Anne TootillTo Be or Not To Be a Mother - Part Three
March 5th 2007 16:50
Even though the inhaler was working on my breathing I was still so sad. Just like they say, “it hung over me like a cloud”. It had been more than a year since Alex was born. Shouldn’t I have felt better by now? My periods were finally back to normally abnormal (every 7-9 weeks apart). Didn’t that mean my hormones were once again balanced and everything was right with the world and with me?
But it wasn’t. I took my hand out of the yam chip bag and sat back in the dining room chair. Josh was showing me his matchbox-sized Thomas the Tank Engine trains and Alex was busy playing with her toys. I smiled at Josh but it was that plastic grin. I pretended to be engaged as I played with him. I know I said all the right things and did all the right things. I know I told them I loved them and how wonderful, smart, beautiful/ handsome they were, but it was as if I was talking in my sleep. I felt numb. Felt numb, isn’t that what’s called an oxymoron?
A friend called. She was a Physical Therapist trying to get pregnant and having fertility problems. I think her husband had a low sperm count due to a varicose vein on his scrotum or something like that. Anyway, I was the only one of our friends who had kids so I guess she felt I’d be more understanding about her trials. And I was. And in return she helped me.
She knew how hard I was having it. How alone and frustrated I was feeling. And I had told her how much I missed working and earning a paycheck of my own, but because of childcare I knew I couldn’t afford to take any part-time job. So she suggested I go back to school and become a Physical Therapist Assistant. She explained that it was a two year degree and that when I came out I’d be able to make up to $30/hour part-time, a salary that would enable me to pay a babysitter while still netting a take-home pay in the black.
But go back to school? With two toddlers in tow? Who would watch them? And with my husband’s salary just making ends meet, how could I pay for daycare and school? Weeellll…according to her, the local community college had a great program at a really reasonable price and a great daycare center which was hard to get into but priced on a sliding scale basis (in other words it would cost next to nothing for poor folk like me).
Having grown up in a house of accountants and always wanting to go to law school I’d had no idea possibilities such as these existed. It would’ve been a 180 degree turn from everything I’d known. But as she talked I started to get excited, something that happened very rarely these days. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to investigate.
I hung up the phone and called my husband. And this time I wasn’t crying and begging him to help me. This time I couldn’t wait to tell him the good news.
But it wasn’t. I took my hand out of the yam chip bag and sat back in the dining room chair. Josh was showing me his matchbox-sized Thomas the Tank Engine trains and Alex was busy playing with her toys. I smiled at Josh but it was that plastic grin. I pretended to be engaged as I played with him. I know I said all the right things and did all the right things. I know I told them I loved them and how wonderful, smart, beautiful/ handsome they were, but it was as if I was talking in my sleep. I felt numb. Felt numb, isn’t that what’s called an oxymoron?
A friend called. She was a Physical Therapist trying to get pregnant and having fertility problems. I think her husband had a low sperm count due to a varicose vein on his scrotum or something like that. Anyway, I was the only one of our friends who had kids so I guess she felt I’d be more understanding about her trials. And I was. And in return she helped me.
She knew how hard I was having it. How alone and frustrated I was feeling. And I had told her how much I missed working and earning a paycheck of my own, but because of childcare I knew I couldn’t afford to take any part-time job. So she suggested I go back to school and become a Physical Therapist Assistant. She explained that it was a two year degree and that when I came out I’d be able to make up to $30/hour part-time, a salary that would enable me to pay a babysitter while still netting a take-home pay in the black.
But go back to school? With two toddlers in tow? Who would watch them? And with my husband’s salary just making ends meet, how could I pay for daycare and school? Weeellll…according to her, the local community college had a great program at a really reasonable price and a great daycare center which was hard to get into but priced on a sliding scale basis (in other words it would cost next to nothing for poor folk like me).
Having grown up in a house of accountants and always wanting to go to law school I’d had no idea possibilities such as these existed. It would’ve been a 180 degree turn from everything I’d known. But as she talked I started to get excited, something that happened very rarely these days. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to investigate.
I hung up the phone and called my husband. And this time I wasn’t crying and begging him to help me. This time I couldn’t wait to tell him the good news.
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