First Day of School

Oh ye of little ability to handle stress...

So. School. Teaching. And shit. (Quite literally, actually, you should have seen Emma's poop today. But I digress.)

There are a ton of ways to describe what it is I do for a living. The easiest is to say I'm a teacher. Which, depending on who you ask, gets either the, "Oh, you are so amazing I couldn't do it you are SO not appreciated for all you do for our kids we love you blahblahblah..." OR the "...Oh...really?" with the look that says, "Are you serious? 'Cause who would want to do that? Aren't you smarter than that?"

In response, yes, I am serious, and you will never meet smarter people than the wonderful people I work with. You will also never meet harder workers or more dedicated human beings. I live for and love the people I work with and am SO lucky to have them in my life.

But.

Back to the words you can use to describe not just my job, but my school. Title I. Low-socioeconomic status. Trailer park. Low-achieving. Free and reduced lunch. High-needs. Interventions. Special programs. Adequate Yearly Progress (Step 2, no less). ELL. High minority population. No parent involvement. After school programs. Etc...etc...etc.

In short, I have a tough job. I don't think there's anyone out there who would disagree with that. But today was probably one of the hardest days of my life. In short, I started back to work after4 and a half months off, I have 33 kids in my class and not a single one stands out as a leader that I can count on, I'm having supply issues with nursing, my teaching partner from last year and best friend at school is no longer teaching 4th grade (not her choice, our principal's choice) and she was what kept me sane. Our schedule sucks and my room smells like mildew. In between pumping and working with the kids, I had no time to just sit and relax, which is what I need to do to keep up my supply. And because I'm a respected member of our staff (read: the only one who would volunteer) I'm on the two most involved committees at our school and the facilitator/chair of one of them. And today I found out that my mom had to go to the hospital, while she was caring for Emma, because she was having heart palpitations. Which means she may not be able to care for Emma for very long, because we don't want to overstress her or put Emma in danger should something happen to my mom.

And at the risk of being a total downer to everyone, if you don't want to be depressed, don't keep reading. I just need a place to get out some of the things I've had on my mind, since once I put them to paper (or in this case, the internets) they don't seem to bother me as much. It's like I'm justified in feeling the way I do because there's something concrete that I can look at and say, "Wow, I've got a lot of SHIT going on right now, and I have every right to not handle it well."

That isn't to say that others don't have more shit, just that I have enough to be justified in feeling shitty about it. Know what I mean?

So back in May I gave birth, coming off of a very uncomfortable, sick and miserable pregnancy with at least one hospital visit for a false alarm and an early leave because of stress. It was amazing that as soon as I quit working, all of the issues either lessened or went away. So I had a wonderful c-section experience, then a bunch of shit happened. We had to take Emma to the ER because she became non-responsive and turned out it was because of jaundice and a medication I was on. Then our pediatrician noticed her hips were a little wacky and she had a UTI in the first week. So we had to go through a hip ulrasound, renal ultrasound and VCUG (which was SO miserable - she was strapped to a board with her arms over her head while they catheterized her and squirted water over her to make her pee, all while trying to get xrays of her bladder and such). Then the doc found a heart murmur. So she had to go through a cardiac ultrasound. Thankfully everything was normal, but it all made for a very stressful first month or so.

While all of this was going on, I was still having issues myself. In the span of three months, I had 2 strep throat infections; constant painful stomach upset and diarrhea which turned out to be because of a sudden and unexpected lactose intolerance; 3 yeast infections as a result of the antibiotics after my surgery and for the strep throat; weird food sensitivities (my throat would swell up after eating something that was totally common in my diet before); weird skin sensitivities; constant bleeding for almost 3 months; and a very painful (it still hurts) swelling in my SI joint that has required both massage and chiropractic treatment to lessen the pain and get me walking normally again.

So thank god most of that had resolved itself before I started back at work. My back still hurts and it's hard to bend forward at times, but it's slowly getting better. Breastfeeding started out great. But then I had to go in last week to start setting up my classroom and suddenly I'm having supply issues. It was the exact same thing with Alex - I dried up in the first week (I think I pumped once). I have had no problem nursing Emma until now, and even with upping the amount of times I'm feeding/pumping, and making sure to avoid any supplementation, I'm still having issues. I'm watching my diet, I'm getting exercise (I LOVE MY Wii FIT!) and I'm trying to get as much rest as I can (HA HA HA - she says as she blogs at 11:00 p.m. on a school night). I think the last thing I want to do now is give up breastfeeding, and it's not because I'm feeling guilty about it or that I'm worried about other peoples' perception of my quitting, it's because I LOVE IT. It's precious time with my daughter. I get to hold her close, kiss her soft cheeks, stroke her silky hair, stare into those HUGE eyes and just ENJOY her for 20 STRAIGHT MINUTES. No interruptions, nothing to do or worry about, just me sitting down, relaxing and enjoying my precious baby girl. It's THAT that I don't want to give up. But it's getting harder and harder to enjoy when she isn't getting what she needs, is getting fussy when she finishes and isn't latching on for longer than a minute or two without pulling off and fussing.

Sadly, I have more, but it's getting late and I need to sleep. I'll come back for more in the saga of "I'm more depressed than you!" tomorrow. And maybe I'll start on my medication again. Who knows, maybe it'll actually help things. It has before...