hitting the wall

The last weeks of pregnancy are hard for anyone. Last time I was pregnant, I had a breech baby which meant I suffered through the intense pain of a head poking me in the diaphragm, causing terrible heartburn, and a brutal cough that caused stabbing pain. A few days ago, I was bragging about how much easier it is not to have a breech baby. I didn’t have that brutal pain in my diaphragm and the cough wasn’t nearly as bad, even though my heartburn was intense.

It seems I spoke too soon, because the cough has intensified (not sure if I’m sick or it’s just from the severe reflux/indigestion) and I am getting a hefty kick in the ribs every time the coughing resumes (this time from a foot instead of a head).

I am resting at home, but rapidly running out of sick time. The plan is for me to continue at work for 2 and a half more weeks, and baby is set to arrive via scheduled c-section a week after I stop work. But I’m starting to think that I need to rest before having major surgery. I can’t teach in the state I’m in and no amount of lying in bed seems to be helping. Off to the Dr. tomorrow to see what they can do.

Anyone know of a natural remedy to help with a terrible cough? Even hot tea with honey and lemon don’t seem to help, nor do throat lozenges or gargling with salt water… definitely feel like I’ve hit the wall and the universe is telling me it’s time to slow down.

Last leg

How have I landed here so soon? The summer is coming to a close and I return to work in a few short days… such is the life of a teacher. Saying good-bye to summer vacation is always difficult. It’s all the more challenging this year because I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy and just starting to really feel tired and worn out. Which leads me to ask myself, “what the F*#! were you thinking when you decided to go back to work this fall?”

To top it off, I’ve just found out that I have gestational diabetes (GD), although only very slightly. There was one number (of three) that was ever so slightly elevated on my test. My doctors think that I had GD in my first pregnancy, but the screening test has improved slightly, so they believe they missed it last time. It makes sense that I had diabetes during my previous pregnancy; among other things Maya’s blood sugar crashed big time right after birth, requiring medical interventions, and the nurses kept telling me that it was really unusual for that to happen unless I had GD.

Now, I have to prick my finger 4-5 times daily to determine my blood sugar levels and adjust my diet accordingly. I’m kind of neurotically healthy with my food choices to begin with, so I’m finding it hard to believe that I have to make changes. Plus, I have celiac disease which is enough to manage in and of itself. Adding a diabetic diet to this is extraordinarily complicated. I keep telling myself: 10 more weeks, no big deal. But with the hormones, fatigue and added stress of starting work, I’m beginning to think it’s going to be a very long last leg.

Sick, sick and sick!

I’ve been sick for over two weeks. First it was a head cold, then I was healthy for about two days, and now it’s a lingering chest cold. I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for myself and certainly feeling a bit surrounded by germs being an elementary school teacher by day, and mom to a toddler who is in daycare by night. It’s like a cesspool of viruses are just lurking nearby… waiting to find their way into my body.

All this is pretty awful, but to make matters worse many of my co-workers and students are now battling a flu that involves 6 hours of intense barfing. I just got a call from my principal, whose daughter is in my class, saying that she had to stay home with her daughter who is sick with this latest, most terrible illness. My teaching assistant is home with her son who goes to a totally different school because he spent most of last night vomiting. I even heard someone say that they saw a kid barfing out his car window while driving home. This is more contagious than one of those zombie viruses you’d find in a horror movie. It’s like the whole city is infected! Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. I’m doomed!

finding a moment

Today I rushed home from work, got Maya from daycare, picked up groceries, started dinner, and ran off to yoga class right after my husband walked in the door. When I got home Maya was in bed, the food was put away (leftovers for lunch) and it was time to eat my late dinner and go to bed. In a way, going off to yoga makes my life crazier. It means I hardly see the rest of my family all day and I don’t get home until late and without two of us to hold down the fort, things are inevitably a little behind in the house (i.e. dishes and laundry). But I’ve learned that if I don’t go and take the time to give myself what I need (which is usually physical exercise in some form), I’ll go a little nuts and eventually totally freak out at the fact that I’ve not had a moment to myself for a long long time. So, attention working moms: get your “ME time”, no matter what it takes. If it helps you survive the crazy rat race of life as a working mom, it’s worth it.

my brain is full

What is it about being a working mother that makes you totally unable to think like a normal person?

When I got pregnant I thought that the whole “pregnancy brain” thing was temporary. I even heard people say things like, “don’t worry, you get the brain cells back”. But seriously, it’s been over a year and THEY’RE NOT BACK! And my brain is so full from trying to remember every little thing that I have to think about in order to function at home and at work. I regularly lose my train of thought mid-conversation and I act like a person with an attention deficit disorder the way I’m so easily distracted. For instance, I make tea, or at least I try to make myself a cup of tea, about 4 times a day at work. And my classroom is connected to the kitchen so you’d think it would be a simple task but I usually manage to drink about a half a cup of tea per day (if that!) before it gets cold, or before I forget that I turned on the kettle or that I even wanted tea.

So tell me, do the brain cells come back at some point? Is this my mental state from now til my kids are 30? Man, if I had known, I would have done a lot more interesting things while my brain was still working!

adjusting

The past two weeks during which I went back to work full-time and my little girl adjusted to her new daycare have been a total emotional roller-coaster! Some days I woke up feeling so exhausted that I thought I could never actually get my feet out of bed and onto the floor. Some days while I was on my way to work I cried because she cried when I left her at daycare. Other days I thought to myself “I can totally manage this life as a working mother, it’s a good balance”. Then there were the times I felt completely trapped in a prison of sleeplessness and workaholic-ness (even though that’s not even a real word) and deprived of the time I so craved to spend with my child. Quite the ride…

However, at the end of this past week I finally started to feel like I was pulling myself together. I got to bed early, didn’t stay up all night working (a teacher’s job is never done-especially for a total perfectionist), I left work each day in time to have some QT with my girl, and I even managed to be nice to my husband all week.

I have decided that our Canadian maternity leave which lasts an entire YEAR is a wonderful, remarkable and amazing gift but makes a first-time mom respond with complete and utter shock when the magical non-reality of a 12-month honeymoon with your baby comes to a crashing halt and you suddenly have to juggle more shit in your life than you ever could have fathomed! It’s like being set up for a nervous breakdown or in my case a panic attack… or two… In short: I loved my first year of mommy-hood.

Working Mom

Going back to work was as good and as bad as I expected. I rediscovered the fact that I love my job and so that was pretty great. But, man, I was tired. Getting up at 5:30 to get myself and my one-year-old girl out the door in time to drop her at daycare and get to work on time.

Maya had a difficult first few days at daycare. As I had mentioned before, we chose a small daycare at the home of a friend of mine. My husband and I chose this over a bigger daycare in the same building where I work as a teacher. I knew the people running the programs at both places and they all seemed more than competent, but I just felt overwhelmingly (and my husband agreed) that it was better for Maya to be at a house with fewer kids, than in a larger, more institutional setting (even if the larger place was in the same building as my school).  Plus, the daycare at my friend’s house is close to our house (a 5 minute drive) which meant that Maya would not have to spend an extra hour each day commuting in the car with me.

So much thought and deliberation went into my decision to choose the daycare that we did. Nevertheless, I found I was totally second guessing our decision at the last minute, and kind of panicking about whether we’d made the right choice. Now, I am feeling much much better about our decision because, after about three days of mega-crying, Maya started really enjoying daycare. She bonded with my friend who runs the program, she naps on her usual schedule, and interacts happily with all the other kids. She still cries when I drop her off but I’m told it stops shortly after I leave. That said, those first few days were rough on both of us and I cried in the car a few times on my way to work. It was really hard to pick up Maya all red-eyed and exhausted from those first trying days. Thankfully, it worked out for the best. I don’t know what I’d have done if it didn’t because the waiting lists for daycares accepting kids in Maya’s age group are long. It would have been hard to find anything else.

The holidays were a nice reprieve after three weeks of work and we’ve spent loads of quality time together as a family over the past two weeks. In two days, we’re back the grind and it’ll be months before we have a break again. I am not looking forward to expending the energy that’s required of me for the next while (it’s going to be exhausting). But, thankfully, I have a supportive husband, and a great job (with a flexible employer) and all these things make this adjustment period easier to handle. So, here we go…

the dreaded day

I start work in a few days. It’s a terrible travesty, it really is. I always thought I’d really want to work after I had kids. You know, have it all, a family, a career, the whole sha-bang. And now, I’m in tears over the very thought of leaving Maya 5 days of the week to go back to teaching. I have always loved my job, but my love for my work pales in comparison to my love, affection and attachment to my child.

We have a good daycare picked out. At least I think it will be good. A friend of mine from Teacher’s College has a two-year-old and she decided to start a little daycare in order to stay home with her son. There is only her son and one other full-time child there now (and some part-timers). But it’s growing, people are calling and asking for spots. And there seem to be a lot of rambunctious boys. And Maya is so small… not quite walking yet. I’ve been visiting the daycare with her all week. I love the program. I think my friend is the right person to leave Maya with, if I’m going to leave her anywhere… but that’s the problem–I don’t want to leave her! More importantly, I’m not ready to leave her.

My year of maternity leave seemed to whiz by in a wonderful flash. I can’t believe it’s ending. I will go from spending almost every minute of every day with my little girl to spending less time with her than her daycare provider does. Isn’t that scary? I just don’t feel ready at all… how do people prepare for this?