It's Okay.

 

 

 

Yesterday was hard.

 

 

A new quarter of school started for The Husband this week and it's a heavy load.  Twenty credits heavy, night classes, long classes.  I'm so proud of him.  He's on the downward slope of school and he is doing so good and working so hard.  But him in school means me helping out more with our business and me doing the nights alone with the kids.  Most of the time I can handle it. 

 

 Oh, but this kid.  Neither of us has slept well in weeks.  He used to sleep 9 to 10 hour stretches and be somewhat on a schedule.  But around 4 months old, I don't even know what happened, he just stopped.  There's not much routine about this kid.  I am pretty severely sleep deprived at this point.  Well, add some pretty brutal teething to the mix and it's just ugly. 

The last week has been especially hard. My nerves are raw. I have some new concerns about Olivia consuming me and then there is Cole and his teething that seems to light fire to my tired nerves.  When Olivia cut her first teeth she was in the hospital with RSV. I remember that period time as a haze of breathing treatments and hospital smells.  But I'm in the thick of it with Cole.  Lots of crying and needing to be held from him.  I lay him down to sleep only to have him be up an hour later.  He wakes up in the night for two or three hours at a time, just wanting to be held.  Last night was really bad.  At one point I locked myself in the bathroom for a few minutes to just breath.  Both Cole and Olivia were sad last night.  There was lots of crying, lots of meltdowns, and I need four seconds to breathe. 

After two hours of trying to get Cole to sleep, I laid him down only to have him wake up 20 minutes later completely distraught.  I sat and rocked and sang over his cries.  Eventually, I gave into my own exhaustion and cried along with him.

When Brandon walked in door a little after 10 he found not just a sad baby, but a sobbing wife, neither of could be consoled. He scooped up the baby and with a kiss on the forehead he tucked me into bed.  He kept Cole most of the night to finally, blessedly, give me some sleep.

Today has been much of the same, but feeling somewhat more rested I was able to hold onto a bit of sanity.  I was able to remember that our lives are messy right now.  Good, but messy.  And it's okay that its hard.  Sometimes I forget that it's okay for things to be hard.  I am helping to put my husband through school.  I am a working mom.  I have two small children, one being a baby, the other with special and sensitive needs that  can be are consuming. 

So today, I slowed down more.  I realize that my exhaustion will pass.  That teething is not going kill me, that it was just the straw that broke the camels back.  So I focused on breathing and loving and calmness.   We played more, laughed more, read more books, cuddled longer.  I focused on letting them just be little and me just being the mom.  I need more of that.  I am going to make much, much more of that.