Tag Archives: motherhood

A story of choice

February 2, 2015 therealsarahc Leave a comment

Alex asked:
What was/were the best decision(s) you ever made in your life? (Either because there were immediate benefits or it caused a chain of events that lead to something else you didn’t know you needed.)

Life is replete with opportunities to choose between two or more courses of action. Shall I turn left, or right? Should I take the long way home? Which will have the better pay off, Option A, B, or C? We make so many decisions arbitrarily, rarely considering how one such harmless and innocuous choice could alter our life forever. When you asked me what decision I made most changed my life, this is what I thought of: decisions that, only in hindsight, you are able to identify as life-altering.

Certainly, there have been times when I decided on a course of action, knowing in advance that it would result in complete upheaval. Every so often, you can see a singular moment, a choice that will alter your course irrevocably. The decision I made to move to Hawaii from California when I was 18 was one such decision. I made it during a visit to Hawaii to see my mother and stepfather, while sitting in the dark on their lanai, looking out at the ocean off of Kailua Beach and desperately trying to divine what was going to come next in my life. Many decisions are like that, you know? Made out of complete desperation. I wanted so badly for my life to start, but I was terrified of the prospect of severing ties with everything I knew in order to catapult my life out of torpidity. So reluctant was I to actually make that decision, I broke out my tarot cards and asked Spirit to tell me what to do. I don’t remember what cards manifested in that reading, nor what message they delivered, but clearly recall making that most momentous decision that very night. I flew home, packed my bags, and returned to Hawaii just a few months later, though I can’t say that I never looked back.

I knew moving to Hawaii from California was going to change things forever, though I certainly couldn’t have predicted in its entirety the complete magnitude of that decision. I had anticipated moving, going to college, graduating, and going back home. That last part, though, never came to pass. Part of it was my parents dying and the following sense of being truly marooned on an island, but there were other factors as well. A nondescript moment in my first semester of college where I sat down with my mother to choose next year’s courses and decided Sociology 100 over Psychology 101, for instance. An inane choice between the study of society and the study of the mind that had more to do with my dislike of Sigmund Freud than anything else ended up changing my life entirely — I met my husband in that freshman classroom. Had I not moved to Oahu, I never would have encountered him at all, and we may have missed each other, had we both not made an arbitrary decision to sit in Ms. Mann’s class on sociology at 9:45am on Tuesdays and Thursdays that fall.

I’ve made countless other life-changing choices since then — and clearly, the choice to become pregnant and give birth to Moira is at the top of that list. To be honest, though, I’m not sure any of the other decisions I’ve made in the last ten years have been quite so staggering as those first two. The reason being that each subsequent decision I made; to go to college, to become an interpreter, to marry William, to have Moira; all of them followed naturally after first deciding to up-end my life and move to the island, and then to meet my husband (unintended though that decision was at the time). I made a necessary, heart-wrenching decision to relocate to a strange place and live among strangers in order for my life to start — and boy, did it ever.

Stuff Sarah Says

Where you rest

November 17, 2014 therealsarahc Leave a comment

November 15th, 2014

Today was your birthday. You would have been 59. I couldn’t bring you a card, or cake, or flowers, so I brought to you your legacy — a little girl with the same turn of jaw and curve of chin. We turned East and drove to that beach where you rest, to those waters that are now your arms, and legs, and laughing mouth, to that sand that is now your hands and feet. I couldn’t see you, I couldn’t feel you, but I prayed to God that you were there.

Moira was a little scared at first, like she is when she meets a stranger. I sat with her at the outer limits of the surf as the waves drifted slowly in and you tickled her toes, wet her hair. You whispered to her quietly, confidentially through the waves. She picked up wet, sloppy handfuls of sand and squeezed them delightfully through her fingers, and I imagined that she was squeezing your hand. She stomped her feet in an oncoming wave, and I pictured her dancing with you. We walked into the water, past the shorebreak, and into the crisp blueness to sing you Happy Birthday, and I imagined your arms around us, holding us. It was the very best I could do.

I opened my hands underneath the waves, closed my eyes, and prayed, much as I have done every time I have visited this place. Let her be here, let her come. Let there be a touch, let me be open, let there be something.

I heard Moira laughing as she played with her daddy in the water. I felt the waves ripple past my skin, warmed and cooled in turn by the sun and the afternoon’s breeze. I waited, but the supernatural evaded me, as it is wont to do.

Closing my hands, I brought them up out of the water, and opened them toward Moira. She smiled in that way that proves she was born for her Hawaiian name — Kealohi, The Light. “Hau`oli Lā Hānau, Meemaw Janis,” I said, sing-song for us both, before turning to go home.

Stuff Sarah Says

The Momma Bear Protocol

October 20, 2014 therealsarahc Leave a comment

Parenthood — motherhood in particular — comes loaded with a lot hidden programming. Sure, there’s a lot they don’t tell you — I did not anticipate, for example, having my moderately sized 36Bs landing in the 40F range by the time it was all over.

Poor High-School-Boyfriend. He missed out. But at least he's related to the Pumpkin King. Still has that going for him. — Pre special-order bras. Poor High-School-Boyfriend, he really missed out. But at least he’s still related to the Pumpkin King. He’ll always have that going for him.

Besides boobs more massive than Husband or I could ever have dreamed of, there’s also the ability to diagnose minor ailments by glancing inside a poopy diaper, and the somewhat less desirable ability to hold protracted conversations about what I have found within those diapers. But there are also things I wouldn’t have believed, things that well up from deep within.

There exists an intrinsic desire to care for every aspect of your child’s well-being, to make sure that they are safe at all costs — it is deep, lizard-brain, instinctual caveman shit. And if you’re a mom, I speak primarily of the Momma Bear Protocol.

Yeah, I would want to tango with that gal, either.

As a new mother, you may not realize that you have downloaded this critical programming until after you have given birth. Perhaps not even until long after, not until your child stumbles unwittingly into a situation of some minor threat or danger, and you quite suddenly find that the rational, pleasant, complimentary person you once were has suddenly left the room and a wild, raging animal has taken her place. The Momma Bear Protocol has been activated.

God help you, you poor, unfortunate soul.

Perhaps the most surprising this about the Protocol is that there are no caveats or exceptions: it applies to all offspring (it can even apply to children under the care of the Momma Bear but not otherwise related, or children who are in the vicinity of the Momma Bear but not witnessed to be under the care of another Momma Bear) and the Protocol contains no fail-safes or contingencies for the other caretakers of the child or children, nor the inherent integrity of those caretakers — if they fuck up, GOD HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS.

Case in point: the night my husband accidentally locked me out of the house while our infant daughter slept upstairs.

He didn’t mean to do it. He works nights and he was running late, so in the rush to get in the house, change clothes, get back outside, and switch cars with me, things got a little hairy. He assumed I had my house keys. I assumed that anyone with a brain would know better than to lock the door with an infant in the house and no adults inside. Clearly, there were some failures in communication somewhere along the way. Be that as it may, none of of that really mattered once I was standing on our porch, listening to my daughter cry upstairs, with no way to get to her.

Momma Bear Activated: I broke the window next to the door, reached in and threw the lock.

Moira was fine, of course. She was already back asleep as soon as I was in the house, but that didn’t mean that I was any less hysterical. I called my husband’s cell phone and, in a voice that was two decibels higher than dog’s can hear, left a message that would have melted his ear off, had he been able to understand me. He called back to apologize, but it wasn’t until he came home the next morning to take in the broken window and my messed up arm that it really sunk in.

The moral of the story: Don’t mess with Momma Bears.

I amend my earlier statment: I wouldn't want to mess with her, unless she messed with my kid. And then I would poleax her, and grind her bones for breakfast. — I amend my earlier statement: I wouldn’t want to mess with her, unless she messed with my kid. And then I would poleax her and grind her bones for breakfast.

Stuff Sarah Does, Stuff Sarah Says

Life is crazy.

September 8, 2014 therealsarahc 2 Comments

Shit has been so blindingly real recently that I’ve been swept away on a current of this-must-be-done-now, this-needed-to-get-done-yesterday, and oh-shit-the-baby-has-poop-crawling-up-her-back. In addition to bouncing between tasks like a gormless rabbit with ADHD, my car was towed on Saturday morning, ultimately robbing me of the precious time I had set aside to sit down and write for my poor, neglected blog.

Poor, poor blog. I’m sowwy.

So, what have I been doing to keep myself so exorbitantly busy, aside from overtime, being a momma, and the usual run around? I’m SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

Well, I found this cross-stitch pattern online while searching for more Totoro-themed things to add to the munchkin’s nursery:

Yeah, he's cute, but does he look a little... I don't know... stoned, to you? — Yeah, he’s cute, but does he look a little… I don’t know… stoned, to you?

Now, I know how to cross-stitch, and I’m actually pretty good at it, if I do say-so myself. The problem, however, is that for cross-stitch to be a useful craft, if kind of requires that you also be handy with a sewing machine, too, or else you just end up with a lot of framed cross-stitched patterns on your walls and that’s not a decor theme that I’m willing to submit to.

No bueno. — Good for some, but it ain’t my style.

So I looked at the pattern, and the general dimensions and I thought, “Well, I crochet. The pattern is in squares. Granny squares!” I opened up an Excel sheet and came up with this:

Next came planning the structure and build of the afghan. This pattern hadn’t been intended for crochet, so I needed to know how many squares in each color, how large the squares would measure, how large the afghan would measure once assembled, etc. etc. I really need to go back and make up with all of my various teachers from primary school through high school because this stuff was MATH.

In the end, I figured out that motif squares, measuring about 2 inches square, will give me a blanket of about 85″x97.5″ for a grand total of 1,155 squares, not including some decorative notions like stars in the night sky and flowers and leaves on the grass by Totoro’s feet. I’m super-stoked about this blanket, but it’s definitely the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted. Prayers and words of encouragement would be welcome.

By the by, if any of you would like to use this pattern, you are most welcome to do so. I’ll include the specifics in another post once it’s all done, but below is the pattern for the motif squares. Contact me if you want the Excel spreadsheet of the Totoro image.

Since I will likely continue to be on hiatus for long stretches of time this month, I invite you to come find me on Instagram, showing you #HawaiiIRL, or on Twitter and tumblr, where I share daily words of (mostly other people’s) wisdom, art, and advice. And fandom. Oooh, do I get into the fandoms…

Just keepin' it real, y'all. — Just keepin’ it real, y’all.

Crochet pattern for itty-bitty granny squares, otherwise known by the less-adorable name “motif” squares.

As far as I’m aware, these can be done with any size hook. I am currently working with a size H hook, which makes a square that is about 2 inches wide and across.

Round one: make a magic ring, chain two, work 11 dc into magic ring.

Round two: 1 dc into 1st stitch, 5 dc in 2nd stitch to make the first corner. Make 1 dc in the next two stitches, followed by 5 dc in the next stitch (2nd corner). Repeat twice more for corners 3 and 4.

Slip stitch into the top of the beginning of the chains to tie off.

Stuff Sarah Says

Legacy

July 21, 2014 therealsarahc Leave a comment

I am trapped in a room with the woman who is both my tormentor and my hero. I so admire her, but am also intimidated by her. I want so badly to please her that I have fallen all over myself in successive, bumbling attempts to prove my worthiness, my aptitude. I feel now, from her sideways glances, her tacit nonchalance, that my attempts have failed — failed to such a degree that I have in fact proven myself of increasingly little merit in a cruel reversal of intent. I am trapped in a room with a woman who is aggressively, coldly assessing me, and she is finding me wanting. I cannot leave this room. I am trapped.

The room is my mind. The woman is me.

One time, my mother (over)shared with me about some of her indiscretions and mistakes. She had made some poor decisions and betrayed our family (though she didn’t frame it that way at the time), leaving quite a wake. She told me the truth and I was hurt. Defensively, she asked me if her actions had “hurt me special”. Had she done something to really harm me in particular, when it was her husband she had cuckolded? When it was him she had lied to? Call me crazy, but even then, I thought that was a mighty big question to ask of a 10-year-old.

When the actual betrayal happened, I was far too young to realize what had actually occurred. It was just another knock-down, drag-out fight. It was just another few nights of listening to my mother and father scream at each other. Just another visit to our house from the police.

Growing up in an environment where bi-yearly visits to our home from the cops were considered normal took its own toll, but the legacy of diminished self-worth is much harder to let go of. Now that I, as a grown woman, can see why my mother did the things she did, I can definitively say yes, Mom — every time you illustrated for me that a woman’s worth was intrinsically tied to a man’s desire for her, you hurt me especially, because I lived by your example.

Now, there are a lot of reasons that marriages fail, and I’m no relationship guru. However, I see these underlying machinations at work: a damaged soul, one that never considers itself whole, never considers itself enough on its own, seeks to fill the void with an attachment to another soul. And another. And another. Because that which you are unable to furnish within yourself cannot be found within the heart of another being, but that doesn’t stop you from trying.

Granted, I’ve never committed adultery — I’ve been blessed with a much better marriage than my mother had — but I see how easy it must have been, how soothing, to have slipped from one man’s arms into those of another because the second gave you the time of day. Made you feel pretty. Wanted. I can see how, while drowning in the depths of self-loathing, any positive attention must seem like a life raft. I understand it, without condoning it.

The bigger question now is how to stop the cycle. It’s too late for me, in a sense — the demons are already in my head. Every time I watched my mother grasp her thighs and sigh in disappointment, every time she called herself fat, every time she went on another binge diet — I learned from her example and expanded my mental arsenal. I have waged war on myself for years, tending (self-inflicted) wounds and wearing the battle scars like badges: if I cannot make myself good enough, then I will be my own judge and jailer. I consumed my own flesh in recompense for my multiple failures. My descent aided by the voices of criticism around me: “You need to dress better.” “You really shouldn’t eat that.” “I expected more from you.”

The apathy, the low expectations, the understanding shared by all — including myself — that I was different. Other. These are perfect conditions to create a monster of self-hatred. So how do I stop it from killing me the same way that it killed her? How do I protect my daughter from this legacy?

Stuff Sarah Does, Stuff Sarah Says

D.I.Y. Redhead

July 7, 2014 therealsarahc Leave a comment

Tips for completing an at-home, do-it-yourself, dye job.

You will need: A box of Blue Light Special, discount hair dye in Red #44, a comb, rubber gloves, and a towel that you don’t mind staining.

Upon successful completion of this project you will:

– look as if you are bleeding from a massive blunt force trauma to the skull and/or lacerations to your upper extremities.

– have imbued your home with the intoxicating aroma of cheap chemicals.

– have an unexpected, wholly new color scheme in your bathroom.

– have an uncontrollable urge to take absurd selfies.

Ready? Let’s begin!

Step One: Make sure your children are either in bed or out of the house. This may cost you either sleep and/or the favor of your spouse.

Step Two: Assemble your tools. Clothing optional (saves on the amount of clean up afterwards and eliminates the possibility of introducing stray globs of hair dye into your next batch of laundry). Put in your contacts — ain’t no way you’re getting this done in glasses.

Step Three: Adjourn to the bathroom. Follow the instructions on the box. Carefully.

Step Four: Realize that you mixed Tube # 1 into Bottle #3 instead of Bottle #2. Quickly transfer the contents of Bottle #3 into Bottle #2. Clean up the ensuing spill and scrape the excess off the counter and into Bottle #2. Realize you forgot to put on rubber gloves.

Step Five: Wash hands vigorously before they are permanently stained orange. Finish mixing the contents of Tube #1 and Bottle #3 into Bottle #2. Apply gloves.

Step Six: Apply mixture to the roots of your hair, evenly distributing the mixture from root to tip. Avoid contact with the skin and eyes.

Step Seven: Fail to avoid contact with your skin and/or eyes.

Step Eight: Immediately develop an itch in the corner of your right eye. Locate the gloved finger that appears to have not yet come in contact with dye and scratch. Realize you were wrong about the dye.

Step Nine: Finish applying the dye to your remaining hair with one eye shut.

Step Ten: Pass a comb through your hair to ensure the dye is evenly distributed. Pile your hair on top of your head and set a timer for 30 minutes.

Begin the frantic race against time to remove errant dye from your ears, neck, forehead, cheeks, arms, wrists, shoulders and various bathroom fixtures.

Step Eleven: Fail.

Remember the dye-encrusted comb that you left beside the sink. Retrieve and give a rinse. Give up, and dispose of comb.

Step Twelve: As you begin to accept the new color scheme of your bathroom, prepare to hop in the shower to rinse out the dye.

Pro-tip: “shampoo” your hair with the dye as you hold your head beneath the running water, ensuring that the dye is thoroughly incorporated through out your roots as well as beneath your fingernails. Make sure you have color-safe conditioner at the ready.

Step Thirteen: Realize you don’t own any color-safe conditioner. Realize also that the hot water is off. Run downstairs to wash your hair in the kitchen sink until the water runs clear.

Step Fourteen: Develop a terrible crick in your neck from having your head bent over into the sink. Realize the water will never run clear.

Step Fifteen: Towel dry, then blow dry and style as desired. Or, if in the case you are tackling this project at 11pm at night, go to bed with wet hair to avoid waking your slumbering child. Sleep on old towels to avoid staining your bedding.

Step Sixteen: (optional) Take a bunch of selfies.

Go ahead, play around in photoshop. You've earned it! — Go ahead, play around in photoshop. You’ve earned it!

Stuff Sarah Says

Best laid plans

Aside May 12, 2014 therealsarahc 1 Comment

I guess you hear it all the time, but until you’re neck-deep in motherhood you never quite realize how irrelevant all of your plans are. I have daydreamed about becoming a mom since I was a teenager — I knew what names I liked, what kind of clothes I wanted them to wear, how I was going to care for them. I had visions of sweet, cherubic faces dancing in my dreams like proverbial sugarplums. Courtesy of college family resources and psychology courses, I knew how to facilitate every stage of their development. I had every intention of a doing prenatal yoga, undergoing natural childbirth, being an unapologetic breast-feeder. And then I got pregnant and realized that life doesn’t give a shit about my plans.

If you want predictable, you're better off with the board game. — If you want predictable, you’re better off with the board game.

I didn’t even know I was pregnant until I almost lost the pregnancy. Unbeknownst to me, I was 6 weeks pregnant when a gush of blood signaled that something was very wrong. In the emergency room, they confirmed I was pregnant, then told me not to get my hopes up: “At this point, if your body is going to spontaneously abort the pregnancy, there’s nothing we can do about it.” So we went home and prayed. We prayed for three straight weeks until I went to first ultrasound and saw the heartbeat. Finally, I was able to breathe again — my body hadn’t betrayed us and killed our baby.

The rest of my pregnancy was smooth sailing, though not entirely what I had expected. I was way more tired, my body under way more strain, than I had been prepared for. Forget about yoga, walking the dog, or getting up off the couch — I’m willing to go from bed, to work, and back to my sofa, and there’s nothing you can do to convince me otherwise! Forget the well-rounded pregnancy diet, too. If it smells good, I’m going to eat it, and I can’t be held responsible if animal proteins aren’t on that list.

It turned out okay though. We made it to November without incident, my OBGYN complimenting me on being the easiest patient on his roster. Having read about the correlations between epidural use and increased likelihood of complications leading to Caesarian section, I was hoping to experience natural childbirth. I read everything I could get my hands on, interviewed friends, developed a birth plan with my doctor, and practiced breathing exercises. I drafted my friend as a doula. We stocked up on calming essential oils and packed my bag to allow for a quick departure to the hospital. As we approached my due date on November 9th, I felt we were pretty well prepared for the inevitable. Baby had been locked and loaded since the end of October and all signs pointed to a timely delivery. I did everything the Big Book tells you to do in order to help things along: had sex, walked around the neighborhood, exercised on one of those gigantic balls. Short of puncturing my own water bag with a knitting needle, I tried everything. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be: at two weeks past my due date, we threw in the towel and acquiesced to an induction by Pitocin drip.

You know what happens when you go into labor under Pitocin?

Hint: It ain't pretty — Hint: It ain’t pretty

Well, first of all, your contractions tend to be twice as long and a million times as intense as those caused by the natural labor-inducing horomone, Oxytocin. Try managing six hours of teeth-gritting, horrifyingly protracted spasms in your gut — I couldn’t do it, so I opted for the epidural. It made the pain go away, but not the long, arduous contractions that were squeezing my baby every three minutes. Her heart rate dropped from 120 beats-per-minute down to 60. Turns out my daughter couldn’t handle the Pitocin, either.

I bet you can guess what happened.

Yeah, that’s me, crying tears of, “Oh my God, what the fuck? One moment I was in the L&D room and the next I was rushed into surgery, holy crap, they’re cutting me open.” The whole time I lay strapped to the surgical table, arms spread out like Jesus on the cross, I kept thinking, “Ok. Well, so I didn’t get to labor the way I wanted. And now my delivery is going to be very different from what I had planned. But she’ll be here soon. And then we’ll cuddle and do the skin-to-skin thing that everyone’s always going on about, and everything will be fine.” Even after Moira was born, though, things went a little off-plan: she spent the night in the NICU, and I spent in the night in recovery. Once we were reunited, we had to learn how to breastfeed, and that didn’t come easily either. As we struggled, Moira and I, to hit our stride, those last visions I had of myself as Earth-Mother Incarnate went out the window. This was the big leagues. It was about survival, by any means necessary.

And it continues to be. I’m definitely not a crunchy-granola kind of hippie earth-mother I thought I’d be. Despite what I learned in FAM-R or Childhood Psychology, I don’t actually manage to pick her up every time she cries. There are even times when I leave the room and make her fend for herself while I run to the bathroom to pee (gasp!). Now, we’re on to solid foods — will I manage to make everything from scratch and eschew store-bought baby food? Only time will tell. I still have moments of panic when my plans go awry, but then there are certain things I can’t bring myself to get huffy over. It’s just much, much easier to go with the flow. From conception, to gestation, to delivery and beyond, nothing happened quite the way I had intended it to. I think I’ve made my peace with that.

She looks pretty well-adjusted, after all.

Stuff Sarah Says

Undoing women’s lib? (OP from The Gamer Widows)

January 10, 2014 therealsarahc 2 Comments

Allow me to personally set the women’s liberation movement back 60 years: I totally want to be a stay-at-home mom. Call me the anti-feminist, say I’m being prosaic, whatever. Because if I had said “I want to be a career woman and never have children” I’d receive the same amount of criticism. Not that much has changed since women came out of the kitchen, it just that now we have more than one unfair archetype to compete with. I had this thought at our recent holiday party. Nicole was so excited to receive a Kitchen Aid mixer for Christmas (And why shouldn’t she be? That thing is the kitchen gadget to end all gadgets.) but upon expressing her elation, she immediately became apologetic: “I know that sounds very un-feminist of me.” But why should she, or anyone else for that matter, feel ashamed of being “un-feminist”?

Women’s lib has done a great deal for the fairer sex, and I’m grateful. I like that I get to vote and have (ostensibly) the same earning and career potential as a man, but in the last fifty years since societal expectations for women shifted away from the home, a new prejudice has taken root. Now, it’s not only career women who are criticized for their ambition, but home makers, too. A woman with a family who holds down a full-time job is just as likely to have her motivations questioned as the woman who chooses to stay home with her children. Not to mention the side-long glances that women get if they decide not to have a family at all.

In my experience, having gone to college, gotten married, and started a career before starting a family (cheekily termed the “right way” of doing things), I’ve run into every passive judgment out there: “Oh, so, you’re not going to graduate school right after you get your BA?” “Wow, you got married young.” “You better hurry up and make some babies!” Oy vey. This is, in fact, a very popular trope in movies, TV, and books: the working mother, the stay at home mother, and the I-don’t-want-to-be-a-mother. The maiden, mother, and crone of our generation. In the movie “I Don’t Know How She Does It”, the class lines are fairly well drawn: you are a working parent struggling to keep up or you are career mommy, spending your days either at the gym or barefoot in the kitchen. As Sarah Jessica Parker’s character tries with dubious success to be everything for everyone, the viewer realizes that this is what society wants — a successful career person, who never misses a play date or soccer game. She keeps a functional and beautiful home, and makes sure her man is satisfied, all the while mastering the art of French cooking. But, no pressure.

We also laughed lovingly as Sex and the City’s Miranda made the awkward transition from career powerhouse to fumbling single parent. The coworkers at her firm sneered when she made her son a priority, while her housekeeper shook her head in disappointment when Miranda had to tend to work obligations. Moms just can’t win.

I still remember the look of utter disdain my senior advisor gave me after I told her I was getting married after graduation, a look that clearly said, “another smart woman lost to girlhood fantasy.” She actually seemed a little offended that I had decided to put graduate school on the back burner (a decision that had nothing to do with getting married and everything to do with a serious case of senioritis), as if it were her potential I was wasting and not my own. In telling her the truth about my decision, I hadn’t given her an answer that she wanted nor one that she respected. Neither did I answer satisfactorily when asked by my family how I feel about going back to work now that my daughter is 7 weeks old. I was honest: “It sucks, and I’m depressed about it because I already know that I’m going to miss her. I wish I were able to stay home with her full time.” The sort of half-smiles and indulgent glances I got after that admission made me feel like I was lacking the proper enthusiasm. Might they have been happier with “No, no, I’m not sad to leave my child in the care of others! I am thrilled to go back into the work force and make lots and lots of sweet, sweet money! Pass the seared baby seal.” Because it is, for many, about money — if women want equal treatment, they should be equally financially responsible, not dependent on their husbands to pay all the bills. For me, if the world was perfect, I’d go back to work part-time — you see, wanting more time with my child is not a ploy to avoid the work force or shirk my financial responsibility. Yeah, I’d love to be a stay-at-home mom, but the pay is terrible.

My husband is sympathetic to my plight, but alas, doesn’t really understand. (He, after all, didn’t become a mother when our child was born: see this blog post.) When I first admitted how increasingly despondent I was feeling as the date of my return to work loomed, he chuckled, “Yeah, if I had had two months off of work, I wouldn’t want to go back either.” But that really isn’t it. This isn’t like the kicking-and-screaming tantrum you once had as summer vacation ran out and you were once again relegated to the toiling primary school masses. Becoming a child’s primary caregiver is not an easy occupation. We all know there’s a great deal of work involved — unpleasant, dirty, smelly, frustrating, back-breaking work — so clearly, it’s not a lack of work ethic that I’m talking about here. It is a change in attitude, a shift in my passions, a new calling. Some where along the way, I woke up and I was Moira’s mom, and no one is going to do that job better than me.

I made this perfect little person, carried her in my womb for nine months, gave birth to her, and have spent the last eight weeks devoted to her every need and desire. And now I’m expected to just hand her off to someone else and trust that they will do as good a job as I would do. And I’m one of the lucky ones — I am blessed to not be a single parent, as many working parents are, and my daughter isn’t going to day care with a stranger, she’s going to be either with her father or with a family friend while I’m working. This ought to alleviate some of my anxiety, but it doesn’t. There are 168 hours in a week and I will be away from my child for nearly a third of that time. That’s not a vacation from parenthood, as some may suggest. That’s torture.

Very few people understand why a successful, educated person would want to stay home to raise their children. Won’t you miss adult conversations? Don’t you want to do more in life? You mean, more than nurture and educate my kids? I achieved a lot in my early twenties and I’m proud of those accomplishments. But there is more pride in seeing my baby girl smile up at me in joy than in any academic commendation or career accolade.

Admittedly, this isn’t the case for all mothers. Among the Widows, there’s a pretty even divide amongst the moms that work in the work place and the moms that work in the home. And as is often the case, we sometimes want what the other has. Lady M, for instance, had her first baby in the middle of her college career, and now with number two on the way, sometimes wishes she could focus on her education and her career rather than mommyhood. Still others have confided in me that they were relieved to get back to work after their babies were born, as the din of the office became a haven for some much needed quiet. To each their own — I’m not here to judge. I wish we could all say that, but as I mentioned before, when it comes to the motherhood versus career-woman dichotomy, everybody has an opinion, even if they’re not aware of it. From my professor who wrote me off after I married, to the kept women that sneer at a mom trying to balance home and work obligations, we all seem to lack insight.

As I type this one-handed on my iPad with my daughter asleep on my chest, I am dreadfully aware of how many moments like this one will soon slip from my grasp. Some women struggle because they want to discover who they are outside of motherhood. I am struggling because I want the opportunity to discover who I am within it. And in the end, whatever you choose, or whatever you have to do, we should respect each other for the obstacles inherent to the path we have chosen. Mothers can only overcome the Good Mother, Better Woman archetype if we support each other. (Except those mean, holier-than-thou types. They just suck.)