Well, Jack will be 4 weeks old on Wednesday. By this time with Emma Grace, I had written numerous posts gushing over my beautiful newborn and how wonderful it was to be a mother.
I feel so terrible that I currently have only one post about my beautiful newborn and have nothing in addition to write that would be beautiful and moving as to how wonderful it is to be a mother.
I hope that Jack does not take this one day as I do not love him as much as his sister or as deeply, rather it's a sign of our life right now. We are struggling. I don't feel like a person right now, much less a mother, wife, or daughter. We have been battling the last 4 weeks with our new life, making adjustments and flat out trying to survive.
Jack is beautiful and such a gracious blessing, but Jack is a crier. He fusses...a lot. He hasn't completely grasped the concept of feed-wake-sleep or that at night we feed and sleep. That makes it hard. As a baby Emma quickly took to the nighttime schedule, which helped us with our sanity. She did struggle with the day time schedule, so this will be work with Jack too. It's so much harder to get on a schedule with two. The day revolves around Em's schedule, and it's sometimes hard to get Jack's schedule to fit in. It's also difficult, well impossible, to let him cry it out since sissy's room is right over our bedroom. So, we're struggling with having a newborn again that LOVES to work his lungs.
Then there's Emma. Little Emma. Everything I ever did to my parents and all my feistiness is coming back to haunt me ten-fold. Emma is seriously struggling with the new addition. She loves Jack and tells us that all the time. She wants to help with him and wants to check on him and kiss him, but she resents us for bringing the kid home. It now takes us almost two hours to get her to sleep at night and it's a constant battle. And naps...you can forget about those. I've heard more screaming, yelling, and crying in my house the past few weeks than I have from her the past 2 1/2 years. Dusty and I are struggling. We are at a loss as to how to handle the situation. We've talked to experts. We've talked to friends. We've read and read and read. We've hit bottom.
And I'm sorry this post has been anything but beautiful words about motherhood. I needed to vent. Crying just isn't doing the trick. I now completely understand that being a parent IS the hardest job you'll ever have. I didn't completely grasp that statement. Oh I thought it was hard before the arrival of our newest addition, boy was I ever wrong. This has been the hardest 4 weeks of my life, hands down.
I hope that in the next few weeks I can turn my helpless words into beautiful words of how wonderful motherhood is...we'll see.
