Lately, Down Moanery Lane…

"The guilt could do with a thesis of its own."

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

It’s hard to do anything creative when you’re sleep-deprived, angry, on the verge of tears or any combination of the aforementioned. It’s hard to do much of anything, really, but creative endeavours, I imagine, are impacted more by these mental maladies than non-creative endeavours.

Of course, I wouldn’t really know; the last time I worked an entirely non-creative job was in college, when I had a part-time job at Sheridan’s Cheesemongers in Galway city.

My job was to serve cheese to the dozens of people – foodies, home chefs, tourists – who would come through the doors of the refrigerated shop each day (thermals were a must). “What kind of cheese have you liked in the past?” I’d ask them, and then recommend an appropriate purchase.

“The ossau-iraty is gorgeous right now,” I’d say, which would be the truth; I love all cheese, with the exception of brie and camembert, which I’ve never quite taken to.

It was nice, telling the truth about the cheeses; when I worked in Brown Thomas, on the designer floor, I would occasionally tell little white lies. “No, no, you can’t see your underwear at all,” was a favourite. We worked on commission, so had a vested interest in having people follow through on their purchases.

In Sheridan’s, my interest was solely concentrated on deciding what sandwich I’d have for my lunch – goats’ cheese, baby spinach and local honey was my go-to – along with making sure I’d tasted each and every cheese we sold, so that I could better educate our customers on their flavour profiles, obviously.

I think I could do that job pretty easily right now. The refrigeration would probably get to me, and I’d miss my baby, of course, but ask me to stand behind a counter and cut cheese and wrap it in paper and smile and say please, and thank you, and “that’ll be one hundred and twenty-three euro and forty-three cents” (or thereabouts) and I’m pretty sure I could manage it.

Ask me to sit down and write 800 words on the latest season of Love is Blind, though, and I’d struggle – this despite the fact that one of the contestants on the latest season (which dropped just today) has already uttered the words “sex playlist”. You’d think it would write itself.

The sad fact of the matter is, the only thing I want to write about is the baby. (The new baby, not to be confused with the old baby, who is still, occasionally, referred to as “the baby”, but more frequently as “the toddler” or, rarely, by his name.)

I could compose a thesis-length piece on what the baby is doing – his eyes filled with tears yesterday, for the first time; did you know that babies don’t actually cry when they’re born? They just wail, caterwaul, screech incessantly, but tears take a while to join the party – or how often he needs his nappy changed. I could write about how many times I woke up last night (five), or how many times I cried yesterday (three), how much I’m struggling, in this postpartum period, this time around (a lot), how guilty I feel about that struggle.

The guilt, in fact, could do with a thesis of its own.

I feel guilty about the feelings I’m having – that this baby is not as easy as Atlas was; that I’m not bonding with him the same way I did with Atlas; that we may have made a mistake, adding a fourth child to our family, because I’m so tired and it’s so much and we’re so broke – but I also feel guilty about my inability to work; the episodes we owe the podcast Patreon (three); the time I’ve wasted watching television (countless hours); the time Atlas has wasted watching television (even more than I have); the state of the house; the number of days that have elapsed since I last changed our bedsheets (I couldn’t say, honestly – it could be 10, but it could also be 20, or even 25); the fact that Atlas hasn’t eaten a vegetable (or even been offered a vegetable) in ages (he won’t eat them, but still, I know we should still offer); the number of times I’ve snapped at or stormed off on a member of my family (I plead the fifth).

The rage, too, is there – at various moments, I feel myself begin to simmer, to bubble, to boil over to the point that I have to leave the room. I like to go to the bathroom in those moments, to sit on the loo and look at my phone (the hypocrisy of this, too, because there is nothing I like to say to children more than “you don’t need your phone in the bathroom!”) and take deep breaths and remind myself that this, too, shall pass, even though it doesn’t really feel as though it will.

Inciting moments:

one.
The baby is crying. He is crying because that’s what he does, most of the time, unless he’s eating or sleeping. He often stops crying when you walk around, holding him upright in your arms. It’s not easy, because he is a chunk, and your arms start to tire pretty quickly. But it’s necessary, because otherwise, the crying gets pretty out of hand.

I am in the kitchen, washing up, having handed the baby off to Brandin so that I can do the washing up. He could do it, too, I know, but I’ve been holding the baby all day and I want to do something else. Anything else.

I ask Brandin if he’s tried walking around with him.

“I can’t – my arms are too sore!” he says.

“From what?” I ask, thinking maybe he’d been roped into doing something very physical at work.

“From the gym!” he says.

I bristle.

“You can’t go to the gym any more if it means you can’t walk around with the baby,” I say, thinking, if he reacts badly to this I’ll pretend I was joking, but I’m not, not really, and he knows it.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if I went more often – so really, it’s your fault because you’ve been preventing me going!” he responds, and I’m sure he, too, would pretend to be joking about this, if pushed.

I think about the times I’ve “prevented” him going: on my birthday, last week; another day, the week before, when I was crying so much that he said he’d come home to give me a break (a break that looked like him holding the baby while I folded laundry).

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say – or, at least, nothing productive to say.

two.
The baby has a cold. To be fair to him, he’s not being too miserable about it, but he is snotty and congested and the only way he will settle is in a wrap, which is how I’ve been calming him all day. My back hurts (between this and the co-sleeping – see “four”, below – my back always hurts) and I am tired, and frazzled, and, honestly, a bit smelly because babywearing is very warm and clammy (you don’t see that in the Instagram posts).

When Brandin gets home from work, I tell him that I need to do some work of my own; I tell him the baby has just done a poo (which he has; ordinarily I would change him immediately, but this time he poops and falls asleep), and will need to be changed once he wakes up.

“Well I can’t do it,” Brandin says, “My hands are too cold.”

The baby wakes up as he says this (traitor! I think) and so I tell Brandin to bring him upstairs and I will change the nappy. I tell him to bring him because my hands are full, picking up the many objects which have accumulated on the stairs over the past 24 hours and which only I can, apparently, bring upstairs.

As I change the baby, I hand Brandin one of the two wraps I’ve been wearing the baby in all day.

“Would you tie this up?” I ask him, demonstrating quickly how to do the kind of fake braid I do on the wraps, to keep them tidy and so that they can be easily hung on a hook inside the front door.

“Why am I doing this?” my 37-year-old husband asks me.

“Because I always do it,” I tell him, incredulously.

three.
While I am changing the baby, Brandin hears chewing downstairs, and goes to investigate. This, I am convinced, is just his way to get away from me; he can tell that I am in “take no prisoners” mode, and he is determined to relax, which he does, with absolutely zero qualms, every day when he comes home from work.

(As I type this, I hear him opening a can of Diet Coke and feel murderous.)

Does he ever feel guilt, about his relaxing time? I don’t think so – and truly, I understand. He works all day, he comes home, he wants to relax. But why can’t I relax without guilt? Why does that feel like his fault? It’s not his fault, really, but it’s also not-not his fault, if you think about it hard enough (which I do, all the time).

Anyway.

He goes to investigate the chewing, and finds that Vinny, our 70-pound pitbull, the stupidest, slowest dog alive, has started to chew his synthetic bone through the baby wrap I had dropped on the floor not 15 minutes previously, as the baby had awoken in a frenzy of starvation and I’d been forced to unwrap him with great haste.

Brandin will pick that up when he gets in, I’d thought to myself, as I saw it fall to the floor right in front of the door. (Spoiler alert…)

He brings it upstairs to show me the holes the dog has chewed in the fabric. I am incandescent with rage. The baby has somehow got poo on his hand. I start to think about the lesson I learned during my personal training qualification about the type of hepatitis that results from ingesting faeces.

(“Remember: never fart on someone’s salad!” was how our instructor taught us. This was the same man who told us, with his full chest, that the gender pay gap was a myth, and asked, another day, “what’s the female equivalent of ‘sun’s out, guns out?’” as if women didn’t also have arms.)

I start to think, not for the first time, how much easier life would be if we’d never adopted these dumb animals (the cat has discovered how to open the pantry door and is single-pawedly doing his darnedest to drive me insane).

four.
We are co-sleeping. Again.

We co-slept with Atlas because he simply would not sleep on his back. Ever. Not once. We are co-sleeping with Roman because he simply will not sleep on his back, side or belly unless doing so right next to the warm cosiness of another human body, preferably mine, and usually with a boob in his mouth.

Every single night, without fail, Roman will scream, at the top of his lungs, having swallowed too much milk at the one time, and I will stroke his head and I will apologise to him – as if it’s my fault! – and I will tell him it’s okay, ssh, it’s okay, while Brandin, next to us in bed, rolls over, his back to us both, and puts a pillow over his head.

I ask him, sometimes, to change Roman’s nappy, even though it seems silly, to wake him up when I am already awake. But then, I think to myself, I’m exhausted. I can’t get up again. I can’t change another nappy. He probably can.

He does, every time, but he frowns, he huffs, he puffs. I tell him this, ask if he could maybe smile, not make it out to be such an ordeal.

“I know I seem pissed off,” he tells me. “It’s just because you’ve woken me up. Just ignore it.”

It’s amazing to me, that he is the one huffing and puffing and sighing and frowning… and he is aware of this fact, and instead of, oh I don’t know, maybe not huffing and puffing and sighing and frowning, instead I am the one who has to find a way to deal with it. I’m the one who has to make it tolerable.

It must, I think (not for the first time), be so incredibly, gloriously wonderful to be a man.