Educating the Wheelers

Though I’m able to keep a detached bemusement about it all, I had forgotten how grim post-partum depression can be, particularly for a fairly isolated stay-at-home mom. It is not helped by the fact that our children are, bless ‘em, “high need.” Owen howls if he is not constantly held. I know there are different schools of thought on how to handle those types of kids, and I don’t have a dog in that ideological fight, but in our household, his disposition means that my hands are never free. [The PP depression is not helped at all by his fussiness. Both of my children have been soothed when other people hold them and fuss when I do. The books tell you that it’s common to think “the baby hates me!” when you have pp depression, but I tell ya, my babies hate me. Heh.***]

Thankfully, this is a problem that you can help — though not completely alleviate — by throwing money at it.

I’ve managed to scrounge up a neighborhood girl who can come by once or twice a week for 3 hours and for 5 dollars an hour, she’ll play with my 2 and a half year old while I tend to the newborn, or if by the grace of God he is sleeping, I can take a shower or do laundry or something, anything.

There are no other babysitters in our neighborhood that haven’t already turned me down for being too busy, so I also occasionally hire a post-partum doula 1-2x a week for 4 hour shifts on weeks that the babysitter can’t help, and she’ll handle one or both kids, or do housework for me. That’s 15 dollars an hour.

I usually end up having some sort of help twice a week. So it’s not cheap, that’s for sure. But I keep reminding myself that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And I just have to keep myself sane until we get there.

*** At least I can look to Audrey’s example to know that he’ll grow out of it. He’s already starting to, thank God.

Wedding presents just don’t make much sense to me anymore. It used to be that people married when they were coming out of high school and leaving their parents’ house for the first time. They had little money and needed to outfit their new homes, and getting some pots and pans or a toaster would have been a real blessing.

The vast majority of people I know have gotten/are getting married in their late twenties/early to mid-thirties these days. So we’ve got two people who have been living on their own in their own places for about 10 years and already have bought everything they need to live comfortably. In fact, since it’s generally the melding of two independent 10-year-old households, there’s an overabundance of stuff to start with and there are several large donations to Goodwill. Most of the bridal registries I’ve seen look like an opportunity to upgrade to shinier and spiffier stuff rather than to help them get started with the necessities of life.

On the flipside, you now have late teenage and early twenties folks out on their own having to buy all this stuff for themselves right about the time when they have the least amount of disposable income until they start having their kids.

I’m not saying the answer is for everyone to go back to marrying their high school sweetheart right after graduation. [Lord knows I’m glad I’m not married to anyone I dated in high school! Or college, for that matter.] And I’m not just trying to wiggle out of buying wedding gifts because I’m cheap. [No, really!] But it seems like the tradition doesn’t much match the reality anymore.

Our introvert-would-not-be-strong-enough neighbor appears to be getting all of his trees cut back today and yesterday. That’s good! We’re thrilled to see him actually taking care of his property. But then I’m watching out the back window as I see tree branches falling into our backyard and possibly even taking out a part of our fence.

Hmm.

So I go over to talk to the nice young Hispanic men who are doing the work. Oh oh. They don’t speak a word of English. Not even the foreman. I don’t know a lick of Spanish. We somehow manage via hand signals and perplexed expressions to communicate what the issue is, and he starts walking to my fence gate to help me get the tree branches out of my yard.

And then I remember to yell, “Perros!”

And I think, “Thank you, Amores Perros!”

UPDATE: Oh my God, they cut a bunch of our trees. Really badly. Oh my God.

I can’t believe it’s been over a month already since Owen was born. I’m in one of those funky warps where time is simultaneously crawling and speeding by. I have not been online much and in some ways it has been nice to be so disconnected.

Finance-wise, things have been uneventful. We haven’t yet received our portion of the bill for the birth, but it’ll be biggish, because our midwife is “out of network” [as if our insurance had “in network” midwives … ] and it’s early enough in the year that we haven’t chipped much away yet on our yearly deductable. On the upside, we’ve been squirrelling money away into our HSA this year, so it’ll at least be paid in pre-tax dollars.

Unfortunately, like last time, I’m in the midst of post-partum depression, and I’m just hunkering down and waiting for it to pass.

The children are, of course, as beautiful and awesome as usual.