Today I was sick, sick, sick with wretching stomach problems. I sat on the toilet clutching my stomach, crying, waves of nausea over coming me, but never vomiting, just cramping and hot flashing and dying, about every 20 minutes, all day and now into the evening. I was utterly useless to my childen, and they sort of wandered about the house, cokking thier own popcorn and watching endless hours of spongebob, dora, animal planet as i lie in my bed, trying not to open my eyes. Everything hurt, everything made me feel sicker: the sounds of the lawnmowers, the smells of the popcorn, the feel of the usually soft blankets and sheets, the waistband of my underwear, my ponytail elastic, all made it all worse. It was exactly like pregnancy sickness, and I spent over 50% of my day today sniffling, moaning, and fianlly, weeping for how scary it was to be sick with nobody to help me back in the days when I was pregnant.
I have GOT to do something positive with all this emotion, sooner than later. Sooner than being a doula someday, sooner than being a midwife someday. I need to have somebody who can take care of me, when I am needing it. Charlie nursed literally 100's of times, draining me, sucking the marrow out of my bones, cracking my ribs as he clumsily tried the other breast, back and forth, back and forth, I just shut my eyes and tried not to scream, my mouth as dry as apparantly my milk was today.
I am working on finally making a network of like-minded Mother-friends for myself, even if and when it means dragging my kids out to hot park-days at naptime, hosting and entertaining potential new pals when i would rather be alone...I am trying, searching, to fill in the needs that I still have as a mother raising these four children in this town, on this block, with so many old people and nobody's ever home...
I am planning special events for my sister who is pregnant, as a part of my wanting to end this abandonment of mothers, and I am trying to rise up out of frustrating self-pity and fear into a place of safety and resolve. But goddamn, it is hard for me.
I get so upset that I need help, and so, so, so upset thinking about the black-acid pit hole painful realization that it isn't coming.
I have wonderful friends who have jobs all day. This is not about you guys!! My mom has helped me financially recently, allowing us to keep this very home in which we live. This is about the desperately empty void I have in the form of mama friends. I had mama friends years ago, and I naively thought thi what what it was going to be like now and forever...but it was short-lived and the void is jarring and achy.
So when I am having troubles, theres nobody to come over. Nobody to call and say "hi I am super sick today, could-ja help me with my little ones while i go lay in my bed and die?" Nobody to let me grab a quick shower, to run a quick errand, to bring by a meal, pick up some herbs from the health food store, to throw a load in the wash, to keep an eye on tots so I can tidy up or make lunch or return a phone call or email, nobody to fix meals with, to chat to, to comisserate with. Nobody to sit on the couch and nurse with, laugh at TV with, push strollers with. Nobody to enjoy the baby with. Not a single one of my friends or family right now really knows what Charlie can say, or do, what his favorite treats are, when he naps, what he would or wouldnt like---how did this happen??? The lump in my throat is huge...can this all just be because you only get one baby, the first baby, where everyone is all "into" them, and then all the other babies are just, well, NOT interesting? Did I do something really bad karmically to someone, or to many people, and if so, how do I fix it? How do I get from a place of pretending I want to "be alone" to the truth which is I want a tribe and a village and goddamnit I want one NOW. nownownownownownownownow
I love putting the kids to bed and getting all dolled up and going out for a decidedly non-maternal night. I need that and I deserve that and that is cool and good. But come morning, all the rush that that play-acting gave me is one hundred percent gone, and I am left here again, looking out the windows and watching the elderly pull out of the driveways on my street, wondering, where are all the other mommies.
Are they looking out their windows for me? Do they sip little gross lukewarm coffees with powdered creamer in them and wish for me? Do they walk around with one side of their nursing bra unhooked all day like me? Do they have a laundry mountain that they cant even work on even though they want to? Do they hate Dora and Diego like I do? Do they write in blogs, do they wish and dream of saving up for double deluxe jogging strollers and velour baby carriers and all natural chamomile baby creams? Do they look at OldNavy dot com and IKEA dot com and do they bookmark recipes they will never ever have the energy to cook? Do they plan and scheme little sexy things they are "totally gonna do to" their man when he gets home and then by the time he gets home they are so far gone mentally and so sweaty and over-touched and pissed off and delerious that he is lucky if they dont get in a fight within 5 minutes of his glorious return? Do they feel like they dont know how anyone could raise a child without a village anymore, and do they look at the workin' mommies and their clean clothes and their clean SUV's and their kiddie-drop-off centers with a twinge of jealousy where there used to be only condemnation? Are they ever gonna come over and make pb and js with me, crusts cut off?
Its really a wonder the kids even lived today.
3 comments:
I want that too...mommy friends...at the moment I'm sitting in a hotel room in TN kids asleep and wishing for someone to go have some goofy girly mixed drinks with, but most of all I miss my old neighbor and friend who used to be my mommy friend...and she'd come over with her kid, or I'd go there...we'd hang out and watch Oprah and eat fruit rollups...oh those were the days...and it was extra awesome because we'd watch eachother's kids in like 20 minute intervals so we could do cool stuff, like take showers.
Oh, I have so been there. And I only have 1...but the isolation is definitely the worse, the trying to make mom friends and it doensn't work. It makes me so crazy, because I know they're out there; but the ones I do manage to meet are too busy, don't need any more friends, too far away, too politically opposed....whatever. And I end up feeling like a Big Ball of Need for wanting to connect with other people.
This is where I feel I failed myself during pregnancy, before we even had our first child...not seeing that this would happen, not actively pursuing a network, a village.
I had one period in my life when I got to spend lots of daytime hours with a new mommy, as a new mommy. It was awesome. We let it slip away and now her kids are older and going to school, and mine are home schooling with me, and I keep having more babies, and noone else is, so I am back alone, only now I have old kids too and I know so much more and it is different. Hard, but not as lonely or silent.
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