Supermom Speaks on Life With 4

On September 10, 2012 we welcomed our 4th boy into the family. Here is a link for the whole birth story if anyone is interested.

Life with the new little one has been interesting. He's been a pretty good baby. I feel like I can't complain. He really is fairly easy, but about once a day, or once every 2 days, he gets fussy. It gets surprisingly old. He seriously does great and then all of sudden he just will not fall asleep, and I have to sit and rock him for an hour or an hour and a half, and if I try to leave he usually ends up crying again. I really don't understand it, he eats a full bottle. I burp him and change his diaper, like always, and then I wrap him up, grab a binkie and try to lay him in his bed. He'll cry, so I'll stick the binkie back in. He'll cry some more so I'll give him gas drops. He'll cry some more, so I just let him cry. He cries and cries and cries clear till the next feeding. I've tried giving him more to eat as well, but that just leaves me feeding, burping and changing poopy diapers all day-- or all night. At night he seems to do OK if he sleeps with us, but during the day it gets hard because I have 3 other children to attend to and trying to block out the crying baby leaves me very irritable and over stimulated. This means my other kids get snapped at if they do or say anything that snaps me out of my "trying to concentrate on not loosing my mind from the crying baby" routine. It sounds silly that it drives me so crazy because he really doesn't seem that fussy, but it can get under my skin fast.

Things were pretty manageable when the other 3 were staying with my mom. People would ask how it was raising 4 boys, and I'd say I didn't really know because I've just really had the baby and that's it. My mom kept them for two weeks, and it was wonderful, but I was torn because I missed my boys. I'd go to wipe up their chairs or clean up their room and come to the horrific realization that my wish had come true: My house had actually stayed clean. There hadn't been little grubby fingers eating lunch or dumping out toys to make things a chaotic mess around here. It seemed like a dream come true, but it made me kind of sad. Our house felt really empty and lonely because of it. And I realized what I had always known, I like the challenge of raising my kids and without them I'd probably die from complete boredom.

Anyway. . .we've had all 4 boys living under the same roof for a week now, and I'm surprised there is still hair on my head. It isn't how hard it is that's depressing. It's that I can't enjoy my kids when they are here, but I'm too lonely when they are gone.

This leads me to the title of the post. I've heard it uttered many a times, "You're supermom" or "You're such a good mom" or other variations. I'm not angry with, hurt by or upset with anyone when they say this, but it does jab at a little spot in my heart. One reason is because of the matter of my marriage and the issues that came out last December that almost ended everything. I can't really describe it here without divulging too much, but it stings a little. And the other is, I'm really not a supermom, and I just really don't deserve the title.

My mom told me that she would be fine taking one child at a time, but it was too hard to take all three. It was too hard because all she does is yell at them when they all three come over. She apologized and felt bad for saying that. She said she'd never want to to tell a mom that's how she felt, but that it was true. The truth is that it actually made me feel better because that's all I do. I seriously feel like I just yell all the time. The only thing that seems to change is the volume of my voice and the object I want to kick or throw. I just wanted some time to figure out how to enjoy my three. To figure out how to control my temper better, so that I wouldn't feel like all I do is yell. So that maybe when someone called me a good mom I could just graciously accept the compliment instead of wanting to cry in a corner. Now we have a 4th one, and I'm just tired. I'm too tired to try and look forward to things maybe getting better. I'm too tired and worn out to handle a baby right now. And I'm tired of myself, and all my depressed and unhappy thoughts. I'm tired of that part of my brain that jumps straight too, "I don't want this baby. I don't want to raise my kids. I just can't do this anymore. I just want to run away." I don't want to feel that way about a baby. Feeling that way brings on immense guilt, and I know that I really do love my children and wouldn't trade them for the world. Part of me feels a little childish when my emotions betray me like that.

Part of what scares me so much about these feelings is what happened with my last baby. It was just so hard, and I feel so bad. I look at pictures of his first year, and I feel like I cheated him because of how hard of a time we all had. Granted, that bitter relationship has turned into something really sweet. I just love him and miss him so much when he's gone, and he really is a huge momma's boy which boosts my confidence a little. And the issues that I had with him were finally revealed to me through this pregnancy. This baby was born exactly 2 years from my last baby and being pregnant at the exact same time brought up emotions I didn't really know existed. I noticed feelings of loneliness associated with my marriage and what had happened. Sometimes those emotions would be about memories from my last pregnancy. I couldn't figure out why. What had happened in my marriage happened the summer after I had my third baby. Then I realized that the pregnancy must have been when my husband and I started to drift apart. This finally explained why bonding with the baby was so hard. It explained why everything felt so off. It wasn't all postpartum. It wasn't because I had a c-section or didn't breast feed. It was just our lives at that time and the situations we didn't realize existed. It was a relief in someways to find this out. But it also left me terrified of having this next baby. I felt like everything would happen all over again. Like the baby would come and my life would become another marathon and I'd never catch up. Having those emotions come up now just leaves me worried that we haven't progressed or moved on enough to make our lives work.

 

Some people try to sum up my life experiences into lessons that needed to be learned. They try to give a reason for everything. "Maybe this is why you have all boys", "Maybe this is why that happened", "Maybe this is the reason you're having a baby". It used to be something I could do. It was something I desperately searched for, but lately it hurts too much. I just want to scream to the heavens, "I don't know what lesson I need to learn, and I just give up trying to figure it out!" I guess everything is too close and too real, and I'm just to vulnerable right now. I acknowledge that I'm learning and growing, but to say everything I've gone through was simply to learn a lesson just hurts too much.

Those thoughts made me feel a little bit cynical until I heard a talk given at a Church Meeting, that was filmed and put on TV. The man was talking about a guy who had a dilemma about taking a job out of state or accepting a job closer to home. The General Authority who he was talking to said, "It mattereth not." It made me think, "How many times have I tried to give epic meaning to something in my life when really 'it mattereth not'."

 I also had a discussion with friends about how God isn't sitting up in Heaven ripping out his hair, having panic attacks and going insane because his children won't behave. Though I'm sure it gives him great sorrow, what we do doesn't change who God is. This made me think of all the times I've gotten angry or upset because I'd think of God up there sending me trial after trial trying to get some sort of message through. But really maybe he's just up there saying, "You made a choice and I knew what that choice would lead to, but I couldn't keep you from making it because I gave you your agency. And though it's hard to have to watch you suffer because of it, I know that is how it has to be in order for you to really learn what you need to learn."

This post is getting long, so I had better wrap it up. For the most part things are better, but life is still hard. My husband is gone all the time working overtime, so we can pay the bills. My parents have offered all the help they can, but truthfully I think all of us are at our max capacity. It's hard to figure out what can relieve the stress when relieving the stress just brings about other stresses. For the most part I try to just take it one day at a time. I just get through the day and try not to get anxious about tomorrow. Things may get easier when the baby gets older. Things may get better now that we have a van. Things might start to look up when my husband switches to working at home. But everything feels like it will just bring on a new kind of stress, so I just go to bed hoping that when I wake up maybe I'll have a better understanding or a clearer view.

I feel like a fickle friend, loving my kids and wanting to spend more time with them, but also tired of having to solve problems and looking way too forward to nap time. Sometimes I get so angry with God for all the trials in my life, and then the next second I'm begging for forgiveness and trying to be thankful for what I have. When these moments come up I think of what my Dad said to me in the hospital, "If you need to be angry with someone God can take it." I hope that's true because it certainly brought me a lot of peace when he said it.