How To Survive Armageddon (Or Construction Works And Screaming Baby)

If you are in a difficult place (ie your baby is screaming in your face so hard you want to bang your head on the wall because if you pass out you wouldn’t be able to hear it anymore), a sense of humor is everything.

Not even talking The Secret-type stuff here, you just have to look past everything and reach your special little happy place to bring The Funny.

The Funny is you at your best when you never knew you had it in you – but with humor just so people also know you are charming. For survival. Because there is something about your baby screaming at you that is just worse, in that instant, than umpteen lines ringing on your dealer board (where you know exactly what every one of em wants) and RMs crowding into the room when the market runs on that IPO because equity/ equity derivatives investors, herd of stampeding bison with cellphones, same difference.

Well here we go Ms Rockstar –

Behind This Door Lies Adventure! Color! Sparkle! Now You See It, Now Watch Mummy Make Everything Disappear! Whoot! Wasn’t That Just Trippy? No, Mummy’s Not Doing Drugs, It’s Not The Breastmilk, It’s…. A Door! It’s Mummy’s Wardrobe Door! 

I call this game Someday All This Shall Be Yours.

Ms Rockstar calls it:

What Could You Possibly Have Been Thinking???

And

I DON’T WANNA WEAR THAT SOMEDAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

When I’m stressing and she’s fussing Rockstar will look up briefly from iPad/laptop which we now use as pre-bedtime wind-down, “You need to open the cupboard door again, Mu-umm <all knowledgeable Been There Done That>.” My 4.5 year old, the baby care expert. Maybe Nanny 911 is auditioning.

Anyway. I know a very godly lady who had one young baby, morning sickness during her second pregnancy, and she didn’t even get partial help. (Later, she also got pregnant a third time, while the second child was I think not even a year old – they are currently back in the States – it’s not like she was all See So Easy You Cannot Meh, more like Please Pray For Us To Get Through The Terrible Twos, but point is, survive she did).

Then I had another girlfriend who breastfed and once described a procedure to clear an infected blocked duct in the doctor’s office that involved a large needle <flinch>, had (just) a twice-weekly cleaning lady – and a Portuguese Water Dog who snuck a swim in the filthy pier water nearby any chance she got, necessitating yet another bath, right away.

Oh, and I don’t think she even plugged in her tv <respect>

Thing is, we’re gonna compare, no matter how much we tell ourselves it’s not good for us. So sometimes why not make it good for us. I have mummy friends who are amazing and if they can do *that* much then maybe I can at least do *this* much is still more productive than I’m doing better than *that* mum whose kids can sing any shit by Eminem <complacent> <heck, all self-important self-righteous stick-up-butt>. I know mums who have managed to swing lots more things than I have. Perspective is everything. Surround yourself with mums who farm virtually all parenting responsibility to helpers and etc and you will think you have to have the same.

Most importantly, when I’m terrified – Yes I Who Had Never Had Much Interest In Children Nor Carried An Infant In My Arms Before Rockstar – I remember my friends must’ve been, too. Through fevers, fussing, it must’ve been hard for them too. (And then some). I’ve come to believe you shouldn’t expect “true” parenting to be “easy” all the time. If it is, if you think it is, you’re doing it wrong. My own brand of No Free Lunch, post-market. It’s another human being you’re raising, one who will go out into the world, make their own way – and have the potential to cause terrible hurt and pain to others – someone else’s children and family members. It’s not like you just feed them and walk them. It’s why JD gets to be such a bitch (sorry) sometimes, and the kids don’t.

Mostly, something my pastor said last week stuck in my head: Don’t waste your difficult circumstance. Use it to become a better version of yourself. It’s a waste of a stressful situation if I don’t use it to learn to calm my baby, or really, practice being screamed at…. And I can’t help the construction hammering away whenever til October. Unravelling hurts me (and Ms Rockstar) more than it could/would ever hurt the construction people anyways.

So there it was. How we got through the week. It was easy, because we wanted to see it as easy. (And by “easy” I mean “I’m. Not…. Going…. To Die!“)

Not dying feels pretty good. Being screamed at close-range while you’re hormonal/ glancing round quickly when the baby starts up, deciding beforehand where is the safest place to put the baby if you really throw up n-ot so much (and of course never actually happened), but oh it felt so good knowing I learnt to handle my own baby without any help. Being able to put the baby down, once or twice even awake and watching her slowly doze off after, I would do that tacky fist-pump or throw my arms up like I was an Olympics gymnast after completing a perfect balance bar routine.

Pic from jamesfreesports.com

Oh, you competed in the Olympics? That’s nice. I just got my fussing baby to sleep.

Not just the Olympics, also like in the World Wrestling Federation Championships. I’d roar like they do too, but that might wake the baby and then I’d have to start over.

Pic from Wrestling Wikia

<Sheepish> Somedays I roared at Rockstar – when I was trying to put an over-tired baby down for the umpteenth time and hardly dared breath, finally, when the construction workers have gone home, and I get “I can’t reach my towel, Mo-mmy. Mo-mmy? MOOOO-OOOMMMMMEEEEE…….”

At the end of the week, our nanny comes back for a few hours a day (planned sometime back, just to help with any heavier lifting while my inlaws visit.) The look of respect on my tough, could’ve-auditioned-as-real-life-Wolf-of-Wall-Street-if-she’d-gone-to-college nanny’s face was something else, as I walked her through changes, dare I say mild improvements, in Ms Rockstar’s sleep/feed/play schedule.

(For e.g. she can play/entertain herself for awhile without demanding to be picked up pronto, even occasionally fall back to sleep. Partly from mechanically picking her up, quieting her, putting her down, over and over and over…)

Ms Rockstar still screams her lungs out at me. I’m still scared.

But I’m alive. I’m alive. A-LI-IIIIIVVVVE! 

Bride of Frankenstein pic from morbidementia.com

I don’t care if it’s drama – I earned it, mama *ridiculous dorky dancing*.

Ps: Weight just after nanny left a week ago: 60kg

Weighed just before she got back: 57.5kg. (Pre-baby weight, 53kg) That was a little scary though I feel fine enough…