Sweet Yet Sour

A long time ago my sister and I made a deal with each other that if we ever even considered buying a minivan, the other sister would make every attempt, including maiming, to dissuade the insane minivan buying sister. The minivan seemed like such a horrid expression of motherhood that it made us cringe.

I’ve been a mother for a year now and thankfully, I’m not ready for the minivan yet.

When I was around seven I filled out a “My Book About Me” that included some very important information.  Among other things, I apparently took a count and decided I had “about 100″ freckles (a VAST underestimate in reality), loved the color green (still do) and that I wanted to be a “gold miner” when I grew up.  I have no recollection of what drove me to say “gold miner”.

I do remember wanting to be a marine biologist or a zoologist.  I was never a little girl who played much with dolls and don’t ever remember wanting to be a mom.  It’s not that I didn’t like kids, I babysat often and generally liked babies, it just never was a particular goal of mine to be a mom.  I had other things I wanted to do like go to Africa and see elephants.  But as time went on it seemed to be more of a natural thing that I would get married, have kids and do that wife/mom thing.

I am in awe of women who seem to be excited to be mothers from the time they are little girls.  Those are the women who are so giddy and excited to get pregnant and have kids.  These are the women who say things like, “I fell in love from the first moment I looked at the ultrasound picture.”

I am not one of those women and I can’t change that even if I try.  I was excited to be pregnant, but not the giddy kind of excited.  I was also worried about what lay ahead of me.  Friends would say that I didn’t seem excited or that I wasn’t smiling as much as they expected a pregnant woman to smile.  All I could do was shrug and say that I was excited, but in my own, worry wart way.

When Anna was born I was excited to see her, but I don’t remember thinking that I was in love with her from the first moment I saw her.  It was a few weeks before I really felt like I loved her and thought she was a neat little girl.  For the first few weeks she just cried, slept, ate and pooped and frankly, if I had a boyfriend like that I would dump him…

Around 2 months Anna became more interactive, would look in my direction, even try to smile and began to develop into an actual personality.  It was then that I began to really love her.  Today as write this I absolutely adore Anna and I love being her mom.

It’s been hard though, this mom thing.  For me it meant giving up (for the moment) a career that I loved and felt I was good at and staying at home.  It meant at times being lonely, angry, frustrated and depressed.  But it was a choice that I made because I did not want to miss Anna developing into a little girl.  I have been here for a lot of firsts and I’m glad of that.

Let me go briefly onto a tangent here.  It really makes me angry that the most rich, powerful country in the world, full of people who say that they have “family values” makes it so hard to be working mom.  Out of all of the developed nations we offer the least amount of time off for parents and none of that is required to be paid. Most other countries offer 1 year (at least) – in contrast to the stupid 12 weeks the U.S. offers, and in most countries that is paid.  We also breastfeed for a shorter time, breastfeed less and bottle feed more and use the breast pump more.  In order not to miss Anna’s 1st year I had to quit my job and I don’t think that’s fair.  This doesn’t say “family values” to me as much as it says, “the dollar is king – get back to work ladies.”

A year into motherhood I do feel better and calmer about being a mom.  I’ve learned a lot and frankly, I did not heed a whole bunch of advice that I should have, but I think I’m better for having learned it the hard way.  I still make mistakes and still have a lot to learn, but if and when we have another child I’ll be a little more excited and a little less worried about what lies ahead.

Every day I get to do silly things with Anna, like tickle her, make faces at her and practice making silly sounds. I spend a lot of time on my hands and knees saying things like, “Mama’s going to get you Anna!” while she screams with delight and crawls away as fast as she can.  When I take her places, even to the store or the backyard I get to experience her learning about things for the first time.  No one bats an eye when I point and say, “See the tree Anna? or “See the pretty yellow mustard bottle Anna?” And teaching someone about the world is intoxicating – it makes you realize what an awesome world it really is.

There are a few things I learned the hard way this year and that I need to keep in mind for the next time:

1. After childbirth, take the stool softener that they offer you in the hospital.  Enough said.

2. Nap when the baby naps.  Do not do laundry or clean the kitchen you OCD freak. Get some sleep!

3. Baby clothes sizes are not the same across all manufacturers, nor are they logical… When Anna was born I thought she would fit into the “0-3″ size.  This is wrong.  She was “newborn” size and didn’t fit into the “0-3″ until she was 3 months old. Now that she’s 12 months old she only fits into certain 12 months sizes, while others she’s still wearing 9 months and others she’s wearing the next size up after 12 months.  Insanity!

4. DO repeat these words and practice them often, “Will you be bringing food or helping with the dishes/laundry?”  These are words that must be said to each and every visitor that comes to see the new baby. I had two friends who helped with dishes and laundry, and my sister and another friend brought food and this was all very helpful.  However, there were plenty of visitors who came and did nothing but hold the baby, even some who would ask, “Can I have a glass of water? I’m holding the baby.”  For these people I will be practicing, “Kiss my overtired, unshowered, up four times a night ass and get your own damn water.”

5. Ask for help.  I have never been good at asking for help – I think I learned this from parents who for some reason think asking for help is shameful.  I can’t even answer when people come over for dinner and ask, “What can we bring?”  I did not ask for help in those first few really trying months, even when I was out of my mind with need for it, even from Mike.  Instead, I took everything on myself and was in general pretty pissy about the whole thing.  There is a reason that “mother” and “martyr” sound so similar; it wouldn’t surprise me if they were originally the same word.

6. Find your self worth somewhere other than motherhood.  This one has been particularly hard for me and I’m still working on this issue.  Before Anna was born I gained a lot of my self worth from my job, doing well at work and the compliments I received from my superiors.  When I became a full time mom I had no way of feeling good about myself – no one compliments you about how well you are doing and the baby certainly never says, “Nice job on that diaper!” And honestly, most people ignore parents entirely when there’s a baby around – you start to feel like back drop at the baby play. I’m sure this is why I took everything on myself and never asked for help – because I wanted to at least feel like I was doing it all; I felt better if I could say to myself that I had done it all without help.

7. Spend time with other mothers. I’m doing much better at this now that I did at the beginning. All moms have different things that they do that you can learn from and it’s really nice to have some one that you can talk to about whatever is going on.  I tried joining “Mothers and More” for a playgroup – only to have that flop – but I have successfully formed a playgroup with other parents/mothers from our childbirth class and the friendships I have made with them are invaluable.

8. Let go and let the dad take the kid.  Poor Mike – he has offered help and told me to get out of the house so much and I never take him up on it.  I am getting better about this though – a few weeks ago I took off and spent two heavenly hours at a local bookstore reading and sipping an almond steamer.  And I’ve started (thrice) going out for “mommies night” with my sister.  Other than that and leaving for the cupcake tour with Laura I haven’t really gotten out of the house by myself for more than an hour this whole year and that’s just wrong.  I promise to do better about this from now on!

Motherhood is an awesome learning experience – you learn something, then you need to roll with the next change and learn something new.  This first year at least every two weeks Anna was doing something new and different.  This week she started to hold the phone (both the real phone and her play phones) up to her head and babble.  Last week she started to try to go down the stairs by standing and scooching her little butt of the stairs.  The week before that she decided that the laundry basket was best used as a walking toy…

My point is, I’ve learned to roll with the changes, be calm about what’s ahead and watch with wonder because there is always something new and interesting about to happen…