Bad Mommy

A few weeks ago Wombat busted his frenulum labii superioris, and I felt like a mater horribila magnifica. Kids fall, I know this, but mothers aren't supposed to react to these events--especially ones with lots and lots of blood--by thinking (1) where's my camera? and (2) oh please don't let him get any on my shirt. To be fair, it was a throroughly horrified "Where's my camera?" and the words never actually escaped my mouth, but still...It was a really bad face smash--split lip, cut frenulum; we were convinced he'd lost some teeth--so then what in cheese's name was I doing thinking about anything other than fixing the situation as quickly as possible? And was I seriously concerned about getting blood on my shirt? (Yes, I was.)

The myth is that when we become parents (and mothers in particular), all our selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed tendencies melt away as effortlessly as a truffle upon the tongue, because we are, supposedly, automatically--biologically--the servants of our children as soon as they are born (or even before that, depending on how well one is able to stick to the draconian What to Expect... diet. ["A tablespoon of oil in your salad dressing and one of butter on your bread will do it for the day....If you've fried your eggs in a tablespoon of margarine, you must subtract that from your day's allotment." (1988, p. 80) In my opinion, to follow rules like that when one is otherwise enjoying a healthy pregnancy is to imply that perhaps one needs an entire stick of butter to lubricate the stick in one's ass, am I right?]

Yet, even the wackadoo pregnancy diets that are at least nominally prescribed in the spirit of Doing It for the Baby contain an element of Doing It for Yourself, and that's just one of the many forms the martyrdom myth takes. As pregnant women, and then as mothers, we're constantly given tips about how to remember to take care of ourselves, lest we forget who we are, what we want/need in life, what it feels like to be showered and shaved and pretty to someone more than two feet tall (even if that person is only the one in the mirror). To me it seems that (and I'm fully aware how much perception counts here) we're told to take care of ourselves and pay attention to our own needs because it's feared that if no one tells us to think of ourselves, we never will, not ever again, because it's all about the baaaybeeee, to the exclusion of everything else. (And I use the passive voice with a vague subject on purpose here, because I'm not entirely sure who the true scaremonger is. Friends and family? Other mothers? The ever-faulted media? Ourselves? I suspect it's different for everyone.)

Yet, flight attendants remind us on airplanes to put on our own oxygen masks before assisting our children. They (whoever that might be) assume our self-preservation instinct has given way to our mama bear one. Am I the only one who would put my own mask on first just because that's how I'm wired?

And okay, okay, I get why this is a relevant thing--and a good thing--for a lot of women out there. There are without doubt scads of mothers who DO need someone to say, "Hey, take some time for yourself" because they have, automatically and biologically, given up a part of themselves when they became mothers. The thing that makes me squirmy, though, is the assumption by...people (vague!) that forgetting ourselves once the baby arrives is not just a side-effect of motherhood but essential to it, and a sign of normalcy, of a fully functioning mothering instinct, of proof that we're cut out for the job.

To which I say...eh...not really. I don't think I'm a bad mother--the whole picture considered rather than the individual shortcomings I need to work on. (For one, I would like Simon's homecoming from work to feel less often like a relay in which I pass him the baby like a baton and tell him to run in the opposite direction. I'm also not as consistently engaged or patient a parent as I thought I'd be. I finished up the previous blog post, for instance, while Wombat was wailing in his crib but I was so past the point of having had ENOUGH that I wasn't about to rescue him. (Besides, it was nap time.) It was not lost on me, the irony of putting him in a room to cry himself to sleep while I oohed and aahed at photos of my beautiful boy, wondering how best to illustrate that heartfelt tribute to his thirteenth month, but when Simon reminded me that I've done this once before, and probably even more than that in different forms, I felt pretty rotten about it. I don't really have an excuse except to say that this is the type of mother I am by nature (at least right now), and that being aware of it is a step in the right direction.)

But here's the thing: Sometimes, for some of us, being a mother is not about listening to your instincts, following your heart, and doing what comes naturally. Because sometimes what comes naturally is the voice that says "Get the camera!" or "Save your shirt!" instead of "Cradle your baby to your breast until he stops crying, nevermind the blood." For me, then, sometimes being a mother is very much about following my head and doing what I KNOW is best, even if that overrides my "instincts" and knee-jerk reactions and yes, even just my downright selfish needs. I definitely don't have the magical mommy instinct that lifts me out of bed in the morning before I'm ready (note: I'm hardly ever ready), or the one that urges me to martyrdom in all other things, from keeping the t.v. off while the baby's awake to making sure he's changed and fed and happy before I've had at least one swallow of tea. (In that last case, I think of that morning cup like an oxygen mask; I can't hope to care for my child unless I'm conscious and functional myself.)

I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme--and I'm definitely not beating myself up about this too much--but I admit that I sometimes allow myself to go to the dark place where I fear I don't have the mothering instinct at all. A friend of mine says she feels physically ill--weak, faint, and nauseous--when her daughter cries, for whatever reason. Me? Depending on the context, I feel everything from genuine heartache to adolescent, eye-rolling annoyance. And what does that say about me as a mother? Shouldn't I suppress my own needs to fulfill my child's in every situation? And shouldn't I be compelled to do so? Shouldn't my devotion to him range from taking a bullet in his stead to simply waiting twenty minutes for my own breakfast, even when I'm starving to the point of dizziness? Am I a bad mommy? Am I an unfit one, at least constitutionally? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What have I done?

Then, because I'm just as good at talking myself down from the ledge as I am pushing myself to it, I realize that there's nothing wrong with parenting from the head rather than from the heart (in some situations), so long as the outcome is positive for the child. When I know my son is healthy, happy, well-cared-for, and much loved, I shouldn't worry myself so much over how I got there, whether the road to that place was paved with flowers and jellybeans and easy instinct or if it was dark and lousy with poison ivy and quicksand and "poor me" and "what about my needs." If my instinct when Wombat smashed his face was to grab a camera and a poncho but I knew, intellectually, that I should cradle him to my breast until he stopped crying, nevermind the blood, and then I did the latter? Is there anything to feel bad about? At least for more than two seconds? Out of one (1) person surveyed, survey says: no.

Besides, for what it's worth, the thing with the blood wasn't entirely selfish; as concerned as I was about my shirt (thank god it was red), I was also worried for Wombat's outfit, which was a onesie embroidered with monkeys hanging from orange letters spelling out "I love my mommy." (OH, IRONY.) He was also wearing, over the onesie, a...pink frilly dress, borrowed from a friend with daughters, which was also, I'm ashamed to admit, perhaps the reason he tripped and fell in the first place. My baby is not used to walking in a dress, you see, him being a BOY and all. And if I'm not a bad mother for anything else, surely I'm a bad mother for THAT.

wrote Leah at 12:28 PM | Comments (19)