First Week

One week down….a million to go.  Whew.  First, I just want to thank everyone for your support in starting this.  I have wanted to start a blog for a long time but could never find a topic that felt right.  I hope this becomes a place of support as we walk this road together.  Because God knows I need it.

 Well let’s talk about my first week.  I think it could be best described as a progression.  It started off really well and slowly unraveled into a huge, fat, big mess.  On the Sunday night before I went back to work, I was furiously cleaning the house and getting everything ready before my first day back.  My pump was packed.  I blew the dust off my work laptop that hadn’t even been opened for 4 months.  I was even tempted to pick out my outfit like I used to do before the first day of school after summer vacation.  Because let’s be honest. Maternity leave, at least for me, is a lot like summer vacation.  You live for so long at this crazy pace and then all of a sudden you get to stop and check out for a bit.  But back to Sunday night.  I was rambling to Justin about how we should have expectations about what he would get done during the day and who would do what chores.  Justin works at night as a private chef/cooking instructor and is home with Jack during the day.  For some reason, I thought it was really important that we figure this all out on Sunday night before either of us had a clue what we were in for.

I woke up at 5am on the dot.  I took my time getting ready.  I packed my lunch and made a fruit smoothie.  The house was quiet and clean and I thought to myself, I can do this!  Jack normally wakes up anytime between 5-7am so I wasn’t sure if I would be feeding him or pumping.  So by 6am, he hadn’t woken up yet so I just pumped.  I felt very satisfied with myself as I left that bottle on the counter, knowing that Jack would have it when he woke up.  And off to work I went.

My first day was great!  Yes, I had about 857 emails (literally) to go through but it was great to see all of my old coworkers.  It was a nice ego boost hearing about how much they missed me and how great it was to have me back.  “Wow, you look great!”  “What, you had your baby only 3.5 months ago!”.  That part felt good.  I will not give too many details about my job on this public forum, but I am the lead on a team of corporate trainers.  I jumped back into the swing of things and quickly started to learn about all I had missed.  I realized that I wasn’t that mom who cried all the way to work.  Maybe I actually can do this.

That was Monday.

When I got home that first day, I had a few tears when I saw Jack.  It dawned on me that I had just missed a day of his life.  Slowly in the back of my mind, the progression started happening.  I had no idea how I was really feeling at that point.  Instead, I took it out on Justin.  Why hadn’t he cleaned the bottles or walked the dog?  Weren’t these things part of our expectations?  Nice going “wife of the year”.  What you meant to say was thank you for keeping our kid alive all day and for being such a good dad.

This is already getting long so I will give you the short version of our road to chaos.  It started with a rat problem in our garage on Tuesday.  They got into our dog food so our three dogs were starving but Justin didn’t want to feed them contaminated food.  So he woke Jack up from a nap to go get new dog food, only to realize all of the stores were closed because it was only 8am.  Then Justin got his work schedule at the last second and realized he needed my mom to watch Jack two times in one week.  This also meant I had to add an extra hour onto my day to go get him after work.  On Wednesday, Justin got a ticket for an expired license while trying to teach a cooking class on a military base.  This also meant a trip to the DMV.  This also meant more time at my mom’s house for Jack.  On Saturday, Justin had to cook for 70 people (which turned out to be 125 people).  He was up at the crack of dawn on my one morning to sleep making hash browns and cutting fruit.  He came home exhausted but his day was only just beginning.  Justin is the worship leader at our church and he had to make sure he was ready for the biggest holiday of the year.

Late nights.  Hurried hellos and goodbyes.  No time to even look each other in the eye.
As I write this, I realize that most of the stuff was happening at home and had nothing to do with work.  But as I watched my house go from calm to chaos, I realized that I felt helpless.  My role is to keep everyone calm and organized.  My role is to help my husband.  All I could do was come home exhausted and get Jack in bed.  I even threw in a few snappy comments as a bonus.
So on Friday I cried at work.  I was so wounded, so tired, and so ready to be with my family.  Thank God I have a wonderful coworker who is in the same life situation as me.  She took me to get frozen yogurt during my breakdown.  By the end of the day, I left with a smile, knowing I could catch Jack during his “awake time” and get in a few snuggles.  But of course, there was a HUGE accident on the freeway during my commute and I got home right when he was ready for his nap.  What a wonderful finale to the week.  Justin was leaving right when I got home and needed help with some things.  As I looked around my messy house, I was done.  I threw a little temper tantrum like a little girl as I yelled, “I just want to hold my baby for a few seconds!!!” Thankfully, he knew that wasn’t directed at him and we got him out the door.  Blah.  Gross.

When I started this blog, I wanted to leave my readers with something positive or relatable in every entry.  Well I’m not sure this is going to be one of those entries.  See, I am already breaking my own rule.  I can conclude by saying that I survived.  I learned a lot during that first week and plan to think through some of those things and share them with you.

Please comment if you made it this far.  I would love to hear any first week horror stories or lessons you have learned.  I am praying this week is a lot smoother and that I learn from my own mistakes and failings.  Most of all, I am thankful that I even have a family to take care of and a job that pays my bills.  Cheers to a better week!