Originally posted Thursday, June 28, 2007
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Life
I was asked to tell something about learning to be a mommy....
I didn’t have the “natural instincts” I never really wanted to have a baby, or at least I wasn’t sure if I did. I was an extremely great auntie and was satisfied with that. I always told my sisters that I wanted to be that eccentric aunt, the one that traveled all over the world and brought the kids back unique things from other cultures, one that they could laugh with, tell anything to, and always, always look forward to seeing, because they knew there would be exciting tales to be told.
Learning to be a mom.... well I think I kinda lost myself for awhile because I didn’t really know what being a “mom” meant.
Growing up I watched my mother and she didn’t have another life outside of being a mom and a housewife and in an unhappy marriage. Cleaning, cooking, doing work on the farm. She didn’t enjoy us, I don’t remember her playing with us, she was too busy, there was too much that needed to be done. I rarely remember her smiling, she wasn’t happy. That was her life. I didn’t want to become that.
I only had that one idea of what being a mom was, and maybe because of that idea I felt like after having boo I no longer existed. That I was secondary to boo, I could no longer do stuff I wanted to do, only things that I “had” to do.
“Mom” and “Linda” were like oil and water.
I fought hard against it. I hated it the first couple of months. I was alone. I found no joy in this tiny human being that was in my care. I found hard work and sleepless nights, days without showers because I when I put her down she would cry or want to nurse. When she cried it made me feel like a failure, I would look in the mirror at this “mom” I had become and I hated the way she looked. Postpartum marshmallow belly, unkempt hair, bags so large under my eyes I could’ve parked my volkswagen in them. I seemed to have aged 10 years in a couple of weeks.
My days and nights consisted of changing her, feeding her, burping her, there was no difference between them except for the sun and moon.
Maybe I had a harder time adjusting to it because of loosing so much blood after I delivered her, I was in the hospital for five days and then told I shouldn’t do much for two weeks to make sure I didn’t start bleeding again. I was so weak, and maybe the weakness of my body weakened my mind.
I didn’t feel confident in this new life. The thought of taking her out to the store to get what we needed scared me, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was afraid of, I just was. I was used to running into the store quick grabbing what I needed.
Now?
Well now I had this tiny person in tow.
Big deal?
It was to me.
Every time I put her in her car seat she cried. You wouldn’t believe the stares and judgements you get from people in public. The comments “If I wanted to hear a screaming baby, I be baby sitting.”
Really? Oh well then... I’ll stop pinching her right now so she’ll be quiet.
Shopping with a cart was a whole new experience to me, much less shopping with a cart and a baby. Pushing the cart down the aisles, baby crying, and then... then you notice the smell and the brown stain appearing on the side of her leg.
Great.
I start heading to the bathroom to change her and I get stopped by a clerk who says I can not take my cart into the bathroom, it’s a fire hazard.
I have to take boo out of the cart (still in the car seat) and dig out my diaper bag from the bottom of the cart underneath all of my items. Go into change her, realize I don’t have another outfit for her and this one has poop all over it.
Wait....I have one in the cart!
Put a diaper back on her put her back in the car seat, to go out and get the outfit out of the cart and decide to just pay for it later. (It used to bother me, the people that would open a bag of chips or put on new shoes and pay for them later)
I emerge from the bathroom, diaper bag over shoulder packed with extra everything except the badly needed outfit, baby in car seat carrier in the other hand crying again of course because she’s back in the car seat.
No cart.
Where the f@#% did the cart go?
I went up to a cashier and asked her if she knew where the cart that was sitting outside of the bathroom went.
Thoroughly annoyed snapping her bubble gum she says “How am I supposed to know? I’m working here.”
“My stuff, all the stuff, I was just about done, he said I couldn’t take it into the bathroom with me, I had to change her....”
“Like, I don’t know, ok? It probably got put back to be re-stocked, ya know, like a deserted cart?”
“But I just had to change her”
“Um. well... you can have another cart.”
And that little exchange, that little bump in the road was enough to make me cry right along with boo crying in her car seat.
I grabbed another cart, tears streaming down my face and started over.
I learned to cram even more things in a diaper bag after that. I also learned that if I was shopping and the cart was full and I was almost done shopping, she could wait to be changed, a little poop on the butt has never killed anyone.
Ahhh if I only knew then what I know now.
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