It’s days like today where I really realize that I can never be off. I’m on paternity leave, but still managing to feel overwhelmed and like I have no time to myself, which I personally think is something that should be essential to all parents new and old. By no means necessary am I holding it against my child for taking up so much of my time, the whole point of paternity leave is so we can spend all this time together. But there are mornings in which she wakes up earlier than usual, and the day begins earlier than usual, and the day’s entire cycles are thrown off, and at some point in the day she’s going to be ready for bed earlier or screaming her head off because the schedule’s not lining up and then my blood pressure is probably spiking.
All throughout the day, I’m feeding her, trying to keep her entertained, as well as working on the development of certain physical milestones, such as being able to sit up on her own. Some days she’s more tolerant of things than others, but then there are days in which she has no desire to lay on her back on her play mat, or no desire to be laying on her stomach working her little abdomen muscles, and is instead screaming her head off in dissatisfaction. Times like this, the only thing that really placates her is being held, which I’m happy to do, but at the same time I’m wondering if I’m boring my child and wasting opportunities to be stimulating her somehow. I can only read so many books, and mythical wife and I have agreed no screens for a while, so we’re definitely not going to be parents to plunk her in front of the television, but that limits the options for things to do.
It’s too fucking hot out still, so I’m reluctant to go out on long stroller walks with her, and I really wish that it were like October or something instead, so the weather would be drastically more pleasant to take her out in, for the both of us, and her awake windows aren’t necessarily long enough to really explore going to the pool without making her outright miserable.
So what really ends up happening is that there’s a lot of time spent doing the same things repeatedly, trying to chew up time, which makes me feel like shit that I’m sometimes counting down minutes until the next nap time so that I can get a brief reprieve to do whatever I want for at least 30 minutes, which is usually never anything particularly productive, because seldom do I do anything that feels remotely productive in the span of 30 minutes.
All this adds to my general feelings of anxiety as of late, and leading me to wonder about therapy as I had talked about in a prior post. I want to be the greatest dad I can be, but there are times where I end up feeling like a selfish asshole for wanting time for myself, and when I get time for myself, sometimes I’ll just scroll through photos on my phone which are 95% of her, and wonder why I’m not having tremendous amounts of more fun with the real thing than wistfully staring at photographs.