(no subject)

[rivka]

It's amazing how much I can be rejuvenated by an hour and a half of just playing with my baby, after someone else has taken care of her all day.

She has become very serious about her stacking rings. She used to love to take them off the central post and bang them together, but now it has occurred to her that she ought to be able to put them back on the post. That requires aim. Rather a lot of aim, given that the base rocks instead of having a flat bottom. She did pretty well if I held the base still, less well if I left her entirely to herself, but she worked on it hard - and got frustrated with herself for not getting it perfectly.

Not that she's my daughter, or anything.

After I fed her supper, we put a 50's music tape in the stereo and danced around the living room. Alex started grinning and flapping her arms as soon as she heard the words who put the bomp in the bomp-ba-bomp-ba-bomp?, and laughed out loud as I flipped her upside down, spun her round and round, and did the twist with her on my hip. I did some laughing, too.

Michael came home and announced that he was going to put the baby to bed and make dinner. And he'd spent some time today thinking of what arrangements we could make to keep me from getting this burned-out again. I am cautiously optimistic. We'll see how it works out in practice.

And on Wednesday night, barring another attack of the stomach flu, I will be going to see The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe after Alex is in bed.

I'm still feeling like my life is very far from where I want it to be: at best, I'm an adequate mother, not the mother Alex deserves. I'm not getting much accomplished at work. Michael and I have been acting more like workers on opposite shifts in the baby factory than like husband and wife. I used to be so proud of my blog, and now I feel like I'm not even the same person who did it - I certainly don't feel like I could access that kind of writing ability, or passion, now. But this evening I guess it no longer feels hopeless to try.

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you are feeling rejuvenated, and I'm glad you and Michael are being mindful about the situation.

I was just thinking this afternoon that I wanted to be able to write like you. It must suck to feel like you can't write like you.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

meh!

[headbutt]

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

at best, I'm an adequate mother, not the mother Alex deserves

Hell, your parrot umbrella doesn't even fly.

You know this is your exhaustion speaking, right? Because you're certainly not no more than adequate, and if you were, your child would not be this engaged with you.

Perhaps you aren't doing everything you told yourself you would do for Alex not having met her yet, but it sounds to me as if you've adjusted to your actual child's needs just fine.

You're a working mother and you're not perfect. No parent is.

Cut yourself some slack, huh?

signed, felt like shit when HM was a baby because I wasn't more like you.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I'm sitting here, listening to Vivaldi, enjoying a glass of wine, and holding my hands out, palms up, wishing I could convey to you the Mother Wisdom I've acquired over the last - oh my god - 26 years. My baby, my eldest, my Megan, celebrated her 26th Birthday on February 1st.

Let me just hold my hands out to you and take yours in mine and tell you, truly, you are a marvelous mother. That's all, really.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Not that she's my daughter, or anything.

I'm pretty sure she's your daughter. It's that or I took part in a mass hallucination.

Michael came home and announced that he was going to put the baby to bed and make dinner. And he'd spent some time today thinking of what arrangements we could make to keep me from getting this burned-out again. I am cautiously optimistic. We'll see how it works out in practice.

I am pleased you guys are going to take some steps against the stressmonkeys.

I'm still feeling like my life is very far from where I want it to be: at best, I'm an adequate mother, not the mother Alex deserves. I'm not getting much accomplished at work. Michael and I have been acting more like workers on opposite shifts in the baby factory than like husband and wife. I used to be so proud of my blog, and now I feel like I'm not even the same person who did it - I certainly don't feel like I could access that kind of writing ability, or passion, now. But this evening I guess it no longer feels hopeless to try.

Part of this is the sheer amount of energy that being working parents takes. You are both doing two jobs right now, one for money and one for love. And while it seems like this has been going on forever, you've been doing it for about 10 months.

Now, from a sleep deprivation/energy level viewpoint that's a long time. But from the viewpoint of acquiring a whole new set of constantly changing skills/schedules plus adding a whole new relationship to the mix that's not such a bad learning curve.

Sweetie, you know what babies with not good mothers look like and act like. And Alex isn't one of those babies. She's active and learning and generally healthy and eager to encounter the world. I'll grant you she doesn't have the perfect Supermother, able to leap tall grant applications in a single bound.

I will suggest, gently, that she doesn't actually need one. She has you and Michael and a whole circle of loving family and friends.

The blog? You wrote good stuff. You will write good stuff again, be it about politics or feminism or baseball or parenting. But you can't make gourmet meals out of an empty cupboard, or drive a car on an empty tank. Be gentle with yourself. Feed your head and your heart as you can, and the writing will come.

Oh, good...

[librarygrrl]

I had been busy thinking about my reply as Sam and I drove home from grocery shopping, but it's mostly been said now. Saves me some typing. ;)

Sam recommends you read Confessions of a Slacker Mom by Muffy Mead-Ferro. She says I should read it, too, but it gets trumped by school right now. I did read some bits of it, and it has some wise thoughts in it. Sam said it was a funnier version of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel, which I also highly recommend, even for the non-Jewish.

Basically, I wanted to say that I doubt any parent is as good as they'd like to be. But, if they're the sort of parent who thinks about that sort of thing, they're probably a better parent than they think. You are that sort of parent.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I am so glad that you and Michael are talking about working together to stave off the burnout. Keep talking about it until a solution is in place, too--don't let this be the last discussion about it.

-J

[ailbhe]

You just spent an hour and a half playing with your daughter for sheer joy of loving her, and you think you're just an adequate mother?

Right.

And re the writing: you have a nine-month-old baby. Your energy is all used up on that, and you're working a demanding job too - it's not like you're mindlessly stacking shelves or anything.

And the husband and wife thing... Rob and I have found it almost impossible to be "just a couple". Neither of us much likes the idea of going off and having fun without Linnea. Which is just as well, given her sleep schedule, but it does mean that we mainly have fun doing stuff she enjoys. This isn't difficult for us, mind you, because we don't really have any outside the house adult-only hobbies anyway, except ballroom dancing which I can't do any more anyway.

But husband and wife time at home is only possible when neither of you are burnt out to a shred of your former selves. It is highly likely to fall into place if you manage the baby-juggling. Alex sleeps pretty well, it seems, which gives you a headstart.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Like everybody else has said, it seems to me that you're doing more than an adequate job with Alex. But I feel pretty inadequate in my mothering even though people tell me the same thing, so I think that feeling may just be par for the course.

It's hard to see the future when you're in the middle of the present, but time really does make this better. Sleep gets better, they learn to do some things on their own, and slowly but surely you start to get yourself back again. We're coming up on two years now, and I feel like we're getting there.

Everybody else has said all the other things I would have - maybe you feel inadequate because you have such brilliant friends? :-)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You're right. The mother Alex deserves has time off from being a mom now and again and comes home feeling like playing. One of the hardest things about being a mother, in fact probably the hardest after how much "no" I had to say, was facing that other people could have more fun with Zorinth than I could because I'm Jo, I'm there all the time, I'm taken for granted, I'm too tired to be fun all the time. I have to wash the bottles or there won't be any milk...

In the film Before Sunset a guy in a similar situation says, about his marriage, "It's as if we're co-workers at a very small nursery" (or possibly "pre-school") and I laughed, because I remember that feeling so well.

If you had a night out, even once a month, you could go to one of those small cafes that sells tea and cheesecake and ninety-five different kinds of coffee and drink tea and eat cheesecake and read your book, all evening, without anyone pestering you. If you and Michael had a night out together, you could go out for a meal and talk. Or you could go to a motel that rents rooms by the hour and -- hang on, nine months? Probably not yet.

My friend Chris tells this story on herself -- once she was on a bus, without the toddlers, alone, and the bus went past a field with cows in, and she poked the strange man sitting next to her and said: "Look! Cows!"

When Z was two, Chris and I made a deal whereby I'd have her kid for lunch and the afternoon on Thursdays, and she'd have Z for lunch and the afternoon on Mondays. Oh the joy of those Monday afternoons -- and actually, when they were three and four the Thursdays got to be quite fun too, I'd usually take them to the park or somewhere and two interacting kids can be less trouble than one kid wanting all my attention all the time.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

at best, I'm an adequate mother,

Just because you're feeling inadequate - and since you're not superwoman, you *will* have to compromise _somewhere_ - does not make it a fact. You're loving, you spend a lot of time with Alex, you play, you're teaching her, you're taking her places - I wish more kids would have parents like you two!

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I haven't got time to say what I ought to... the best I can say is that, if you heard this from someone else, about the parenting, the writing, and more, you wouldn't accept it as "truth". You'd recognize there was something else going on... be it exhaustion, temporary stress overload (not quite the same thing, I imagine) or whatever.

Please, remember, this will pass, if you take good care of yourself. And then, please, take good care of yourself.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I know these feelings, of being inadequate in every area of life: as a parent, a partner, and an employee, never mind having any time to be oneself. I think they're very common, not to suggest that this means they are not real and painful, of course. For me, 8-9 months was a particularly bad burnout time - we'd been doing the grind of the working family for a long time at the point (from 3-9 months our swing-shift schedule meant mr. flea and I didn't actually see each other awake for more than 5-10 minutes between Tuesday morning and Thursday night). Also we had the serious sleep deprivation issues, but then I have a fairly low-impact job, so that balanced somewhat and meant I only had crying breakdowns on the weekends.

It's hard, hard, hard. I'm afraid to go back there, except with the added complication of a toddler. But we soldier on. And hold each other's hands when necessary.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I am truly impressed by how much you do get accomplished. And I know that is partially my own guilt talking (four days out of the week, I don't see Kay awake), but I think you are doing a good job prioritizing her.

Here's hoping your date nights go better, because they are also essential.