Night watch

My husband moves to night shift tonight. Full-on, 6 pm til 6 am overnights. And I am full of anxiety and fear over it.

I do not want to be at home alone. I am scared. No, make that terrified.

Let me explain why.

I didn't blog about it, but there was a night back in May of this year when a man tried to break into our house at three in the morning.

We were home, asleep. Our dogs woke suddenly and ran to the foot of our bed, barking wildly. We quieted them, then there was another sound. We weren't sure what it was. The dogs went crazy again. We got them calmed down again. Then there was another noise that sounded like someone walking on the wood laminate floor in our living room. "Okay," I whispered, "That sounds like footsteps."

Dave got out of bed and let the dogs down. They charged out of the room, growling and barking. But it was as if there was an invisible perimeter on the living room rug that they would not pass. They absolutely would NOT go any further. Dave picked up his flashlight and shone it around the living room. He would later tell me that someone else flashed a different colored flashlight on our dogs. He hurriedly came back in the bedroom. I was still sitting on our bed. "Call 911," my husband hissed. "Someone's here. I don't know if they're inside or outside, but someone's here."

"What?", I whimpered. "Brooklyn...Brooklyn...." Her bedroom is on the opposite side of the house. "Call 911. Now," Dave growled.

Dave grabbed his shotgun and went to the edge of the living room. He cocked it and roared, "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!"

My trembling fingers fumbled with the cell phone. First I dialed 811. Then 911. The dispatcher answered and asked what my emergency was. I told him my full address and that someone was either trying to break into our house or was already in our house. I was practically hyperventilating as I told him, "My baby...I can't get to her...she's on the other side of the house...my husband's a cop....he's trying to clear the house....I can't get to my baby....my baby...."
Then the dispatcher asked me if I was calling from within the city limits of the major city about 10 miles away from us. UM, NO. I GAVE YOU MY FULL ADDRESS, INCLUDING TOWN, WHEN I CALLED!!!! "Then you need their police department, ma'am. Let me transfer you." AND HE PUT ME ON HOLD!!!

So by then I was definitely hyperventilating and shaking harder than I probably ever have and I had to relay the whole situation to the dispatcher in my actual town. And I could no longer hear Dave....I could occasionally hear a door or see flashing lights and I had no idea what was going on, I just needed to get to my Baby Bear so, so bad.

I think once I was on the phone with the proper dispatcher for all of three minutes before the police arrived at our house. But....oh my God, you want to talk about time creeping by. I slumped against our closet door. "Oh my God...please make them hurry...please, please, my baby, my little baby girl, please, I can't get to her, please, I have to get to her, please, please make them hurry, oh my God, I'm so scared...."

As it turned out, no one had gotten inside of our house. They had been in our backyard, they had come through our back gate. There were footprints in the mud leading up to the window where Dave had seen the flashlight shining in.

And that was that. The police couldn't find him. A man was arrested breaking into houses in a neighboring town with a similar M.O. a few days later. Maybe it was him. Maybe not.

Brooklyn never woke up once through the whole ordeal. Not even after the police left, when I collapsed next to her crib, crying.

And THAT is why I do not want to be home alone at night. I can't do this. What am I supposed to do if something like this happens again and my husband isn't home? I am absolutely terrified of not being able to protect my baby girl.

So. Do I take a sleeping bag into her room and sleep on her floor? My alarm will wake her up when I have to get up for work. Dave won't let me move her crib into our room. I have thought about putting her Tucker sling/wedge that she sleeps on onto our bed next to me so that she can sleep there, but Dave would have to move her and the whole apparatus when he gets home at 6 or 6:30 a.m., and I'm sure it would wake Brooklyn. I hate to shake up her sleep routine in any way whatsoever when she has just started sleeping so well the past few months, but I am just so afraid that I don't know what to do. The worry and fear are absolutely suffocating me this week. I am petrified of tonight. Ideas??????

This machine cannot communicate these thoughts and the strain I am under....

I knew I hadn't blogged in a while, but I was shocked to get on here and see that it had been just a couple of days short of a month since my last entry.

Allow me to attempt to explain myself.

No, I can't give you a single specific reason why I haven't been writing. I will tell you that I started this blog to be my personal, somewhat-anonymous space where I could say what I wanted, where I could vent and worry and talk about things that I am normally too afraid to talk about in real life. Well, either afraid to talk about or I just don't feel like anyone wants to hear about it. And now, apparently I am getting that way with my blog too.

I could write about how more often than not, my marriage seems to be crumbling. How my husband and I fight for hours at a time, days at a time, yell at each other, and how I want to hit him so badly for saying the hurtful things he says to me. How I have cried so hard that I cannot stop and end up having panic attacks in the middle of the night, because I never, ever thought that we would be like this, and I never would have dreamed that I would feel the way that I do about him so often now.

I could blog about how my brother was living in a Wal-Mart because he has been kicked out of overy homeless shelter in town because he refuses to stop using drugs. I could tell you about the call my parents got from one of my brother's friends, saying that my brother had a cyanide pill and planned to take it soon to end his life. How my parents asked me to help, and so I knew nothing else to do but to use my connections at work to have a probation violation warrant issued for his arrest. I went and told his probation officer's supervisor about every violation that I knew of. I found out where he was going to be dropped off and when on the day said warrant was released. I stayed on the phone with the officers as they found and followed him, and arrested him. How my brother said he would kill himself in jail and my guilt related to that. What kind of person orchestrates her own brother's arrest? Me, apparently, when I see no other way to try to save him from himself. But if something happens to him behind those bars, I will never be able to forgive myself. Because although I am not the REASON he is in jail, I put him there.

I could write about my worst fear in the world right now...that at sixteen months, my baby girl has stopped using all of her words. How every word with the exception of "Dada" has seemingly disappeared from her little mind. That it has been nearly a month since I have heard her sweet, tiny baby voice say "Mama", "baby", "apple", "hi", "hey", "bye", "puppy", "egg", or "fish". That she no longer points at pictures in books, asking to hear the words for everything by saying "This? This?" How I am completely terrified of that horrible, ugly A-word...autism. That my husband is sick with worry over it because it runs in his family. "If she has it," he says, "it would be all my fault." And that it is taking what seems like a million years to have her evaluated or seen by her pedi. That I truly don't know if I could handle that diagnosis. I am so afraid to even think of it as a possibility, to type or speak the word. As if doing so will curse her with that condition or make it suddenly real. It tears me into a million little pieces.

I could write about any of those things.

But I end up pushing it all back down inside, rolling my fear and anger and guilt and sadness and worry into a ball in the pit of my stomach, and not using this blog for what it was intended to be - my only outlet for all of these feelings and fears. I tell myself that no one wants to read whiny, negative entries. That if I write the things that I am thinking, that people will think I am some kind of self-pitying, bitchy, crybaby drama queen.

And then I can't think of anything else I have to say, because all of these horrible feelings seem to consume me completely these days.

And no one wants to hear about that, right?

My disappointing Mother's Day

Today it is dreary and drizzly outside, and it just seems appropriate. I am just having one of those days.

Mother's Day was really disappointing for me. My husband is usually so great about making me feel special and planning sweet little surprises on important days. But yesterday, he said nothing about Mother's Day. We had been up for a couple of hours when I finally asked him if he knew what day it was. "Yeah, it's Mama's Day," he replied. And that was that.

I didn't need him to make a big huge deal out of the day or anything. I didn't need him to buy me an expensive present or plan anything elaborate. I just needed him to acknowledge the day. To give me a card from my daughter or something like that, since she isn't old enough to do so herself. Just to tell me that he knows how hard I am working to be a great mommy to our sweet baby girl. Just....something.

Instead, I pretty much ended up feeling like I must be doing such a shitty job as a mom that I wasn't worthy of a Mother's Day sentiment. If it wasn't for my daily dose of the emotion-stifling Lexapro, I think I would have been doing a lot of crying yesterday. Last night, while my husband slept soundly beside me, I laid in bed staring at the ceiling fan and feeling increasingly worse about myself and my (lack of?) motherly abilities. Today, I feel like I have a hangover from the sadness and disappointment of yesterday. And the weather seems to understand.

You CANNOT be serious.

What the hell is wrong with my husband? Sometimes I wonder if the irresponsible, inconsiderate person I now share a house and a child with is the same person I married.

Yesterday, he was off work. His mom came over to watch Brooklyn because she doesn’t get to see her very often. Dave told me that he was going to take advantage of the free time he would have and actually get some things done...mow the yard, take one of our dogs to get her shots, get Brooklyn’s prescriptions refilled.

I tried to call him a couple of times during the afternoon and he didn’t answer. He called me back around 4:30 and said that he was with his little brother and best friend and that they were on their way to my office. A few minutes later, they walked in. Dave says to his best friend, "Okay, Joe, show her the pictures." Joe comes over with his cell phone and starts showing me a series of pictures of someone getting a huge tattoo on their entire upper arm. I quickly notice that the person in the picture is wearing the same shirt as my husband. I look over at Dave and see that his sleeve is all bloody. He gives me a big goofy grin. He pulls his sleeve up to show me his new gigantic tattoo. "It’s AWESOME, isn’t it?!"

You have GOT to be kidding me. First of all....he doesn’t even bother telling me that he’s going to do this. I apparently don’t need to know, but his friend and brother and mom do. (His reasoning there: "I wanted to surprise you. I wanted to be able to show you and say, ‘Look what I did!’" SERIOUSLY??? Did you think I was going to jump up and down with excitement???)He has had no tattoos. Neither do I. We were planning on going together to get matching ones of Brooklyn’s newborn footprints after I am done breastfeeding her. Secondly, this thing was expensive. I can think of about 1,000 things we need to pay for more than that. Like, uh, medical bills, a several things that need to be done on our cars, pay off our home phone that was cut off (how white trash is that???), Christmas presents, tons of bills, formula, medicines. I could go on and on. And I would not say this to him because it’s hitting below the belt...but I am not the one who was demoted and got a $9,000.00 pay cut. I won’t say it, but I’m certainly thinking it. How freakin’ irresponsible and selfish. Oh, and by the way, why are you coming to my professional workplace looking like a hobo with bloody clothes???? Embarrassing and GROSS! Again....what the hell is wrong with you???

I don’t care that he got a tattoo. That’s not the issue. I wish he felt like he needed to include me in his plans. I can’t understand how he can justify spending our money this way when we clearly have so many other places it needs to go. I wish he would have thought of someone besides himself. I am PISSED. And he doesn’t care. He thinks it's pretty much the coolest thing he's ever done.

Oh...so he was at the tattoo parlor for four and a half hours. Do you think he got anything else accomplished during the nine hours his mom was taking care of Brooklyn? You know, those things that actually needed to get done? Nope, he didn't do a thing. Nice.

The space between us

I never, ever, ever would have thought that starting a family would be so hard on my marriage.

Last night, my hubby told me that he doesn’t feel close to me at all anymore. He wanted to know whether I still loved him. If I knew that he loved me. He said that he feels completely useless and unwanted.

Not that any of this was really news to me. We have had abbreviated versions of this conversation several times over the past few months. There is such a distance between us now. I think it’s just the stress we’ve been under, but I don’t know. We don’t have time for each other. We are often in the same room but barely talk to each other. We snap at each other over seemingly minor things. I have absolutely no desire to be intimate with him.

David said that there are three things that really upset him: 1. He can’t “fix” Brooklyn’s medical problems. 2. Because of that, he can’t “fix” me (the post-partum depression). 3. He doesn’t think that I am at all attracted to him anymore. He feels like he has had to almost force me to have sex with him the few times it has happened since Brooklyn was born. He doesn’t feel wanted.

I can’t seem to make him understand that it really isn’t anything personal. I am so, so, so tired and so, so, so stressed out. I know he is both of those things also. But I can’t ever put it aside. I stay sad and weepy and exhausted. I feel guilty and inadequate. I am anxious and worried and scared. I use what little energy I have at the end of the day to take care of Brooklyn. To try to be happy around her. To try to be a good mommy. I don’t have any energy left for what he wants from me.

Furthermore, as a man, he doesn’t comprehend that I can’t be in the mood to be close in that way when I don’t feel close to him in any other way. And I can’t really explain why we aren’t close in any other way now.

David and I were so close and such good friends that we didn’t have problems with some things that are regarded as being hard on a marriage. “The first year of marriage is the hardest year you will ever have,” we were repeatedly told. Our first year was a breeze. No problems. “Working opposite shifts will put a toll on your marriage,” they said. Nope. We made time for each other and we were great. We felt like we were closer than most couples were and thought that was the reason we didn’t have a hard time with those things.

This is not to say that our relationship has always been perfect. Of course not. But when there have been problems, we have quickly worked through them. And now it seems that we can’t. I don’t know what to do.

“I wish I was better,” he said. I asked him what that meant. “A better husband. A better dad. A better provider so you didn’t have to work.”

“I wish I was better,” I told him. “I should be happier now than I’ve ever been. I have to take these damn pills just to deal with life, and they don’t even really work. I’ve always wanted what I have right now, and I can’t be happy. I don’t understand.”