Peak stress

[Balderdasha]

I need to vent a bit. I am aware that theoretically I could be under a lot more stress. No-one I know has recently died (touch wood or other similar warding off superstition), for example, but there is a huge amount going on and I am pretty stressed.

Currently:
- we are supposed to move into a new house in 2 weeks but still jumping through bureaucratic hoops with the letting agents / landlord so don't have a definitive yes yet
- we have handed in our notice at our current flat so if all falls through with the new place we'll be homeless in 3 weeks time, plus we've got people trooping in and out for photos / viewings
- if all goes well, the new house is unfurnished, we don't own any furniture, so we have to sort out furniture as well as the usual moving stress
- I am due to give birth in 6 weeks, so really need to keep my stress levels down so I don't go into premature labour which would not help matters
- I am looking after an excitable toddler full-time
- part of the reason the referencing process has been so tricky is because we run our own company, with first accounts, etc due with HMRC in January 2016
- I am still in recovery from post-natal depression last year. Much better but not totally out of the woods.
- the depression meant we got massively behind with finances, I'm processing a backlog of 18 months worth of invoices at the moment
- my husband's work means that this week he was in Surrey, next week he's in Cardiff
- three of our parents have recently had cataract operations so can currently only see with one eye each
- my father-in-law is in hospital about once a month due to either operations for his bladder cancer, maintenance of his diabetes, or something heart related (including recent heart attacks and a fibrillation issues)

I don't think I've been this stressed since 2009 when my grandfather died and then a couple of months later my dad walked out on my mum announcing he'd been having an affair for 14 years and had bought a house with the other woman.

Anyone else feeling particularly snowed under right now?

P.S. just posted this in football by accident, anyone know how to delete that one?

[WOM]

Peak stress

Balderdasha wrote: Anyone else feeling particularly snowed under right now?

Imma guess 'no', but I'll let others answer for themselves.

I have some stuff going on, but nothing that compares to all that. Of course you know this, but it will all pass and you'll keep going. Be strong and vent whenever you feel like it. There's strength in numbers. And I'm sorry it's all piling on right now.

[Crusoe]

Peak stress

What WOM said. Things will get better and until they do keep venting to let it out. Good luck.

[Balderdasha]

Peak stress

Thanks guys.

Oh, I also forgot that my husband's passport expires in about 2 months time, which is problematic because we either need to get his Italian one replaced, v annoying bureaucratic faff involving queuing outside Italian embassy for days and risking the question of why he never did his Italian military service, or we need to apply for British citizenship for him, even more bureaucratic faff.

I've just phoned my daughter's nursery (she goes two mornings a week, I don't think we'd have survived this far otherwise) and postponed picking her up for 45 mins because I have diarrhoea and need to eat a sandwich. Too much info probably. I have taken to loud, creative, swearing and crying whenever I have five mins alone in the house because I can't do it in front of my toddler. She already mimics the 'oof' straining noises / grunts I make when trying to stand up off the sofa, and doesn't need more material to copy!

[hobbes]

Peak stress

Shithammers. You can't even chug a bottle of red wine in mitigation, either. I feel for you Balders that's a lot to have going on. Moving house on it's own is almost unbearably stressful and that's when it's all simple and easy.

Do you have any family/mates who can take the toddler to the park for a couple of hours? Even just an hour or two can give you time to either relax a bit or get some stuff done.
As for furniture, you're in London right? British Heart foundation are good for 2nd hand stuff delivered really quickly if cash is tight. We got a practically new sofa for £100 from the one on the Old Kent Road and they delivered it the same day for £20. (On a Sunday.)

- we have handed in our notice at our current flat so if all falls through with the new place we'll be homeless in 3 weeks time

This was the biggest stress with buying our house. Long story short, we could only get a vague date within a month with a provisional date at the beginning of that period. So we could either give notice and risk being homeless for a month or possibly lay out two grand in rent we didn't need to pay (which we needed for mortgage.) That and the worry of moving the cub from the only place he'd known and from a brilliant, brilliant nursery where he really loved it, Drove me nuts for a bit.
it all worked out fine in the end. And he really likes the new place too (far more than I do.) but that doesn't help when you're in the midst of it, does it?

[hobbes]

Peak stress

She already mimics the 'oof' straining noises / grunts I make when trying to stand up off the sofa, and doesn't need more material to copy!

Hah. The cub does that too. Very deliberately says "oof!"
Not that I'm pregnant of course. Just old and knackered.

[Crusoe]

Peak stress

Our three year old has started saying "bloody thing!" at anything a bit tricky. My wife swears she has no idea where she picked that up.

[Balderdasha]

Peak stress

NB, the passport is important not because we're planning on going abroad on holiday any time soon (hollow laugh), but because my husband needs it to get through security at some of the sites he works at, and he occasionally has to work abroad at short notice.

[Kevin S]

Peak stress

Christ Balders, yeah, that's serious stress. Toddlers are more than enough on their own.

We did a house move while our boy was two and a half and my wife was about 4 months pregnant. Again, that nearly fell through, but very luckily it all went ok in the end. We had to hire a removal firm, though, as there was no way I could have cleared, boxed and moved everything myself.

Crusoe wrote: Our three year old has started saying "bloody thing!" at anything a bit tricky. My wife swears she has no idea where she picked that up.

Sadly it only took the first half a term at school before my little boy told his baby sister to fuck off.

[Kevin S]

Peak stress

I like hobbes' tip on the furniture. Emmaus is good for that too, if there is one nearish.

Also, if you go for some new flat-packs, our experience is that Ikea is an order of magnitude easier to assemble than Argos.

[Balderdasha]

Peak stress

Furniture is the bit that our parents are obsessed with, but very low on our list of priorities and easily sortable.

Right, must collect daughter from nursery before they phone social services. Continued messages of support and reassurances that it is normal to find this stressful much appreciated.

[meregreen]

Peak stress

I think any one of those things on their own would be a lot to cope with. Sounds like you're coping incredibly well with it all. It certainly makes me realise how trivial my own minor stresses are.

[My Name Is Ian]

Peak stress

I know exactly what you mean, Balders.

We had our first child seven weeks ago and I'm getting about four hours sleep a night, seven nights a week. My wife doesn't work, so I'm working overtime which pushes my salary up to about £32,000 per year, but I'm working forty-eight hours a week for it and even then it's only just enough to pay for everything. I see my wife for what feels like about half an hour a day, and we haven't had any time together alone since before the birth. We haven't had any time together at all without her being either with child or with a child since a week after we got married. I don't do anything at all for pleasure any more, because I either have no time or no money. I'm trying to hold the website together as and when I can, but that's proving extremely difficult and my plaintive pleas through social media for some assistance with it were completely ignored. My mother is eighty and her health is failing, but this means that there is pressure on us to visit her with the boy and this stabs the one day off I have with nothing else to do in the heart. Twice in the last four weeks this has been arranged without asking me before agreeing it. My hair is thinning thanks to Trichtillomania. I haven't had a haircut in months or a shave in weeks and look like failed audition from "The Hair Bear Bunch: The Movie." I'm not so much worrying about the possibility of burning out as secure in the knowledge that I am burning out. I keep getting told that the worst of having a newborn baby will be over shortly, but that doesn't help me now, does it?

(Yes, I know, paragraphs. I just wanted to give you all a taste of how it feels. If I could have written all of those words on top of each other, I would.)

[Crusoe]

Peak stress

Hang in there Ian. I remember the first few weeks and months being just a jumble of days without structure (there no days or nights, just hours awake and hours wishing you were asleep, and no weeks as you did the same thing every day regardless). And lack of sleep is an utter killer, I could cope with almost anything providing I'm vaguely rested, even five hours I could survive on. It does change to such a degree that you'd consider having another child, but as you say it's not much consolation when you're right in the middle of it. They seem to have a tendency to push you right to the limit and only then give something to make it a tiny bit more bearable (a smile, a laugh, a word).

[WOM]

Peak stress

My Name Is Ian wrote: I keep getting told that the worst of having a newborn baby will be over shortly, but that doesn't help me now, does it?

It can help if - like me - you convince yourself that awful situations are the new normal instead of the temporary normal. Like I say upthread, each stage passes remarkably quickly and you barely remember what it was like. Being in it is horrible, but know that it's temporary and relatively brief. It's not what the rest of your days will be. Trust me. And if I knew anything at all about either football or websites, I'd help in a second. If you need anything edited or proofed or whatever, let me know.

[Flynnie]

Peak stress

Ian, if you have any friends or family whatsoever who can look after a baby for a few hours, take advantage of them. A break from the baby is good for your sanity.

I have my mother in law here looking after the bubs, which is handy because my wife has food poisoning (real food poisoning). She's been a bloody lifesaver for the first eight months of this wee man's life.

PS: got me spousal visa last week. That's some stress lifted.

[ursus arctos]

Peak stress

Best of luck, Balders*.

That is indeed a ridiculous confluence of the stressful, but I am confident who will not only survive but thrive.

And when you look back at this time you will have no idea how you made it through.

* I find the cognitive dissonance of my mental image of Balderdasha with a nickname that evokes Henry Blofeld to be quite charming.

[caja-dglh]

Peak stress

This all looked very stressful and then you added the bit about trying to get a post moved / deleted from football. At that point i feared for you.

Good Luck - it seems like you are coping with everything best you can as you are remaining aware that nearly all of the factors are temporary. Keep plodding on and it will pass. Maybe mark the days off as they go so you can see how things are moving along without too much incident and there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

[meregreen]

Peak stress

Ian, it's shit but it does get better. Honestly.

In the early months I used to dread coming home from work. My wife would hand over a screaming baby and I'd don a sling and walk her up and down the stairs in a bid to get her to stop crying. It was too cold to go outside. If I was lucky she would sleep for 45 minutes and I could cook us a meal with the baby still strapped in the sling. As soon as I sat down to eat, she would be off again. It was like that every night for months. I used to fantastise about living on my own, popping in to see our daughter when it suited me.

The first time she smiled we both cried because it was the first sign that she wasn't deeply troubled or in pain. After six months she went on to solid food - I think she had reflux of some kind - and the crying stopped and she started to sleep through the night. And with it, the first semblance of our lives returned.

Admittedly, none of this helps you now. We used to cling on to a line we'd read in a parenting book about babies who are difficult in the early months. The endless screaming, apparently - and totally illogically, it now seems - was good as it meant the baby was getting its crying out of its system. Hard to believe that the book was written by a doctor, but in our case, it was true. At six months our lives were transformed and thereafter, compared to her peers, she became the most easy going of toddlers.

Best of luck. I always feel sorry for new parents. Supposed to be such a happy time and yet...

[Balderdasha]

Peak stress

Hallelujah! It's all about celebrating the small victories. The nursery took pity on me for being visibly the size of a whale and have not charged me for being an hour late. My daughter has fallen asleep in her pushchair (she hardly ever naps during the day now) after agreeing that for this afternoon's exciting activity we will stay at home and make sandwiches together. I am going to go to sleep too.

Ian, I really feel for you. When our daughter was that age my husband was so deliriously sleep-deprived that he accidentally shaved off his own eyebrows and went to work wearing his dad's shoes that were a size too small, and assumed that the resulting discomfort must mean his feet had swollen out of stress. Things are tough now, but I do get to sleep at night (until the next little one makes an appearance).

I found the 'this too will pass' mantra absolutely zero help at the time. The only advice I can give is that if anyone, pretty much anyone at all offers you any help, either taking the baby for an hour, doing your washing up, whatever, agree instantly before they can retract it. And ask for help, this is when you need it. If your wife is at all isolated, investigate any local children's centres with free activities. They sometimes even offer free courses for mums with crèches attached which are a life saver (you get to drink a cup of tea, while it's warm!)

Good luck, and I'm sure you're both doing an amazing job with the baby. If it's survived the first seven weeks, you basically have all the skills necessary.

[WOM]

Peak stress

Every word of that. We struck an unspoken deal early on that L was home all day with the baby, so she'd be mine to deal with at night. So while L slept soundly and warmly, I'd wander our house in the dark of a Canadian winter, bouncing a crying baby while barely standing upright. I just remember how long it felt, and that it would be like this forever. And then one night, they just sleep through and you forget all the sleeplessness.

[hobbes]

Peak stress

Ian, do you guys bottle feed or breast feed?
If it's breast feeding, then maybe you could talk to your wife about a change of responsibililty.
When the cub was wee Mrs The Tiger said to me "you have to go to work, I don't. I'm still working, but it's a different thing. There's no point both of us being exhausted out of solidarity."
So our deal was that when the cub woke up, I'd get up and change his nappy and get her a drink. Then I'd go back to sleep and leave her to it.
She'd sleep during the day when the cub was asleep, so instead of a full night, she'd have a series of 2 hour kips. Babies sleep a lot.
In return for this, I'd make sure all the other stuff was done - washing, shopping etc. so she could concentrate on just keeping the cub and herself healthy. She didn't need to do any tidying or washing up or anything like that. Just look after the cub.
She'd hand him over when I got home for cuddles and so she could have a shower etc, then we'd give him a bath and get him down.
It worked really well and when he started sleeping through the night (which was really early I'm both proud and a little ashamed to say) neither of us felt like we'd been beaten to death.

[S. aureus]

Peak stress

Wow, that's a hell of a lot to be dealing with all at once, Balders. You definitely have my sympathy, though I don't have any helpful advice, I'm afraid.
For the sleepless nights and all of having a new kid, 5 and 7 years later I don't remember clearly what it was like (I suspect that I didn't remember at 2 years, since I had a second child), about the only specific thing that I do recall is being terrified that I'd fall asleep holding our child and drop him. For myself I do find it helpful to think about the temporary nature of such stuff.
As you can imagine, stress levels are high in the S. aureus household due to my wife's health. Currently they're running somewhat higher than normal since the oncologist has put her back on the drug that screwed up our vacation, albeit at a lower dose. On the plus side, this is because it was actually working*.
I find that a source of stress for me is the stress itself, or, more particularly, worries that the effects of stress on my wife and I are having a negative influence on our children's development, or that they are suffering from stress (because of her health issues) that will screw them up. Which is all somewhat circular. This is more insidious in a sense, as I can't use the transitory argument against it - I am stressed that we are doing permanent damage.
To be honest, I don't know how different my stress levels are to those of anyone with 2 young kids, it's not like they don't induce a whole bunch of it on their own.

*With one notable exception - she has a new lesion in a location that, apparently, is notoriously hard to treat with chemo (not her brain). The plan is to have this one surgically removed.

[Kevin S]

Peak stress

WOM wrote: Every word of that. We struck an unspoken deal early on that L was home all day with the baby, so she'd be mine to deal with at night. So while L slept soundly and warmly, I'd wander our house in the dark of a Canadian winter, bouncing a crying baby while barely standing upright. I just remember how long it felt, and that it would be like this forever. And then one night, they just sleep through and you forget all the sleeplessness.

Yeah, ditto. I did go mad a couple of times with the first one.

This

is something you put water in, drop a bottle of formula in, and switch it on - it warms the bottle.
One night when I staggered down with baby boy, I went back to the warmer after the time was up only to realise I'd put a tea bag in it instead.

Another night, again, holding him in the kitchen, I heard my wife shouting down at me. I started, and responded to the effect that I didn't know where I was, what I was doing, or how long I'd been there. I must have fallen asleep sitting with him on a kitchen chair (tiled floor), but I really have no idea to this day.

I once fell asleep while feeding him in an armchair. Luckily the bottle fell out.

In that half waking, half dreaming middle-of-the-night state, I also confused thoughts of parenting with my job. Again, while I was sitting up feeding him, my wife stirred and asked if everything was ok and I said something like "Yeah, he's done about half of the questions, just a few more to go." And then once again wondered what the hell my brain was doing.

Ugh.

The second child's babyhood was much easier in comparison, if that helps. Also helped by the fact I discovered OTF between babyhoods 1 and 2, so I could read the forums and things while trying to get the daughter back to sleep.

[Balderdasha]

Peak stress

Sleep proving evasive as the womb-squatter has hiccups. At least I am horizontal.

Hobbes, surviving any newborn is a massive achievement but it does sound like you might have had what is euphemistically termed 'an easy baby'. Our daughter never had 2 hour naps at the beginning. She'd only fall asleep either attached to my boob or upright being marched about in a sling and invariably woke up screaming in about half an hour or 45 minutes, so it was almost impossible for me to nap when she napped. In hindsight she probably had reflux but as clueless new parents we didn't know any different.

Like meregreen's experience though, it got a lot easier at six months and she's now a spirited but generally very happy toddler.