AT LONG LAST

As some of you have pointed out, I have been rather quiet on the blogging front for some time now. Strangely enough, this is not really due to a lack of free time to write; there are several draft entries (a couple of which are fully formed) on standby that will most likely never see the light of day. As time post-baby has elapsed, I find that I am increasingly self-critical, and for some topics - missing my pre-baby life and my excitement on returning to work, to name a couple - I have been hesitant to voice my thoughts for fear of coming across as heartless and cold.

I've started to realise that this may be an insecurity of mine in this whole motherhood journey. I suppose it stems from my feelings during pregnancy. If I'm perfectly honest, my feelings were definitely more toward the apathetic/anxious side of the emotional spectrum, rather than the more common (or at least, more widely voiced) feelings of jubilation. Needless to say, I surprised myself with the pure unbridled joy that M, in her deliciously chubby flesh-and-blood existence, has evoked - but the guilt and doubt from my limited maternal feelings prior to her birth have obviously stuck around and become magnified over time. Why else would it be so important to me for everyone to know that I do love my baby and I am happy being a mother? It's the beast that is holding my lips tight at the times when I want to talk about how I do love my baby but by god she can be trying, and I am happy being a mother but by god I do miss my carefree childless days.

Undoubtedly all mothers feel these conflicting emotions to some degree (though I'm sure many would never admit it, perhaps due to a similar fear). After all, motherhood is about having a baby, not a lobotomy. I disagree that motherhood changes you - I think you are still the same person, much as you are the same person after you have sex for the first time. But you have another dimension of experience, another colour of yarn weaved into the tapestry of your life. And that's certainly not to diminish the power and majesty of that experience, but at the same time it's not to detract from the person you are. Not you as a mother, but you as a person, in the fullest extent.

MAKING FRIENDS

This morning I read an interesting article on how difficult it can be for people to make, and maintain, meaningful friendships once they enter their 30s.

Although not yet in my 30s, the sentiment of this article resonated with me, as Alex and I definitely struggled with this phenomenon after the 6 year old came into our care and started making friends at her new school. Neither of us have many friends who have children, and while I am lucky enough to have some of the most amazing and supportive friends you could ask for*, I couldn't help but wonder if I should start making friends with fellow parents, both for the sake of the 6 year old and for my sake - having people who I could relate to in terms of the lice treatments, discipline tactics, fun kids craft activities, and all the other little nuances that come with raising a child.

I don't know how earnestly I tried, to be honest. Luckily for us, the 6 year old's best friend has parents who are quite like-minded when it comes to their lifestyle and general philosophies - we can chat fairly easily about growing a vegetable garden and enjoying a child-free drunken wine night on the weekend. But, at the end of the day, I just wasn't able to relate on any meaningful level. The age gap doesn't help - try as I might to relate, I don't have the same thoughts, worries, life experience as someone approaching their 40s. Likewise, I'm sure they can see that I am of an entirely different generation, and still finding my feet with this whole parenting thing. Maybe the obstacle is more my inability to fully commit to making an effort. Either way, I came to realise that while it certainly helps to be able to relate to these people as friendly acquaintances, why do I need more than that? Perhaps, rather than trying to force friendships out of obligation or some perceived need, we should just let new ties form naturally - to whatever extent they happen to develop - and not try to push beyond that.


*At the end of the day, while my friends may be childless, we still relate to each other on a level that is irreplaceably meaningful, and I hope that these bonds will carry through well into and past our 30s.

AROUND HERE LATELY

• The 6 year old has learnt about Pinterest and has been keen to jump aboard (is that a pun?). Alas, to our dismay we discovered you need to be invited to join. Not by a friend, by the actual Pinterest dudes. Taking themselves a bit too seriously perhaps? In any case, we played along and have been awaiting acceptance with baited breath (I would like to say this just applies to the 6 year old, but I did feel the same longing to be accepted that one feels when waiting for a potential date to call, masked with the same feigned indifference of "I don't really care if I never hear from them again"). Finally tonight we received our official invitation, which delighted the 6 year old who has grand visions of pinning pictures of the "dream house". Back story: we have a running joke about one day being able to afford our "dream house". We all have slightly different ideas about details of the dream house (the 6 year old and I insist that the dream house must have a pool; Alex insists it must have at least one room dedicated to storing his bicycle collection), though we all agree that the dream house is, in essence, some kind of mansion that two of the three of us know we will never be able to afford. The other has already begun saving and has "30 or more monies" (30 individual coins, not dollars) in her piggy bank, which she believes is almost enough for a down payment. Bless.

• I have had recent doubts about what to do as far as a career goes. I am starting to realise that I went into my PhD with the aim to eventually become an academic, and never really entertained the thought of doing much else. Now, with the baby looming and my previous single lady freedom well and truly dead, I'm starting to question how realistic this goal is, especially considering recent funding cuts and increasing job competitiveness. Not really sure what to do post-baby. Perhaps I could get paid to blog??

• Speaking of which, I have discovered a fantastic "mummy blog" (apparently this is a phenomenon now?) of a woman who is much, much funnier than I could ever hope to be. Also, her life is a lot more interesting than mine. I'm struggling to produce even mildly entertaining material - there's only so many times one can write about weird pregnancy symptoms, and the 6 year old is shamefully well-behaved so not much material there.

• Along with wasting time reading aforementioned blog, I have been watching a lot of stuff on iview. My current faves are this and this (no judgement). There has also been a lot of Masterchef and Sailor Moon watching in the house, which is fine except for the fact that I often have a Katy Perry/Sailor Moon theme mash-up running through my head.

• We have YET ANOTHER head lice infestation. I've honestly lost count of how many times this has happened since the start of school this year. On the upside, we are now experts in lice treatment - I can name at least 3 different brands of lice shampoo (and which of those actually works), and we have the combing conditioned hair bit down to a fine art. We also have a nice collection of lice combs (5 and counting), which is going into the baby's dowry.

• I have been both excitedly awaiting and fearfully dreading the start of birthing classes (next week). Material to be covered in Class 1 includes: The 3 stages of labour (which was news to me, I always thought labour was just one long drawn-out process), when to come into hospital/what to bring, reason for induction, and role of the support person. Sounds like one of the more upbeat classes, as we have coming up in future weeks: postnatal depression, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, vacuum and forceps use during labour, and post-birth contraception. We will be paying particular attention to the last one.

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

I would kill for a decent night's sleep. For a few weeks now, I've been waking up every three hours or so in the night, and feel wide awake. It takes a while to fall asleep again, and the sleep is never very deep because I'm constantly rolling from side to side (the roll is more like a three-point turn these days) trying to get comfortable, or trying to get the baby to stop kicking me or lying on my bladder. I feel like a wreck. I am barely cognisant most days. I feel down, I have burst into tears at the slightest emotional provocation - the other night I cried for half an hour after seeing the delivery of a premature baby on Offspring (a fictional show). It's like all the PMS I've missed from the past six months has finally caught up with me. If I read one more cheesy line about how the upshot to all this is At least you'll be prepared for when the baby comes!, I might vomit.

I'm sorry to whinge. I am keenly aware that in pregnancy, if you and the baby are both healthy and everything is going along according to plan, there is little worth complaining about. In the spirit of being honest though, I think it's important to document the vast range of experiences, not just the good ones. I don't take my or my baby's health for granted. I'm just tired.

ON BECOMING A YOUNG MUM

The first question I'm usually asked after someone finds out that I'm pregnant is, Was it planned? Although the way it's asked is often more like, It wasn't planned, was it? Most people I've told find it surprising that people could be so forward and, well, rude. In all honesty, I find it amusing more than anything. Was it planned? Hell no. I'm surprised people have to ask.

I never thought I would be a mother in my twenties. It's not that I didn't ever want children, but suffice it to say I rather enjoyed heavy drinking and sleeping till midday. Also for those who are wondering (and for those who have asked me, as a follow-up to the planned question), I'm certainly not pro-life and would have had no moral objection to not going through with an unplanned bump in the road... Though to my surprise, despite this, this was not the option that ended up feeling like the right one for me this time. And so here we are.

Certainly there are many positives about being a young mum. Having the energy and enthusiasm of youth is the first thing that comes to mind, not to mention a youthful body that will (hopefully) bounce back from the physical onslaught of pregnancy and childbirth without as much trouble as it may a few years later. There are times though at the end of the day, after having done my best not to fall asleep at my work desk then crawling home to do the nightly domestic chores, when I look at the clock, see that it's 9pm and surprise myself because surely it must be midnight - I am exhausted. And I wonder, if I feel this tired with all my supposed energy and enthusiasm of youth, how do other women do it? How will I do it as I inevitably get older?

I do worry a fair bit about money and, in only a vaguely related way, about my career - the latter has been a far greater source of anxiety than I had predicted in the early days of my pregnancy. After years of understanding the glass ceiling and the continued prejudice against women at an intellectual level, I finally understand this at a very practical level. The subtleties and nuances of discrimination that I have faced have astounded me. They have not come from a place of outright malice, but I see that where I was once highly respected among my coworkers and (arguably more importantly) among my superiors, I am now preemptively turned down on working on meaningful projects, I am not given due credit for tasks that I have worked on, I have been written off as though I have already gone on leave. I worry about being bumped off the ferris wheel of working life, and wonder how I will be able to get back on post-baby. Would I still worry if I were five or ten years older and already had an established career? Almost definitely yes, and maybe even to a greater extent.

For me, the one thing that I do come back to when I despair about potentially losing the "best years of my life" on child-rearing is that when my children grow up, I will still be young enough to relate to them in their young adulthood. I will hopefully not be too out of touch, and I hope that they will not feel a great generational divide as I did with my parents. And, maybe, I can reinvent my forties and fifties as the "best years of my life".

PREAMBLE

Hello. After a long stint of teenage angst blogging (okay, there was some early 20s angst blogging too), I swore off blogs as, for the most part, a bit of a self-indulgent wank. Not sure that I've entirely changed my mind, but I have discovered myself spending a fair bit of time thinking about, discussing and generally becoming adjusted to this whole having-a-baby thing. It seems maybe an outlet for these musings that's not my partner/mother/friends/co-workers/any living person who would rather not be regaled with yet another story would be beneficial for everyone involved. Also some nice peeps have encouraged me to start this, and god knows I don't need much of an excuse for finding another means of procrastination. So here goes. Enjoy.