The debates of parenthood, how they rage. And they take so many prisoners.
Breastfeeding? Ah, you're an evil ear-infection lover if you don't, but you're a freaky hippie woman if you do it for longer than a year. Me? I made it seven weeks. And I don't feel one damn bit bad about stopping. A) I hated it, B) my company didn't have a nursing room, so if you wanted to pump when you went back to work, at the time, you did it on a chair in the women's room - no thanks and C) I had some cultural issues - see, I've spent my whole life associating the titties with the strip clubs. I could never wrap my head around using my breasts for their natural purpose. Sad? But true.
Co-sleeping? Oh, now this is a hot item. My beloved did NOT want a family bed. Even though I was initially against it (a joke, considering that when we have the hot sex, it's usually not at night in the bed - I'll let you just wonder where and when it is), I was so totally ready to cave when we entered into the Six Months of Nonsleep Hell that was last year. I read so many books on sleeping and felt like such a wretched mother when I couldn't get the little angel to Just. Fucking. Sleep. Already. My good friend Cagey had no intention of becoming a co-sleeper, but when Arun bitch-slapped her with the crying, she made her peace with it, and a more contented mama I've never met. I've always envied her her ability to go with the parenting flow. The little angel does sleep many nights in her bed now, but she still wakes up (at over two years of age) about three times a week. I don't consider this to be a victory more than a draw. But hey, at least I'm sleeping enough to be coherent at work, which brings me to my real subject...
To work outside the home or not? I struggled mightily with this one, which is sort of funny, considering I fancied myself having a choice at the time. There are many ardent SAHMs out there that would probably contest I did have a choice, even if my choice meant selling This Old House, for which I paid (are you listening, coastal dwellers?) a whopping $127,500. We would've had to move to a two-bedroom apartment and sell a car to stay afloat on my beloved's salary, and to do that very well might have meant sacrificing matrimonial harmony. I chose my marriage, not wanting to face the death arguments that can come from eating noodles with butter 300 times in a row. So I kept working.
My mommy work mentor, C., told me that it took her a good six months to feel comfortable working outside the home. It took me longer than that - almost a year - before the little angel came up on the waiting list at the Emerald City and started skipping off to daycare MOST DAYS. Again with the most days. There are days that she clings to my leg and cries, and those are the days that I must explain to her that we all have our jobs - mine is to go to work and earn money, Daddy's is to go to work and do whatever he does there, and hers is to go to school and play with her posse and maybe make Mommy and Daddy a nice picture out of those noodles we won't be eating more than twice a week because I stayed employed.
My friend and editor M. recently went back to work after having her dear baby D. She's currently immersed in the crying jags that are leaving your precious child after spending every moment with him or her for three months. I remember it well. I remember questioning myself as a human being. I watched my friend A. make her own decision to cut back to part-time, and she can do that, because she can afford to do that. I applaud her. My friend C. in Chicago does the same. I envy them their extra child time, but I also have realized after a lot of soul-searching that we have to live the life in front of us, as my best friend once told me. And you do.
I've missed out on some things the little angel has done that I would've liked to have seen. I've also missed out on her doing some other things that I'm glad I didn't see. There are trade-offs either way. I miss out every workday on watching her make her pictures or go down her slides or dance with scarves, but I also miss out on her being cranky and getting time-outs, if she gets them. I'll never know. This may sound incredibly callous, but I do know that from the minute I see her after work until the minute I go to bed and every minute of every weekend, I enjoy her. Part of this can be attributed to her genial personality, but part of it is that I come to the table reasonably fresh. I also have a cleaning lady who comes twice a month and a job that provides me with the lovely feedback every adult needs.
Outside of Working Mother magazine, to which I began subscribing after I dropped my subscription to Parenting (too many weird crafts) and American Baby (too aimed at SAHMs), I don't see many working mothers owning their positions. There's a lot of guilt out there, a cultural belief that despite the fact that 68 percent of mothers work outside the home, we're doing it wrong. We should be at home, raising our kids. To that, I have to say that I AM raising my kid. And so are some very lovely individuals at her school and a posse of sticky-fingered two-year-olds who are teaching my only child that she is not the only human being on the planet, that she sometimes has to share and wait in line and that if someone pulls the fire alarm, she should grab the string with the rings on it and get the hell out of Compton. Those women love my daughter, and we love them.
The little angel's lead daycare teacher's husband died last month or late in May. It was the first experience the little angel had with mourning. We learned that people are sometimes sad, and when they are, we should give them extra hugs and be very nice to them. She has a little girl in her class who has cystic fibrosis, and she's learned not to fear wheelchairs or special equipment, and that C. can still play even if "play" means having the other kids bring over their toys or books and share their lives with her. It's much easier to me to explain disabilities now - I can just say that the ramp is what C. needs to move her chair, or that person over there? They are like C., and they just need people to involve them in their lives. These are valuable lessons.
When I had the little angel, I was extremely overprotective. Ha! I still totally am. Many people told me what I needed was to have another child. What they really meant is that I needed to cede control. Daycare has made me do that - I can't control every morsel that goes in her mouth or every experience to which she is exposed. She learns songs I don't even know, and I have to ask her to teach them to me. She just laughs and says, "Silly Mommy." How many things will she learn that I will never know?
Childcare is hard. There are no nonworking parents. I have several friends who are SAHMs, and their lives are not necessarily easier than mine, but they're not necessarily harder, either. They're just...different. Knowing that we will probably not have another child, I am thankful the little angel has found a family in her little posse. I'm thankful she has somewhere to go every day and feels safe in a place other than our home. I'm thankful she's met people of all races at a very early age and will not grow to fear people who look different. I'm not saying no SAHM could expose their child to that environment, but I don't know how easily I would've done it if I were alone with her. I live in the Midwest. I have friends of other races, but I don't have a plethora of them with two-year-old kids.
Most of all, though, the past two years has taught me that there are not as many choices in parenting as you think there are. The children are little people, and they have their own little personalities. We don't control their sleeping, eating and pooping as much as we'd like to think we do. We don't control the price of gas or the war in Iraq. We don't control downsizing or upsizing, and we barely control our mortgages with the rising interest rates. We just do the best we can. We live the lives in front of us.
The one thing we can control is how we treat each other. How much we judge each other. Each time I'm envious of one of my SAHM friends, I remind myself that I get props at work, I get to have lunch with other adults and not be covered in goo for about eight hours a day. I get to sneak off to the gym at lunchtime and have a ten-minute drive to myself, during which I may run a child-free errand. And I have that moment that SAHMs don't get - the moment my little angel looks up at daycare, realizes I've walked in the door, and runs to me screaming with joy. Then she drags me over to a table to show me the dinosaur she's just slaughtered for dinner. I hope that she'll remember these times and not be upset that I wasn't there all the time. I also hope that I'll be one of the lucky ones who gets to work part-time when she is school-aged, so that I can be there for her when she gets off the big yellow bus. I hope that will happen, but if it doesn't, I'll still focus on her when I get home and listen to every detail of her day and make her feel like the most important person in the world when we are together. Because other than my beloved, she is the most important person in the world to me. Because of that, we deal with our situation, and we try to make lemonade, even if it occasionally spills.
Everyone out there has their good days and their bad days. We all have it better and worse than each other. I know this is starting to sound so preachy I can't stand it, but it would all be a hell of a lot easier if we were nicer to each other. Don't bang on people for having one child or twelve. Don't raise that eyebrow when you see a three-and-a-half-year-old sporting diapers. Don't shudder when your pal whips out a boob at Starbucks. And never, ever, insinuate that a SAHM doesn't work. It's hard enough being a parent - being with each other should be the reward, not the penalty.
