Neurosis
Motherhood has a way of making you neurotic. I consider myself to be mostly even keel. It comes from an entire childhood of my mother saying "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it", meaning we'll freak out, but only when it's time.
Being an RN seems to bring out my worst.
Because I don't work with peds, it's not kid stuff I worry about. If he has a break out, it's MRSA. If he blows bubbles...pulmonary edema (okay, I seriously only thought that for a few seconds). Slow wake up...neurological issues. Lots of crying...surely he's mentally ill.
I think it's worse since I've been back at work. I swear I never worried like this when he was a newborn.
I've found I'm much better when M. and I are together. Now we're flying solo with Finn most of the week, which gives my brain more time to come up with crazy stuff. And where I work seriously scares me. We get the tougheset cases. Have a scary infectious disease? Well, you'll come to my hospital, and there's a good chance to my floor. And I can bring all that crap home.
It's seriously crazy-making. CRAZY.
Right now we're worrying about Finn's weight for no obvious reason. He's healthy. He has wet and poopy dipes. He's eating between 21 and 28 ounces while I'm gone. He's just a skinny guy and tall. It's hard not to compare to all the chubbing out babies around us. Doc appointment tomorrow, so we can at least be told to stop worrying about it.
posted by Sacha @ 5:59 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Ok, so I am going comment happy these days. :) I went through similar worry/anxiety when my husband went back to work. I was so use to having somewhere there all the time for support that it was a little terrifying to be alone. That worked itself out but I don;t know if you ever quit the worry about everything else. Our boy too is on the skinny side. He started out in the 75th percentile and now at 11 months is in the 15th. He too is long and skinny but everyone comments on how healthy he looks. He eats like a fiend -- always has so I have just come to terms with the idea that we have someone produced this string bean of a baby. There was this great article a few months back in Parents magazine about the wide range of "normal" in babies on everything from weight to hitting the big milestones.
I haven't got so far as your current posts - I've just sat reading the archives for maybe 2 hours. Which has been double super, as firstly it has been articulate, interesting, honest and funny. Which is great as we are busy negotiating with our KD and looking to start trying soon - so alas, you're still providing food for thought for those of us behind.
And second I'm on the night before starting a set of nightshifts and trying to stay up late to get in to the swing of things - and was going to concede and just go to sleep at midnight before I found your blog - and alas time has slipped by.
Oh and third, if I can have a third, I've never read a blog before, and I've not entirely got the concept before - but I certainly do now, so cheers. [the no experience of blogs might explain part of the 2 hours as I only just worked out navigating properly....I'll be dragged into maybe the nineties soon and maybe beyond year 2000 a bit after that].
Oh, I know, being a parent definitely makes you worry. I've noticed it at our house too. We're always worrying about something. And I imagine it's only going to get worse when Kim goes back to work and our baby goes to day care (although our day care provider is a very good friend of ours who lives right around the corner from our house - and therefore me, because I work from home - so that should ease the worrying a little. But still, I think it's going to be really weird for a while!)
I have been a lurker for quite some time now.......your situation, aside from giving birth to a beautiful baby boy, is very different from my own - but I am really enjoying the glimpses of your day to day life. (I am a single mother with a father who truly qualifies as a sperm donor, although that wasn't really the original intent!)
ANYWHO.....the reason I 'delurked' was to hopefully make you feel better about Finn's weight situation. My little guy was chubby for a whopping 2 weeks, from about 8 weeks old to ten weeks. Then he stretched right out and never seemed to 'chub up' again. I was worried even though he too was peeing and pooping just fine (excessively it seemed at times!) and getting boob every 2-3 hours--which he did at that interval until about 6 months, by the way. Call me bessie!--and my doctor basically told me to relax and he's fine. As long as he was content and growing he didn't see any problems with his weight; he was >90% for height, >90% head circ. and <25% for weight. Yes, he had/has a massively large head. Actually, the first words after his birth were "wow, he's got a big head!" not the whole "congradulations, it's a boy!" No wonder I had issues walking after birth......... :-)
Anyway, I hope it makes you feel a little better. From reading your posts, it seems that your little man enjoys his boob just like my guy did. I'm sure he's just as fine as my guy was. He is now seven--just turned last week!--and incredibly healthy and smart if I do say so myself. So although I know how you feel, don't worry. He's fine. Better than fine, he's cute little Finn!
Good luck at the doc's!
I've delurked a couple of times but I wanted to comment on Finn's weight, too. I had a couple of skinny babies - my daughter looked like a pile of toothpicks for her first few months, my next-to-youngest son weighed 16 pounds at one year, and of course my 34 week preemie was a sack of bones and in newborn clothes until five and a half months.
What is funny is that those skinny babies ended up being well-built, healthy toddlers/young lady (well, the preemie isn't a toddler yet, he's Finn's age but he hit a growth spurt and apparently sucked sixteen pounds worth of milk from my breast in the couple weeks) and my chubbiest, roly-poly, ham-hock legged BABY is now a tall, skinny five year old with knock knees and rather alarmingly pointy ribs. Kids are funny that way.
Either way you end up wondering if you're doing something wrong. Moms just can't win!
Ah yes. I understand the "neurosis" that comes with working in nursing. I imagine the worst when it comes to DD. I worry about about everything when it comes to her.
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