Attachments & Heels

A very long time ago, when I was pregnant with the golden child, I discovered the attachment parenting phenomenon. I bought a couple of books by Dr. Sears and cozied myself right in. I did cloth diapers, the sling, nursing on demand, the family bed. All of it. Hook, line, and sinker. And I have to say that I do think it was a tremendous success. I was a stay at home mom and it made perfect sense. So here I sit ...13 years later, and I feel like a total heel. I don't know exactly what's up with me, but I used to love to cuddle and be close and be loved up. I was always the chaser in the relationship between Monk and I. Nearly begging to cuddle, "Hold me?" was something he heard on a nearly hourly basis. I think I mostly drove him insane. I have felt strictly hands off for the last 2 years at least - with both Monk and the extremely attached one. I'm not sure what it is ...but I'm pretty sure I could nearly poke my eyes out when I come home from work, wanting to relax for a minute, and Monk plants himself on his knees directly in front of me and becomes a close talker 2 inches from my face and wants to just lay on me or something and then the attached one slips into the chair half on me and they both just ....suffocate me. I bear it for as long as I can stand it and then I usually have a big freakout and am mean and yell that I need my space and they back 3 feet away for like ..20 minutes ...and the whole process starts again. I dread coming home because of it, even. I've tried forcing myself through it ...grab on to them both ...cuddle them for like 15 minutes a piece when I get home and hope for the best ...but they seem to be insatiable. At least by me. And it makes me sad ...because the old me? Would love it. The old me? Trained them both to love it. And what if I'm still like this when the next baby is born? How could I not snuggle a newborn? I don't know what happened to me.

The attached one seems also to be going through some minor sort of weird regression right now which I have to believe is somehow related to the baby or her fear about starting high school next year...because it hasn't happened since she was like 5. Aside from the aforementioned snuggle fest, she's become uncharacteristically needy. She follows me from room to room to the point that I went upstairs to change into my pj's and she came running up the stairs behind me and actually screamed, "MOMMY! Wait for me!!" frantically because she didn't want me to ....I don't know ...lock myself in my room without her or something. She hasn't called me mommy in years. I explained that I was changing and would join her in a sec, and when I opened the door to my bedroom she was sitting on the floor outside of it waiting for me. WTF? Seriously. The old part of me buried somewhere recognizes that 1) she obviously needs something more than what she's getting from me right now 2) they're aren't many moms that have a 13 year old that still wants to cuddle and 3) even my attached one won't necessarily want to cuddle with me for very much longer and I shouldn't take it for granted much less reject it.

In completely unrelated and random news:

• I essentially do a prenatal visit on myself every week when I'm at the family practice clinic - because I'm that insane. Weigh myself, check my urine, my blood pressure, measure my fundal height, and doppler myself. I spent about 15 minutes with the doppler today before I found a strong heartbeat at 160 ...but I almost stroked from minute 5- 15. I considered running to the other wing of the office with my pants around my ankles to get a doc to look about 27 times. I'm fairly certain this child will have anxiety disorder or something. Good god. Please keep in mind that I felt the baby move not more than an hour before I was looking but was still completely convinced it was dead when I couldn't find the heartbeat. I'll never be not crazy, I swear. I will say that I still feel not pregnant. I forget about it for almost an entire day at a time. Even the movement which I feel on a fairly regular basis now I could pass off as something else. I develop more compassion for those weirdos that deliver without knowing they were ever pregnant all the time. I will say that I have developed a tiny bit of attachment to the monster in my stomach - that Monk refers to as "Emmet" - (a story for another day). When I finally found the heartbeat today ....it was the first time I actually felt something close to love and not fear for this pregnancy.
  
• I'm on call this weekend. Again. And I hate it more than close to anything else in life. My work week this week will be 90 hours long. I'll work at least 140 hours in a 12 day stretch without a day off. That's not healthy when you aren't pregnant. My problem is that I committed to all of these speaking engagements and what-not before the baby and now it's time to pay the piper, so to speak. Bad timing on my part.