I’m exhausted and unsure if it’s this new medicine, taken three times a day, or if it’s my pumping every two hours (except for at night, when I sleep uninterrupted only for four hours). When I first announced my pregnancy on this site, people wrote in, warning that I stock up on sleep, as if it worked that way. Enjoy it now, people said. They should have urged me to enjoy my breasts. "Fondle yourself," you should have said because now, when we hug, I warn, "careful," as I back away. Now one of my boobs has red inflamed bumps along the sides that itch, I’m sorry to say, like a motherfucker, and my nipples feel as if they’ve been pressed against a smoking-hot panini pan. There’s nothing hot about motherhood. Pregnancy, maybe, and now, aside from having vicious night sweats, I’m having sex dreams again. My hormones are aflame, and along with wanting, and being unable to have, sex, I also want to cry at times, and just sleep for one full day, alone, taking up the whole bed. Now here’s the real question: I know I can’t think about having intercourse for about six weeks, but what about an orgasm? If it were written on a message board somewhere, I’d have found it by now. Help a mother out. Email me on it. I’m keeping comments closed for this post, mostly because I’m now about to paste a bunch of repetitive babble, just so I have a record of it, for myself to look back on.
Because people keep asking, in the future, you can always find new updated photos of the babes at these three links:
siblings: http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/photos/twins/
lucas: http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/photos/lucas/
abigail: http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/photos/abigail/
Supply is Demanding:
Phil does everything. He feeds Linus and makes sure to clean up after him, lets him out. He makes sure I’ve eaten, sets alarms for my feedings, writes the labels of the date and time on the milk, then drives to the hospital to bring it to them. I cry and worry. I’m fat and want my old body back, the body I had before I got fat in the first place, my 123 lb. body. I now weigh 156 lbs. I weighed 172 lbs. at my last pregnant doctor’s appointment. All I want to do is eat cheesecake and sleep. But I can’t sleep. I know I’ll sleep less once they’re home, but I’m not sure how to get less than I am now. I have to pump every two hours, day and night. Though at night I’ve been taking a break, sleeping for four hours, then pumping, then sleeping for three hours, then there’s the “power pump,” where I pump for ten minutes, instead of fifteen, then off for ten minutes, for an hour, so I pump three times in an hour. Supply and demand sucks.
Fighting the good fight:
I wish they were home with me, to feed and hold as I wished. Instead it’s visiting hours. And driving. And finding a parking space. Once they do come home, Phil and I will fight even more. We fought today about blinds. He was at his rope’s end and insisted he no longer wanted anything to do with making decisions. “Why do I have to take care of everything?” Because I just had a baby, no two babies, all by my fucking self, and I was scared, but I did it, and now I’m in pain and hate myself, and feel like everything is my fault, and I’m ugly and fat and have stretch marks on my boobs and bad clothes. That’s why. But the truth is, he’s been taking care of everything long before I was pregnant. It’s the role he takes, wanting things to be his way, to the point where I just stop trying to do anything. And usually this works fine, until it doesn’t. Until he tires and frustrates and tells me I’m not an invalid and can take care of myself. This is when the crying begins, and now, with all the hormones, it just doesn’t end. I’m crying even as I type this. Being near him makes me cry and feel like a failure. A walking list of everything I don’t do, do wrong, wrapped up in a sweatshirt and Adidas sneakers. And I want to borrow his shoes and run away with them.
When he comes into the room, I cry even more, but then he apologizes and says, “I’m new at this too.” And we hug, carefully, and I cry, and he looks up at me and says, “I hate to say it but…”
“Time to pump?”
And he shakes his head ‘yes.’
“It feels like they’re not even mine.” And I don’t mean just my breasts.
