The Night That I Lost My Mind

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Yesterday was terrible.  TERRIBLE.  The hub had to go out of town early morning, then go straight into work.  While he’s rarely home in the mornings (that’s when he has class) somehow it’s just…harder…when he’s out of town.  I know it’s in my head and utterly illogical, but there ya have it.  My father died in a car accident in 1998, and whenever anybody I love (or even like a lot) drives any kind of distance, I get antsy.  Especially when I know that person is already exhausted (poor guy had the migraine that never entirely went away and hasn’t slept very well the last few nights…then had to drag out of bed at like 630 to drive almost 2 hours away to do electrical work for a friend).  Anyway, I was a little stressed out, but that’s almost my normal state of affairs at this point…just…enhanced a bit.

So on top of that, I was out of grocery money, and forgot to ask the hub for some more before he left, so I called him to ask for him to transfer some money into my account.  The kiddo would have enough milk for breakfast, and enough fruit for lunch, but that was about it.  That didn’t work out too well – the hub wasn’t able to transfer money to me, as all he had was cash.  Well shit.  So added stress.  My kid’s not going to starve to death or anything, but I don’t like running out of anything.  Again, makes me antsy.

So the day goes by, the dog is getting progressively more insane because it’s raining and cold, and she’s a PRINCESS and refuses to be wet or cold, so she was going totally stir-crazy.  She’s a weimaraner, so when she gets cabin fever, it’s SUPER obnoxious.  She whines, that awful high-pitched whine…she gets RIGHT up in my face and breathes heavily like a dirty old man on a crank call…and she gets VERY demanding.  As in “I have to go outside NOW…let me back in NOW…I’m hungry NOW…I want pets NOW…” all day long.  All day.  The kiddo started getting cranky as hell after he woke up from his nap.  His molars are making him crazy, but they’re through the gums now, so it SHOULD be a little better for him, but nooooooooooo…apparently not.  So he’s being a grumpy little whiner-child.  I was having contractions…not particularly painful ones, but the insistent kind that take my breath away and make doing ANYTHING AT ALL immensely difficult.  Then…I don’t know if this as-yet-unnamed-baby is already dilating me, or what, but I’ve had the most AMAZING pain in the last few days – it’s not contraction pain, but it’s definitely a cross between cervical pain, awful abdominal pressure and ligament pain.  It’s god-awful and makes EVERYTHING suck.  So there’s that.

Then it’s time to put the kiddo to bed…everybody’s survived the day, everybody’s miserable, stressed out, crabby and exhausted by this point…and the kiddo usually goes to bed at some point between 8 and 830.  So I put him down at about 810.  At 900 he was still crying in his room.  I’d tried doing everything – from ignoring him (that whole “he’ll settle down in a second” thing) to turning the light up, to turning the light down, to adjusting the temperature in his room to checking on him to make sure his foot wasn’t stuck in the crib slats to giving him Ibuprofen for his teeth to changing his (totally clean) diaper to singing to him to rubbing his tummy to finally picking him up (which almost killed me…GOD that hurt) and rocking him and walking and singing and rubbing his back all at the same time.  Every time, he’d settle down for a second, then FREAK out again as soon as I laid him down again.  Finally I was like, THAT’S IT, I’M BEING MANIPULATED, I’M IGNORING THIS, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU! And I walked out of the room, closed the door and decided to *try* ignoring his obvious distaste.   

That is when he lost his fucking mind.  I was sitting on the couch, listening to him SCREAM like maybe he was covered in bees or ants, and I started taking it personally.  (And this is the part of motherhood that NOBODY FUCKING PREPARES YOU FOR…that point where you start to think that your toddler has a vendetta against you, personally, because you haven’t slept in almost two years, you’ve devoted YOUR ENTIRE LIFE to this child, and NOTHING you can do will make them happy.)  So at this point, I crossed over from annoyed into frustrated into this weird mix of fucking pissed and suicidally depressed.  Because, y’know…nothing says “I’m a terrible mother” more than your kid screaming his face off for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON and you not able to do a damn thing about it. 

By now it was about 930.  I freaked out.  I was standing in the carport in my PJs, trying to call my BFF, who for some crazy reason had her phone on vibrate (for shame!) and therefore wasn’t answering, freaking out and wondering if THIS is the point where all those other women went nuts and taped their kids to a wall or something.  I called the hub and asked when he was coming home, to which he replied “why?”  I guess that’s a valid enough question at any other moment, but in that fraction of a second, I lost my mind and just started screaming that I DESERVED AN ANSWER, DAMN IT, JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THIS TO ME?!?!  I guess since I couldn’t scream at the kiddo, the next best thing to do was to scream at the hub.  Makes perfect sense, right????  Poor guy.

After the cell phone equivalent of slamming the phone down (it’s just not the SAME to swipe the “end call” swipey as it was to just slam that receiver into the cradle as hard as you could…I feel old sometimes!) and realizing that my bare feet were going numb on the concrete of the driveway, I went back inside to a child whose crying had escalated from “help me mama I’m covered in bees” into “oh dear god, I’m being scalped.  By goblins.  While a herd of chickens peck my skin off.”  And at this point I was finished, emotionally.  The big choking sobs started breaking out.  The shaking started.  All of my thought pattern was focused down to that “fight or flight” reflex, and honestly, for me right then it was GET IN THE CAR AND GO FAR FAR FAR AWAY.  NOW.  RUN.  GO.  LEAVE.  GOOOOOOOOO. 

So I called the hub back and as soon as he was on the phone just shrieked at the poor dude, “YOU NEED TO COME HOME RIGHT NOW.  RIGHT FUCKING NOW.”  I’m sure he LOVED that.  He told me to “calm down” and I screamed something totally coherent along the lines of YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL ME TO CALM DOWN COME HOME NOW!!  (let me just get it out there that the kiddo is 17 months old and I have never ONCE called him at work and told him to come home.  I’ve had a few breakdowns and told him that if I didn’t sleep, I was going to murder him, but I’ve never lost it like I lost it last night.)  It’s good to hold some things in reserve, I suppose, because to his credit, he got his ass home in record time, bearing Hostess Cupcakes for me, went straight into “daddy saves the day” mode and took over while I sat on the floor, stared at the wall and sobbed like a lunatic.

 Yeah.

It was that kind of day.  This morning, instead of going to work on his bike trail or ride his bike or do whatever it is that he does on non-school days before work, he got kiddo out of bed, gave him breakfast and kept him quiet enough for me to sleep until almost 11.  Sometimes he reminds me of why I married him. 

Today has been muuuuuuuch better, except for the continuing pain and contractions and that kind of wilted exhaustion that you get after 30 weeks.  I’m so tired I want to run away from home.  But I’d have to run away from the belly too, because THAT THING is a huge part of the reason that I don’t sleep.  Rolling over is impossible, and this baby just LOVES to punch my bladder at about 3am or so.  I was planning on cooking tonight (nothing stellar…soft tacos and like a corn salad or something) but the thought of standing up in the kitchen makes me want to start weeping all over again.  So I took my happy ass to chic fil a.  It’ll spike my blood sugar, but at this point, I don’t really care.  They have a drive thru, they’re cheap-ish, and their fries are tasty. 

So yeah.  That was my day yesterday.  Everybody survived, all is well now…but really.  Nobody really talks about the HOLY GOD ALMIGHTY freak-outs so I thought I’d share mine.  OH!!!  And the Hostess Cupcakes were amazing, of course!!!  <3