Anne TootillTo Be or Not to Be a Mother - Part Three
January 22nd 2007 19:39
It wasn’t that I was so young when I had kids. I was in my late twenties. But none of my friends had any yet. I was the first to venture into the motherhood realm. It wasn’t that the others didn’t want to have kids (it was due to timing or infertility issues), although there was one friend who was dead set against the female side of nature taking its supposed intended course. To me this was her God-given right to choose, however, as I’ve discovered, more people than prefer to share my father-in-law’s view that, “there’s something wrong with her”.
Whatever the reason the bottom line was that I was very lonely and I had no one to talk to or with about what I was going through. Here I had all these new problems and questions and no one that I trusted to run them by. And because of various dysfunctions family unfortunately, was not a good source of support or information, at the time. Here are some of what I wish I knew:
Was it normal to feel so empty and depressed that even the thought of walking out of the house to go to a store was exhausting?
Was it normal to feel like crying all the time even if you didn’t?
Was it normal to lay awake at night thinking of your childless friends and how lucky they were and how you had made your own bed and now you were stuck lying in it?
Was it normal for my toddler to need so much of my attention that I didn’t have a moment to breath?
Was it O.K. for me to set my toddler up with a video or a cartoon or just to make him spend some time alone so I could recover my sanity or had I lost that right (and had to be punished) for not being a good mother to him when I was stuck in bed (pregnant with Alex) for all those months?
Were all husbands gone from 8:00 A.M. until 7:30 P.M. and then half a day Saturday so that the kids saw them for maybe an hour or two in the morning and never after that on the weekday and the mother never, ever had a break during the week?
P.S. And if somehow the most widely respected mother of all, Mother Theresa, can somehow hear this up in heaven, am I normal or am I a bad person for hating Motherhood?
Whatever the reason the bottom line was that I was very lonely and I had no one to talk to or with about what I was going through. Here I had all these new problems and questions and no one that I trusted to run them by. And because of various dysfunctions family unfortunately, was not a good source of support or information, at the time. Here are some of what I wish I knew:
Was it normal to feel so empty and depressed that even the thought of walking out of the house to go to a store was exhausting?
Was it normal to feel like crying all the time even if you didn’t?
Was it normal to lay awake at night thinking of your childless friends and how lucky they were and how you had made your own bed and now you were stuck lying in it?
Was it normal for my toddler to need so much of my attention that I didn’t have a moment to breath?
Was it O.K. for me to set my toddler up with a video or a cartoon or just to make him spend some time alone so I could recover my sanity or had I lost that right (and had to be punished) for not being a good mother to him when I was stuck in bed (pregnant with Alex) for all those months?
Were all husbands gone from 8:00 A.M. until 7:30 P.M. and then half a day Saturday so that the kids saw them for maybe an hour or two in the morning and never after that on the weekday and the mother never, ever had a break during the week?
P.S. And if somehow the most widely respected mother of all, Mother Theresa, can somehow hear this up in heaven, am I normal or am I a bad person for hating Motherhood?
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Comment by Sarah White
coolgirlsar to the rescue
One Too Many Chocolate Bars
There are sometimes things I miss from before my son was born but I have different rewards nowadays, like when he turns round to me and says he loves me and gives me a big hug.
Comment by Andrea
V8 Supercar Pitstop
Sarah's right. Concentrate on the good instead of the bad and things look so much different.
In fact, you might even venture into the realm of doing it all over again!!!
A.H.