u/Chickeecheek

I'm just not up for all the necessary tasks that come up. I'm afraid of having a victim mindset when I say this. I'm afraid of being selfish. But I have almost nothing to give. Kids still have to eat, be cleaned, be taught skills and boundaries. The house needs to be functional. I'd like to be able to find things. I'd like to take care of myself.

But I just can't do it all. I can't.

My husband -infuriatingly- sometimes asks me what's for dinner, and I'm just like 🤷‍♀️ beats me, bro. Sucks to suck. And we go on to have a nutritionally adequate amalgamation of whatever we have in our house, or sometimes it's frozen pizza. I've given up on consistently cooking for the time being, I make a real family meal probably twice a week.

I have a 1 year old. He's still disastrously messy when he eats. I clean the floor really well probably once every 3 days. It looks absolutely disgusting in between.

I have a 4 year old. I have limited screen time to during the 1 year old's nap every other day. I do speech therapy practice with him first. Go me on that front because that's about all I can do. He demands so much attention and I don't want to crush his soul so I try to listen to him talk all day, and play with him occasionally, but it's exhausting. I just want him to leave me alone. He STILL follows me to the bathroom if he knows I'm going. He says he just wants to be with me. Bless it.

And then there are the doom piles, kid clothes that need gone through (and my clothes), the stack of stuff that needs to be donated, my own hobby begging me for just an hour of my time once or twice a week that I can still barely get to. And I need to force myself to walk regularly or all energy leaves my body. I don't even dream of washing windows at this point, or deep cleaning anything. My bathroom stays barely acceptable. Our bedrooms are a mess. My life is objectively actually very good, but I'm surviving all the time. Just surviving. Why!!! Why can't I do more?? I try to give myself credit for the little things I am able to do, but there is so much I almost never do that really should be done more. I know my house needs better systems and I need more of a routine but I feel like I don't have the brain cells to make those things happen right now.

My husband often spends a LOT of his time off catching us up on house work and laundry. He is ADHD too and likes to get lost in his hobbies when not doing that, which I try to support because he works and does a decent amount at home. Meanwhile I'm going to therapy for years so I can learn to demand breaks for myself. I feel like I don't deserve them because I am actually so bad at being a stay at home mom. Like I wanted this but if I knew I'd feel like an absolute failure so much I might not have done it. I finally crashed out about this to my husband tonight. Maybe he will support me getting breaks more and stop questioning why I go to therapy. I'm just trying not to go insane. I want to feel different than this and I have almost tried medication multiple times and always freak myself out of it and don't. But I can't keep living like this! I genuinely don't enjoy my life most of the time! It's not okaaaayyy. Is it because my kids are young? Will I be like this forever??

My second baby just turned 1 and my first is 4. I sleep between them on a queen floor bed every night and my husband takes our less safe queen in the master bedroom. Our apartment is furnished and we don't plan to stay much longer, so I never pushed to change our bed situation to a king. I spent the first 6 months of this second baby's life absolutely yearning for a king bed, though.

I miss my husband so much! I just want to all be together all night. But since that's not possible, I want to go back to sleeping all night with him again instead of spending an hour or two together until the first wake up. I'm sick of lying awake next to him while he snoozes away because I know that this wakeup is coming, and my body also rests best next to my children because I know they're okay (and having myself as a barrier between them seems safest and I can't really rest until I know baby is safe but don't want to leave my husband). Don't get me wrong, cosleeping is so convenient for breastfeeding, especially in seasons with extra night wakeups. And I despise transfers into cribs and never mastered the skill involved because laying down and nursing and then rolling away is sooo much easier. But... I'm sick of cosleeping. It's a factor in my desire to not have another baby and having to go through this again. It seems like something that is a good idea for lots of good reasons but our circumstances make it a little harder. I understand why people sleep train and keep their kids in cribs forever. I'm too inherently overwhelmed with the details of life and motherhood to do that right now, or to really change my circumstances at all, so I'm basically complaining until the seasons ends. Sorryyy I hate to be that person, but I'm just tired.

Anybone else in similar circumstances? Is there an obvious answer to my dilemma or will I just suffer a little longer until I'm comfortable with the kids sleeping together in a queen bed? I am considering getting two separate single mattresses and asking our landlord to take the queen bed out, but I cuddle them both to sleep and that would be a transition I'm not yet ready for. I do feel like something needs to change in general but time may make the change for me, if that makes sense.

I have Hashimoto's. I have this thing that happens, especially after air travel, and I've always assumed it was a Hashi's flare up because the front of my throat often hurts as one of the symptoms, and it seemed to happen more when my medication wasn't controlling things as well. However, I took a long flight in a small airplane this week and had a flare up that seemed specifically triggered by this activity. Is there something I'm missing?? It's so specific that surely it's not simply altitude sickness, though maybe that contributes. Often there is a 3 day delay or so when I travel in a large jet for this to happen, but this time it started while still in the air.

My neck gets tight especially right at the base of my head. I get a headache and sometimes nausea. I don't want to look at anything and just need to sleep. What fixes it is usually a hot shower on my neck plus laying flat to sleep in a very dark room overnight. I try to hydrate as well.

I'm suspicious that these are just migraines but they do seem to have some sort of specific triggers and possible relation to my thyroid.