I'm a brand new mama just trying to figure out how to raise my sassy little girl without losing my pretty little mind. I'm real, I'm honest and I don't sugar coat this thing called motherhood. I'm Babe_Chilla, and I'm trying to keep my cool throughout the formative years of my child's life through breathing, eating cupcakes and blogging my heart out.
Also, if you're on Twitter she's a must follow. Her tweets are real, relateable and oftentimes hilarious. Check her out here.
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Whenever I am offered the opportunity to do a guest post, I take it. Both because I like to hear myself speak in any avenue available to me, and because I know how hard it can be to fill your guest poster slots. The problem is I am always quick to jump at the opportunity, but slow to deliver on my promise. I could make a million excuses as to why, but the honest truth is simply that I have too many balls in the air too.
So when I was asked to do a guest post here at Juggling Act…Called Life, I thought “I can TOTALLY do that!” Right, I mean, this blog is ABOUT having too many balls in the air, so how could I fail?
Well, I fail by having too many balls in the air. See first I picked my week based on when I thought I might have enough downtime to really focus on an amazing topic. And then I didn’t write it down and the week just snuck right up on me (like hello, when the FUCK did it become the end of July?). Then, I realized that I have the most active 16 month old girl on the planet, and that there is rarely a moment of downtime, unless you count the chores that need doing when she’s finally sleeping (and not refusing to nap as usual). Add to that the fact I work a very busy, full-time job and sometimes require sleep and well, it has fail written all over it. Oh and did I mention that as I was sitting down to crank this post out, my entire computer imploded and I had to waste an ENTIRE day of work watching my tech guy try and fix it? Oh the failure.
Even now, as I am writing this, you can see that I haven’t really yet picked a topic. I am sort of hoping for some organic growth to spew forth from these fingers. I mean, it happens on my own blog ALL THE TIME, so why not here? No but really, this is a guest post and I’m supposed to be putting my best work forward.
Fail again.
So now that you’ve been introduced to just how random I am, let’s see if I can actually take this somewhere meaningful.
We can talk more about juggling. Not the actual act of juggling because I can NOT figure that one out. I mean sure, give me 2 balls and I can probably throw them around in a circle, but add a third and it’s floorsville. And while I tend to pride myself on being an expert multitasker, I have to say adding a small human to one’s life really shakes up your ability to do such things. I used to be ON THE BALL, I was at the top of my game, I could do ANYTHING. I was the type of person who would basically complete an entire day’s tasks before my husband even got out of bed in the morning. I WAS AWESOME ::toots own horn::
When I got pregnant, I never ever slowed down. I was lucky. I didn’t get sick. I didn’t get tired. And I barely got fat. I had energy and the ability to see my feet right up until the very end. I cooked, I cleaned, I shopped, I worked. I hung with friends until the wee hours of the morning, I put together a nursery. I was already kicking so much ass at mothering, it was impossible to foresee the future challenges. How much harder could this really be? I mean, I take care of everything and everyone all the time anyway, so adding another person to the mix will just mean a little more time to do things.
How fucking naïve are all us new pregnant people anyway?
Turns out my daughter had a different plan altogether. At 36 weeks and 6 days, the little monkey FLIPPED from the head down position she’d been in ALL the pregnancy long, to Frank breech. You have GOT to be kidding I thought. I figured I could flip her (you know, because I can do ANYTHING), and the list of things I tried to do so is endless. I did everything from a painful and awful ECV (or “version”) to standing on my hands in the pool every day for 3 weeks. Chiro, acupuncture, ice packs on the top, warm compresses on the bottom, hanging upside down from my couch, the list goes on. I DID IT ALL. In the end, nothing helped and we made the difficult decision to have a c-section.
Do you know what that DOES to you? It cuts open your abdomen (d’uh obviously you know that). And do you know what having a cut open abdomen and a very small human does? It eliminates your ability to DO IT ALL. Fuck, it eliminated my ability to do anything.
That was my first lesson. In those first 3 weeks after having my daughter, my husband was home from work and he had to do everything. I know some people bounce back from their c-sections easily, but not me. Even on Day 9, when I just HAD TO get out of the house so we went for a walk, I was in pain and I bled from my incision. Breastfeeding was not only a HUGE struggle in the beginning but it was also VERY painful when my uterus would contract. I couldn’t even get up to use the toilet without my husband lifting me from the bed. He did all the diapers, he did all the cooking and he did all the cleaning. I only fed and snuggled my daughter. And while that was (and still is) the MOST important thing in my life, I couldn’t help but feel like I was failing. I wasn’t used to being cared for. All I could do was think about what I should be doing. How could I let him do everything while I just sat there? When could I get back to doing it all?
The short answer was never.
We are 16 months into this parenting thing and I don’t think I’ll ever be the person I once was. To be honest, I don’t want to be her. That person stressed too much about getting it all done right, and missed out on some simple joys. That person put pressure on herself to accomplish irrelevant things in unrealistic time frames, and never revel in her successes anyway. That person didn’t take the time to appreciate all that she had; because she was too busy trying to get more.
These days, the house is a fucking disaster at all times. 11 minutes after it’s been fully cleaned, my little hurricane rips through and systematically dismantles it. The laundry sits in piles of clean and dirty, and is only ever folded when I desperately need the “clean” hamper for dirty clothes. There are food bits all over the floor (which the dog and baby fight over), and I honestly can’t tell you the last time my bedroom was actually clean. The car is beyond disgusting, which happens when your daughter is a master at removing the lids from her snack traps and also loves to say “uh oh”. I frequently go days without a shower because I can’t be bothered to deal with my hair and I am a far cry from the fashionista I used to claim to be.
In the end, none of that matters because those hours I used to spend obsessing about keeping on top of things are now better spent with my daughter. I no longer lay awake making mental lists of all the tasks I need to do, in order of priority and cross referenced by time allotment. No, now I lay awake thinking about our future and what that brings. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, it doesn’t matter as long as we’re together.
These days, I am constantly dropping my juggling balls, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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