On Reading: Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman

I just started Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman. I'm not far enough along to write a full fledged review. I am far enough along to say that her premise is that we're all bad mothers - not that it's anything personal, but, she points out, all the examples of good mothers are fictional: Mary Poppins, June Cleaver, Carol Brady etc. etc. etc. She also points out that women perpetuate this idea - that we're all bad mothers - by how much we judge other mothers and ourselves against these fictional role models.
I love Ayelet Waldman. I really do. She has four kids, a career she loves and a marriage that rocks, so really I'll listen to anything she says even if I respectfully disagree with her from time to time. But my first thoughts on this book are that I don't feel like a bad mother - and I love Mary Poppins and wish I could be like her in several respects. Granted, I have an awesome group of friends and family who constantly reaffirm my and my husband's parenting. However, I do admit, I feel like a mediocre wife (my husband never says this - and I will certainly never ask my mother-in-law her opinion on the matter), a lousy friend who is always behind on emails, thank you notes, and phone calls etc, a poor sister for similar reasons, and a disastrous housekeeper. But this of course, underscores Waldman's premise, that as mothers, we're always failing at something and perfection is always just out of reach.
I'm sure I will have more thoughts as I keep reading...

Things I Wish They Would Study: the Hunger Pains of the Nursing

When I was pregnant and reading all about the how-to's, ups and downs, and potential trials of breastfeeding, I remember coming across the detail of how thirsty breastfeeding women are and how much water they should be drinking. The statistic that breastfeeding women burn an extra 1000 calories a day is touted all over the place (this stat always makes me wonder why breastfeeding rates aren't higher. An extra 1000 calories a day! Why do women wean babies so early when there are such metabolic rewards? I like to eat so this baffles me.), but I read very little, if anything, about the all consuming hunger that comes with nursing a baby. No one mentioned it. It is the hunger of teenage boys. Tall ones who play lots of sports. I have actually met a couple of teenage boys since breastfeeding my son. And I have eaten them all under the table.
The books I read said to eat well, of course, and I do (generally). I am constantly surprised - still with my son nine months old - by the hunger and by how much I eat. When my son was first born I was even more hungry than I am now, in fact, I could not feel full. I was embarrassed by how hungry I was. When my husband and I had a friend over to dinner in the first month of being parents, I offered her dessert. She declined with the universal gesture of her hand held up to signal she was stuffed. "No, no, no," she said. "I couldn't possibly eat another bite of anything." I distinctly remember thinking, "Really? Because I could go again." I felt as if I hadn't eaten anything - and I had had seconds! I had wanted to help myself to more, but I was so self-conscious, even embarrassed, by how much food I needed to eat.
I am not as hungry as I was that first month of mothering, but I am still hungry and I do still eat a lot. If my husband and I are going to dinner at a friends' house or restaurant, I always eat before leaving the house. Partly, I do out of self-preservation. Along with the metabolic miracles of breastfeeding comes a blood sugar that drops to zero without notice. I can go from satiated to starving in a millisecond. And it is that kind of starving that makes me, and anybody with me, miserable. When the dropped blood sugar hits, having to wait for food is pure agony and I, in moments like this, have grown so desperate for food, I have threatened to drink my own breastmilk. And I wasn't really kidding.
Non-breastfeeders don't quite get it though - I can tell my husband I am hungry and need to eat, and he'll say, "Okay, we'll pick something up." which in my pre-breastfeeding days would be the ideal response. But now, I have to emphasize a couple or few times, that when I need to eat, I need to eat. Fellow breastfeeders, therefore, make the best travel and/or hang out companions. When I meet my breastfeeding Mom friends, whether we're at the art museum or going for a hike, one of the first things we do is eat. Today, a couple friends and I went to the Mommy & Me movie, and when we came out of the theater, all three of us simultaneously exhaled, "Oh, I am so hungry." If you're in a group of breastfeeding women, one of them has a protein bar in her purse. If it wasn't for fellow breastfeeding friends, I would think something is wrong with me. Generally, thinking about food most the time, and eating on your way out the door for dinner are the signs of a potential eating disorder. With breastfeeding though, it's just par for the course.

Learning Time Management avec bebe

Oh how many of us on the planet have abandoned blogs in cyberspace? Please say I am not the only one. I suspect I am not and am, in fact, in very good company. Well, here I am. And am now aiming for once a week posts. Is that realistic? With a 9 month old now crawling and planning a move out of the country? We'll see.
Between all the books on new motherhood and all the Baby Center emails, I see a lot of headlines about achieving balance and giving yourself a break. None of it really says anything new. Most of it, I think, is kind of misleading. The whole notion of achieving balance makes it sound like you'll never be exhausted if you just attain the right balance of things. Silliness.
I see even more in the books on new motherhood on giving up all the expectations of perfection because these are where suffering come from. This I do agree with. I think a big reason why I started a blog only to abandon it is because I had grand expectations of the kinds of things I would be able to write (long well researched well written thoughtful and thought provoking essays on fine details no one had ever thought of before). I'm slowly coming to peace with that for me to write means I just have to stay up late at night, and often at night, I'm rather at the end of my rope as my dad says. Or I'm not but I want to snuggle with my cute sleeping baby. Or with my cute sleeping husband. Or I just want a shower.
I did realize for not the first time that I am a victim of perfectionism. I want to create the perfect thing/novel/story/piece of art, but when I don't know how to do that or don't think I'm even coming close, I give up. Probably, the gift of a baby is that he is not something I can give up on. And I don't have to be perfect, and really, it's easier for a lot of us if I'm not. So rather than long eloquent, thoughtful essays on the tidbits of motherhood, probably about once a week or so, I'll write a short choppy odd observation on myself in motherhood. It might read like my high school biology lab notebook: "I don't know if I put the right thing in my petri dish". Or "dissected the frog. While there is an odd beauty to it, I never want to do it again."
But this week in my notebook, I did think of the beginning of quite a few essays. So I do have things to go back to work on. Things I haven't seen in the books on new motherhood or baby center emails. Like what do you do about children's Bible stories? On the one hand I want my son to have the mythology, on the other I don't want him smiting kids on the playground because they seem wicked. Or on breastfeeding mothers donating milk. There's quite a few of us who donate milk, but I haven't seen anything that really talks about that. Or for pete's sake, post partum in laws and dealing with them while you are also dealing with hormones (and what kind of cruel joke is that?) And postpartum sex? People really don't talk about that. So anyway, I have a lot of things I could work on. But first, I'm taking that shower since the husband and baby are asleep.