Today was quite the day, and not in a particularly positive manner. I had a day in which I was mostly stressed out on account of the fact that I just felt as if I were kind of losing myself because I just didn’t have any time for myself, because I have to spend so much time in the day doing the same things over and over again, all pertaining to the obvious care of an infant child.
Obviously I know what I signed up for, and that this was to be expected, so it leads to a tremendous amount of guilt over the fact that I felt such feelings in the first place, so then I try to compensate for my selfishness by trying harder, but then getting similar results and triggers that compounds my frustration, creating this unfortunate cycle of feeling exasperated.
Currently, my child is dealing with a lot of reflux issues, which is pretty common for babies similar to mine, so on a day like today, I’d been thrown up on several times. I do not fault my kid, as she is still a baby and has little control over these such things, but it is disheartening to get thrown up on all the same. Additionally, she’s in this current state where she’s either actively eating, or is fussy unless she’s being held. In either state, she requires hands-on attention, and when either mythical wife or I are providing such hands-on attention, we have no capabilities of doing anything else really.
I’ve become somewhat adept at doing some things one-handed to where I can at least kind of dick around on my phone while nursing or trying to coax a baby to relaxation, or I can watch television, and I’m surprised at how fast we’re going through things on Netflix these days.
But what I can’t do are the perpetually mounting tasks, daily chores and routine dog relief while on baby duty, much less anything I want to do for my own gratification, and as I watch the minutes tick away into hours, and then suddenly it’s only a few hours left before the day’s end, and all of this starts all over again, and then I mentally feel defeated, and that I’m losing myself because I just can’t find the time to do anything at all, whether it’s necessary tasks or personal ones. Either I feel like the chores are going to overwhelm me, or I won’t get to do anything for myself ever again, and both lead to me feeling negative.
Additionally, a conversation with my sister was a reminder that nobody in my family has actually gotten to meet my baby, thanks to fucking coronavirus. This weekend was supposed to be the weekend in which my sister and dad would’ve come to meet the baby, and my mom would’ve been here a week ago, and have already acquainted herself, but thanks to Chinese wet markets, those plans went up in smoke.
I know they’ll eventually get their chance to meet my child, but what makes me sad is that I already feel like she’s growing so rapidly like a weed, and they’ve all already missed the stage in her life when she was but a tiny newborn baby that was asleep for 16-18 hours of the day, and wore the tiniest and cutest little newborn outfits. Given the fact that we still have no idea when the coast will ever be clear, we have no planned timeline when they can meet her, and who knows just how much bigger and how much of her growth they’ll have missed by the time that occasion comes.
All in all, I’ve had kind of a trying day, and the only reason I’ve had the capability to write this much at all is solely based on the fact that mythical wife saw me fried and took the bullet and went on full-isolation baby duty, to where I could actually have a small window of time in which I could actually get some shit done and have a little bit of time for myself. Obviously, this doesn’t make me feel that great either because she clearly saw me smoldering to have graciously given herself up like such and I’m lucky to have a partner who can identify when I’m needing some help.
We know thing will eventually get easier, but this was definitely one of those days in which being parents for the first time sure felt a little bit overwhelming. My wife and kid are all that really matter to me, so I feel like a dick when I feel like I want some personal time to do things that only serve me.
