Preemie Life - Day 8

Oh c-sections.  How does one recover from having their baby taken out of their stomach?  I realize that we are just a week out from major surgery but for crying out loud my belly hurts.  I spend a significant time sitting around in a binder, grimacing, and slowly walking around like an old woman.  Getting in and out of Dr. J's car is always a time of grotesque but humorous facial expressions.  The ob told me you just have to take it easy and rest but how does one take it easy with three kids at home and a preemie infant to see?  Not even doing half the things I feel like I need to I find my feet swollen, my tummy aching, my patients lacking.  I'm so lucky to have my mother-in-law who will be staying another two weeks to help me out.  Without her I don't know how my kids would get to school, eat, get homework done, have clean clothes, you know pretty much the works.  I'm starting to see why the doctors insisted I stay at the hospital on bed rest.  Easier to stay in bed when you aren't worried about little ones.  Everyday I try to split my time between the kids.  Either I have Dr. J drop me off at the hospital on his way to work at 6:30 and then have my mother-in-law pick me up after dropping Gigi off at preschool at one or I have Linda drop me off after taking Gigi to preschool and then have Dr. J pick me up on his way home after work.  I try and switch up the schedule so that my kids get a mix of seeing me in the morning or seeing me after schools.  I then walk something like 1/4 mile to the elevator, and maybe a 1/4 mile further to the NICU.  The hospital is huge and really the distance isn't that big of a deal but when your are stuck in elderly hunched over walking speed it seems like forever. There are times when the inconvenience of the whole operation weights me down.  This of course is by no means related to anything my family does, no one complains, murmurs, rolls eyes, or seems in the least bit grouchy or resentful, but I feel torn between what I want to be able to do and what I am able to do.  I want to be able to fill the role I have set for myself for my children.  I choose to be a stay at home mother so I could fulfill all their needs.  I wanted to be there for them through all the little things and the big, the heartaches and the joys.  Part of that need also calls me to the hospital to try to spend time bounding with our newest daughter.  I want to watch her like an guard as if my very presence will keep her monitors on track, her vitals stable, her food down, and her temperature up.  I want to change her diapers, take her temperature, and bond with her every second I am allowed.  I in no way think this is unique to myself.  Is this not the plight of motherhood.  We try to fulfill a role, be all that our children need us to be.  We are a subgroup plague with guilt.  Every choice we make, every decision we agonize over, we feel guilt, we justify, we attack others who have made other decisions because we need to feel confidence in our own, to feel reassurance that it is the only one, the right one.  It is what truly lies at the center of the working mother versus stay at home mother debate, the midwife versus doctor, the epidural versus natural, the formula versus breast, the family bed versus single crib, the homeschooling versus private versus public, the single versus married, the organic versus the budget, etc., the sports families versus the arts, the truly schedule versus the go with the flow, etc. The gospel teaches us not to run faster then we have strength, but you have to think, obviously they weren't paying any attention to mothers...