is, I just don’t want to feel like this anymore.

But I’m not sure where exactly to begin…..

Um.

So I’ve been a whole lot of nutcase a little bit craazzy of late.  I’d blame the French, except they’re not the ones still waking me up for a feed once or twice a night now that they are in their own room. No names mentioned, miss E I’m looking straight at you.

Anyway, I guess the only way out of this funk is to accept the ongoing sleep deprivation, embrace the broken nights because they are showing no signs of abating anytime soon. Either that or sink lower into a tired misery punctuated by a fixation on all things meaningless while I let the meaningful moments slide.

Examples?  I have so wanted to come on here and tell you all about A’s amazingly elephantine memory and her ability to recall things from a year ago in perfect detail, snippets of conversations we have which show her burgeoning empathy and reasoning skills yet are still rather hilarious.  Especially her emphatic “I KNOW that” whenever she is called up on her behaviour, before proceeding to do what she wanted to do anyway.  Her secure satisfaction in knowing that she will always be my baby and that I love her to the moon and back.  My girl’s excitement and pride reserved for physie, and the thrill of counting down the days until this weekend’s concert, where she will be wearing her “proper real physie shoes and leotard mummy“.

Her obsession with the story of Cinderella, and her father’s delight at my ambivalence to this most decidedly non feminist tale.

And then there’s been E’s language explosion, from the adorable way in which she will plop down her weary head and say ‘nigh nigh‘ whenever she is tired, her pleading ‘uhh! uhh!‘ as she tries to scramble up my legs and into my awaiting arms and her most exuberant “dip! dip!” as she is presented with a bowl of food or tub of yogurt that she must feed herself, and by dog she does a great job with a spoon already.

The new tooth, the exceptionally hair raising climbing skills and mastery of riding a slippery dip at the grand old age of fourteen months. Her love of animals, as evidenced by her cheery “woo!woo!” greeting to the neighbour’s dogs when  we raise her bedroom blind in the morning, the constant searching for and pointing at “tweet! tweets!” as she climbs up onto the coffee table to gaze out at the birds in the bushland outside.

The squeals of delight as my girls play chaseys with each other all day long.

Mr hissychick’s landmark fortieth, and the horror/comedy of the day as detailed on his own blog, but excluding my sadness and embarrassment  at his poorly hidden displeasure with my first choice of watch for his birthday present.

Instead I have been mooching around, paying half hearted attention to the kids and the state of the house as I focus my priorities on stupid things like trying to get a nappy cream stain out of a couple of MCNs….at 11pm at night. Typing and then deleting comments on your blogs, fearing my words are just inane crap.

Worrying myself sick about the fact that I have to put in another extension of leave form at work, even though I knew it was never going to be realistic for me to return before the end of the year. Wondering how it will even be possible to juggle the commute and my absolute opposition to formal child care for my children before they are two years old but fearing that if I don’t return to work that I will entirely lose my own identity, self esteem and independence.

I won’t get started on the whole I really want a third child even though it defies all common sense and ongoing resentment at the fact that even if mr hissychick magically changed his mind it wouldn’t happen the au natural way anyway.

And let’s not mention how much time has been wasted of late in the agonising grip of guilt. Guilt that my own shitty mood is directly affecting my kids, my relationship with my husband, and is probably the major cause of climate change and the one thing that is holding everyone back from achieving world peace.

I am way too self involved.  So tell me, is the answer sleep, medication, sex, plucking my eyebrows? And what was the question anyway?

Gah.

Let’s leave it at that shall we?

When I first started this blog it served merely as an online diary, a place of catharsis where I could blab about the trials and tribulations of infertility, something I did not wish to share with the real world at the time.  It then evolved into a place where I could document the wonder of my pregnancies, the joyous milestones of my children and muse about motherhood.

Somewhere along the line I (re)gained a sense of humour, and with it an audience for my blog.  An audience who, from my understanding, like to read my blather because it usually makes them laugh.

Right now I face a conundrum.   You see, dear internets,  I am currently in the midst of a rather persistent funk. A dark, viscous oiliness has permeated my brain, sucking all confidence and the ability to make light of life right out of my very person. It’s a persistent bastard, still lingering even though the kids and I have recovered from our poxes and palsies.

Funnily enough this black mood is causing a serious writer’s block.  It is irritating and frustrating to not be able to concentrate on capturing those precious snapshots of my kids when they are both going through such rapid developmental leaps right now.

Do I attempt to purge myself of my current state of whiny teenage angst by writing annoying and depressing drivel that will bore all of you stupid, or do I try to find something humorous and therefore crowd pleasing to write about and hope that my mood lifts as a result of pretending that it’s all okay?

For fuck’s sake, mr hissychick is the one turning forty next week and I’m the one having the meltdown.

I guess what I’m trying to get at  is that sometimes I don’t know who I’m writing for anymore.

I think I’ll shut up for now.

*Simone and Kathie best understood where I was coming from.

I just become a rather shitty writer of trite nonsense, with far too much inane whining replacing anything of substance or amusement, the kind of prose that I enjoy writing and you, dear internets, might actually enjoy reading.

I am not in a dark place at the moment, nor am I in a shiny happy people lalalalalala mood either. I am merely frustrated. And you know what set me off? My freaking hormones, the ones that just gave me a period of quick, let’s get two of everything onto this boat pronto proportions followed by a massive tension headache chaser, dear god would someone do something crunchy to my neck and make it all go the fuck away The fact that I started the day with a dishwasher full of clean dishes and a small pile of dirties on the sink.

But so what? I hear you say. That my friends, is enough to set me off when I am in this kind of mood. In a chain reaction well known to hysterical twats like myself this meant that the dirty breakfast dishes piled up everywhere because I couldn’t put them straight in the wash which meant that I didn’t have time to clear up before taking A to daycare which meant that I had to deal with them on my return instead of taking my usual Friday morning breather which meant that I then noticed all the other piles of miscellaneous crap around the place which rendered me inert with procrastination, unable to figure out where to start. An entire renovation of the house or popping on a load of washing?

I am that uptight at the moment.

So forgive me my foibles and my not very interesting posts of late. I am clearly in need of a life.

It should not have surprised me as much as it did, given that we’ve just had another spell of rather interrupted sleep, and that many of the warning signs of burn out have been around for a while.

But it did.

I am a shit mother. I am a shit wife.

Pathetic.