So, I suck with blogging, but I am back tonight. Blogging is more fun that doing work or wrapping up projects anyway. Here I am...37 weeks pregnant and October begins on Friday.
As I get closer to the day of meeting my second daughter, I really start to freak the hell out...on so many levels. I think of where I was and who I was when I got pregnant with E. Then I started this thing called the doctorate and so much about me changed. And being a mom changed so much about me as a student and as a researcher. As I have spent the past two years on the journey to learning about motherhood, I have also found myself researching motherhood. I have met some particularly interesting people on this journey who seem to share similar parenting views to me. When I had E, I knew I was not in the mainstream parenting culture. I confess--I was a breastfeeding, baby wearing, co-sleeping, homemade baby food mom who (still) has never let her child cry it out and practices some of the basics of attachment parenting.
Attachment parenting...the bane of my existence these days. When E was young, I could not do what other moms did. I could not force a feeding schedule, I could not force her to cry it out, so I started to turning to more websites...and to attachment parenting. I realized that in my heart that allowed me to follow my instincts as a mom. For me, that was what mothering was all about.
I have a Facebook "friend." I call her a "friend" because I have never met her nor do I ever intend to. She believes many of the same things that I do about parenting, but recently her posts have haunted me and plagued me with such an overwhelming sense of guilt that I want to crawl into a hole. No joke. Two of the posts that have haunted me deal with the following:
1. Mothers should absolutely not leave their children with anyone (husbands only for short periods of time in an emergency) until children develop a sense of time.
2. Women should only have one child at a time, or space their children far apart so that mothers can dedicate themselves to taking care of the needs of their children.
I stopped. I stared. I looked at my two year old who at times is such a little grown up but at times is still so much my baby. I look at my giant pregnant belly and think to myself, "could I be the worst mother in the world?" As I rock my daughter to sleep (yes I confess I still rock my daughter to sleep-and I don't plan to stop either), I think to myself of how I may be depriving her, hurting her, or emotionally scarring her by having another baby. And then I feel an overwhelming sense of fear, of panic, and I ask myself, "what in the hell were we thinking??"
Then I say to myself, this person that I do not even know has made me crumble and feel like a terrible mother. She has made me, someone so sure of where they are headed in their life, someone who feels very grounded in her parenting feel like a worthless parent. And I said to myself, she has over 1000 Facebook friends and many blog followers (certainly more than oh-so popular I), and this message reaches so many people. So many moms who may work, who may be students, who may have struggled with fertility and want more children, moms who need a break, moms who struggled with breastfeeding and lacked the support to help them get through, moms who suffer from depression as they adjust to their new lives, and mothers who struggle to connect to their newborns. We are bombarded with messages in the media about what it means to be a good mom. We use Facebook, blogs, twitter, pregnancy and parenting websites, online support groups, magazines, books and guides to tell us how to prepare, how to be a good pregnant woman and how to be a good mother. And if one does not follow these messages, they are setting their children up for heart problems, depression,diabetes, cancer, ADD, violence, sex, drugs and rock n roll...
And then I breathe. And I remind myself of these things:
1. This Facebook "friend" is a self-righteous bitch. Seriously. And yet at the same time what she reminds me is that I am not crazy to pursue my line of research. She reminds me that despite of all of the political, economic and social changes that have occured in the past 60 years, dominant culture's image of the "perfect" mom from the 1950s. And why? Why does that make one a good mom??
2. People told me I was crazy and stupid when E was born. Crazy and stupid to be a mom (please refer to my original blog post in 2008). People tell me now that I am also crazy, that I have no idea how hard my life will be, E will hate me, the baby will hate me, I will not make it in grad school, my marriage will suffer, my boobs will sag to the floor, my dogs will run away from home, my friend will abandon me, my hair will fall out....the list goes on and on. I am not sure what exactly gives people the authority to know such things.
3. My life is obviously going to change, but my life is not going to end. Neither of my daughters will hate me. I don't have to abandon E. I will still be able to rock her to sleep. My husband and I will not get divorced and the dogs will not run away from home.
4. My biggest lesson that I learned when E was born is that not everything in this life is in my control. I was a complete obesssive compulsive scheduled control freak. Seriously. And the day she was born, I let it go. I became the parent that I always scoffed at. I thought I would be a formula pushing, cry it out sort of mom. I found I was the complete opposite. And as I made this change in my personal life, it changed me in so many ways. Some may argue that I am not a very good (or dedicated grad student). That might be true. But letting go of the control, letting go of the compulsiveness is what has let me survive grad school, has let me figure out my life, and has made me feel comfortable in my own skin.
As I look at these final weeks of pregnancy, I am trying so hard to enjoy life and to stay calm. :) So many things scare me, worry me, but I keep reminding myself that I will have a new daughter...another wonderful girl to love and to make life a bit more interesting and to inspire me in new ways.
See, I really AM Little Miss Sunshine!! :)
Ali
1 comment:
I hadn't really known you had a new blog post. I came to it because you are in labor, and I can't stop thinking of you. I absolutely love this. I think it's a good reminder for all of us ]who struggle with being the "perfect mother." All we can do is the best for our children, and in the end, it doesn't matter how we look to anyone else. There will always be someone else who doesn't agree with what we do. The only thing that matters is that we do the best we can for our children and ourselves. And, for what it's worth, I think you are a fantastic mother, which is why I constantly look to you for advice and guidance. Love you, Ali.
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