Parenting is hard.
Not sure what kind of hard, I am thinking maybe granite. Hardened steel maybe?
Anyone with children will tell you that parenting is hard, no question, but usually then the bad stuff is out weighed by the good.
Except, for me, it doesn't seem to be.
Whilst I do enjoy getting the little one to smile, or achieve something new, I don't seem to get the reward feeling I was expecting.
The endorphins or that warm fuzzy feeling.
Sometimes I get it but even then it's a long way shy of covering the grief of getting cried at in the middle of the night.
Now this could be down to any number of reasons.
Maybe my anxiety / low mood are just taking the edge off the good bits
Maybe sleep deprivation is affecting my outlook.
Maybe as I only see the little one for a few hours a day, usually when she is at her most irritable.
Maybe I am just being a bit self centered.
Maybe with exzma and not sleeping through the night yet it is actually bad.
Maybe it's just how I now feel I no longer have any time alone.
Maybe I just miss being able to get things done.
All I really know is that in a comparatively short space of time things feel to have gone from 'going well' down through ok to 'surviving'.
Having a baby is a great blessing and privilege for sure, and knowing many people who are desperate for kids, yet here is me wondering if they can be pushed back in.
(I am assured they can't, mostly because they are bigger, that and something like a non return valve or alike).
I often feel bad about complaining about how hard things are particularly to those people but at this point but it's something that's been wearing me down over the relentless broken nights sleep day after day.
It's as if parenting just didn't live up to the hype?
I have forgotten what an unbroken nights sleep is.
Maybe that's the warm fuzzy feeling?
A lot of the above I expect is difficulties in trying to fit an engineering mind set to a tiny human which seemingly follows no form of logic.
If anything happened to the little one I would be distraught, no doubt or question, which shows a love and affection. The same is true for wanting to make her happy.
The good lady wife is very helpful and reminds me (at a time when I am able to be rational) that I can't reason with a 6 month old. Go through the routines until something works. It's not faultless but it usually works.
R looked over the post above for me, and asked, what's the purpose of the post?
Well I am not sure, could be simply to say I am not ok, to say to other new fathers, it's ok not to be ok and maybe even remind me in the future how things were and that all things pass.
She added, 'it's all just a phase', this just feels like a particularly long one.
