Four-month ramblings

My brain is fried so this is all I got…bullets!

• The babies go for their 4-month check-ups tomorrow. What I’m thinking a lot about: Champ’s super-flat head on the right side. We shall see what the ped thinks.
• I had a long list of “projects” to accomplish during maternity leave. HAHAHAHA. (What was I thinking?) I seriously have crossed one off the list.
• Hubs has been absolutely and totally and completely buried in his dissertation. He hasn’t slept the past two nights because he had a big presentation to give today. He is so tired of it. He is so stressed. This week he has had absolutely no time to help with the babies…no feedings, no bath time, no snuggles, no dipe changes…ay yi yi. I know it’s not good to wish time away, and certainly I don’t with our sweet sweet babies, but I am SO READY for my poor hubs to have completed this @#^*$#@&(@ thing. (Then it’ll be time to stress/worry about the next step: his job applications this Fall!)
• I have been “training” the nanny for a few hours here and there for the past month. She is wonderful. Calm. Zen. Sweet. Nurturing. Loving. I am so grateful for this.
• The thing is, though, I do things a certain way. (Ahem, I like to leave the bath water running to circulate the water because Champ always pees when he gets in the baby tub. She just fills it up and turns off the water.) I have been home while she’s been learning the drill and it takes a lot of effort to find the right balance between, This thing is really important to me, versus, You know what? It’s okay if she wants to do it that way. Has anyone else dealt with this?
• Hubs’s brother and his wife are moving to our city this summer. [Insert cheering!!!!] I love them both so much and am SO SO SO happy we will have family IN THE SAME CITY AS US! They are apartment hunting this weekend and are staying with us from Friday–Monday. So tomorrow is my last day solo with the babies before going back to work.
• I feel like a ticking time bomb with the going-back-to-work thing. I suspect it will be terribly difficult. I don’t even know, I’m a mess of emotions. But hopefully I’ll at least enjoy having the countdown aspect GONZO.
• I’m going to pump as long as possible, but am trying to be realistic that I may not last too much longer once I’m working….eeeeesh.
• Hubs downloaded some pics from our digital camera a few weeks ago and I happened to glance through them today. There is one picture of me in the waiting room at the hospital the night I went into labor. The clock reads 12:47am. I haven’t gone back to triage yet. I am HUUUUUGE. (My gosh, I did NOT remember how big I was!) Puffy. Multiple chins. I have a giant pregnancy-induced blood vessel thing erupting next to my nose. (It had to be cut off two weeks later in a quicky surgery. A whole other blog post. Yuck!) I look so uncomfortable and annoyed at hubs. I was probably in the midst of a serious contraction and little did I know that I was already 10cm dilated and literally a couple of hours away from meeting Champ and Honey. You know what? It’s such an awesome picture, I didn’t even remember hubs taking it!! 🙂
• All three of my babies are currently sleeping: hubs, Champ and Honey. I love them all so very very very much. I am so incredibly grateful to be exactly where I am.

Dum dum dum dum DUM

I go back to work in two weeks. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I remember when the babies were born and feeling like my four months of maternity leave was going to be an ETERNITY. Well, it was and it wasn’t. First of all, I am in COMPLETE AWE of you rockstar Moms who go back after 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks. You guys are seriously awesome. At 6 weeks post-partum I was a complete mess. I cannot fathom having my sh*t together enough at that point to be able to leave the house in a presentable outfit, have coherent conversations, etc etc etc. You guys are amazing, seriously, amazing.

I am a mix of (inarticulate) emotions about my return to work.

At the moment, the overwhelming feeling is NERVES. I was working from home (those scary bedrest days) for five weeks before the babies came. Which means I haven’t been in the office since February 11. That was a loooooooooooong time ago. I was constantly on the phone with and emailing/IMing with coworkers during that time so it wasn’t like I was totally off the grid, but you know what I mean.

Since the babies came, I have compleeeeeeeeeeetely checked out of work. Well, I check my email every three weeks or so to clean it out and make sure I’m not missing a staff-wide notice about an open part-time position (hahaha), but that’s seriously the extent of it. I am also friendly with several coworkers so we’ve exchanged emails about the babies/work gossip/etc off line. But I have missed SO MUCH. Two humongous projects that I love overseeing every summer? Another staffer handled them. A major MAJOR change at my business? They sailed the stormy waters without me.

I feel really weird about the fact that “life went on” remarkably well without me at work. They have done just fine. (How in the world did they manage that?! Kidding, kidding.) Do they need me anymore? Are people going to be annoyed at me that I took four months of leave instead of the standard three? (And why the frack do I care all of a sudden?) Am I still going to be good at my job? Will I still command respect when I come back? Not just because I was GONE for so long, but because now I’m sure to be thought of as a softie, maternal, waaaah-I-miss-my-babies woman and not the tough-as-nails, burn-the-midnight-oil worker-bee I once was. (Okay, to be fair, I have always been a softie.)

As of this week, I keep showing up at my office in my dreams and it’s freaking me out.

Also, is it completely f-ed up that I’m fixated on THIS stuff and not the obvious?

That being, of course, that after four months of caring for my sweet, sweet, SWEET little babies 24-7, I will suddenly be working 50+ hours a week? Shouldn’t I be freaking out about going into withdrawal from my little ones? About how much I will miss them? Shouldn’t I be afraid of crying at my desk? How sad will I be on the nights I can’t put them to bed? How resentful am I going to be on the three nights a week that I work late? Am I going to be okay? Are the babies going to be okay without me? How will I pump? Should I stop BFing now? Will the nanny be as awesome as we think she is?

Le sigh.

Like I said, I’m a mix of emotions and I think I’m subconsciously focusing on the mental stuff: the extreme weirdness/anxiety of returning to my office job and how I’ll deal….instead of the big issue tugging at my heart: how much I’ll miss my babies.