Well I failed the blood test yet again. Their diet, which I followed religiously, did nothing (OK, it dropped my sugar 2 points, but it is still over their standard, and it is still under the national standard). I took my sugar at home 30 minutes prior to their test and it was much lower. So either my meter is broken or their results are bullshit. It makes no sense for my sugar to go up in half an hour when I'm fasting.
I am done with this. I think I'm going to point out to them that I have no symptoms of diabetes and I will respectfully decline diabetes care. I have my two weeks of normal readings to show them - normal from day one, before I'd started the diet. They have no case except their overcautiousness. This is doing nothing for me except making me far more stressed out than I should be, and making me sicker and sicker with worry and with lack of food. It has to stop. They are just going to have to leave me alone.
I'm so disappointed. I prayed so hard for this to work out easily, for my body to cooperate. I checked my own readings and they were fine. But I go into that damn lab and the numbers just go up. There's nothing I can do. It's the same with my blood pressure. I'm just always high.
And you know, yesterday I had a really scary experience that makes me wonder if I'm going to be terrible at this whole parenting thing. I told a friend I'd watch her kid for a minute. It was 15 minutes, actually. So when the friend left the kid started screaming, of course - she was left alone with me, who she doesn't know, in a house (mine) she'd never been in. And even though it was only about 5 minutes before J walked in and distracted her, and we found ways to keep the screaming down to every few seconds by sticking kitchen implements in her face and feeding her cheerios, even in those 5 minutes when she wouldn't stop crying I simply wanted to put her down and leave the room. It took all my will power not to cover her mouth with my hand. I couldn't talk to her. Yet when I tried to put her down she asked to be picked up. I don't know why she wanted me, the stranger, to pick her up. She kept screaming when I picked her up. And I realized that I still really don't like kids at all. I thought I did, but in fact I really hate how uncontrollable they are. I don't think it's at all right, but I do understand why people shake babies. You can't make them stop. You can't do anything. You are helpless. I have never felt so helpless, and it didn't make me feel like a failure, it made me want to get rid of her. Thank God it was only a couple of minutes, but come on, I can't even go a couple of minutes? I'm completely screwed.
People say that when it's your own kid it's different, that you can live with more crying and you actually want to meet their need instead of giving up. I sure hope that is true because otherwise I am going to be one terrible mother.
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I am reliably told that it *is* different when it's your own kid. Which is not to say that there won't be difficult times; I have to imagine that there will. (Have you read Anne Lamott's "Operating Instructions"? She writes beautifully about writing and Jesus and single-parenting.) But I think it's different when the kid is yours, on all sorts of levels.
It is different with your own kid.
I have never felt particularly intuitive with kids, and as I got older (i.e., out of babysitting age) I found it harder and harder to communicate with them well. Don't have this problem with Clare. I get her (mostly, I mean, even with moms sometimes Toddlerish is just gibberish.) And she gets me.
What I've found with Clare is that if she's screaming, there's some sort of reason and it's usually pretty easy to figure it out. It gets harder nowadays since she's a toddler with more complex needs/wants than a baby, but even so, it's a matter of working through the possibilities, which are finite.
See, you knew what the issue with this kid was--and you knew the problem was not that you didn't know what was wrong but that you were the wrong person to fix it, and that's not your fault.
Brent and I used to have what we called "childless moments" for years before we had Clare. Once I got pregnant I assumed they would stop, but I think I was about 5 or 6 months along when we saw this horrible kid totally tyrannizing his whole table at a restaurant while his parents flitted about helplessly...and as I thought "childless moment" and started to lean forward to share the thought with Brent my big ol; belly bumped the table and I thought, oh shit. I'm not allowed to have those any more, now what???
Finally...you know your body better than anyone else. You're not a medical object and hurrah for not allowing yourself to be turned into one!
As the mother of an almost-12-year-old and a 7-year-old, I can assure you that it *is* different with your own kid.
Not that you won't have moments that you'll want to shake them, mind you. You WILL. That means you are human, not that you are a terrible mother.
Never forget that you can put them in a crib or other safe, contained space, and leave the room until you get control of your emotions. There were a number of times that I had to put my crying son safely in his room and close the door between us for a few minutes. Crying did not hurt him, and the breather it gave me was a lifesaver for both of us.
Yes, apparently my sis and mom both employed the "leave them in their crib" technique. Sis told me that if you put them in and take a shower, then you get the double benefit of not hearing the crying anymore AND getting a shower (which is relaxing and you probably haven't had one in days). And usually by the time shower's done, the baby is either asleep or has stopped crying. With this recent visitor I had nowhere safe to put her, so I was stuck, but that will definitely not be the case with our own one.
I'm one of those who has no idea what to do with other people's children, but seemed---somehow---to be pretty competent with my own.
So don't worry--you'll do fine. Especially now that you can eat again!
Pax,
Doxy
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