Category Archives: motherhood

motherhood, parenting, Spirituality

Where are all the people?

Today my daughter and I wandered into church.

New to town and in search of someone/anyone in the rectory, we’d wandered in there a couple months ago.  Apparently to her three year-old mind that signaled a routine.  So today after we finally did complete that unfinished business in the rectory, she wanted to go into the church again.

I hadn’t been planning on it.  I’d finished my list of tasks and was headed to the car.  I began to say we were done and could go home – when I paused.  Why couldn’t we go into the church?  We didn’t have to rush home.  And even so, I make time to do all sorts of ultimately extraneous errands.  Why shouldn’t I stop to spend a moment in the quiet sanctuary of the church?  And at this point in time, in my life, in society, a prayer could certainly be used.

Angela and I entered the dark hush of the church, a sacred feeling sweeping over me in a way that just doesn’t happen with the hubbub of a congregation-filled Sunday.  We quietly trod towards the sanctuary, my eyes on the golden glint of the tabernacle and rosy glow of the Christ candle, Angela’s moving from side to side across the pews.

“Where are all the people?” she asked.

Years of Catholic devotion springing to life through the sense memory of approaching and genuflecting on the altar, I continued forward without answering.  After we both genuflected and crossed ourselves – she doing a surprisingly good job for a three year-old – she asked again.

“Why aren’t the people here?”

Just like my initial response to her request to go in the church, I had a quick and logical answer – it’s not Sunday, there’s no mass right now.

And then I saw this beautiful little being standing next to me, a human in miniature, not even as tall as the altar, asking her question again in her sweetly innocent voice.

“The people should be here,” I said.

“Yes, they should,” she said.

I knelt down and focused on the image of Jesus on the cross, His presence in the tabernacle, the light from the candle.  I acknowledged all that He gave us and how all we do is ask for more.  And then I asked for more.   I asked for strength to give Him my all; to turn it all over to Him.  I prayed to remember this lesson my daughter had unwittingly given me – to go to Jesus; that I should be with Him there and always.

And I suppose, somewhere, inside me, I knew this.  I chose today, a week before Christmas, the midst of a week of trials and tribulations all around me, to officially register at the parish – a task I’d been meaning to do since moving in.  Why now?  The same reason I agreed when Angela suggested we enter the church.  Something inside me needed this lesson, this reminder, this preparation of Advent that always seems to fall short other years.

And it is no small wonder that it came from a small child of God.

 

 

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motherhood, parenting

Feedbag on the front, camel on the bak

I’ve stumbled upon perhaps my most brilliant and self-preserving idea yet.  Not only will it make and keep my children happy, but it will keep me from losing my patience, temper, and ultimately, mind.

I’ve been increasingly irritated by the constant demands for snack and drink from my cherubs.  It’s a never-ending cycle.  I’ve tried to institute schedules.  Three squares, of course, with one morning and afternoon snack.  I’ve taken into account thirst during playtime, allowing a water bottle at any point during the day.  However, independent studies in our home have found that true thirst is only satiated by fruit juice or chocolate milk.  And that if said thirst is not satiated, desperate whining ensues.  And those little bellies just can’t last twenty minutes until a balanced dinner is placed in front of them.  Oh, the horror, the agony, the hunger eating away at the tender muscle at their bones.

Dinnertime itself presents a whole new slate of irritations.  The heretofore-ravenous hunger is somehow sated within two minutes of meeting those colorful vegetables and proteins; the cup of milk drained dry with t-minus ten seconds before my husband and I sit down.  Just as my mouth is about to close around my first forkful of food, the demands come.  Can I have more milk?  Yes, in a moment, I respond, trying to savor a few bites before I return to the kitchen once more.  But I want miiiiiiiilllllllkkkkkk.  I said you can have milk.  Let Momma have a few bites of food first.  But I want MIIIIIIILLLLLLKKK.  *$#&@*.  I grab the offending cup and stomp to the kitchen.  When I return with cup filled and plop into my seat, oh-so-ready to resume my meal, the next little voice says, Can I have more milk?  *&$@*#&#&@(!  You didn’t know you wanted milk when you heard your sister ask for some?  But I wasn’t done with it then.

It was after one such episode that I came up with my brilliant idea.  My patience gone and my language and attitude most definitely flip, I announced to my husband – gesticulated actually – that I was going to strap a feedbag to the front and a camelbak hydration system to the back of each child.  It would make life so much easier, I raved.  Food and drink on demand!  Their needs met with nary an act on our part.  He laughed and pointed at me: there’s your next blog.

One half of my brilliant idea

Yes, and maybe my million-dollar idea.  At the very least, it would make me less irritated.  Though my kids would probably be the next three statistics in the childhood obesity epidemic.  I guess we can’t have it all – though they’d have food and drink all day if I’d let them 😉

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motherhood, parenting

Unfair Labor Practices

I’d like my fifteen-minute break now, the first of two, of course.

Then I’d like to take my lunch break where I will leave the confines of the workplace for a change of scenery.

I’d like to punch out when my eight-hour shift has ended, after tidying my workspace and locking the door on it until morning.

I’d like to collect my paycheck and cash it at the bank, cold, hard, currency in my grimy little hand.

But I don’t get breaks.  I don’t have free time.  I don’t get off work.

Lately I don’t even get to sleep through the night.

If only I had some vacation credits to cash, but my employer doesn’t offer those either.

These three are the toughest little tyrants I’ve ever worked for.

 

[Bad Mommy Disclaimer: this post is tongue-in-cheek, of course.  Most of it anyway]

 

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anxiety, Living, medication, motherhood, postpartum depression

You Can Call Me Peri?

So I crack open this month’s issue of Family Circle, the latest installment from the gift subscription my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas, and see an article on menopause.  Ok, think it’s safe to skip that one.  But oddly compelled to read all printed matter that comes across my radar regardless of whether it pertains to or interests me, I scan the first page.  In speech bubbles strewn about the page are various questions, worries, and anecdotes from peri- and post-menopausal women.  More than half the bubbles could have been direct quotes from me!  And I am not very peri at all!

The article invites me to “read on to find out how to outwit, outplay and outlast the next chapter in your life.”  Thus begins a decade-by-decade breakdown on how to outwit this personified beast that threatens to overtake all women all over the world.  “In [my] 30s,” I can expect my fertility to decline.  Yes, knew that and no, that does not bother me in the least.  I should become my healthiest self as “what [I] do now impacts how early menopause starts, how intense the symptoms are and how they affect my body.”  Right about now, my dander is starting to get up – and it’s not just the lack of the third comma in the lists of three things that is doing it.  I need to “bust stress” as “mini-meltdowns will be happening.”  I should try tai chi or yoga or a “peaceful play list on [my] iPod” to “help alleviate menopausal related anxiety.”

It’s about now that I realize I’m fucked (and, no, I don’t mean the uncomfortable sex that I can look forward to in my 50s).

Either I’ve been perimenopausal since my prenatal visits for my third bambino or it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.  How does one who seems to be suffering from post-partum post-trauma prepare for a whole lot more of the same?

There is a sidebar by my decade entitled, “Get the #1 Test You Need Now.”  Apparently a baseline hormone panel (“an easy blood, saliva or urine test that determines [my] optimal hormone levels”) will assist my doctor in prescribing hormones “specific to [my] ideal range instead of the range of an average woman” when the time comes.  I actually laughed out loud when I read this, eliciting strange looks from my daughters.  My oldest asked what I was laughing at; how would I even begin to explain?  That, when it comes to Mommy, there is no such thing as ‘optimal hormone levels’?  That if the doctor prescribed me hormones based on the ‘range of an average woman’, the cocktail would be akin to a stiff drink of water?

While discussing “the (formerly) ‘silent passage’ is no longer taboo,” many women are still petrified by the thought of it.  Except maybe for my friend – who has such irregular periods, she was almost wishing for it.  But when I mentioned this to my mother-in-law, joking about it, she responded very seriously, “No, she doesn’t want it.”

So where does that leave me?  No, I don’t have hot flashes.  I haven’t gained mysterious pounds regardless of what I do or eat.  But mood swings, irritability, anxiety – all de rigueur already – and I’m only in my first decade, according to this handy little guide.

I’m starting to view women’s susceptibility to hormones as this insidious little secret that was only hinted at as my mother described my body’s cycles to me as I sat on the bathroom floor over two decades ago.  By no means was my mother light on the details; I understood my body’s workings in what, to a twelve year-old, was a revoltingly clear manner.  But I didn’t know how pervasive those pesky little hormones were.

Yes, I knew there’d be a few days of PMS.  Yes, I knew I’d be overly emotional during pregnancy.  Yes, I knew there’d be a few days of baby blues.  Then I noticed extra irritability that seemed to coincide with ovulation.  Then those damn hormones ganged up on me with crazy, heart-wrenching situations in my life to send me into a swirling storm of anxiety and depression.  Thankfully, my head broke water a while ago, but only with medication and therapy.  And I still struggle.

I’d like to say that an awareness helps me prepare for and deal with the effect hormones have on my life – just as the article touts the “18 Things Every Woman Should Know About Menopause.”  To a certain point, it does.  But when you know the beast is coming no matter what – and you can’t run and hide because life won’t allow it – what do you do?  Grin and bear it?  Pray to the gods that in your next life you come back with a penis?  I love yoga, but unless I take my strap and choke the hell out of the beast, it’s not gonna make it go away.  Maybe I can drown it out with the soothing sounds of my peaceful play list while I try to achieve optimal hormone levels.  Maybe instead of ‘silent passage’, it should be ‘silent scream’.

UPDATE May 2014: I spoke too soon on the hot flashes!  My past three menstrual cycles have been ushered in by a week of night sweats.  Good, clammy times!

 

 

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Identity, Living, motherhood

The Alpha and the Omega

There are moments when I catch glimpses of the mother I used to be.  The one I was when I had one baby.  The one I was when I was more frequently in a good mood or less stressed out.  The goofy one who sang silly made-up songs.  The one who danced with a baby on her hip till her legs gave out.  The one who wasn’t so beat down she just tried to get through her day.  The one who could spend time with her children rather than refereeing them.

I see her in the smiles of my children.  The looks of surprise.  The glances at each other and back at me before cracking up.  The silly giggles that roll from their bellies and out through their lips.

I see myself in the mirror and I see a girl child who somehow ended up in charge of three of her own.  A girl who still sees herself as growing and learning.  A girl who still wonders at the dynamics of her own mother/daughter relationship as she builds ones up with her three.

Will they see me for who I am?  A person, who in motherhood and life, often makes it up as she goes along.  Someone who loves them fiercely, but wonders how she loses herself from time to time.  And who opens her eyes from time to time to see the true incarnation of who she’s supposed to be – to them and herself.

Yes, the image will change.  The lines will deepen, the colors fade.  But it should only be a deepening, not a swallowing, a sinking.  The original image is in there somewhere.  A fire in the eye, a shape, a sparkle of laughter.

How do I flow gracefully into the deep while allowing the light bubbles of my past to filter through?  How do I get from the beginning to the end and honor both all the way through?  How do I reconcile the woman and mother I’ve always wanted to be with the being I’ve become?

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anxiety, Living, motherhood, parenting, postpartum depression

This House is My Baby

Three years ago, I was in the midst of the maelstrom known as kitchen renovation while designing my own dream space in utero.  In a house too small for three children and no money to move, we decided to do what we could about the logistics of our life.

We messed them up even more.

We ripped out the kitchen, thinking a more streamlined area would ease prepping and feeding three little mouths.  Streamlined is not a word to describe a kitchen reno or raising three children.

Demo started one month and one week before my due date.  Anal retentive to begin with and unknowingly suffering from a fledging case of postpartum depression, my list-making, obsessive planning, and futile attempts at control began.  I created calendars scheduling every detail.  I pushed my father-in-law to speed things up.  I perpetually pissed off our floor installer for constant e-mail updates.

I wanted that kitchen done before the baby came.  I needed running water to clean bottles and babies.  I needed the nasty mastic under the formerly linoleum floor covered up so any residual dust wouldn’t assault my newborn’s fragile airways.  I needed life in some kind of stasis before all hell broke loose.

How a finished kitchen would have prepared me for what happened in the delivery room and beyond is beyond me.  But I felt that some measure of control over my physical world would provide me some sense of control over everything else.  Well, I may not have known that then, but I can certainly see it now – especially since I’m trying to do it again.

Nearly three years to the day after the first pull of a crowbar in our kitchen, we’ve contracted a purchase and sales agreement on a new house.  Gorgeous kitchen aside, we’ve reached the limits of this house.  With one daughter just starting kindergarten and another young enough to make the switch to a new school hopefully not too traumatic, it seems like the perfect time.  Well, sort of.

With interest rates historically low, causing a backlog in bank closings, and a seller who has a cat with special needs (don’t ask), getting into this new house in time for the first day of school is becoming increasingly difficult.  And I can feel the anxiety ratcheting up as a result.  I can feel that nag mechanism gearing up for e-mail assaults on my realtor, unrealistic expectations from our loan officer, and an overall sense of unrest at the universe’s apparent disregard for my wishes.

Every fiber of my being is screaming – make it happen!  It must happen!  You have to get these kids in that house so they can find a home for their lunch boxes and a place to lay our their clothes for the first day of school, make a dry run to the bus stop, and get a feel for that new place as home before they have to figure out a new school, too.  It’s mommy guilt and good planning and type-A personality all rolled into one.  It’s also unrealistic.  Well, sort of.

If I felt any different, I wouldn’t be myself.  I just don’t roll that way.  And it’s coming from a desire to have the best for my children.

It also feels incredibly familiar.

Since 2004, I’ve been pregnant in two and a half year cycles.  When my youngest passed two years and seven months, I realized that was the oldest I’d ever had a child without expecting the next.  And I held my breath for the next three months.  No child number four, but we still embarked on a tumultuous endeavor: this whole house-buying thing.

This house has become my baby.

Apparently I cannot live through a two and half-year cycle without giving myself something to obsess about until it comes to fruition.  But while I see the parallels between my behavior now and then, at least there’s no such thing as post-house-buying depression – not until the first mortgage payment is due anyway.

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Marriage, motherhood, parenting

No Bubble to Burst

When I explain to my children the evolution that is pregnancy, I do not mention the stork.  I do not talk about babies left in rush baskets on doorsteps.  I explain that they grew inside their mother.  I explain the physiological changes and processes.  But I do it in terms they will understand, which means that the baby grows in a bubble inside the mother’s belly until it’s ready to come out (and yes, we discuss where the baby comes out).

For whatever reason (a recent birthday, a friend’s newborn, another friend’s impending labor), we’ve been discussing these physical wonders a lot lately.  And through the inspiration of an upcoming wedding anniversary, these wonders are helping me reframe the importance of the marriage relationship.

Floating in fluid to cushion it from blows from the outside world and allow the various parts of the body to grow evenly, without restraint; to exercise and strengthen the lungs so they can breathe on their own when out in the world – this is why the fetus is suspended in that bubble.  The symbiotic bond developed in the womb prepares both mother and child for the rigors to come once they become separate entities.

Is this not unlike marriage?  No, one is not born of the other, but for a marriage to be successful, the couple must build that bubble around themselves.  In the world they build for themselves, the couple builds protection from anything the world might throw at them, whatever challenges, insults, hurts it has.  In the shelter of their love, the couple grows as one and as the best distinct individual each can be.  In the safety of their partnership, the couple learns to develop their voice – speaking as a team and to each other about what matters most.  In this bubble, the two halves of this couple develop and strengthen the best parts of themselves and each other so that when they step out into the world, together or alone, they still feel the strength of that foundation.

And floating in that bubble is something only they can experience.  There are some things sacred to just the two people inside; they are meant for no one else.  Nor should they allow anyone to even try to permeate the outside layers.  Just as in parenting, the couple is a united front.  No outside force – or person – should pit them against each other.  And if it’s done right, no one even has the chance to.

I’ve birthed three babies.  I’ve grown each of them in their own personal bubble.  But none of them would be here if it weren’t for the special ‘bubble’ that my husband and I built in love eleven years ago – and no one can burst that.

 

 

 

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motherhood, parenting

A Big Sarcastic Thank You

To you who draw obscene pictures of target areas of your anatomy

To the teenage delinquents who practice the spelling of choice four-letter words

To the future pyromaniacs of America who melted a pothole into the slide

To the underage drinkers who left a bottle a few swigs short of empty by the jungle gym

 

I thank you

For enhancing my child’s playground experience

 

I thank you for questions like

What is that?

Why did mean people ruin the playground?

Why do people drink beer here?

 

I applaud your ingenuity at finding ways to feed your obviously repressed artistic talent,

your scientific aplomb at experimenting to find the exact temperature at which plastic melts,

your courage in fighting acceptable social norms for public drinking and congregation.

 

But, please, take your Miller someplace else and find some other way to live ‘the high life’ – and leave the playground to the kids.

 

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Living, motherhood, parenting

Phases and Stages

As my three year-old legs trudged after my parents on the last leg of a trail where the promise of the parking lot was just around the next corner, I was the most tired I had ever been in my life.

In the final push of a crazy semester where all-nighters became a necessity, I was the most tired I had ever been in my life.

On the last day of the marking period during my first year of teaching, with too many grades to process and not enough daylight hours to do it in, I was the most tired I had ever been in my life.

When I slept twelve hours a night and still needed a nap during my first pregnancy, I had never been more tired in my life.

Then the baby was born.

Then a pregnancy while taking care of a toddler.

Then a pregnancy while taking care of a toddler and a preschooler.

When a few years into a family of three, I thought I could resume my own interests and still maintain the smooth flow of said family, I was never more tired in my life.

Undertaking a six-day intensive writing institute, prepping a manuscript for publication, tearing through my house for showings, looking for a new home for us, and hosting a birthday party, I have never been more tired in my life.

It’s so easy to get snarky with ingénues of any sort, in any matter, when you know what’s coming down the pike.  But they don’t.  To them, in that instant, it is the hardest thing they’ve dealt with.  As is everything that I think is the penultimate exhaustion-inducing tribulation.  But there’s always something more challenging than the last, isn’t there?  Which is another good reason not to resort to snarkiness – karma will come around and knock you on your ass – or at the very least, laugh heartily at your discomfort.

All the more reason to be present.

If we lament our lot now, when we’ve reached the next, progressively more difficult step, we’ll look back and realize we didn’t know how good we had it.

A wise woman with almost as many children as Mrs. Duggar with whom I’ve become acquainted once said, “You always have one more child than you think you can handle.”  So true.  Adding one more straw of any sort isn’t going to break our back, even if we fear it may.  If we only follow our instincts and trust in ourselves, our bodies, our lives, our mindsets will shift naturally to accommodate the weight.

Great advice.  If I wasn’t so damn tired, maybe I’d be able to follow it.

 

 

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motherhood, parenting, postpartum depression, Recovery

Mom – that’s enough

A couple of weeks ago I made the mistake of calling in to a radio talk show.  Stupidly enough, I thought the host, a contemporary of mine in age and many ideas, and I would be able to have an intelligent dialogue.  I had forgotten the talent that radio hosts have to turn every conversation on its ear until it follows the tack they had intended for that evening’s show.

I called to counter that ridiculously inflammatory article ‘timed’ to coincide with Mothers’ Day.  I said that the issue was not whether this woman should be breastfeeding her child, but that this magazine had the chutzpah to title their article in such a way.  As if mothering isn’t a hard enough job on its own, as if women don’t constantly question themselves, and as if some of us don’t already feel tempted to attack others’ decisions to validate our own.  There is no need to create divisiveness where there should only be support and camaraderie.  For when it all comes down to it, aren’t we all just struggling to make it through as best we know how?

The topic of blogging came up, the host wondering about the now infamous woman from the cover photo’s own blog.  I said that while I hadn’t read it, blogs can be an enormous help to other readers going through similar experiences.  He said, yes, I can see if you or a loved one are suffering from some rare disease and there is a support group or information on a blog, but a blog on mothering?  Sharing your ‘fresh’ experiences on something that has been done down through the millennia?

I felt the fire rise up the back of my neck, but I knew the conversation was over.

This man does not know I am a mother.  Who blogs.  Who receives enormous benefit from it as I come to grips with the person left in the wake of postpartum.  Who has felt like less of a woman because I didn’t do X, Y, Z with my babies and children like I knew other moms were doing.  Who has suffered in misery thinking I was so completely and totally alone.  Like a failure.  Who shares my story in the hopes that other women will not suffer as I did.

And he could never possibly understand.

And that, I understand.  This post is not about attacking him.  Everything’s relative, this I know.  My own husband said, Jen, when he’s a father and watches his wife go through it, he’ll know.

But there are many people who already know.  The women – my aunts, my grandmother, my friends, my cousins, women wrangling their children at the grocery store, women struggling to drop their kids at daycare and get to work, women all around the world – with whom I’ve shared my struggles.  It took me a long time to admit I wasn’t the perfect mom I tried to portray.  But when I did, my confessions were met with nods, knowing smiles, affirmations, similar stories. There is a special bond with these women.  A comfort.  An unspoken feeling that they’ve got my back – if for no other reason that they’re not going to judge me because they’ve been in my same position.

That’s what women need to share – not the stepping on each other in the struggle for perfection, but the imperfection.  That’s the only way we can shatter the idea of ‘the perfect mom’ and end the war for our self-esteem and self-image.  Because who the hell are people trying to sell magazines and get radio ratings to tell us if we’re mom enough?  That’s up to us and our fellow moms, the women who are all in this together.

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