 |
| A mom and baby. Image source. |
------------
I have a lot of *feelings* about being a mommy.
I love my child so much. Sometimes I hold him and I think, "This is the most important thing in my entire life. This is all I want to do." And that's really surprising to me; I didn't think I would feel that way. I thought having kids would just be one small aspect of my life, taking up as much space as a hobby, but now it's the whole thing. Everything I do all day is focused around "I'm a mommy." (Note that I am still on maternity leave. When I go back to work in 2 months, things will change. And I'm not looking forward to leaving him. Oh I love him so much.)
I also have a lot of feelings about how I'm not doing all the things a mom is "supposed" to do. When I was a little kid, I thought my mom knew everything and could do everything related to housework and taking care of me. And ... when I think about my child realizing that I can't do some of the things he needs ... I'm very sad. I want him to feel safe. And I want him to think I'm a good mom.
And this is all complicated by the fact that my mother-in-law is living with us. See, in China, that's what happens. You have a baby, and then it's very common for the grandparents move in to take care of the baby. In our case, it's just Hendrix's mom. We call her Nainai because that's the Chinese word for "paternal grandmother."
It's extraordinarily helpful to have her here. She loves the baby so much. She's really good at cooking. If I have to go out and do something, I can just leave the baby at home with her and it's no problem. But the problem is, she's ended up "in charge" of a lot of the baby things. Like she washes his clothes and puts them away, so then I have only a vague sense of where his clothes are. She gives him a bath every night, so at the beginning I was so sad about the fact that I didn't even know how to give him a bath- how can I be his mommy if I don't know how we give him a bath?
(Don't worry, I have since learned how to give him a bath.)
And I feel bad because I'm "supposed to" be in charge of all the baby things, because I'm the mom. It's such a big change from pregnancy, where I was totally 100% in charge of him, and other people supported me. And I hated being pregnant, and I said that once the baby comes out, I am gonna hand him over to my husband and I am DONE. But now I don't want that; I want to take care of him.
It's such a big change; the pregnancy is suddenly gone and in its place we have this adorable squirmy child.
And so I feel bad that I can't do everything that a mom is "supposed" to do- but then I realized, maybe that happens gradually. Yes, going from "pregnant" to "mom" happens very suddenly. You get all these new responsibilities dropped on you, that weren't there 1 day before. But maybe after that, it's a gradual process of learning the skills I need for taking care of my child. So it's okay that I'm not "perfect" now. I'll get better and better at it as little Square Root grows.
I also want to talk about gender roles. I always thought, yes of course the mom and dad should share the parenting responsibilities equally. But now I feel like, it's important for my identity as a mom that I do most of the work. And I'm not thinking in terms of "who's doing more work, me or Hendrix" but in terms of "I need to do the best I possibly can for my child." Also I'm on maternity leave so I can spend all day taking care of the baby, while Hendrix has to work. And we have Nainai here, which introduces the question of what's the mom's role and what's the grandma's role. There's a big cultural difference there...
So. Okay. Those are my feelings about being a mommy. I love my child so much, and everything else has become a much lower priority- and I didn't expect that would happen so drastically. And I feel bad because I'm not some idealized concept of what a mom is supposed to be, but it's okay, I'll gradually get better and better. And I'm so feminist, I didn't expect to feel like "I'm the mom so I should do most of the work" but here we are.
Probably my feelings and our roles will change more over time. We'll see what happens.
----------------
Related:
No comments:
Post a Comment