Chaos

I want to share a moment from my parenting adventure that really made me realize the insensity of this whole parenting thing. I honestly did not find babyhood all that challenging the first time around. Sure I was exhausted, breastfeeding hurt, and there was a learning curve to understanding my kids cues. Overall I had not found the first year of motherhood all that difficult. I remember joking with another mom that the most challenging thing so far was learning to clip that squrimy baby’s nails. I still hate clipping their nails.

Anyways there was an evening when my son was around fourteen or fifteen months old when my husband was going to be home later than he usually was, he was guessing ten or eleven. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to binge a series that he was not a huge fan of and thought maybe I could put my son down to bed a little early. I flew through dinner and clean up pretty smoothly, gave my tot a fun bubble bath, took a quick shower myself and then settled him down in bed. After nursing for a few minutes I kissed him goodnight and got myself ready for a little Netflix binge.

I had just sat down when I heard my son fussing. It was unusual for him because at this point he generally went right to sleep after I said good night. The fussing continued so I went upstairs to see what was going on, he seemed upset and since he was on a floor bed I snuggled on down next to him and asked what was wrong. He turned to look at me and promptly threw up. It went all over my face, my hair, and my shirt. It was on my hands and I even wiped it away from my eyes. The worst part was that it went in my mouth. No actually it gets worse. In the heat of the moment with my son bawling and me in absolute shock I went to pick him up. I remember it going in my mouth but I have zero recollection of what I did with it. I like to believe I didn’t swallow it but I will never actually know. Every time I remember this moment I feel a little sick to my stomach.

So, there I was trying to console my vomit covered toddler while ignoring the fact that I too was puke covered. After he calmed down a little I stripped us both and we took a really thorough shower together. He was cranky and tired at this point so it was no easy feat! After our shower I had just finished getting dressed and getting Mr man dressed when I suddenly had to sneeze. Now there are lots of jokes about moms crossing their legs to sneeze after they have had babies. There is a good reason for that, my pelvic floor was not as strong as it was before my kid was born. Well it happened. I sneezed, and it was actually multiple sneezes in a row. I realized immediately that I would need another shower because I had forgotten to cross my legs to sneeze. A mistake I will never make again.

So after my third shower of the evening I was ready to try the whole bedtime thing again. I brought Mr man to his room and realized that in my rush to clean us up I had forgotten something. I still had a vomit covered bed to clean up. I changed the sheets quickly and started a load of laundry. Everything was done now and all that was left was bedtime itself.

I think most parents are familiar with what happens when young children are up well past their bedtimes. First they are tired and cranky, then they are overtired and hyper. Eventually a crash comes, but at this point in my story my one year old was in full overtired and hyper mode. He was running and yelling and had absolutely no intention of going back to bed. It was at this point my husband arrived home. I gave him a brief overview of the evening and then he took over bedtime for me.

I went downstairs, sat on the couch and stared at the paused Netflix show. I reflected on what had just happened and all I could think was, ” I must have spat it out”.

This event was the one that made me realize that all the quotes, stories, and jokes about parenting being really hard were very true. What I had experienced up until that point had been hard sure, but not the absurd type of hard. The type of hard that makes you want to laugh, and cry, and hide all at once. That was the kind I experienced that night, and have experienced many times since, especially since adding a second child to the mix.

Please share your stories of parenting moments that made you feel this way below, I think we all need to know that we are not alone in the wierd, amazing, funny, exhausting, mind numbing and stressful chaos of parenthood.