Frustrated

[cjanelles]

I'm 9 months pregnant.

My ankles swell if I'm on my feet for more than 10 minutes.

My husband works 60+ hours a week.

My house is a mess.

I spend my days pacing myself so that I don't over-do it but still get the chores done.

I clean the kitchen, sweep the floors, vaccuum, do laundry, straighten up, general organizing, etc...but by the end of the night, it looks like I've done nothing but sit on my butt all day long.

I don't want my husband to help with the inside chores. He works WAY too hard during the week, and then on the weekends he works on the yard or home-improvement projects that need to be completed.

I'm just so frustrated. I feel like I'm always cleaning and yet the house is never clean.

I try to live simply. I am not a packrat. I throw stuff away. I just can't seem to keep the house looking relatively put together...

And now with the baby due any minute now, I'm afraid that I'll *never* have a clean house. I mean, how am I supposed to keep up?

I'm so frustrated that I could cry.

[UberMama]

The end of pregnancy and the very beginning once the baby is born are some of the hardest weeks, I think anyway.

Really though, do you HAVE to sweep the floors and vacuum daily? I know, I do those things daily as well. I feel incomplete at the end of the day (yes, I feel incomplete!) if I haven't accomplished those tasks. But really, they can be done every 2 days. And when I didn't have children, they could be done every 3-4 days and it wouldn't look half bad.

I understand your husband works a lot inside and outside of the home respectively. But being so very pregnant yourself, I don't think it's a terrible thing to ask him to do the dishes every other night or so. Or at least vacuum, which can be a bit more physically exhausting than organizing the coffee table for instance.

While it's difficult, I think one sort of has to let go at times. Everytime we bring a new babe into the house, the house is not presentable (IMO) for the first couple of weeks. Yes, we clean daily, but we don't do as much as we normally do - because we have more important things to take care of - ourselves and the baby!

Do you have friends or family nearby? Could they come over and help? If anyone offers, TAKE THEM UP ON IT! Just having someone vacuum, sweep your floors or help with dinner would be a huge load off of you. You are busy gestating a baby, that is quite a load for your body to take on -- don't forget that.

{{HUGS}} to you, Mama. I've been in your shoes many many times. I hope things ease up, one way or another.

[Kavita]

I'm not sure what the problem is, but I would venture a guess that maybe you just have too much stuff lying around out in view and not enough places where things belong? For instance, in the bathroom--do you have a place to put every single one of the personal care items that gets used in there (drawer, medicine cabinet, whatever) or do you have those things on the bathroom counter? I prefer to keep my bathroom counter absolutely bare. Barring that, putting all the lotions/potions/whatever on a pretty tray or in a basket. That makes it really easy to just wipe the sink and counter off on a day to day basis while you're in the bathroom anyway, rather than having it be a big ordeal of cleaning. Same thing with the kitchen counters--if your coffeepot, toaster, blender, etc. are all sitting out on the counter, it is much harder to clean the counters. I prefer to keep thing pretty bare that way and have places inside cupboards or cabinets to put things like appliances. Otherwise it just looks more messy and cluttered and it's harder to keep things clean. If you don't have enough storage to keep things put away so that you have "a place for everything and everything in its place" then you have two options--add more storage or get rid of more stuff!

Is this your first baby?

Have you checked out Flylady.net? That really helped me a lot--one of my major fears about having children was that I could barely keep my house clean before getting pregnant, how on earth was I going to manage with a baby? But I found Flylady to be just what I needed, and I was able to feel enough on top of things to get pregnant and have a baby!

It sounds like you are doing some hardcore nesting--your hormones and instincts are ganging up on you to make you want to get your whole house perfect right now! Don't worry--that will pass somewhat once you have the baby, and you'll be able to get back into some normal housekeeping in time. In the meantime, don't overwork too much--I spent most of my early labor ignoring the wise advice to not overdo it and DH and I cleaned the entire house stem to stern and rearranged all the furniture and I went grocery shopping and he installed baseboard moldings in one of our bedrooms! I was realllly tired out through much of my labor which ended up lasting a coule of days!!! Can you find some help? A doula or a housekeeper or a friend who can come in and help you a bit after the baby is born once in a while for a couple of months?