Time-Out

I’m not posting much.  But then, I’m not doing much of anything but struggling to comfort my newborn who has acid reflux and now cries night and day.   On Wednesday morning Surfer Ty returned to Hawaii for the next two weeks and his departure took the wind out of my sails.  I was coping while he was here but his absence has just brought me to well…my knees.  I miss him.  I don’t want to do this without him.  And the last three days have felt endless.  How will I get through the next ten?

I supposed I’ll get through by doing what I always do:  taking it a day at a time.  Fighting to focus on the immediate moment.  And reaching out when I’m at a breaking point which is what I did yesterday.  I called a couple friends and begged them to come and hold Mac for an hour this weekend so I can at least walk out for awhile…even if its just to get fresh air away from the sound of him screaming.  Because he screams and shrieks and writhes in pain.

 I thought it’d be different.

I feel like an eighteen year old teen mom who imagined a sweet chubby cheeked Gerber baby.  Instead Mac is angry and unable to be comforted easily and after hours of it I just cry.

I shouldn’t cry.  I’m a big girl.  I’m a mom with two boys out of infancy.  But I’m so filled with mixed emotions.  Helplessness.  Sadness.  Guilt.  Love.  I want to help him but there’s so little I can do–we’ve seen the doctors three times and Mac is now on Zantac and supplementing with Gripe water and sleeping in his car-seat, and being fed upright–but even with every trick in the book he cries most of the time.

I wasn’t going to share any of this.  Wasn’t going to let you think that my time with Mac was anything but blissful but I thought, come on Jane, you’re the queen of honesty.  Be honest about motherhood with new baby.  Be honest that its far more challenging than you even imagined and why you’re not at keyboard and why you’re not reading and why you’re not even smiling much.

My big boys don’t understand why their new brother only cries.  They want me to make him stop.  They want to be able to talk to me without me staring at them like the dead.   They want me the way I used to be.  Hell.  I want me to be the way  I used to be.  I want to cuddle and cradle this new baby without feeling like I’m losing my mind.

So there you have it.  Jane with her nearly four week old son in desperate need of a time-out.  Which is why I’m here, at my desk, letting Mac shreik away in his room for fifteen minutes.  His crying just makes him more gassy.  He’ll throw up endlessly now that he’s cried so hard.  But I had to have a break.  I had to put him down.  I had to step away.  It was that or cry again.  And I can’t cry.  Yet.  It’s only nine twenty in the morning.