I feel really comfortable with the identity of mother and always wanted to be one. I worked with kids for years before becoming a parent and always felt at ease around them — and still do. However, I could not have anticipated how difficult the transition to parenthood would be. The pandemic didn’t help. And just when I was feeling like I kind of had a handle on things I got pregnant again. Can’t believe I ever thought one kid was hard.
The biggest shock initially was the total and immediate annihilation of self (lol) followed by how easy it was for my now-husband and I to fall into the gendered traps that were set for us, even in a ‘progressive’/whatever household. Still navigating this almost four years in.
A bit of both. With a background in early childhood education I kind of had a head start on sifting through different approaches to child-rearing and seeing which fit my values. (Not that working with kids makes you a better parent — just more vulnerable to hubris.)
I think I have a good intuition when it comes to relating to kids and find it really rewarding. I find babies pretty challenging, though.
Barely. I’m really lucky to work at an art gallery so on paid work days I try and sneak some time in the research library or an exhibition, or catch the free weekly film. Mostly though I just scroll on my phone pumping milk in the first aid room.
In summer, naked backyard painting followed by hose/sprinkler/water play. Buckets of watered down paint plus ‘bush brushes’ (sticks/leaves/flowers/fronds etc) on a big sheet of paper or canvas (or an actual old sheet) on the ground or on the clothes line — really fun and easy. Summer bath time substitute.
The first year, for both my kids. Way harder second time round (and still not quite through it).
We wouldn’t be able to function without the huge amount of support we receive from family. The boys and I stay with my parents so frequently their place is a second home. On my paid work days, my parents manage preschool drop-off/pick-up for my eldest and Mum looks after the baby. My husband works at a cemetery with really early morning starts but finishes in the afternoon which is great for pick-ups, too. When my eldest was little and I was first getting back into paid work, my mother-in-law came down to help every week.
Our support needs have changed a lot as the kids have grown/multiplied and we’re always doing our best with the given circumstances — as soon as we find a kind of equilibrium, something changes. I think the nuclear family is a con and it’s distressing to think where we’d be without our village.
I’ve never really had a ton of friends but whatever group I did have has been severely whittled down by the pandemic/parenthood double-hitter. I’ve got a couple of close friends who are always in orbit regardless of what’s going on — the kind of friends where you just pick up from where you left off, after any stretch of time. That suits me, I think.
It hasn’t changed in the sense of being intermittently plagued by self-loathing. That’s a familiar state I sadly don’t think I’ll ever fully shake. The specific targets of loathing have changed, of course. Funnily, I actually kind of love my stretch marks. Not so much the looseness — was it Maggie Nelson who described the postpartum belly as pizza dough? — but the marks themselves. They really do make it look like scored dough. Strange kinds of scars. There’s one tiny one off to the side, near my left hip, that appeared near the end of my first pregnancy, a bit like an afterthought.
They make me think of scarred trees, and cicatrices. Those trees dot the southeast Australian landscape with such frequency they’re almost ubiquitous, and often invisible (unless you know what to look for). Each one is evidence of an ancestor — someone who knew this place, and cared for it.
I don’t always think about that (e.g. when I’m in a nothing-to-wear meltdown, or moaning about new frown lines) but it’s nice when I do. It’s good practice to zoom out and see yourself in the context of a long lineage, and in relation to the land — wherever/whoever you come from. Kind of like Jemima Kirke’s advice for ‘unconfident young women’: ‘I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.’
Links:
