Tired.

Again.
It's been a tough few weeks. I've been over-stretching myself while simultaneously not getting anything really achieved.

It sounds stupid but my dental treatment is really stressful. The dental office is up a flight of stairs, which means that nt only do I actually physically have to climb the stairs, but it also presents the baby-problem. Firstly, there's getting to the place. It's a 5-10 minute walk, with no bus that goes there, so I have to walk. What does this have to do with stairs? Well, think about it for a second. I can either take her in the pushchair and then have to lug 12kgs of pushchair AND a baby up and down a flight of stairs, or I can not take the pushchair and carry the 20lb baby there and back. Neither of these options is actually any good. I can't really physically do either of them without doing myself damage. Forgoing the pushchair is the easier option, because I can take her in a sling, but that presents the problem that once she's in the dentists office and I'm in the dentists chair....what the fuck am I supposed to do with her? For my last appointment her godmother came with me, but I cannot and will not ask that of her again (except for when I go into hospital to have my wisdom tooth removed) I hate being in debt to people, I hate asking for favours, it humiliates me. The dental room is too small for her to be in there with me, so assuming I get there in one piece and get up the stairs in one piece, we then have the issue of who looks after the baby.

Are you starting to see why I'm extremely fucking stressed about this?

Yesterday I had a really great day out with a couple of friends, but the need to pretend that everything was great and I was fine and normal and wonderful meant that I massively over-excerted myself. Then we had a huge problem that took a couple of hours to sort of on the phone and that caused a lot of stress. Because we'd had a big day and then a stressful night we didn't end up having dinner, just a small snack. So today I woke up exhausted, in a lot of pain, with stress-whiplash, and the niggling guilt of having things that desperately needed to be done but hadn't been. I was also starving. But because I was out all of yesterday and out of spoons when I got home, there were NO clean dishes. At all. And no clean pots or pans or cooking implements or anything. The fridge was full, but not of grabbable, immediate-to-eat food. It taunted me with ingredients! They were all 'Ooooh, look at me, I'm a lettuce. If you took me out and chopped me up and added those tomatoes over there? You could totally have a really crappy salad. But you can't do that, CAN YOU? HA! YOU LOSE!'
Guys, it's a bad day when you're being taunted by lettuce. Lettuce is pretty much the wimp of the vegetable world. If you suck worse than the suckiest vegetable, then you suck a LOT.

I ended up having a can of coke, just so I would have the energy to grab a few sticks of celery and a jar of peanut butter. I wiped down the cleaniest of the dirty plates and after being up over an hour and a half finally had the oomph to eat something.

I'm in a guilt-spiral right now. A friend is very ill, and I bought her a present and meant to send it off a while ago, but didn't. The more time that goes by between when I MEANT to send it and the present, the worse I feel, and the less I can physically look at it. It is not all my fault, as I said it's been a tiring few weeks and honestly, I'm beyond exhausted. All the time. The 50 minute round trip to the post office (including standing around for 25 minutes in the que while A.B screams at me and my hips freak out) is something that I dread and that I've put off on thebasis that I can't push myself any more than I absolutely positively HAVE TO. And who always loses? My friends. My friends lose. And then I'm so ashamed of myself that I step back from them and then you know who loses? Me. And then I'm miserable and grumpy and guilty and who loses then? A.B and Mr A. So now EVERYONE HAS LOST. Awesome.

I also just got an e-mail from Mr A's aunt, inviting me to the theatre in a week. I could cry. I like this woman a lot, and I haven't been out by myself (as in, without Mr A) to an evening thing for over two years. I would love to go but I can't, because Baby A.B won't take milk from a bottle. And no one understand this. No one seems to understand that I can't 'just' leave her to starve. People don't understand why we don't 'just' get her on bottles. They act like the answers are so easy but they don't know her and don't understand what we've been through trying to get milk into her. They don't understand what it's like listening to your baby scream and cry and knowing that you can fix it. They don't know how hard it is to 'just' ignore that. And I get so tired of trying to explain why I can't 'just' leave her to people who don't understand why I bother to breastfeed in the first place, why I bother to breastfeed for 'so long', and why I care SO MUCH about breastfeeding her. They always feel like they need to offer me advice I don't want or ask for. Really, she won't starve to death? You don't say! Fuck off, even if she doesn't starve doesn't mean she'll be ok. There is a lot of bad stuff between being happy and starving to death. Bad stuff that I don't necessarily feel like inflicting on my baby.

See, I'm getting all defensive and angry and upset and.... I don't know. I'm stressed. I may have mentioned that.

I'm going to go drown my sorrows in some strawberry and mango tea.