It’s been one week since my husband left to work out west.
As he puts in 13-hour shifts somewhere in the backcountry of
Minnesota, I am putting in 16-hour days of baby time, school time and work
time.
It’s an exhausting thought to know this will be the next
three months of my life. And it makes me appreciate all those single mothers out
there and the additional stresses they deal with day in and day out.
Keeping up with all the chores is hard enough with two of
us, but having a 5-month-old makes it downright impossible. He is starting to
take fewer and shorter naps, and he is not yet mobile, so he likes lots of eye
contact and doesn’t appreciate when you walk away to take care of something
briefly.
But I don’t have the time to sit around feeling sorry for
myself. I have a little person who is completely dependant on me. And my
biggest priority is to maintain a sense of normalcy for him.
Babies don’t know why moms get sad. They just want to eat,
poop and play.
The hardest part is not having that extra set of hands. I
have to meticulously plan how to vacuum, do laundry, wash dishes and take out
the trash. And forget about yard work. We have family helping us with that,
thankfully.
That’s great, because I was trying to figure out if I could
get little, baby sound-blocking headphones to take him on the John Deere with
me.
Surprising through all of this is that my spirits remain
intact. My husband, however, is a wreck. He’s just sick over the fact that he
is not here with us, and Skype can assuage him so much.
Maybe it’s because I spent most of the spring processing my
feelings of anger and self-pity, while he basked in the warmth of denial. Now
he realizes how difficult it is to be away from his wife and baby, and I am
getting through each day with a happy face for my son.
After all, what choice do I have?
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