Lifting Weights
The demands of my daily life have reached a point where I am beginning to feel like a professional athlete and it's not because I get a lot of exercise or am particularly fit (ha!) these days. It's just that there is so much to do and the demand for my full attention is so constant that I'm thinking this is what a marathon must feel like... if it didn't consist just of running from point A to point B but also included laundry, diapering and getting someone to sleep over and over. I find it increasingly difficult to be organized and focused but at the same time I realize that those are the only things that will keep me afloat. Every day it all seems to come down to the basics: endurance and endurance. Ideally I would have a coach, taking me to the next step, monitoring my nutrition and sleep, so that I could every day do the same thing but with more strength and less breakdowns. There is so much self-control involved, so much patience, it is a training as much, if not more of myself than of little kids. It's very basic, but it is essential. The amount of strength that's necessary to say the same things over and over (Put your shoes on. Put your shoes ON. PUT your SHOES ON!) or to tend to a crying baby all day or to make the damn dog shut up already... can't be achieved by some sloppy periodic exercise. This is the Olympics, people.
Funny thing that this situation reminds me just of... labor. The further you are into it, the less there is to "manage" but more to just endure. There is no "solution" to the pain or a break or a regrouping of sorts, there is just the focus on the task at hand and... endurance. Giving birth took me all the way down to the "end", to the point where you are sure you can't go on and all the strength has been used up. Usually that's the point where one needs to start the real work - pushing. Then a funny thing happens, which is unexplainable to me even though I've been there twice: you will yourself into this most impossible task and your body follows. I suppose it's similar to those situations, when people were able to lift cars all of sudden, in a desperate attempt to save a loved one underneath.
Since then I am aware I have hidden powers. I'm not sure if they are a gift to mothers or just anybody, but I know that when I hit the wall, there is the emergency button and with a will the size of a pinky I am able to lift myself up and get on with it. I am convinced part of the reason one gets to experience this in labor is so that later on they can use it when raising children on pea-size amounts of sleep for 24/7. I have stopped counting the times where I woke up in the morning, exhausted already, convinced! that I! cannot! do! this! today! NO! And then I got up and did it.
There is a problem though. One must not abuse the emergency button. Spending my day with those two little ones is not only physically exhausting, but mentally as well (Crazy! I know!). If I start living on the emergency supplies, my world turns dark after a while. I am unable to focus and I can hear myself falling apart as I forget things, fail to notice things, gaze into space a lot and cry for apparently no reason... and you know me, I am made of stone, I do not cry.
Another sign of having spent too much time living off the emergency supplies is that I can't stop. I have pushed myself so far into endurance mode that relaxing is not really possible. I don't know how to do it and it almost requires too much effort to figure it out. I'd rather wait for someone to take pity and hit me over the head with a bat so I can rest in oblivion. You could say that this is probably not healthy.
I remember an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Raymond catches his wife Debra crying in the living room and freaks out worrying what could have been the matter. Eventually she explains she was just "having a good cry". The first time I saw that I wasn't really sure what she meant, although I could guess. Now I have children and well, let me tell you, I know a good cry. Sometimes there is no other way to release the tension, to finally start relaxing, to feel your arms and neck get heavy and to... breathe. There's no fuss to be made about it, no need for solutions so it doesn't happen again. It's just a good way to calm down... so I can get up again.
Posted at 01:49 PM on June 09, 2006
There IS a turning point, when life with a baby and sibling(s) starts to fall into a routine, and you are less tired. It is coming soon. I know what you are talking about, the sleepless nights, the lack of energy, the nerves on edge..., it's the first three months that are the hardest, then it gets better at about three months, then it gets better again at about 6 months.
I'm just hitting the 6 month stage now, myself...
Thanks for writing this Dinka (not that i think you did it for my sake). The second to last paragraph really rings true for me. I think I need to have my husband read this.
Hang in there. And do get some rest! Which is what I need to do RIGHT now so I'm going to click Post and then shut this baby down.
Lindsey
Every morning my mantra is "just keep movong, just keep moving, don't sit, just keep moving". I'm not joking.
I never even would have done anything as corney as reciting a mantra prior to kids.