The Loneliest Lonely

A mom friend recently told me about the following situation.

Immediately after the birth of her second child, her husband would wake up with her for diaper changes.  Not for feedings, which she had to do on her own because she was breastfeeding, but for the diaper changes that happened after the feedings.  He would wake up, sit up, and take the dirty diaper out of her hands.  Not a huge effort, but a hugely meaningful one.  It meant that she wasn't alone in the world when a living adult person was sleeping next to her.

And that's really the loneliest lonely.  When you're all alone, even when another living person is physically, but not emotionally, there with you.

I can't think of a deeper feeling of loneliness.

And she was lucky, because he didn't allow her to feel that.  He sat up in bed, spoke a few words, and took the dirty diaper and put it in the garbage can.  It was a simple thing to do, but it meant everything.

And then, gradually, he stopped helping.  The baby started sleeping through the night, and the morning started feeling less dire.  And instead of waking up and taking care of their older kid while she slept or fed the baby, he started letting her take care of both kids.  She was now working on a full night of sleep, and he had work to do and to get ready for, and she was the first to hop out of bed at the sound of the kids waking.

And over time, this became normal.  And as the baby got older, she had more work to do in the morning.  Feeding and dressing both kids became a bigger, kid-chasing, messy-spooning, you-take-another-bite-threatening, waffle-toasting, lunch-packing, hair-brushing, tooth-brushing, face-washing, potty-reminding, get-out-the-door-in-time-scrambling, mess.

And some mornings, when she was doing all this, he was still there.  Taking his shower.  Putting on his clothes.  Getting ready for his day at the office.  Which, granted, was very important.  The family needed him to go to work.  And she worked from home, which meant she bore the brunt of the family care.  But one day, she realized that she felt totally, deeply alone.

And she asked me if this is normal.

And I didn't know what to say.

It shouldn't be?  But it is?  I hope it's not?  But I've heard it so many times before.  And I've felt it myself.

It's so easy to lose yourself in childcare.  To lose sight of teamwork in a marriage.  And it's so easy for the person with a difficult day job to prioritize their own schedules above your family's.  In so many ways, they have to.

And it's so easy to fall into a pattern where this feels normal.  One person does overwhelming work to care for the kids and the other works hard to make money and just isn't there most weekdays.  Weekends are the rare times when everybody comes together and then the kids get confused and sometimes frantic and overly excited, and then it's back to the one-parent model for the rest of the week.

It's nobody's fault, it's not ideal, and long hard workdays for the full-time wage-earners don't help.

But for the mom who's stuck in it, feeling isolated and alone, and unsure about whether that's even ok to feel, it's ok.  Even if he's paying most of the bills, it's ok to feel alone, tell him that, and ask for help in the times of day when he can reasonably provide it.  It's better to ask for it than to spend years feeling overburdened, lonely and isolated.  That's a really harmful set of feelings.  And it makes for a very sad, very deep feeling of loneliness that damages marriages and families.  I don't wish that on this mom friend, I don't wish it on you, and it's devastating when I feel it myself.

So please ask for help when you need it.  Taking care of two kids is hard, hard work.  It's not the same as a demanding office job, it's not even comparable.  Two different worlds.  In fact, I'd often argue that the office job is easier, at least in the amount of begging, cleaning, arguing and tackling involved.  If you're feeling overwhelmed, ask for help from your partner.  And if and when he agrees to help, let him.

The image of the selfless mother who sacrifices every bit of her energy and sanity to raise her kids, with no help from anyone, is absolutely nuts.  Don't allow this idealized vision of motherhood to stop you from asking for support and defending your own basic needs.  You don't need to be oppressed to be a good mother.  You know what you do need?  Help.  Every day.  Find it wherever you can.  

Affection is like a Structured Product

I don't know if you're familiar with structured products.  I'm not.  But as far as I understand, they're collections of investments (stick with me), whose dividends are paid out to investors in a certain order.  The top category of investors gets paid first, then the next category down gets paid, and if there's any money left in there, the last group gets paid.  If the fund runs out of money after paying the top category, too bad for the other investors. Depending on the investment strategy and the state of the economy, sometimes there is plenty of money in there for everybody, and sometimes there's not.

I've come to think of my stores of affection and patience like a structured product.  Little Mabel gets the first payout.  Penny gets the next payout.  And my poor husband is in the last category.

So, when the affection/patience economy is good, when I'm rested and happy and feeling good about my life, everybody gets their whole share.  But when the affection/patience economy is bad, when I'm tired, sad, disappointed or overwhelmed, there isn't enough to go around.  D is the first one to suffer from the bad affection/patience economy.  It's not good, but he's pretty robust and he can usually take the hit.

The really bad times come when there isn't enough in the fund even to pay out all of what Penny needs.  She can sense when the attention/patience fund is running low, and when she sees it coming, she digs in and tries to squeeze out as much as she can before I cut her off.  She climbs all over me, digging her toes into my shin bones and attacking me with hugs that have anger behind them.  I see that she needs affection, so I try to scrape the bottom of the barrel for something extra to give her, and the more I try, the more exhausted I get, and the faster the reserves are drained.

Usually, when there's nothing left, I say something like "that's it, mommy needs a break, you have to get off me now."   And the kicker is that after I do that, my first instinct is to pick up Mabel and distribute the reserve affection that structurally belongs only to her, because I'm so scared of running so low that I don't even have enough for the baby.  Penny sees that and, understandably, gets even more pissed.  Sigh.

It would probably be wise for me to have some kind of alert that goes off when the fund is running low, but not perilously low.  It would say to me "Hey, you're not going to have enough to pay out all the investors, so you better do something now to replenish the reserves."  And at that point, before I get into the impatience/anger spiral, I would take a break, give myself whatever I'm missing, and improve the affection/patience economy, lifting all the boats, so to speak.

I wish I could do that, because the worst part of all this is that it's not personal.  It's not that I care less about D than I do about Penny, or that I care about Penny less than I do about Mabel.  It's just that they're ranked in order of neediness.  But yet, when the fund is emptied before someone gets their whole payout, that person understandably feels like it's a personal slight.  It must mean that I don't love them enough.  And that's not it at all.  I just sometimes run out of the affection and patience that is usually the best and easiest indicator of love.

I'm not sure if this realization helps anything.  I certainly can't explain it to a 3-year old.  But somewhere in my head it does help to remind me that I'm not a terrible person when I run out of affection for Penny, but still have some left for Mabel.  It helps me remember that impatience isn't permanent.  It reminds me why it's important to take care of myself, because it makes the whole economy stronger.  And it makes it clear to me how lucky I am to have a husband who can handle being in the last-paid group all the time and still find it in his heart to hold out for the flush days.

Most of all, it allows me to forgive myself for not being everything for everyone all the time.  And the easier it is to forgive myself, the better the affection/patience economy performs.

It's Just A Phase

One of the hardest things to do as a mom is to remember that whatever is happening right now is not going to keep happening forever.  It might stop happening in a month, or a week, or tomorrow, good or bad.  And some new thing will take place of that current thing, and that current thing will disappear almost instantly from your mind.

Really, the thing that you spend all your energy worrying about right now is almost over.  And when it's over, you will almost never think of it again.

In the spirit of remembering the temporariness of the current moment, here is a list of things that I have, at some point, been certain would never change, but did:

3 wakings every night
2 wakings every night
1 waking every night
3 tantrums a day
2 tantrums a day
1 tantrum a day
Tantrums in the grocery store
Tantrums at the park
Tantrums at the pool
Throwing food on the floor instead of eating it
Refusing to eat pizza
Eating a bag of yogurt melts every day
Refusing to eat without the tv on
Effusive love of Yo Gabba Gabba
The adorable bathtime game where Penny put hats on all her toys, kissed them all, and put them to bed
Pooping in diapers
Hitting friends instead of sharing
Going to sleep with a bottle
Going to sleep only after 3 songs, 3 stories and 40 minutes of rocking
Refusal to get dressed
Refusal to wear a coat
Refusal to wear a hat
Throwing things out of the stroller
Refusal to get in the stroller
Refusal to get in the carseat
Teething

And now the things that I currently think are permanent:

The girls going to bed at different times
Penny needing teddy, 2 lovies, a blanket and a light-up fish to go to sleep
Mabel needing nothing but her thumb
Asking Penny 5 times to take each bite of food
Asking Penny 5 times to get in the bath, brush her teeth, put on her pj's, and put her toys away
Attack hugs from Penny
Sweet, smiley tantrum-free baby Mabel

So I guess the lesson here is twofold.

1. The bad things that are happening now are not going to last, and they're not your fault as a mom, or your kid's fault in any real way.  They're phases and they'll pass.  Don't despair.

2. The good things that are happening now are not going to last, so love them with all you've got.

The Case Against Attachment Parenting

The last thing I want is to tell another mom that she's doing it wrong. The point of this blog has been that mothers shouldn't judge themselves so harshly, or feel so deeply vulnerable to outside judgement.

So I'm torn about writing a post about attachment parenting and the whole genre of "naturalistic" parenting that goes along with it.  On one hand, for me, attachment parenting was a potent source of judgement and guilt, and I want to spare a new mom that suffering if I can.  On the other hand, I do understand that some moms really love attachment parenting, it really makes sense for them, and they feel comfortable using it as a guiding rule.  So, I'll just start by saying that what follows are the reasons attachment parenting didn't work for me and doesn't make sense to me anymore.  If it works for you, more power to you.  It's a good choice for some people.  There are people I love and respect who still use it.  However, if you're struggling with balancing the goals of attachment parenting with the reality of parenting in your household, if you feel overwhelmed and insufficient, this post is for you.

I was a very strongly-committed attachment parent when I was pregnant with Penny and followed it strictly for the first 14 months of her life.  It was hard.  I spent a lot of time severely sleep-deprived, feeling painfully guilty for failing to achieve or enjoy the selfless goals of attachment parenting, finally gave up, and then discovered that I could be a good mom, a better mom, a happier mom, when I wasn't trying to be a perfect "natural" mom.

Ironically, letting go of the strict naturalism of attachment parenting allowed me to behave more naturally with my kids.  It allowed me to laugh at myself and my parenting travails instead of feeling that every misstep was an unnatural error that would have lasting impacts on the mental health of my daughter.

With a little distance, I was able to figure out what it was about attachment parenting that didn't make sense to me.

This is what I've come up with:

The Myth of the Selfless Mother

One of the stories that most haunted me in my early days of parenting was one about African mothers who were shocked when they heard of American mothers leaving their children alone to sleep in a crib in their own rooms.  These African mothers considered it unthinkably cruel.  I took this assessment at face value (partly because it was supported by Dr. Sears - more on that later), and for months I worried about whether I was being cruel to my daughter in all my normal parenting activities.

I worried about it in moments when I just needed a minute alone to breathe and I left her in her crib, crying, when I was on the verge of crying too.  In those moments when I was at the end of my rope, I managed to make myself feel worse by heaping guilt on top of inundation. That worry hung over every parenting decision I made.  What I didn't spend one minute worrying about was whether I was being cruel to myself.  

And none of the parenting books or discussion groups that I saw seemed to care about that either.  Nobody ever asked, "Are you being kind to yourself?"  It's just expected that a mother's self-respect and self-care should come after the respect and care of her children.  But what kind of lessons are we teaching our children if we don't respect, care for and love ourselves?  They learn by example.  If we want them to respect themselves, not only do we have to respect them, but we have to show them what it looks like when a person respects herself.  That includes sometimes putting your needs above those of your kids, and explaining exactly why.

So when those kids are crying and you just need a minute to make a cup of coffee, take a breath, and give yourself a little high five, take it.  The kids can cry.  They won't be destroyed.  And they'll learn an important lesson about self-respect and self-care from the person they care about the most.