Sometimes, when things don't move as fast as I thought, I lose hope. Please tell me you have been there too, that I'm not the only one! To you, as a third party to our adoption, it may seem that things have been moving at a pretty good pace - one thing happening after another. To me, this whole becoming a parent thing is taking forever. And when something takes forever, I start to over-analyze. Unfortunately, I am also a researcher at heart and tend to look up as much information as possible with whatever is on hand. What is on hand right now is the internet; and people's blogs; and people's stories of adoption; and people's horror stories.
Now, I do tend to be the kind of person that believes that all things work together for good, and so I am confident it will all work out well. I do realize there will be some difficulties, and have never been under the delusion that any kind of parenting would be easy. However, when I read some of these stories, I feel seriously discouraged. I feel like it might be too hard.
All these stories are not helping my current emotional feelings of incompetence. Lately, I've felt so stressed out with work, having a semblance of a social life, and trying to keep my house in order that I've come to question whether I can even be a working mom. I've talked it over with David, and we've decided that as soon as possible (aka when our contract allows me to) I will go down to either part time or not working with some tutoring jobs. The more I think about it, the better the plan seems. I took a sick day today because I had a huge headache and was feeling flat out awful from my cold. I was able to sleep, get good medicine, eat decent food and altogether rest. Not only was I able to finally rest, but I also had a chance to catch up on some things that have fallen behind in the chaos. I was able to straighten up and do some serious amounts of laundry. Cuddling with my babies (Aubie and Luna) was truly helpful to my mental health as well!
All of these thoughts when considering myself being a parent is leading to me feeling that maybe I'm not ready. (I need to insert here that I have not changed my mind about adoption! Just in case you were getting that vibe). It makes me feel like if I can't handle these small little responsibilities, than what will happen when I have extra little people, with bigger needs than mine, to take care of. It's kinda freaking me out a little. I have been consoling myself with the fact that it's very common for people, when they find out their going to be parents, to freak out and wonder what kind parent they will be.
Because I have been feeling uneasy about being a parent, I've decided to do the one thing I know usually makes me feel better about doing something new; pick up a million books and read about it! I've gotten tons to samples of parenting books off my Kindle, and I'll be buying a few of them as soon as I figure out which ones I like (i.e. the ones that actually teach good parenting techniques based on Psychology, and not ones that are like "I have pretty good kids, this is how I did it!" - It's crazy how many books like that there are!). I feel like maybe if I can read about good techniques, I will feel more prepared for managing my life and my children, and then will feel less uneasy about becoming a parent. Do you have any favorites that I should check out? Any advice during this period of waiting?
No comments:
Post a Comment