Mommyhood

My mother did not take more than three weeks maternity leave when she had children. Other than that, I have never known her to take more than one week of vacation at a time. When we were sick, she would tell us to ‘stay back’ because she could not afford to be sick. She always made it clear that working was not her choice; that it was something she had to do as a single mother of two. “When you get older and have children, do everything you can to stay home and raise them” she would tell me. I could not help but wonder why she did not take her own advice.

I do not think that my mom was the best mother (not that she didn’t try). I associated her poor parenting skills to the fact that she had a career outside of the home. That’s not to say I think all career moms are poor moms, I just thought my mother would have been better to us had she not had a career. Because of that one idea, I took her advice (there is a first for everything) and stayed home to raise my son, for my biggest fear was to be a bad mom.

Prior to leaving the work field, I had bounced from several forms of occupations before landing on my feet in education. I combined my love of literature with my understanding of disgruntled youth and became a high school English teacher. The cliché is true in that the pay sucks but the rewards make up for it and I loved my career. I loved it for 2 full years, but left halfway through my third year with a sour taste in my mouth and a six-month-old fetus in my uterus. I left my teaching position early because the administration had gotten the better of me, and with my future mom-hood waiting for me, I did not look back.

Staying at home, full time, to raise my son has presented me with issues and challenges I would never have anticipated. Each day I question my self-worth, what I bring to the family, and what I bring to the world. I swear the kid is growing up on auto-pilot; he just needs me to reboot him every once in awhile. It sounds so easy in theory, but in practice I am losing my mind. For the first six months, I just held him constantly. If he was not nursing or sleeping, he was screaming his head off. There was no time to question whether or not I was a good mom, there was not time to eat, sleep or think. I lived on Luna Bars, Smithfield Farm Smoothies, and Law & Order reruns. I lost all 75 pounds of my baby weight bouncing my colicky, acid reflux, bi-lateral hernia baby in my arms for hours on end.

The second six months were blissful. He stopped screaming, started sleeping, and we began to make friends. I had more down time than I have ever had in my life, so I became creative in scrapbooking and painting my living room furniture. His first birthday was my personal celebration.