On Pregnancy and Perfectionism

Be pregnant and a perfectionist is hard. I think some of my frustrations (and whining) this first trimester have been due to the fact that sitting and resting are not really part of my vocabulary. I’m not one to just lounge in front of the TV all evening. I’m usually doing a combination of that and any number of small things around the apartment. So when I get home from work completely zapped of energy, it’s really frustrating for me. I feel lazy, bored and feel like I am behind or not doing enough.

Ok, fine, I am suffering from the perfect housewife dilemma. I’m not able to grow a human and at the same time cook nutritious meals every night, keep the house as clean as I like it and have energy to spare to be a perfectly charming companion. The TV console is crazy dusty at the moment, we had hot dogs for dinner and I’m tired and irritable.

Mike is really good at compartmentalizing chores and the like. One night he washes the laundry, one night he irons. (Yes, my husband voluntarily does the household laundry. It is truly awesome.) One night he runs, the next night he gets a haircut.

My brain does not work like that. My brain operates more like the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I go into the kitchen to clean up the dishes and notice a few splatters on the stove. So I decide to wipe the whole thing down and clean the stove pans while I’m at it. And then the dish cloth is dirty so I toss it in the laundry room. I notice there is a growing pile of dish cloths/towels, so I decide to wash them. Picking them up off the floor makes me realize the floor hasn’t been cleaned in ages, so I sweep and mop the kitchen floor. You get the picture.

Problem is, I can’t do that right now. And I don’t like that I can’t do that. I’m learning some much-resisted hard lessons that I don’t have to do everything at once and It doesn’t have to be done “perfectly”.

It’s 9:15 p.m. Tonight I tidied up a few things, ran one load of laundry and mopped the kitchen floor. There are at least a half dozen other things I’d like to get done and that probably should be done. But I’m going to get the laundry out of the washer and then I’m going to bed to read. And that’s ok even if my brain is telling me it’s not. I’m busy growing a human and that’s an amazing and big accomplishment in itself.