Floundering

I considered writing failing, but things aren't quite that bad yet.

The fusspot was up every hour again yesterday night. Make that 5 nights running.

It is getting harder to talk to JD about the situation. First of all, he feels terribly guilty that he can't be here with us and he worries endlessly about me. And then, he does not really share my interest for reading parenting books or talking to other parents about parenting in the abstract, so he just tends to take as truth my statements about different options.

My mother e-mailed me again to say that she talked to a colleague who did CIO, not that she's giving me any advice mind you, and it worked great! Of course, my mother also e-mailed last week to remind me that it was the fusspot's 7-month birthday. Because she trusts my ability to multi-task and remember little things like when I gave birth, that much (It really did make me laugh to open that e-mail).

And then I called my lactation consultant, who is awesome and a big advocate of attachment parenting, and she confirmed some of my worst fears: this might be the fusspot needing to reconnect with me after daycare. She might actually be getting traumatized by being put in a crib and left to cry at daycare (let alone the propped bottles which bothers me to no end ... I understand not having the time to rock/sing/talk all the babies to sleep but seriously - bottles should not be propped. Ever.) So she recommended I drop everything and get into bed with the fusspot when she goes to bed and see how that works. And I'd love to but ... I need to make baby food, do laundry, cook my food, send work e-mails (I have no internets at work during the day) ...

So I did all of that and nursed the fusspot every time she woke up. And I am exhausted. Really, truly exhausted. And the worst part is that my work is incredibly hard this month. It takes tons of concentration and even when I'm totally focused there are days that I get absolutely nothing done. The work will get easier in time, but for now I really feel like I'm floundering. Unable to both devote enough time to nursing/cuddling the baby and the very minimal housework* that gets done around here and be awake for work. And so tired that I dropped the fusspot at daycare this morning and then came home to get ready for work, when I know it would be better for her to have a shorter day at daycare and spend some of the morning home with me. But I am just too tired to balance a needy baby and the little tasks I'm doing at home.

I know this was going to be hard, but it wouldn't be that different from living in NYC with JD working all the time if it weren't for this awful sleep regression. So I'm really hoping it will pass soon.

I do get asked quite often why we did not wait to start a family (especially since it was hardly accidental). And I was thinking about it while feeding the fusspot. If the cycle we got lucky had not worked, we would have possibly had one more cycle with injectables and if that hadn't worked we were all scheduled for IVF in July and then another round at the end of August (if either of those had worked they would have been a disaster for my funding because I would have had to interrupt 2 grants rather than shift them) and if that hadn't worked ... I would have come back to Europe last year alone. And I would have just finished my research and returned to the U.S. in June and we'd be cycling right now. So instead of having a beautiful 7-month old, I'd be doing the labwork for a new clinic and thinking about IVF in August or September. And yes, my research would be done and I'd be living with JD, but the earliest we would be dreaming of a baby would be 1.5 years after the fusspot's grand arrival (sorry if that makes no sense - there were all sorts of restrictions on when and where we could cycle from my work, JD's work, insurance which doesn't cover IF treatments but DOES cover basic labwork and some ultrasounds, etc.) And I would have been miserable waiting an extra year and a half to find out if we could get pregnant. And I would have spent most of that waiting time alone, thousands of miles from my friends and husband. So am I glad that we did not postpone? Absolutely and unconditionally. I just wish my beautiful baby would sleep a bit more tonight.

* While I might normally just skip vacuuming, dusting, etc. for a week or two (who am I kidding? a bit longer than that) I'm pretty sure that this apartment is old enough to have lead paint. And it is peeling in a couple of places. So I REALLY need to keep up with the cleaning.