Anne TootillTo Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Two
November 13th 2006 21:22
These days Josh had become an easy baby. He ate everything I gave him. He slept twelve hours at a clip. He loved to sit in the stroller and just watch the world go by, never complaining. Who’d have thunk it. The baby from hell had turned into a living doll. Heavy sigh.
The only teensy little thing that bothered me, other than the fact that I was so bored I could scream, was that Josh didn’t seem to have bonded with me. And by that I meant he went to anyone who held out their arms. Without so much as a whimper or an itty bitty pouty lip he let them hold him. Here’s the thing. I’d watched other babies. I’d seen my niece and nephew in action. And I knew that for baby, there was a difference between mommy and everyone else. For example my nephew screamed until he turned red and couldn’t catch his breath when anyone but my sister picked him up. And at the very least most of the others fussed. But not my Josh. Any old stranger could pick him up and he’d be as happy as a clam.
I know I should have been happy, after all if I could afford a babysitter this would make it easy to leave Josh with one, but the truth was that I wasn’t happy. Hadn’t I suffered through a horrendous pregnancy and an even worse first three months of infancy? Hadn’t I earned the right to be the chosen one? At least for now. At least until he married some cold bitch who tricked him into moving thousands of miles away from his loving mother
and who manipulated him into refusing to visit us or us, him.
Yes, yes someday I may have to accept that my son will separate from the woman who bore him and sacrificed for him, but for today I wanted what was due me as a new mother. The reason I’d put up with eight long months lying in bed and suffering as I gestated…a baby that cried every time my mother-in-law took him from my arms.
The only teensy little thing that bothered me, other than the fact that I was so bored I could scream, was that Josh didn’t seem to have bonded with me. And by that I meant he went to anyone who held out their arms. Without so much as a whimper or an itty bitty pouty lip he let them hold him. Here’s the thing. I’d watched other babies. I’d seen my niece and nephew in action. And I knew that for baby, there was a difference between mommy and everyone else. For example my nephew screamed until he turned red and couldn’t catch his breath when anyone but my sister picked him up. And at the very least most of the others fussed. But not my Josh. Any old stranger could pick him up and he’d be as happy as a clam.
I know I should have been happy, after all if I could afford a babysitter this would make it easy to leave Josh with one, but the truth was that I wasn’t happy. Hadn’t I suffered through a horrendous pregnancy and an even worse first three months of infancy? Hadn’t I earned the right to be the chosen one? At least for now. At least until he married some cold bitch who tricked him into moving thousands of miles away from his loving mother
and who manipulated him into refusing to visit us or us, him.
Yes, yes someday I may have to accept that my son will separate from the woman who bore him and sacrificed for him, but for today I wanted what was due me as a new mother. The reason I’d put up with eight long months lying in bed and suffering as I gestated…a baby that cried every time my mother-in-law took him from my arms.
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