first you must accept

Dear Diary,

You’ll have to forgive me if this is a bit disjointed.  I have a newborn, who in typical newborn fashion, wants nothing more than to be permanently attached to me these days.  We were doing well for a short period of time with a bit of ‘alone mommy time’, while said newborn would swing in a swing.  But as of yesterday afternoon, this seems to have become a thing of the past.  This probably has everything to do with the fact that as of yesterday afternoon, I had come to the conclusion that it was time to venture into the writing realm once more.  I began composing in my head and aching to just have a small period of time in front of my laptop.

18 hours later and this has been my first opportunity.

Such is life with a baby, though.. right?

Perhaps a bit of catch-up is in order.  I tend to not do that in my blog, preferring to allow the ‘catch-up’ to happen more organically.  However, I am going to make an exception for this post because the fact of the matter is that so much has occurred and is occurring, the jist of which is what is causing my unyielding need to write.

And so… here is the down and dirty of the last several months.

First and foremost:

I’d like to welcome my daughter, Aurora Bella, into this narrative.  She arrived a week late on September 27^th at 12:15pm, weighing in at 8lbs, 13oz and 20.5 inches.   And up until she actually emerged, I was fairly convinced her name was going to need to be Finnegan John.  I’m pretty sure this is a result of some misguided belief that because everything else in our lives is tanking, there was no way in hell the universe would see fit to actually provide me with that which I have been obsessed for some time.

I was wrong, though.  She is a girl and up until yesterday, a very quiet, unobtrusive and basically crying-free, girl at that.

Despite my best attempts (read:  trying every known natural induction method known to man: including, but not limited to:  walking hours up hill and down, taking stairs two at a time sideways, nipple stimulation, acupuncture, spicy food, sex, etc) and despite the fact that I spent the last month of my pregnancy in some extended form of pre-labor, I did not go into labor spontaneously and instead, had her via my third caesarian. 

At the time of her birth, my husband had been without work for over 3 weeks and continues to be.  You might recall from earlier posts how I stupidly mentioned that the only thing it would take to send us right over the edge and send us right into a true state of poverty would be for one or both of us to lose our jobs.

Bingo.

He did not actually ‘lose’ his job, but the work at his consulting company ran very dry and has continued in this manner ever since.  On top of all of this is the fact that his company still owes him money, to the tune of thousands and we have not seen any of it.

As a result, we are months behind on rent with no means of paying it moving forward unless work through the consulting company magically appears or a new job presents itself.

You know that saying ‘between a rock and a hard place’?  That’s us, multiplied by about  1 million. 

There was a period of time, before Aurora, where it looked like a job was on the horizon, a job which would require a move north to the Seattle area, a job which would allow me to disconnect myself from the work force and focus on being a stay at home mommy, but that particular job has not yet come to fruition and I don’t know if it will.

So, I am looking at having to return to work in about two weeks.  This is, by the way, before I will even be technically released to work after having a c-section, but yanno, I have no choice in the matter.  We do what we must to survive and I am still the insurance provider and I am still the only one in the family who continues to bring money into the household, not that the money does anything except keep our utilities turned on and provide us with a very small amount of groceries.  It doesn’t even fully pay credit card payments, which makes for joyous and unyielding phonecalls with creditors.

But hey… we are doing the best that we can.  Hopefully, beginning next week, there will be some unemployment coming in.  Make no mistake, it will not even cover our rent and car payment, but it will be something, right?

This is the unfortunate reality of our situation.  It is, I believe, worse than it has ever been for us.  And believe me, it is quite a shock, give than last year we made more money together than we ever have.  This year we have made less than half what we did last year and our overhead increased dramatically, as well.

I try to let go and tell myself that somehow we are going to get through this.  I try not to obsessively try to control everything I can and everything I cannot.  I try to tell myself that I should enjoy this small amount of time home with my new daughter, my husband and boys, but honestly…. That is so very difficult when you are a position where you walk down to New Seasons to browse (not buy) so that you can grab a free sample dixie cup of the amazing coffee they put out for customers to enjoy… just to taste good coffee because you can’t afford to go to a coffee shop.

It is difficult when you are in a position where your husband will, during leaner times of the month, wait for you and your kids to eat before he does, where he eats the leftovers and is losing weight to the point where friends who haven’t seen him for awhile, ask if he is ‘ok’ upon glimpsing him for the first time in weeks or months.

It is difficult when you are desperately attempting to breastfeed and not fail like you have with your previous two children, because there is no way in hell you can afford formula.  The stress of not being able to afford anything but breastfeeding is probably not the best way to ensure that your breastfeeding relationship goes well, though I must admit… it is going well so far.  Thankfully.  But, I live in fear that things will go awry as soon as I return to the workforce.

The one bright spot in all of this is that our children are not yet old enough to really understand the impact of this.  They have no idea that they are getting a toy from the dollar store because that is all we can afford and sometimes we can’t even afford that.  They don’t understand that we don’t have cheese or crackers as a snack today because we can’t afford to buy them or that we continue to have Max’s Ensure-like, big boy milk delivered from Apria because it is covered by insurance and allows us to make sure that even if we don’t have any milk for Rowan, we still have the canned formula/milk we can give him.

I swear, if I weren’t living this way, I wouldn’t believe it was true.  But, believe me… it is.  Things are just that bad right now.  

I am sure it will turn around.  I believe that it will.  I have to believe it.

But even after Moose gets a new job, it is going to be a very, very long time before we can dig out of this mess and it is more than likely that the new job will not be in Portland, but in some other city in some other state, which will present itself with a whole host of other issues to overcome.

I am a bucket of joy today, am I not?

Make no mistake, I do really believe things are going to be ok.  I do believe we are going to claw our way out.  But, sometimes you just have to acknowledge the deep well of despair in which you find yourself before you can focus on the positive…..

First you must accept, before you can focus on hope.