Today is a Down Day

Today is a down day.

Lilah didn’t take a nap which set off a chain of exhausting parenting moments. And all of a sudden I found myself in a place of “I can’t do this”.

I can’t redirect one more time, I can’t calmly tell her to stop hitting mommy, I can’t do any more laundry, I can’t organize any more infant stuff, I can’t clean any more goldfish from within the carpet.

And then there are the things that just apply to me that feel just as hard. Things I feel I just can’t handle. This ferocious weight gain in pregnancy, the mood swings, the OCD thoughts launched into full force these last 9 months, the many moments of loneliness while at home by myself.

But hardest of all is knowing that it isn’t about to get easier. This next season I’m about to head into is an unknown. I’ve never been there before. And yet I know what postpartum feels like, how exhausting it is, how much a new little person takes out of me. I am about to do it all again and I am terrified.

Can I do it? Of course I can. I’ve made it through hard before. But it still looms over me like this massive dark cloud.

I can’t wait to meet my boy, hold him in my arms, snuggle my cheeks against his, but this post isn’t about all that beauty. It’s about the other stuff. The hard stuff. The unseen stuff. The things that have me down today.

Life is beautiful and it’s hard and both must be acknowledged.