Mommy guilt and the writer’s life

Don't feel bad, Mommy.

There are so many ways to rack up mommy guilt these days. Stay home with them too much and you’re stifling their social skills. Stay away from them too much and you’re endangering the parent-child bond. Do something in between and you’re either wasting your husband’s money or wasting your own time.

I have always, always had a problem with guilt. I like to blame it on 9 years of Catholic schooling (complete with nuns), but in reality I think it’s just part of my makeup. I go so far as to feel guilty for feeling guilty because my guilt might be selfish and I don’t want to be selfish. That doesn’t make much sense and believe me I know it.

As I sit here at Starbucks I am feeling guilty for the following things:

- my mother-in-law watching my child when I have no billable work to do

- not being outside while the sun is out

- not taking this time to clean my apartment which was cleaned yesterday

- wanting to read other blogs instead of writing mine

- feeling like anyone actually cares whether or not I write on my blog

But my real problem here is that in order to be a writer, one must be selfish. You have to be willing to carve out that time and not do other things. You have to be willing to believe that other people will give a flying frig about what you have to say. Ultimately, you have to believe that you and your writing are worth the effort.

When I was in school this was easy. I had to write for my grades. I was paying someone else to teach me to write and to tell me to write. Once I was out of school it was much harder and now that I’m a mom it is very very difficult! It is next  to impossible for me to justify that my writing – which is not currently getting me any sort of compensation – is worthy of my letting someone else play with my kid and maybe turning down a paying editing gig and letting the housework wait until tomorrow.

Maybe somewhere in my early life my wires got crossed. I got this guilt complex and the urge to be a writer (and hopefully some talent at it). Two things that do not mesh well.

But one thing I’m trying not to feel guilty for is realizing that I owe it to myself to follow this through. I only get one life and since the beginning of my memory I have wanted to spend it writing. Doesn’t that deserve a real chance? Then there’s that $120k degree in writing that I’m still paying off. If that isn’t motivation, I don’t know what is.

If I knew then…

I have a lot of friends who are pregnant right now. Seems I was ahead of the curve in my personal world, although I was right on the money with the rest of the world. Yes, I contributed to the year that the most babies were born in the US ever. And yes, I am a little ashamed. Oh well.

But a lot of the people I know are having babies in 2009 and I can’t help but think back to the days when I was pregnant myself. I adored being pregnant in a lot of ways. It was exciting, the whole world seemed ahead of me, and people were so damn nice to me all the time. Friends tried to tell me what it would be like to have a baby and I took some of it to heart and ignored some of it. The truth is that there is no way to know what it’s like to have a baby until you have a baby. There is no way that you can truly prepare yourself for your entire life to change. These are the three things that shocked or impressed or impacted me the most about becoming a parent. That were not like I thought they would be.

I was warned that I might not fall in love with my baby at first sight. “Ha,” I thought. “I already love my baby so much.” But this was more true than I ever could have imagined. I had a primal, basic, biological love for my son the second he was born. I wanted to keep him safe above everything else. But I fell in love with him slowly and am still falling in love with  him every day. I didn’t even know him when he was born. He didn’t know him. He didn’t even have a personality yet to know. And at times I almost hated him for ruining my life – for changing pretty much everything I knew up to that point. But it became worth it. And there are times I admit I want to banish him to a house on the other side of the world. But most days I want to hold him tight and laugh with him and help him grow. He really has become the light of my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Am I worth it Mommy? Yes, baby, you are!

Breastfeeding was SO much easier than I expected. It was never physically difficult. It never hurt (except those plugged ducts!!). I know that it’s not like this for everyone, but it does happen. And it was a bonding experience I would never want to miss. But it is EXHAUSTING! Newborns eat more than I thought possible and they don’t care if it’s night or day. When he was tiny, I was very much tied to him all the time. Yes, there were times I wanted to get away and not worry about my boobs filling to uncomfortable proportions or wonder if he would starve rather than drink from a bottle and yes there were times I wanted to say “no, baby, you cannot have control over my body right now.” There were also times that I just stared down at him and stroked his hair and loved him. I can’t even describe how good it made me feel to be that provider for my child. And now that Brady is almost done, I miss those days of cuddling with him as he nursed.  Breastfeeding has been a very positive experience for us and I’m proud of us for making it this far.

It is hard to be parents in a marriage. Before we had a baby, I could never imagine the husband and I breaking up. We had made it through the hardest things in life – unemployment, death, lack of money, family conflicts – just about everything. And we made it through it all stronger than before. But adding a third person to the mix has been more difficult than any of it. Not sleeping and still being nice is hard. The “staying at home vs working at the office” conflict is hard. The “who is going to change that diaper” game is hard. And most of all the “are we sharing this equally guilt and blame game” is hard. But it’s also amazing to look at a person who shares both of your faces. It’s amazing to be the people who are at either side of a new human’s first steps.  And it’s amazing to build a family with the person you love. You just have to remember that mommy and daddy are important too and that they need to like each other for this family thing to work.

Just some of my observations on the phenomenal change that occurs with welcoming a child into your world. Things that I could not fathom when I was expecting this little guy and which I cannot accurately convey to those who have yet to experience it. Every experience is different and each person will be shocked by different things. It just blows my mind how life-changing one of the most basic human functions can be.

Teething is the devil!

Sorry about the title – I was watching The Waterboy recently;)

But teething IS the devil. I’m not going to question God’s design and I’m sure that in the grand scheme of things there is a perfectly good reason that in order to eat the food we need to survive sharp objects need to pierce through the flesh of your mouth, but from where I’m standing right now it seems like an evil plan.

Brady’s teething process seems to take a long, looong time. I swear to you he  was teething from 6 months until just over 10 months when his first 6 teeth finally emerged all within a two week period. He has now been teething another 4 months leading up to now – he has gotten 5 teeth in the last month and has another 1 working its way in. Four of these teeth are molars.

The poor guy has been miserable. He was  snuffly and snotty and keept rubbing his gums. He was waking up at night in pain. He didn’t want to eat.

I think that the last molar came through this morning and I’m really, really, really, really hoping that means he’s feeling better.

I think I'm feeling better now.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!!!

I'm wearin my green!

Living in my neighborhood on St. Patrick’s Day is both a blessing and a curse. Coming from an Irish family I love St. Paddy’s and it’s so nice to see all the people out celebrating – even if they are smashed out of their minds.

Then there’s dealing with the people who are smashed out of their minds. The drunks tend to think that they have the right of way today – and in a way I guess they’re right. But that doesn’t mean they should puke on the sidewalk at 3 in the afternoon, or push old people out of the way, or scream at babies. All of which has been known to happen. See, the parade ends right near my apartment, which means that everyone comes to drink right near my apartment.

My dear husband has deemed St. Patrick’s Day in NYC a menace. We’ve lived here 8 years now and we have never gone out to celebrate. I usually look wistfully at the revelry outside my door and go home to make myself a green beer with food coloring.

This year I’m hoping to get Brady in on the fun and go to the parade. He fell asleep early, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Love in HD

Hi cutie!

The husband and I had been visiting the HD TVs at Best Buy for, oh about 2 years. We would go and check the prices and compare the pictures and talk about what we would get some time in the future. We would ooh and aah over them like puppies at the pet store – oh that one is so pretty, but that one has such great color, wow that one has the sharpest picture…

On Saturday we were there visiting once again and we decided to take the plunge. The prices were at the point where we had said we would buy, our tax refund was safe in the savings account, and we were feeling randy. So we found a salesman, picked a model, and took our new addition home.

I have to say it is amazing. I picked up the HD cable box this afternoon and we are currently watching The World Baseball Classic in HD. I’m not so fond of what we’re watching, but the picture is awesome!

The husband and I are giddy in our new love affair. We’re just dreaming of the weekend when we can try some movies out on this bad boy. It can be tough to keep the warm and fuzzy in a relationship once you have a kid…but the thrill of a big purchase and bringing home a nice television can certainly help.

Am I blathering?

Are you talking about me again, Mommy?

I have been a faithful subscriber of Elle magazine for many years now. I find the journalistic quality to be higher than that of Glamour or Cosmo and yet the content isn’t as pretentious as that of Vogue. Plus I love drooling over all of the gorgeous fashion items that I could never afford and somehow never feel very bad about not being able to afford them.

In this month’s issue there is an article by Nancy Hass on working moms and just what, when, and where baby talk is appropriate in the workplace. I actually agree with the bulk of the article. It is inappropriate to talk on about your kids in certain situations and not everyone is interested. It’s important to feel out the audience before speaking.  I don’t think that women should pretend not to be moms just because they’re at work. But above that, I have a problem with some of the author’s sentiments.

There is a paragraph that really didn’t sit well for me and which clarified for me the difference between the way I approach motherhood and the way some other women do.

But I have never once thought of her as the best thing I’ve ever done. Perhaps that’s a function of having had a better-than average work life, but it’s also because I’m loath to take credit for my daughter as an accomplishment. Reproducing, even for me, who had to go to such lengths to become a mother, doesn’t feel like a personal achievement; it’s just a natural part of the human cycle. That’s one of the reasons I love being a parent; it’s comfortingly prosaic, delightfully unremarkable. Can you imagine women in small Indian villages standing around the local well asking for reassurance from the others that having their brood of kids is “the best thing they’ve ever done”? It’s a ready-made caption for a New Yorker cartoon.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not think that birthing Brady is my greatest accomplishment. I don’t think that raising Brady is my greatest accomplishment. Honestly, one of the things that gets me down about parenting and makes me long for the office is the fact that I don’t often feel very accomplished at all. He’s a work in progress and what I do may  or may not have a giant impact on the person he becomes.

But it makes me sad that she thinks parenthood is so ordinary. Just because lots of people do it does not make it “unremarkable”. I also do not think that women in small Indian villages think of having children as just another thing to do. I’m quite sure that many of them think of it as more amazing than we here in the built-up, commercialized, regulated, US of A do, In rural villages with little or no medical care it is very likely that giving birth to and raising a healthy child is less expected and that having children to help you is much more important.

Only women can give birth to children and I honestly do think it is something to be proud of. Just because we can now be CEOs and Construction Workers is no reason to designate bearing and raising children as plebeian or run of the mill.

I am proud of what I’m doing and what I’ve done – both in the workplace and at home. In a way this article is another piece of kindling on the fire of SAHM vs WOHM. The evil round and round fight that was sparked by women’s lib and continues to burn bright today.

This is getting away from my point – which is that we (women and men) should be proud of all that we do – whether it’s putting together the perfect presentation or getting our sons finally potty-trained at night. It all takes work and it all contributes to the rest of society. So let’s just embrace it all.

Snow Day!

Brady didn't want to hang out with everyone at the park.

So the East Coast got a lot of snow yesterday. And all those people who were shocked that it snowed in March must have no memories. Most of the bigger snowstorms that I remember have occurred in March. It’s not weird people. It just isn’t.

Brady and I started the day by attempting to go to the Y for our swim class. We made it two blocks and gave up. While B was comfy cozy in his Bundle-Me and with a wind cover – I was struggling to walk each step as I was pelted by snow and blown sideways while forcing the stroller through the drifts. We abandoned the plan in favor of a Starbucks breakfast sandwich.

Later in the afternoon however, the snow had died down and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to bust out the snow pants and boots and go play. A lot of raising a kid in New York is improvisation, at least for someone who grew up in the burbs. I like to think of Central Park as our backyard and so of course we headed there to take advantage of the white stuff.

So we hung out in front of the building.

I neglected to factor in the 15 min walk (with snow, ice, and wind) and the heat to cold ratio of a child in snow clothes in a stroller. I got Mr B all bundled and into the stroller and off we went. But by the time we arrived at our “yard” he was pissed. His face was frozen and his body was sweating. He wanted nothing to do with the snow whatsoever. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with anything. When I took him out of the stroller he threw himself  to the ground screaming. So I picked him up, and he screamed. So I let him walk, and he screamed. Finally I strapped him back in, unzipped his coat, put the wind cover on and gave him some snacks.

This appeased him and we made it back home. But  Mommy was bound and

Maybe I'll just chill in the lodge instead.

determined for him to play in the snow. So we improvised. There’s a little landscaping outside of the door to our building. So Brady played in the snow right there. And he loved it!

Improvisation is key!