My social mojo is missing in action. Or inaction, as the case may be. It has fallen before the physical, emotional and mental onslaught that came with the territory of having a baby. There is no one contributing factor, rather a variety of things combine to make me the earliest pumpkiniser that ever pumpkinned.
I lack the clarity of thought that comes with regular, quality sleep so struggle to participate in conversations in any meaningful way. My days and nights are almost exclusively about my baby, resulting in a limited topic range. If there’s a conversation about lack of sleep, teething issues, crying, or crawling progress I can hold my own. In between yawns and mind blanks. Move the topic to something else, work, politics, religion or sex and I’m lost at sea. I do listen to the radio each day, and I hear the news that is happening in the world, but listening to something and formulating opinions about something so you can talk about it, are two entirely different things!
It is hard for any event to compete with the prospect of sleep; and especially difficult for anything to take me away from sleep, and sleep away from me. I want to stay late, to enjoy wonderful company, drink wine and sample the adult world again; I see other mums doing that and marvel at how they survive. How do they stay up late and not have a meltdown the following day. Or maybe they do but they feel it’s worth it. Who knows.
Since Zac was born, we’ve gone to two weddings, a midwinter gathering, and a mortgage commitment ceremony/party. We’ve also not attended a family 40th and our goddaughter’s first birthday party. It seems 2011 is a year of major changes and celebrations in the lives of many who we hold dear. We have celebrated these events with our friends, briefly; returning home to our castle (figuratively speaking – could you imagine how much a real castle would cost in the inner city?!) usually by 9 at the very latest. Receptions are something that everyone else attends. The two weddings were lovely, and not too overwhelming. Not knowing many people at a social occasion really reduces the amount of social mojo required. However midwinter and the mortgage party were events within our community, our circle. Lots of people we know. Apparently everyone else has been sprogging too, because suddenly there are lots of children and babies around and it can be quite overwhelming.
……. There was more to write, but now over a month has gone by since I started this post, so time to just post it!
Oh, I could have written this myself! Except we have gone out a lot more, and stayed out a lot later – mostly because K is a social beast and insists. He can’t understand that I don’t really have the energy to go out, and doesn’t want to stop going out just because I don’t feel like it, so I keep getting stuck at home looking after the baby into the evening, after he’s been out at work all day. He’s off at a Christmas drinks evening tonight while I’m at home with mastitis! I feel comfortable that we haven’t missed too many important gatherings but it does frustrate me that it takes so much work and is so exhausting – I had to spend one wedding breastfeeding A on a toilet floor in an attempt to keep him quiet so that he wouldn’t disrupt what was obviously a very expensive event (in a very echoey building!).
I had planned to express enough so that K could take A home early from Midsummer so that I could stay on, but I’m on penicillin and bedrest at the moment – I doubt I’ll stay much more than an hour or so, which is really disappointing. I hope to see you there, if briefly, and promise to give you the chance to talk all about your current specialist topics 🙂 We might need to find somewhere away from the millions of babies, though – they’re too scary! x
Heh, a post I very easily could have written myself … if I weren’t so sleep-deprived, and time poor. Not to forget the time poor.