[Please note - This blog post was pre written in advance. I have used a Blogger tool to schedule when these posts appear. Pre written posts will appear once a day until they run out! I may go into labour any day now and am not necessarily monitoring this blog, able to publish or respond to comments or correct errors. Normal service may or may not be resumed depending on how this whole being a mummy thing goes]
So in my last few posts I reflected on how 2011 has been a time of great change for me. I had to refocus my energies and change my life and I started the ultimately successful road of CBT therapy. In these ways 2011 has gone very well.
It would be wrong however to give you the impression that everything in 2011 has gone smoothly and ended up smelling of roses exactly as I'd planned it.
Long time readers of this blog will know that when I started blogging I had a grand scheme in mind. I was going to become a successful housewife. Not the kind you see in kitsch 1950s adverts but something new and different. A 'new model' of housewife who would not just look after the home, but support her husband in his business. I was going to spend my days cooking healthy meals from scratch and then catching up on his admin work. I'd even planned a rota for myself, looking at what I would do on any given day. I might even have been a tinsy-winsy bit smug.
Well it turns out that tinsy-winsy smugness comes before a flipping great vomit and pain ridden fall.
The first month or so wasn't great. I didn't achieve what I'd set out to and I couldn't get myself into a routine. The house was not nearly as clean or homely as I'd envisioned it would be. Further more, complications in my other half's life meant that the business didn't get off the ground as quickly as we'd thought so I found myself totally structureless and at a loose end.
I didn't worry too much because we had the stress of an upcoming wedding to deal with and I found plenty to focus on in that. I was sure I would restructure things and begin again post the wedding.
The wedding came which was lovely; but unfortunately so did my husband. This wouldn't have been unfortunate under normal circumstances had I not
1) listened to the hysterical articles in the media about how female fertility declines rapidly after the age of 25 and believed that I didn't stand a snowflakes chance on a fire of getting pregnant or
2) believed I could start using fertility awareness as a method of contraception without trying it out for a few cycles first (otherwise known as 'winging it')
Fortunately while a surprise this pregnancy was not an unwelcome one. I'd wanted a baby for a long time, my husband was pleased too and we'd both agreed to a not trying not preventing sort of stance. We weren't going to try to get me pregnant but if it happened it happened.
Still I found myself in the middle of April with a baby shaped wrecking ball smashing my previous plans to smithereens.
I think I would have been able to rebuild things again if it hadn't been for the fact that the pregnancy has sucked the life out of me and left me extremely ill for the last nine months. Between vomiting, anal bleeding, two hospitalisations, tiredness, a general feeling of trying to swim upstream in a river made of raging torrents of sewage and extreme exhaustion its safe to say that I haven't gotten much done lately.
This is largely why I haven't blogged much. Despite appearances to the contrary I didn't start this blog just to hear the sound of my own voice and talk at length about my life. Well not entirely anyway. I'd planned to use it to reflect on what is now a somewhat unusual position for a women in the modern world - that of the housewife. I wanted to talk about my failures and successes, to interact with other housewives and to reflect on how we are viewed by society at large.
I haven't been able to do any of that because I've been sat on my arse doing nothing but being ill for the last nine months.
Well sat on my arse for five months. Then a pair of feet migrated up to my ribs and since then I've been largely laid on my side to cope with that development.
I haven't been anywhere near the kind of housewife I intended to be and had very little to say on the matter. I haven't put into practice any of the things I intended to do. I am not organised and my home is not a tightly run ship. I don't even cook any more since the bump got to big and heavy for me to get near the stove. Now my husband does it. The last month or so he has done pretty much everything. He is his own housewife and he looks after me too.
I can't pretend that I'm not really sad about this and disappointed. I'm kind enough to myself to realise that had it not been for the wrecking ball things might have been different and better, but I still feel regret for the way things have turned out. In dark times I feel that I've let my husband down and it's hard not to feel sorrow when I see how stressed he has been and still is.
More to the point I realise that 2012 can't go the way 2011 has. Despite the fact that I could go into labour before I finish this blog entry, despite the fact I'm taking on a huge new job - that of mother - any day now, despite the fact everyone tells me that my life will never be the same and I will have no control over my time for the next few years - I now feel that my New Model Housewife project is more important then ever.
Once the baby is here it will be more important then ever to be organised. It will be more important then ever to ensure I do my part to make my husbands business a success. Goodness knows we'll need the money. The house must be run smoothly to ensure we don't collapse under the weight of dirty dishes and laundry. I have to try and have some sort of routine just to provide myself with some sense of normality.
I know that to many people baby = chaos. No doubt that somewhere there will be a new mother reading this and cackling hysterically at my ambitions. People have tried to knock me off my perch already by convincing me that my carefully laid plans will go to waste after five minutes.
I however am determined to prove them wrong.
Not because I'm stubborn, which is a factor, but because I don't have a choice. I don't want to live in total chaos. I don't want my husband to feel any more stressed then he needs to. I don't want my child to grow up in a chaotic home. I want to live with some semblance of order for my own happiness and mental wellness. So I have no choice, the only path open to me is to get organised and become the kick arse New Model Housewife I'd always intended to be.
Next time - How I intend to get organised and become the kick arse New Model Housewife I'd always intended to be and why I think my plans will work and not descend into total anarchy.
No comments:
Post a Comment