I'm Not Ready

 On Friday last week, we  thought I might be going into labor. I was up most of the night with a racing heart beat, the worst back pain i've ever felt, nausea, and contractions every 10ish minutes. The contractions weren't too bad, but the nausea and back pain were making me almost delirious so come mid-afternoon we marched our way into labor and delivery to see what was going on.

The second we walked through those doors I lost it. I could not stop crying! Not only was I not ready to have another baby, I wasn't ready to go through labor, I wasn't ready to share my heart with anyone but Sawyer, I just wasn't ready.

Once I was wheeled up and checked out, it turned out to be a double whammy of a kidney/bladder infection and I was given an IV of antibiotics, something to lower my heart rate, pain and nausea meds, and something that just knocked me out cold. I wasn't dilated in the slightest, so baby sister definitely wasn't coming, so I just slept the next several hours until they woke me up and told me it was time to go home.

It was all very dramatic and ended up being not a big deal at all, and i've felt so much better ever since, but man did it make me reflect on how not ready I feel to do this again.

I keep saying I wish there was a way I could have this baby (because let's be honest, the end of pregnancy sucks) and then press pause on her life, so I could go home and heal, and rest and then un-pause and be a mom of two. I don't want to miss a single second of her life, but I also don't know how this whole mom of 2 18 months and under is going to work out.

It's really hard to explain, but it feels almost like I know how to be Sawyer's mom. I know his quirks, how he likes his back tickled, what his different cries mean. I don't know any of that about her yet! I know we will learn it, just like we did with him, but the task seems a bit daunting when I feel so darn incapable of just about anything right now.

The other day I was feeling some major mom guilt about plopping Sawyer in front of Moana for the 900th time so that I could just lay on the couch and do nothing, and I justified it by saying "it's okay! Just a few more days and you wont be pregnant and tired and you can go back to being a good mom!"...and that's when it hit me...umm what?! In a few days the exhaustion I thought I felt today won't even compare to the exhaustion that comes with breastfeeding and caring for a newborn. And then the hormones caught up with me again and I cried big, ugly tears that I would be a bad mom who made her kid watch Moana 12 times a day forever.

My logical brain knows that all of these concerns I have are normal, that we will get into a routine, that I will cook something other than macaroni and clean my house again before we know it. My hormonal 37 week pregnant brain thinks i'm not cut out for this and my kids would be better off with someone who played educational games and took them on nature walks on the daily.

It really comes down to, ready or not, here she comes. It will be messy, it will be damp (is there any better word to describe early days of motherhood?) and it will be so wonderful, and once we're through the adjustment phase we will look back and we won't remember the long nights or early mornings. We will remember the way Sawyer kissed his baby sister for the first time, or the night we got both kids to sleep through and we woke up feeling like new people. We've got the good Lord on our side to get us through, and they make this stuff  called Death Wish coffee now, and i'm pretty sure that will light a fire under even the most tired, stretch marked, new mama rear. :)

Thanks for listening to my word vomit today, it feels so good to get the words out of my head!

Until Next Time,