Motherhood

When I was pregnant with my 2nd child I worried, okay about a lot of things. Which is not too far from normal for me. But one of the things I worried about is whether everything would feel like it had already been done.

Would I be excited when she rolled over for the first time? Would her first steps be all over facebook?

She’s now 8 months and many of her first milestones have already come and gone.

I was just as excited when she rolled over.  I could not have been more proud seeing her learn to crawl or pull herself up for the first time. I’m no longer worried that my excitement will be less because she’s not my first. Because they are still her firsts. And those firsts are exciting.

But it is different. With two kids, I’m more distracted and there’s less down time. I have to put in more of an effort to write things down in her baby book and it will in all likelihood have much less written in it than her older brother’s. And more of her firsts will probably not get photographed or written up in a status update. So one day, it may look to her that I was less excited. But even if one day she feels that way, I know it’s not true.

There was one aspect of having a second child that did surprise me though. I know they’ll fight and bicker (believe me that has already started!) but I was really surprised with how much they love each other already and how young Nicole was when they started playing together. They are three years apart – I had expected it to be a long time before they would really connect. But I was really wrong about that. Gordie loves to make her laugh and already they entertain each other. Nicole’s favorite thing to play with is whatever Gordie’s playing with. She’ll chase him down the hall and cry when he leaves the room. Sure sometimes it drives Gordie bonkers when he wants to play with his toys and she’s right there trying to play with him but he adores her too. It’s hard to resist someone who loves you so much.

It’s not always easy having two little kids. In fact it often isn’t. It’s a very challenging time period. But seeing your babies develop into their own people with their own personalities is one of the most exciting things there is.

I’m no longer sure I know the difference. I’ll pick up a book that people are raving about, read a few pages and put it down. Do I just not like the book? Do I disagree with all the hype? Or have my kids just taken any cleverness I used to have along with uninterrupted sleep and time to myself?
It’s hard not to second guess myself. Maybe I should like this book. Maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.
But I just don’t want to read it.
Similar things occur in other areas of my life too. Sometimes just having a conversation can seem like more than I can handle. I can be desperately trying to pay attention to what someone is saying and before I know it, my mind has wandered and I have no idea what the person I am talking to just said. It’s making me have a lot of empathy for people with attentional difficulties. It’s not that my mind wandering hasn’t been a problem before, but it’s never been so pervasive or felt so out of my control.
So do I really have mommy brain? Before my kids, I used to be able to pay attention to things even if I didn’t find them inherently interesting. I’d consider myself smart even. And I do feel like I’ve lost some of that, but I’m pretty sure my kids are only indirectly responsible.

Reasons Why My Brain is Sludge

1. Lack of good sleep
Now that Gordie (3.5 years) has stopped napping I’m finding it even harder to catch up when I lose sleep. Sleeping in is not something I even understand the meaning of any more and I find it hard to go to bed as early as I should and forego the small amount of kid free time I get in the evenings.
2. Lack of uninterrupted time
It’s hard to concentrate on anything when your kids are taking half of your attention or when they are interrupting what you’re doing every five minutes. I hardly do anything without it being frequently interrupted, including simple things like folding a basket of laundry.
3. I just don’t care anymore
This one I don’t think is going to change with time. I read because it makes me happy. I love to read. I don’t have time to read a book that I’m not enjoying. I don’t feel the need to prove that I can read complicated books. I know I can, I’ve done it. And if I’m enjoying reading Young Adult novels right now, so what. They are fast paced, and gripping and I can read them in little snippets of time I have available with ease.
I definitely hope I regain the ability to have a have a conversation without my mind drifting. But as for the books, I’m not so sure. I may not be at my best, and that book may be great, but I reserve the right to decide it’s boring anyway.

(I wrote this just after I had Nicole, but only managed to actually publish it today – 3 months later)

Okay, so it’s not a lie exactly. Our baby Nicole was born last week (8 lbs 10 oz) and we’re now settling in at home. We are both healthy and happy and doing really well. But it sure leaves out a lot of details and makes things sound a lot better than they really are. I think sometimes lies like these can really hurt other women. When you are in the same situation, you compare yourself to your friends and don’t seem to measure up. But you’re not comparing yourself to their reality, just what you see, just what they show you. Even when things are going really well with your new baby, things are still hard.

Lie #1. We’re happy to be home and are doing really well.

What this really means: I’m really hormonal and burst into tears at the drop of a hat.Seriously, someone tells me that my son is doing well at Grandma’s and doesn’t seem to miss me – tears. Someone tells me that he misses me and wants his mommy –tears. I can’t even remember all the things that have made me cry this past week. It is getting better. Yesterday it was only a few times, but writing this paragraph has made me cry too.

My body is sore and fatigued. I feel worn out just from making dinner. Not even cooking anything spectacular – I carved a rotisserie chicken, spooned out a couple salads and warmed up some beans and tomatoes and was exhausted. Nicole was born via c-section – my stomach hurts. It’s generally controlled with advil and tylenol but it’s still tender and uncomfortable.

I’m tired.

Lie # 2. She’s nursing really well.

This is also true. She’s been latching like a pro from the start. Honestly, I don’t know if it was possible for it to go better. But it still sometimes hurts just from the power of her suck. A couple times one of my nipples bled a bit from where she shifted and chomped down too close. Sometimes I have to re-latch her a couple times to get in a good position. Sometimes it hurts just because my breasts are really full. Even when it’s going really, really well, doesn’t mean it’s easy.

There are more lies like this that I could talk about. But honestly, I’m just too tired to write any more. But things are going really well, really.

Did you de-emphasize your difficulties after having a baby? Did it seem harder for you than it did for everyone else?

I don’t actually mind the so called ‘Hallmark’ holidays. Having a day to remind you to stop and appreciate your significant other, mother, father what have you, is overall I think a good thing. However, I do sympathize with those who dislike such holidays. It can put a lot of pressure on one day and it can be easy for many to feel left out.

For me, this mother’s day was… I can’t think of the right word, so perhaps I’ll just explain. When I woke up, I just wasn’t feeling well. I had a huge headache and was so emotionally fragile I wouldn’t be surprised if I made people wonder if I was pregnant. I recognized that I was grumpy, irritable and emotional, but sometimes having this level of introspection gets you no closer to being able to control these feelings.

That is not a good start. On top of that, my only child is 2. He doesn’t have a clue about what mother’s day is about. My husband, has many wonderful qualities but he is not likely to help my son do cute mother’s day crafts or anything or tell me just to put my feet up all day. Which really, I respect. I’m not his mother and he has his own mother he needs to try to make feel special that day.

So really it was just a day, and not a very good one. I didn’t even do a very good job of making my mother feel appreciated.

Now really, the day was fine. Gordie was an angel, my husband gave me a rose, and both our families had a lovely dinner together. And that is plenty to feel grateful for.

But in the end, it is just a day, and if it ends up being a bad or disappointing day it doesn’t matter. It’s just one day. Days like these are great opportunities to reflect on the important people who are or who have been in our lives but it’s best not to ascribe them too much meaning. All the other 364 days of the year are just as important. And overall? Those have been great.

One of the things that has surprised me the most since becoming a parent, is how much I would be plagued with guilt and doubt. For me this was especially true when Gordie was a small baby. Everything was so new and it seemed I was constantly having to make decisions that had no real right answer.

But the guilt and doubt I felt over these day to day decisions was nothing compared to how I felt when Gordie turned 1. That was when we found out that he wasn’t growing as expected. His weight was at the 3rd percentile. Now I realize that sometimes this is nothing. Some kids are just small. But the reason that they take weight and height measurements is because sometimes something is wrong.

When Gordie was born he was 9 lbs. That put him at the 85 percentile for weight. So being at the 3rd percentile after 12 months was definitely concerning.

It turned out that he was having a problem digesting dairy. He seems to react negatively to the protein in milk products resulting in a host of problems some of which I recognized as a problem and others that I didn’t until they went away.

It has now been a year and I still struggle with the guilt that I feel over this.

• Why didn’t I realize what was happening sooner?
• How could I have been feeding my baby what basically amounted to poison (for him)?
• How could I not have noticed how small he was, how little he was eating, how cranky he was, how little he was doing?

It really shook my confidence as a mother. I was second guessing all the choices that I had made with regards to how I chose to feed him, sleep choices – everything.

Now I know this is not particularly rationale. I know I’m a good mom. I do. And I know that Gordie’s problems with milk were not my fault. In fact when I look back, I had realized that something was the matter and I was doing everything I could to figure out. I can’t even think of anything that I really should have done differently. And I know that it was in large part because of me that we figured it out as soon as we did.

Gordie is currently thriving and as of his 2 year check up is now back up to the 25th percentile.

And yet. The guilt is still there.

I do my best to forgive myself and to have realistic expectations for myself as a mother. Most of the time I think I succeed. But I still can’t quite shake the guilt I feel over this.

I am sick of articles written (largely) by people who do not have children talking about how children make parents unhappy and people who have kids are stupid/ridiculous/deluding themselves. (Yes, obviously I should stop reading them, but that’s beside the point.) There seems to be a segment of the population that delights in exclaiming that parents are foolish to have had kids when any piece of research comes out that appears to support that position.

I’m frequently dismayed when I read newspaper articles talking about research studies. They often overstate or misrepresent what the (usually single) study actually found. Particularly in the headline in order to get a catchy title.

This can serve to rile up or confuse people unnecessarily. So, I’ve decided to examine articles that I find interesting and try to explain what the study actually found and how this corresponds with what its portrayal in the newspaper.

The first article article I’ve chosen is, Kid Crazy: Why We Exaggerate the Joys of Parenthood.

In their study reported on in this article, Eibach and Mock, tested how parents reacted to different types of information about parenting in two studies. In these two studies, parents were presented with either information about the costs of parenting or the costs and long term benefits. (It’s interesting to note that all the information presented to parents was of an economic nature. The benefits described were how children help you in your old age so you are more financially secure if you have children. This seems to be a rather limited presentation of the benefits of raising children.) The studies found that although parents feelings of emotional discomfort immediately after reading the negative material was higher than those who had read the positive and negative material, when tested after a delay, these negative feelings were gone. They also found that parents who read the negative material were more likely to say that they enjoyed spending time with their children and were planning on spending more leisure time with their kids.  (You can access the abstract to the original scientific journal article here.)

So, that’s what the research found. What did the article report? Here are a few direct quotes from the Time: Health article by John Cloud.

Now comes new research showing that having kids is not only financially foolish but that kids literally make parents delusional.

But a new paper shows that parents fool themselves into believing that having kids is more rewarding than it actually is. It turns out parents are in the grip of a giant illusion.

Instead, parents glorify their lives. They believe that the financial and emotional benefits of having children are significantly higher than they really are.

Does this mean you shouldn’t have kids? Yes — but you won’t. Our national fantasy about the joys of parenting permeates the culture.

Of course parents should be commended for one little thing they do: maintain the existence of humanity. I praise them for that, but I think they’re both heroes and suckers.

These quotes show an obvious bias by John Cloud. But he is hardly alone in his interpretation of the results of this study. You can find article after article that contains the same basic idea: Parents are delusional and this study by Eibach and Mock demonstrates this to be true.

But in fact, the study did not find that at all. What this really says is that parents can be manipulated into exaggerating the joys of parenting, not that they actually do in their every day lives. Actually, being that parents tend to encounter both the various rewards as well as the costs of parenting, this study would seem to suggest, if anything, that parents do not do exaggerate the joys of parenting in their everyday lives. What it does suggest is that parents may do this when going through a particularly difficult period such as a child being sick, parents will increase their commitment to their children and exaggerate the benefits to help them through a stressful time. This seems like a good thing to me. But somehow it’s being painted as a negative.

Besides, the ‘delusion’ as they call it is nothing more than Cognitive Dissonance. This is a phenomenon can happen to anyone who is having to deal with two thoughts that contradict each other. Such as in this case, how happy you are to be a parent and the economic burden of raising a child (if you want to read more about cognitive dissonance, here is a great, easy to read article by psyblog). It’s really not surprising or noteworthy that this happens to parents.

Yes, parenting is difficult. Yes when you are cleaning up puke from 2 sick kids in a sleep deprived haze it is hard to remember why you thought this was a good idea. But there are not many parents who would choose to have a do-over.

Articles that I have used on this topic for this post:

http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/04/why-having-kids-is-foolish/

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/the-bottom-line-of-raising-kids-parents-rationalize-the-economic-cost-of-children-by-exaggerating-their-parental-joy.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Parents+exaggerate+parenting+justify+costs+study/4379335/story.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245495 (link to the academic journal article)