sight isn’t always necessary

SO – here we are, almost three weeks after Elly was born.  I’ll save the story of the labor and delivery for another day, because it was amazing, and I’m not in an “amazing story” kind of mood.  I’m sitting here on my couch with Elly in my arms, watching TV, thinking about going to get Gus off the couch (thanks Dad for getting Gus into that… it’s almost impossible to break him of it), and wondering how in the world I’m going to do this.  I’m 28 years old, and now I have two children, double the responsibility, and for 36 of the hardest hours of the week, I’m alone with them.  In complete care of two small children; one defenseless and tiny, the other small and looking for guidance.  I feel so overwhelmed, and yet right now my house is peaceful.  I know that won’t last much longer, because soon I need to change the poopy diaper on this baby, then I’ll move on to feeding her, grabbing a few hours of sleep, and back through the cycle.  And then Connor will come into my room, probably at 3am or so, needing some love from Mommy (of course he’ll phrase it differently, asking me to fix his stuffed cat’s whiskers or something equally crazy).  It’s just so much, so difficult, so frustrating.  I feel like I can’t give Connor the attention he needs, and everyone keeps telling me that he doesn’t need all of that attention.  What I know is that before this all, before I started withdrawing my attention out of necessity, he was happier.  Now he’s not.  And I feel like I’m always picking on him, always yelling at him.  In all of this craziness, the most difficult part of it is that I feel totally guilty for doing this to Connor.  Isn’t that crazy?  Crazy.

I guess the proper explanation for this is postpartum depression, or baby blues, or whatever.  I’m hoping that by blogging it away, I can help myself.