Tag Archives: honesty

The (Un)Working Mom

UnWorking MomHey Mamas – I’m back! Lindsay has been doing a great job of holding down the fort here at Raise a Mother, but I’ve still missed touching base with our village.

The truth is, I’ve been a bit dumbfounded as to what I should write. I lost my job on October 19th, a consequence of the Canadian election results. The fact that it happened was unexpected and the fact that it happened in a very public way — I literally watched my job (and those of many of my friends and colleagues) slowly slip away on national television — have made it particularly difficult. Almost a month later, I am only beginning to stumble out of a sort of fog that has surrounded me.

The reality that I no longer have a job that I loved is hard to take. The other day I told Lindsay, “I’m supposed to be at my office right now, doing my job”. Because that’s how it feels to me – like it’s my office and my job, and that fact that I’m not there doing it is what’s wrong with the picture.

Of course, what’s really wrong with the picture is that it isn’t my job at all. Despite all my best efforts — the long and tiring hours, the weekends away from my family — I lost my job. Someone else is sitting in what is now their office, doing what is now their job. I am sitting in my house, trying to figure out where to go from here. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

I am definitely results-oriented. I like planning, organizing and checking off lists. I am the person who will add something I have already done to a to-do list, just so that I can have the satisfaction of crossing it off. And like many people I know with this type of personality, I place great value on these aspects of my character. They are intrinsically connected to my self-worth.

This has probably been the biggest personal challenge that I’ve faced in becoming a mother. During maternity leave I had an ongoing to-do list, to keep my mind busy and give me some structure. But I also had to learn to accept that the list was not going to get completed as quickly or efficiently as I might like. Some items might not happen at all. Because no matter how well you prepare or organize, life with children does not always go as planned. In fact, it very often takes you in a completely different direction.

Now I need to learn that same lesson in my professional life. I planned to still have my job and worked hard to keep it, but I can’t cross that goal off my list. I am actively reaching out to my network and applying for jobs, but until I land a new one, I can’t count that as a task completed. I need to find new ways to feel like I’m contributing, and I need new ideas.

One place I know I’ll be spending more time is here with you mamas at Raise a Mother. Have any of you gone through losing a job? How did you cope with the challenge of being unemployed, especially with kids? 

We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments section, or in a guest post! 

What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Again

Finding out you’re pregnant with your second child is different than the first time around. At least, it was for me – and not the way I expected it to be (surprise, surprise, like everything else about motherhood). I’d seen things like this Coke commercial and thought Good News Round 2 would be simply an ecstatic air-punch, because yes, although my partner and I were both tired beyond belief and being parents was in some ways the hardest thing we’d ever done, we’d know what we were getting into this time, and all the true wonders of a new child would overshadow any trivial worries we might have had as parenting-virgins.

Instead, I saw the little blue cross in the window, did the 2nd test in the box just to be sure, then went upstairs to where my husband was still sleeping and said, “Uh, John, it’s positive.” I was stunned. I’m not even sure if I was happy at that moment. I was instantly overwhelmed, and I wasn’t sure exactly why. Sure, Arlo was only just a year old, and it was earlier than we were planning to have our second. But we already have all the needed stuff for a baby – the toys, the furniture, the gear, the clothes. We’ve experienced recurring thrush infections, sleepless nights, sleep training, traveling with an infant, introducing food, and teething. We have family nearby who are always ready to help out and a fantastic support system of friends. I thought I should feel ready to tackle this next phase of life – after all, we were going to get the ‘baby years’ and all their ensuing difficulties out of the way much faster than anticipated, which should be a good thing, right?

After several hours, I felt some moments of happiness about my pregnancy – I did, of course, remember all the bliss that went along with having a newborn, after all – but I still had this underlying, nagging worry. I couldn’t pin it down to any one specific thing: I thought about how to get two kids to share a room, how and when to wean Arlo off breastfeeding before needing to nurse another tiny person, and how we’d ever get some rest if our kids just took turns not sleeping through the night. For every one of these worries, though, I knew we’d find solutions, and if we didn’t, the worst would only be temporary. So what was this overarching anxiety I felt?

The reason I couldn’t identify my fear is because I assumed it had something to do with the babies. Really, what I was afraid of was myself. There were some dark days – some very dark and twisty days – when Arlo was in the 4-6 month window. I remember feeling helpless, out of control, and like I could no longer see the adult person it took years to become but whom I love very much and of whom I’m quite protective.  Instead, I saw a sleep-deprived, crazed, insecure ghost of a woman, who cried without explanation and lost her temper at the drop of a soother, who was unpredictable and went from loving life to wondering why everything was so fucking horrible in two seconds flat, who was unreasonable and couldn’t seem to rise above the chaos to just love her sweet, entirely perfect little baby. Those moments were, undoubtedly, the worst I’ve ever felt about myself, which is saying a lot, considering the self-esteem issues and anxiety I faced in adolescence.

I haven’t been worried about the logistics, the day-in-and-day-out details. I haven’t been worried about how John and I will cope, because we can get through anything. I’ve been worried about myself.  Nervous that having gone through this once won’t stop me from having a meltdown when I’ve almost got baby #2 asleep and the cat pushes open the creaky bedroom door, ruining my efforts. Afraid that when this new little one demands so much of my attention, I’ll have less patience for my sweet son, who will still be really, just a baby, but in comparison will seem like such a big boy that I’ll expect too much of him. Terrified I won’t have learned anything from the first go-round of motherhood and that, all over again, I’ll drag so many could-have-been-lovely days and moments through the mud with my hormones and emotional baggage.

This particular wave of nerves and fear has, thankfully, passed. I’m now over the morning sickness and unbearable fatigue of the first trimester (which helps everything seem more manageable), and as I’ve talked with more people about the second foray into motherhood, I’m starting to really believe that just as this new little one won’t be the same baby as my first, I won’t be the exact same mother I was my first time through. I will have learned some things, and I’ll hopefully be able to maintain some perspective and grace even through the tough moments with baby #2.  Will I have some dark and twisty moments? Probably. Is that still terrifying? A little bit. But being honest about my fears, even if they’re difficult to admit, has been a big first step in making them a whole lot less scary.

What about you, Mamas? Anyone scared about the next time around? Anyone had an unexpected reaction to a pregnancy? Tell us your story in the comments, or, if you have more to share, let me know – we’d welcome your guest post here at Raise a Mother!

Pity Party For One…

This week, stay-at-home parenting seems like the only reasonable solution for life.

I’m hoping this will sound familiar to someone else:

We eat out an unreasonable number of times due to a lack of groceries, and of time to get any. I manage to stay on top of a few loads of laundry and a bit of tidying only by getting up early enough in the morning to be ready for work 20 minutes before I have to head out the door. I’m in desperate need of some girlfriend time, but already feel like teaching dance for an hour and maybe going to yoga once a week is the limit of time I can be away from contributing at home without feeling guilty. Our evenings entertaining friends (and I’m not ambitious here, just another couple sitting on the couch eating popcorn and chatting would be amazing) seem few and far between, almost a thing of the past. My partner and I both feel like we wake up, are in ‘go’ mode all day at work, come home to dinner/bath/bedtime for the baby, and finally plop down for a a brief period of half-focused-doing-nothing in the same room before collapsing into bed, knowing in several hours the cycle starts all over again.

I get it now. I get why for generations, and in many cultures still, the norm was/is to have one stay-at-home-parent: this whole two-working-parents standard we have is just unsustainable. A colleague who’s a grandmother says, “I don’t know how you’re making it work.” I say, “Well, you did it with your three kids,” eagerly hoping for some tips, to which she replies, “Yes, but I stayed home!” Another colleague says she only got through this stage by hiring someone full time to care for her daughters, cook, clean and bake while she was at work.

In moments of bleakness, my husband will often shake his head or dejectedly sigh and say, “Cycle of productivity.” This week, I really feel the weight of that. The crazy thing is, I don’t feel like I’m that productive, not in a creative/achieving sense. Busy, sure, and productive at work, yes, but what is this garden-variety productivity really worth if you don’t feel you have time to appreciate or savour your life as a whole?

I want to live in the moment with my son when we are home together. I want more than an hour at home with him per day that’s not swallowed up by the evening ‘schedule.’ I want to feel like I have more time for relaxing in the calm space of my home than it takes to get that home to a state of calm. I want my husband and I to have the energy to really be involved with and invested in one other after our kid’s in bed, not just find comfort in our solidarity through the slog.

I’m sure there are lots of things we could do to work towards these goals, but in moments of bleakness, those solutions just seem like something else I don’t have the time or energy for. Maybe it’s also okay, though, to spend a little bit of time having a pity party every once in a while. I know the cloud will lift eventually, and when it does, I’ll be eagerly hoping for tips again, so leave ’em in the comments, dear readers.

Our Bellies, Ourselves

A couple of weeks ago, I got on the bus for my morning commute. It was crowded and I was carrying a large bag, so I was pumped when a woman got up to give me her seat. I was less pumped a few minutes later when a couple of kids got on the bus and the same woman insisted that I remain seated because I was pregnant.

The thing is, I’m not pregnant. I was pregnant a year-and-a-half ago, but I’m not anymore.

I didn’t know what to say to the woman, so I said nothing at all, and just stayed in my seat. I figured that correcting her would only serve to make both she and I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable — and the kids had already found other seats anyway. Still, the experience stuck in my mind for the rest of the day.

When I was pregnant, I was thrilled when people noticed. I loved getting seats on the bus and using the “Expectant Mothers Only” parking spaces at the grocery store. It was one of the only times in my life when I truly embraced my body in all its forms. It was remarkable to me, then, how bothered I was when someone thought I was pregnant now. Why did that assumption suddenly make me feel so bad about myself, when it used to give such joy?

When I told a colleague what had happened, she gave me a hug and said, “That’s just the worst. Because that person is really just saying that there’s something wrong with your body“. Lindsay concurred: “People just don’t recognize that there are many different, normal body shapes,” she said.

And they were right. What I was most bothered by was a stranger making any sort of presumption about the state of my body and feeling comfortable enough to comment on it.

This annoyed me when I was pregnant as well. My husband was shocked when I told him about complete strangers touching my swollen belly, or sharing unsolicited advice about pregnancy, birth, my health, or that of the baby. But other mamas and mamas-to-be I talked to had all experienced the same thing.

The truth of the matter is that even a slight indication that a woman might be pregnant seems to suddenly turn her body into a public object that all are entitled to judge and comment upon. And whether or not the woman is actually pregnant, these judgments can cause her to feel quite insecure.

Last year, Jennifer Garner made headlines when she told Ellen DeGeneres that she did indeed have a baby bump — one named after her three children — and that everyone (including the tabloids) would just have to get used to it. Women cheered. Because whether my rounded tummy is the result of a bun in the oven, or a cinnamon bun for second breakfast, it shouldn’t be up for public comment.

Aside from the fact that it is generally much safer not to comment on someone’s pregnancy until there can be no doubt that there actually is one, I appreciate that this woman was only trying to give up her seat on a bus to someone she perceived as needing it. But even if I was pregnant, I would be perfectly capable of deciding to give up my seat for someone else.

Because it’s my baby bump after all.

~ Shannon

When Returning to Work Doesn’t Break Your Heart

I had to go back to work early after the birth of my son, by the standards of most people in my life. Not early compared to my yoga-teacher friend who had six weeks off, or my friend whose mat leave living overseas was only two months, but I went back at six months, which is early to many. Having talked with other moms, I know I was in a great position to return to work – I got to start back at only three-and-a-half days a week, and our parents were willing to do the needed child care until my husband could get pat leave (I know – lucky!) when I started full-time hours.

But in the weeks leading up to my return date, I was a wreck: I was jealous of my mom-and-baby-group friends, looking ahead to a time when they would continue to have play dates with their babes while I sat at a desk wondering what my kid was doing all day (turns out he was still at mom-and-baby group, just with Dad). I was embarrassed about handing my son off for care without a regular nap schedule, as if that would somehow signal incompetence in that I’d had him for six months and still didn’t know what I was doing. I was anxious that my absence would somehow weaken our bond – or, as my sister put it, I “kind of did” want him to stay a bit of a mama’s boy even though I knew meaningful relationships with other caregivers were important and good, and would make my life a hell of a lot easier in the long run.

The moms in my village gave me great support, encouraging me that John could help with the household duties more so I could spend more time with Arlo when I was home, assuring me that all mothers felt this way when they went back to work, and even telling me it was okay if I just cried all day in the bathroom for the first day back.

…

So imagine my shock when I had (dare I say it?) a wonderful day. Everyone asking about the baby and wanting to see pictures, getting to see friends I hadn’t seen much since Arlo’s birth, wearing grown-up clothes with no chance of food smears or drool? Of course I had a great first day.

But then the guilt-inducing thing was, I kept having great days. I like my job. I like my colleagues. I like walks at lunch by the river behind my building, bike rides with friends to work in the morning, and drinking a whole cup of tea while it’s still hot. Best of all, every day when I came home, Arlo was limbs-flailing, goo-goo-ga-ga ecstatic to see me (a reaction that had largely been reserved for working-Daddy or post-babysitter greetings until that point).

This is where assumptions about motherhood paint us all into corners. Here I was, with all the support in the world (online and in-person) to get me through a shit time, but I was actually having an okay time, and the fact that I wasn’t falling apart made me question a) whether I was a good mother, and b) whether I would still have the support of the mama-world or be marked as a deviant of the tribe. I haven’t really tested this theory in the online world (and I’m a little scared of the reaction I could get here, to be honest).  Among my friends and family, though, I was relieved to find that my unusual (or perhaps just less-oft-voiced) experience of being, in some ways, liberated by a return to work, hasn’t reduced the support I’ve felt at all.

We’re all going to have awful times as mamas – hair-tearing, heart-draining, insanity-inducing moments. But we’re also going to have hurdles that end up not being as bad as we thought they might be. For some of us, going back to work is in column A, and for others, in column B. Where we end up probably depends on a wide range of factors. But wherever you fall when you go back to work, it’s okay.

~ Lindsay

The Importance of My Village

I came across an article at work the other day noting a recent study concluding that ‘less happy’ new parents are more likely to have smaller families. While this doesn’t seem all that surprising, the general modal number of originally “desired children” is two. This already seems like a ‘small’ family relatively speaking, so it is interesting to try to find out why, comparative to the earlier desired number, many people end up having only one kid.

What the study found was that over 70% of new parents experienced a decline in overall happiness in the first year after the birth of their first child.  Of course, as the authors acknowledged, “it is taboo for new parents to acknowledge feelings of unhappiness about childbearing;” there’s a lot of pressure for new moms (and dads) to feel happier, and to project that happiness to the world, which can only exacerbate negative feelings like depression, failure, and worry.

It’s difficult to acknowledge feelings of unhappiness post-birth even to ourselves, because at the same time as life is unbelievably challenging in ways we couldn’t have imagined, there have also been, or at least there were for me, moments of unbelievable joy and love that I never knew before my son was born. There can be a pressure to focus on only the happy side, the wonderful side, and tell ourselves to ‘suck it up’ when the unhappiness rears its ugly head, because after all, this is what we signed up for and we know we should be grateful for all the blissful bits.

I’m personally still in the ‘two desired children’ camp, but when I look back on this first year, I know I’m probably only here because of my village. My village of people, mainly women, but with some pretty fantastic men in there, too, who sometimes felt like the only thing holding me together – like a trellis keeping a fragile, ragged vine from withering.

My village kept me sane. My mom and mother-in-law taking my babe for naps in his stroller or just holding him in the living room for an hour so that I could have a shower or a sleep. My husband telling me (even when he had to repeat himself and raise his voice to get me to believe it) that it really was okay if I just needed to leave the house and go for a walk; he had things covered. My sister talking to me every day, also on her mat leave, and being my daily contact with another grown up on days when I didn’t make it out of the house.

My village kept me safe. The mothers of a previous generation who were living proof that things really would be alright, but who still listened with sympathy and a shoulder to cry on. The few courageous friends who shared with me the details of their own dark, twisty motherhood times as well as their moments of light, letting me know that the roller coaster I was on didn’t make me a bad mom, but was just part of my ride. My husband who, even on the really, really, REALLY awful days, the kind when we were both at our worst and it was hard to even look at each other, was always there bringing water while I breastfed, making dinner, or calling me from work to see how my day at home was going.

My village kept me connected to who I had always been long before I became a mother. Friends came to dance class, encouraging me to get out and shake it off even on nights when I was tired or overwhelmed. Non-parent friends listened about the trials of birth and mothering the way they would have talked to me about any other topic before my life changed, even when I gave gory details they probably didn’t want to know. One particular non-parent friend called on me for urgent love and support when she was in her own dark place, giving me the gift of still feeling that I had something to offer my friends in return, that someone other than my baby still needed me, too.

Being a new parent can be really, really, fucking hard. It’s often said that we mothers have an inner strength that gets us through anything with a newborn because we simply have to, and I suppose this could be true, but for me, my village has been the difference between coming through able to believe I can thrive again, instead of just barely holding my head up.

~ Lindsay

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