I don’t get it. I start to eat healthier, I become more active, and NOW I get sick? For the past two and a half days I’ve been in bed, sick. WIth a steady fever of 100 degrees, the only thing that seems to keep me hopeful are the small, but stronger kicks and movements that bebe keeps sending me. It’s hard to not get depressed other than that.

Being a mother is hard. I have recently been asked if its worth it. I don’t know if I’ve answered that question before on here, but since I’m confined once again to bed I will answer it again while I’m in the mood I’m in right now. So to answer that question…I’m not sure. Most of the times I would say yes. If you would have asked me years ago when my daughter didn’t talk back, or when I had more energy and less on my plate, I would say definitely, but lately? There are no breaks. I have been a mother since I was 18. When you’re sick, you’re sick while taking care of kids. I remember having strep throat and a 103 degree fever at home all day (because John couldn’t miss work) with Wyatt when he was a few months old. I basically had to keep Wyatt in bed with me all day, which at that point he was nursing 24 hours. In other words, keeping down fluids, and resting was difficult, because Wyatt was taking all of my energy that I had left through my boobs.

Since I had Ava I haven’t felt like myself. I have had aches and pains which I think are both related to physical problems and emotional/mental stress that single parenting and dealing with a difficult baby daddy has caused. Since then I have felt years older than I am and had to act the same as well. When Ava was younger the smiles, the hugs, the new abilities that she mastered, that’s what made it all worth it. But now that she’s older? She is her own person. Granted with most people it’s probably easier because they don’t have to deal with another parent in the picture, or their opposing lifestyle choices, it’s still hard. They talk back, they rarely thank you, and they lie because it’s easier. They don’t understand what you’ve given up, or everything that you’ve done, so they have no qualms about saying they don’t like you, or that they like a different parent better. Now my daughter has never said that to me, but just recently she did to my husband/her stepdad. My John is a super patient man. He would and has done anything and everything for Ava since he met her. She started calling him daddy on her own right after we married. He has never raised his voice at Ava with out her pushing his very last button, and is the one to spoil her out of us two. So when my Ava told him that she didn’t like him. I was crushed. It hurt more than if she would have said it to me. I thought about why this was and realized it’s because I was upset that she was so blind to what a good guy was.

I haven’t talked about Ava’s dad much…I think out of respect to him, and also because I try not to dwell on old hate…but I guess sooner or later parts of him are going to come out in my blogs. I broke up with him when I was a five months pregnant with Ava. He didn’t have a job, would constantly not want to hang out with me at my parent’s house at night because he had just turned 21 (did I mention I was 17 at the time?) and would rather spend that time at the bars with his friends doing god only knows what. One night he left early because he said he had to go home because he had an early job interview in the morning. Around 3 a.m I get a call from him drunken and slurred saying his friends left him and he needed a ride home. I of course went to get him and there he was swaying in his drunken stupor with a beer in one hand and a black eye. When I asked him where his black eye came from he wouldn’t tell me. Later I found out that he had fallen face forward from being too drunk onto the ground of the porn shop that was next to the bar. Awesome. Surprisingly that was not the last straw for me. The last straw was him showing up two hours late to my 18th birthday dinner with my family. Because I had no friends and no life my family was all I had. When I answered the door to him finally  arriving he reeked of alcohol and looked disheveled. Me being pregnant and nauseous could hardly stand to be near him. That was the last straw.

Since then things have been the same. Sometimes he tries to be reliable, and then he’s not. He picks and chooses when he wants to pay child support, and when he can see Ava (because he has job and he can’t take off from his job right?), and when it isn’t convenient for him we keep her and change our schedules when it’s his scheduled time to have her. He still accuses me of being horrible, did I mention the night when he called me drunk while I was pregnant just to tell me that I was a whore and a skank because “someone” told him that Ava wasn’t his? Yeah, I was seven months pregnant at the time and wanted to throw myself down the stairs. But that was then. Now I try not to let him get to me. He only picks fights now when he is pissy, or when things are going too well in our lives, and he is usually good about at least making sure Ava is home on time. He still drinks a lot I assume, only because when Ava got her tonsils out two years ago he showed up 45 minutes late to the clinic again reeking of whiskey and wearing the night before’s clothes (I was again unlucky enough to be pregnant and nauseas at the time), and some how managed to blame it on us for not giving him good enough directions to the place (I didn’t realize that was my job as well, we just entered the address into google maps, why couldn’t he?). My husband of course had taken the whole day off of work to be there for us though and that’s how it’s always been. Whenever he drops the ball (which is mostly all the time with a few exceptions) my husband is always there to pick it up.

So you see, after reading only a drop of what is a bucket full of crappy baby daddy history you can see why I was so hurt. John and I have sacrificed sleepless nights, days at work, money, energy, you name it, and her dad nothing, yet she tells John that she doesn’t like him. Since I’ve been bed ridden for the past two days I had to find someone to pick Ava up from school. My chain of calls? John, my dad, my mom, family friends, AND THEN her dad. Why is HER OWN FATHER the last person I can ask? Why? Because 95 percent of the time that I’ve asked him to do something for her that would mean him having to rearrange his schedule he has said no. “I have to work Kelli!” Ok, so how do you think I managed two jobs as a teenager, while living on my own, and having full custody of her? Or how do you think all other parents do it? He doesn’t get it, nor does he appreciate anything I’ve done as well. I digress.

The point is, it’s hard having kids. Do I regret having Ava? No. Do I wish the next few years would hurry up and speed by with her? Yes. My mom told me recently that she hated us kids between the ages of 8-10, my dad’s years of hating us….well all through out our teenage years. Now I see why. But in the end I think there are and have been such great moments that have made it worth it. For me I’m waiting to get those moments back again with my daughter, with Wyatt I am getting them now so it balances it out. Soon I know that Wyatt will hit an age when I will dislike him, but love him, and then this next baby will be my reassurance that you do it for a reason. I don’t regret any of my kids, and I love them dearly, but I don’t always have to like them. So after a long drawn out and probably nonsensical answer, yes it is worth it to be a mother, but only if you are realistic enough to know that it’s not going to go the way you plan, you will hate it a lot of the times, and you know that there is always an end to a phase. I joke that I only had kids to have grandkids…sometimes I think it’s more than just a joke Kidding.

K-