Thank goodness - a place to vent!

Hi, girls. I'm new to groups all together, so I don't know if I'm breaking protocol here by posting an intro, but whatever.

I am fairly new to the SAHM scene. At the age of 24, I started my freshman year of college. Right before the fall semester I found out that I was pregnant with my second child. At the time, I was both a full-time student and a part-time waitress. I decided in October that school and work and being pregnant was just too much, so I took a hiatus from work. And since I was due in the end of March I had to take a break from school after the fall semester ended.

Until I gave birth to my second daughter, being a SAHM was a breeze. I just hung out with my 4 year old all day. We watched movies and played and napped and cuddled... It was AWESOME.

On March 26, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She ended up with jaundice and stayed 10 out of 14 days in the hospital with her. It was an awful experience, but it could have been much worse. The very day we got home, my husband and I both came down with this HORRIBLE stomach bug that spread like wildfire across Oklahoma. The Oklahoma City health department made a statement that this stomach bug had something like a 3-5% mortality rate - if that's any indication as to how sick we were. I was horribly ill for the first 5 days I was home with my infant. 

Thank goodness my girls are easy. Gracie, my 4 year old is really easy going and independant. She's a phenomenal helper. And Kairi, my newborn... I don't know if it's that she's easy or that I'm just incredibly well prepared for her (probably she's easy.) but taking care of her has been - for the most part - a breeze. 

But, I am breastfeeding for the first time. At first everyone was incredibly supportive. Then we had to keep going back to the hospital because of jaundice, and each time the doctor ordered me to suspend breastfeeding for the first 12 hours. My mother was the first to lose faith. 

"It's making her sick!" she would say. "Just quit breastfeeding and she'll be fine."

I asked the pediatrician if I should consider switching to formula. He told me that he highly encourages breastfeeding but he just wanted Kairi to get a headstart on getting better by supplementing formula for 12 hours. ...I had to have him write my mother a note stating this to get her to shut up. 

My husband hasn't lost the faith - but he doesn't understand that I still need encouragement. Although I say my daughter is easy, that doesn't mean that it's easy to be the primary caregiver - to be the only one that can feed her, to be the only one that gets up with her at night. My husband sleeps twice as much as I do. And God forbid the baby wake him up! 

Last week, Kairi woke up in the middle of the night. She needed a diaper change badly, so rather than waiting until I had fed her like I normally do, I opted to change her as soon as possible. I gave her the pacifier and got out a clean diaper and the baby wipes. While I was doing this, she spat out the paci and started crying. I gave it back to her and started changing her diaper. She spat it out again. At this point in time my husband woke up and shoved the pacifier back in her mouth.

"God - can't you keep a pacifier in her mouth while I'm sleeping 2 feet away?!"

 I've since talked to him about the difference between encouragement and discouragement, and he's pretty receptive - but he's also got a short fuse, so we'll see how far my talk takes us the next time he's accidentally awakened. 

Anyway - that's where I am currently. Hopefully I didn't overstep my bounds by writing the story of my life here... I guess it kind of got away from me. I hope I can find some women to relate to here and maybe we can share some tricks of the trade to keep our sanity.