Mom Parenting: Running on Empty

Anticipating the arrival of my second child. I felt excited and as ready as I could be—more so than with my first, when I was a single, naive, young person. Now I had a home and a husband to share in the joy of parenthood and it was going great ... until (the dreaded UNTIL) ...

My son wasn't catching onto nursing like my daughter did. As a lot of moms know what is supposed to be natural doesn't necessarily happen that naturally. After being told by the doctor he had lost too much weight, we went with formula. Only to soon find out he was allergic and went with the hypo-allergenic kind.

Once we got that figured out, it just seemed like there were other illness's to deal with. One of our cats had been sick for a little while and unfortunately had gotten to a point where we had to put him down. In a way it was poignant that my son was born and then it was my cat's time to go.

In the meantime my husband had been fighting a cold but had gotten much worse he finally went to the doctor and was diagnosed with pneumonia so he was semi-quarantined. And I was taking care of everyone and running on empty. I know my daughter was feeling a bit neglected and maybe that is why she decided to cut her hair off. That is when I broke down and called for reinforcements. My grandmother came the next day and fixed my daughter's hair. Eventually my husband got better. And my son started getting bigger and healthier, too. And that was just the first few weeks after my son was born! Sometimes I still feel like I'm running on empty. Welcome to parenthood!