Overwhelmed

I haven't posted in a couple weeks- bad blogger! It's been for good reason. I'm just overwhelmed right now.

I don't want this post to come across as complaining or not being grateful for the amazing gifts in my life. I am grateful. I am so grateful to God for our precious Claire that my heart just wants to burst from my chest when the thought even flutters past my mind. But I am also overwhelmed. And I want to get that off my chest because it's therapeutic and healing.

I used to think (still do probably to a degree) that I could do it all. I saw my mom doing it "all" when I was growing up and have her for a beautiful role model of a working mom that held it all together. She worked full-time, was the primary caregiver, and took care of much of the daily household details. I have always thought that I could handle pretty much anything. Work-full time? No problem. Add graduate school to that? Piece of cake. Add a baby on top of it? I can do it! Maintain my relationships with my friends and family, clean the house, manage the finances, do all the grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking? Yes, because I'm Super-Whitney!

But the truth is, I feel like I am failing at everything. And it's exhausting.

Let's take them one by one...

Work commute- I leave my house by 6:30AM and return home around 5:15PM. That's a long day. During that time, I typically do not get even 30 minutes to just sit and eat a lunch. Nope, I am working through lunch almost everyday these days. I really, really, really love our neighborhood, city, surrounding. But I also really wish my commute wasn't 1 hour on a good day with good weather and good traffic.

Job- I also wish at this point that I had a job where I could go there, do my thing (and a good thing at that), and then come home and be done with it until the next day. But I don't. My job is very demanding and stressful. I think about it all the time. The last two weeks I have worked almost every night for a number of hours after Claire went to bed. I should be going to bed after Claire goes to bed (or at least relaxing) but instead I need to work. My work is generelly the first thought in my head before I go to sleep and when I wake up. I know it's causing a lot of stress for me. I have a lot of responsibility and my boss and his peers have very high expectations of me. It's not going to get any better anytime soon because one of my two direct reports had her last day on my team yesterday (she was promoted to another team). So now we're down 33% of our team so I will have to pick up most of that slack, which means more late hours working from home. Last night when I was feeding Claire at 1:30AM, I commanded myself to NOT think about work and instead pray, which is my favorite thing to do while I feed her during the night. (I prayed for many of you that are reading this blog last night at 1:30AM!).

Grad school- I have two classes remaining (the one I'm taking right now and another in the spring) before I graduate with an MBA from the University of Minnesota. Hallelujah. My class is on Thursday nights. On those nights, I leave home at 6:45 for work and return home around 9:00-9:30 from school. At that point I have to pump because Claire is already in bed so I can't feed her. After changing out of my suit that I've been in for far too long, pumping, cleaning the bottles, checking work email, breathing for a minute, talking to Josh, and getting ready for bed, it's usually 11PM before I hit the sack. And I'm exhausted. I am sad because I didn't get to see Claire at all that day. Besides the actual class portion, I need to find time to study each week. This weekend I need to do a take-home midterm exam that will likely suck many, many hours out of my life and I just don't have the motivation or desire to do it.

Motherhood- I LOVE being a mom. It is the most amazing, fulfilling, demanding, thing I have ever done. I can't explain my love for Claire. I honestly wish I could be a stay at home mom until my kids entered elementary school. It physically hurts me to be away from Claire all day. Annie (my mother in law who takes care of her during the day) spends more waking time with Claire than I do and it honestly kills me. I am so envious and sad. I am incredibly grateful to Annie for doing this. She's making a sacrifice too and I know it's not easy. I just really, really wish I was the one at home with her, which is the way it should be. Being a new mom isn't easy, even without all the other things I have going on. One of the most difficult parts is the lack of sleep. As Claire gets older, the sleeping gets worse. Ironic, huh? From 5 weeks to 13 weeks she slept through the night, every single night. Then I went back to work and she started getting up one time per night, which lasted for awhile. Now she's been getting up two times per night. I estimate that I get about 5 hours of sleep per night, every night. It's been like that for a couple months now and while I am getting used to it, I know that I need more sleep. A lack of sleep just
compounds everything else.

Feeding/Pumping: I am proud to say that Claire has been exclusively breast-fed since day 1. This is NOT to say that I am any better than any moms that formula-feed their baby. Not AT ALL. It was just important to me to breastfed Claire and I have been blessed that it has been relatively easy (from a medical or physical standpoint) for me to do this. From a pratical standpoint, it has been hard. She eats every 3 hours during the day still so my days are really planned around that. I am not comfortable feeding in public so I usually have to go in my car, find a dressing room, or go to a bedroom if I'm at someone's house to feed her. It means that I am the only one who can get up to feed her at night. It also means that I have to pump every day at work. My original goal was to pump three times a day but lately I have only been able to do it twice, and even that is a struggle. I have had to walk out of meetings, skip lunch, literally race to and from buildings, and work from home at night in order to pump during the day. By 3 months old, only 20% of babies are exclusively breast-fed. I don't know what the stat is for 6 month old babies, but I imagine it's far less. Again, I in no way want this to come across as me sounding all high and mighty and heroic for nursing Claire for this long. It has been a sacrifice and one that I am so, so happy to make. It's been a true blessing for Claire and for me.

Marriage- a good marriage doesn't happen naturally. We all know it takes work. I would say the biggest adjustment since Claire has been born for Josh and I has probably been our marriage. We just don't have the time together like we used to and our relationship has just changed. I need to dedicate more of my time, effort, and energy into our marriage. It's the most important thing and yet it feels like it's the first thing to let go when life becomes this stressful. Don't get me wrong- we are doing well and are in love as ever. It's just different and that's been hard to accept. There are days I feel quite distant and days that I know Claire has brought us closer together.

I won't go into these in detail but other things on my plate include:
I am an Executive Director of the Midwest Global Trade Association (my term is 2007-2010)
I started a small group that requires bi-weekly meetings and homework inbetween
I am dealing with two persistant, long-term health problems that both require daily treatment. One of them is my shoulder and I should be doing my physical therapy exercises every day but I don't have (make?) time.

So that's about it. I realize this probably came across as complaining and I am saddened by that. I am tremendously grateful for my marriage, Claire, my job, my house, my friends and family, Sydney, and all of the other incredible blessings in my life.

I read an article recently (while pumping) that talked about post-traumatic stress disorder that can show up seemingly out of nowhere years after women become mothers. These women hold it together for so long (working, mothering, taking care of the household, etc) and then just snap and fall into a depression. The article made a lot of sense to me. It instructed that women must communicate their struggles and let others support and encourage them to prevent this emotional breakdown. So that's what I am doing. I have cried about this often lately- while driving to work, while sitting at my desk at work (no one was around), in the bathroom at work, while talking to my mom on the phone. On the outside I look like I have it all together. But I don't. I have had fleeting moments of the "what if I just get in my car and drive off and never come back" thoughts. But those pass quickly. I am happy. I am in love with my husband and my daughter. I have Jesus in my heart and know that He is all I really need. I have more compassion than ever for hurting and hungry children and families around the world. I am the same Whitney. I'm just a more tired and overwhelmed Whitney. And I greatly appreciate your encouragement and prayers.