This time last year

This time last year was hell.

Two nights ago I was in Baby J's room when J came in and opened the blinds. It was snowing. Snow had made the roads wet and covered the cars. My only thought was that the morning after the first snow fall of the year last year, we lost our cat.

That made me sad and got me thinking about things and about what was going on then. Like I said, last year was hell. We lost the cat and then we lost the baby growing inside of me. I lost part of me each time.

It seems silly now, but I was also unhappy about trading in our car for the car we have now. I wasn't pleased that I lost my freedom, not being able to drive a car with manual transmission. Thankfully, once I was physically recovered and felt like leaving the house again, I did learn how to drive stick and at least was able to regain that part of my life.

My life has changed so much in the past year. In a sense, I've lost some of my freedom again, but I've gained so much. It's hard though. You don't think about the realities of day-to-day life with a new baby. You just want to have one. The reality is that labour, which was extremely painful, at least ended. This pain of never really sleeping, of being fully responsible for a little person, of being physically tied down, doesn't go away. At least not for a long time. They say labour is like running a marathon. I disagree. It was like running a 10K but living afterwards is like running marathon after marathon.

This week, the week of the first snowfall of the year, has been hard. J was supposed to go back to work Monday. I was anxious because I wasn't sure I could handle things on my own. Don't laugh. I really don't know what I'm doing and together we've been stumbling through this parenting thing. Key word: together. What do I know about parenting? Not enough sleep and crazy hormones and sore boobs. And crying. And poop. So not a whole lot, though that does about sum it up.

Saturday, J started feeling sick. Sunday, J was death. He didn't go to work at all this week, which would have been great if he hadn't been sick. He spent the whole week on the couch, afraid to come near any of us, cat included, for fear of passing on his sickness. I spent the whole week parenting solo except the odd time I could convince him to wash his hands and feed the kid.

Being sick isn't fun and I'm not blaming anything on J, it's just that with him sick, even though he was home, I did a lot more of the "baby" work. We had fallen into a nice routine where we would trade off the feedings during the night, that way we would each get one good chunk of sleep. With J sick and hacking up a lung on the couch in the basement, feedings became my responsibility.

I'm not complaining. People do this all the time - raise a kid. So many of them do it wholly by themselves too. I know this. I know it's what I asked for, what I wanted. I didn't know how painful sleeping in chunks of 1.5 or 2 hours for days on end would be. I didn't know how draining it would be trying to figure out why the crying won't stop.

So when, after days of near-coma on the couch, J offers to "babysit" his kid, to which I promptly reply "it isn't babysitting if it's your kid" - a joke of ours - what do I do? Do I run out of the house, happy to be free if only for a couple hours until it's time to pump again? Do I get some exercise or nap or do something just for me? No. I sit at the computer and think about how tired I am.

Then I look at pictures of my smiling baby and know it's okay. I've been through hell but right here, right now, is exactly where I want to be. And maybe I'll go spend some time with my family.