Allow me a moment to confess something to you: parenting a newborn and adjusting to being a family of three is hard. I love Eli more than I could ever express, but I have to admit, I thought maternity leave would be a glowy time of bonding with my new son, planning fun outings, and managing the household with ease and grace. While I certainly have had glowy bonding moments, I have also found endless hours of nursing, a million disgusting diapers, and many sleepless nights. I had heard about this, but I suppose I just assumed this was other babies...not my perfect child :-) Let me tell you, Eli is not perfect; adorable but certainly not perfect.
These realities took a hit on my sanity and definitely how I treated my husband. Mix hormones and a lack of sleep and what do you get....an insane mother. I found myself struggling with anger and resentment. I even found myself angry at Eli as though he did anything to me. He is a baby just doing what babies do. Poor Matt probably didn't know if he was going to come home to a house that looked like a tornado hit with a woman nursing in the dark crying or a crabby lady. Thankfully many of those hormonal moments have passed, but I definitely still have my moments.
Last night was one of "those moments." I was trying to make dinner and clean things up before Matt got home. Eli was sleeping peacefully in his bouncy seat so I bound around the house putting this away and preparing dinner...a premade dinner that someone dropped off. All I had to do was follow the instructions, everything was measured out perfectly and accompanied by easy directions. I was trying to make Gorgonzola burgers with sweet potato fries and fruit. Easy enough right? I mixed up the burgers and formed them into patties...but as I cooked them, they kept crumbling. It looked like I was browning ground beef, not making burgers. Yikes! Then in the middle of it, Eli woke up and started screaming. Burgers abandoned and oven turned off in hopes to not completely burn the fries, I quickly attended to Eli. He would not calm down. He looked hungry but I had just fed him an hour before. Could he seriously already be hungry again? Yep! So a crabby mom, started to feed Eli and texted Matt, "The burgers are falling apart. Eli is screaming. My dinner is screwed." Poor Matt. He simply wrote back, "Oh no. I will be home soon. Sounds like we both need a glass of wine."
Thankfully he got home a few minutes later to find his crabby wife on the couch nursing Eli. He poured me a glass of wine (don't worry, I waited until after I was done nursing :-)) and surveyed my crumbled burgers. He then took the mess and turned them into awesome sloppy joes from scratch. (Thank goodness my husband was blessed with his dad's cooking gene). Twenty minutes later, Eli was again sleeping peacefully (for a 5 hour stretch!), I had a glass of wine in hand and was eating a yummy dinner. Crisis averted!
Today I was thinking about how that is just what God does for us. He takes our crumbled mess and the bad attitude that comes with it and turns it into something beautiful.
All I can say is THANK YOU!
lauren, your honesty shows through and it's good to read the glowy moments as well as the tough times. they can't all be perfect! hopefully the wonderful moments outshine the tough ones.
ReplyDeletewhat a blessing to have an amazing husband who understands and knows (at least this time!) what you need and has the ability to step in and make it happen.
beauty from ashes.