Its comforting to hear words like, "you're a good mom" or "I feel exactly the same way". If most moms feel this way then why do I (we) feel like we're the only ones? Everyone says a baby changes your life but no one said it makes you crazy. And I mean, loco crazy. Last night, I thought I was going crazy. My thoughts were so out of control, like a shaken jar of bees. Fortunately andrew slept through the night so I slept through the night and that helped a lot. I also went up and spent the day with my sister where she also said she struggled with similar feelings.

Sleeping is for Losers, friend and blogger, made a list of things she would have liked to tell herself during the first few months of having a baby. I too would like to go back and say Amy,
a) you'll have moments of feeling resentful about your responsibility to take care of a small person 24/7, then feel guilty for it, but that's normal

b) you'll think you're alone in your feelings of anxiety and feel completely helpless when you need to make decisions about how to solve crying, but you're actually not alone in that.

c)you will continually battle thoughts that you are a bad mother, are raising your child wrong and you know nothing about what you're doing, but actually, no mom has the right answers, no mom instinctively knows what to do. we're all flying by the seat of our pants most of the time.

d)guilt. any choice to make your life easier will inevitably result in you feeling guilty. Elmo's World for 45 minutes because you have no energy to play is not bad. Your child will still graduate from university.

e)fear. fear that you will trip down the stairs while holding your baby, you will get into a car accident, drown in the tub, choke on a carrot, overheat, over eat, under eat, too cold, fingers will get squished in doors, he will fall off the bed and fracture his skull. You're missing a major problem like H1N1, ulcer, lungs burning, stomach ache. Fear that digital thermometers are not reliable and take temperatures every 10 seconds, then your own, then back to the baby to make sure. Too much gripe water, didn't give gripe water so now feel guilty, didn't give tempra and now baby is in pain, severe pain and you think they should be hospitalized. Too much tempra and you have dulled every sensory perception in their body. someone should have told me fear is common and the solution is to take each of those thoughts captive, pray and chuck them out of your head like your baby does with random objects.

So, to myself I say, I'm normal. I'm not alone. I am not alone. I am not alone. I am not alone.