Before I knew it, I was in the game. Weeks into being a mom I found myself shoulder to shoulder in the toughest competition of my life-competitive parenting, mothers division. Who would have thought that with each report on the daily habits of this little 8 pound being, I would be judged for both my knowledge of mothering and my performance, form and execution...
Sometimes I wonder if this hyper-observation/ meta-analysis of my life tends to blow everything wildly out of proportion but I think that this depiction of mothering as ultra-competitive is kind. I mean my sister is reading a book called "Mommy Wars." Geeze. From what I've observed, mamaing is the new child-rearing. It's serious business, like playgroups for ladies in their first trimester serious or wait on the phone for 2 hours at 4am to sign up for swimming lessons for your 6 month old serious. Yet from right out of the gate, I was playing to medal.
I had never really merited recognition for the many starring roles I had played prior to landing the walk on part of, Jessica Kerr, mother of one. I deserved an honorable mention, at best, for my decade spanning performance as daughter/sister. I have to think that Gabe wished he had an understudy for the years I fell short in my role as the perfect wife. Jude didn't even know it yet, but this was my chance, his mom was destined to motherhood greatness.
fast-forward 1 year
Press-release: I have come to my senses and left competition in order to spend time with my family.
Instead of enumerating my many low points in this sham competition which offer little more than a few good laughs, I think it is much more interesting (and flattering) to meet me in my state of reform. I have realized that there are two catastrophic side effects to competition in motherhood. First, what is done in the name of spending time with and for their children, actually pulls mothers away from this amazing opportunity to participate in their lives. But most interesting to me is the pervasive anti-woman atmosphere that appears to be generated by the rivalry between unsure and defensive mothers struggling to make sense of this time of mind-blowing change and serious isolation.
It wasn't until my sister had her baby that I realized that I had taken up residence with the "sanctimommies" (my step-mother-in-law's brilliant term for the holier than thou mommy who lords her momcomplishments over her insecure sisters.) My baby was always held, my baby doesn't take a pacifier, we don't use an infant carrier...
I have to pause here, because there is nothing necessarily self-righteous about any of these choices in child-rearing. I stand by most of the choices we have made as sound parenting. However, the difference between a mother who, say exclusively breastfed her child and a nursing sanctimommy, is that the latter judges anyone who does not/ can not nurse as a fundamentally inferior mother.
Then my sister gave birth to her son at 33 weeks and I got a first row seat to a whole new world of pain and fear that is ever-present for parents trying to navigate how to make the best decisions for a fragile, pre-term infant. The entire mothering world-view I had constructed began to break down. It struck me that judgements I had passed just months before were now down right callous given these new circumstances. I sat with her as she was torn apart day and night for 3 weeks, waiting, unable to snuggle up close, let alone hold, her precious baby. She and her husband were on a rollercoaster involving foreign things like bradycardias and feeding tubes. While they knew that they were amazingly fortunate to have escaped many of the problems that plague premies, they were still faced with enduring a birth/ first weeks that so far from the norm.
I began to soften. And think.
Sitting around one afternoon a few weeks later, nursing our children, my sister remarked that life at our house now felt like a 70's commune. Naked babies, half-naked moms performing mundane tasks like eating breakfast while feeding the baby. She and I made up this goofy song about our shared time off work. We called it "Sister/ Sister Maternity Leave." The spirit of the song was meant to reassure our respective husbands that the idea of Kate and I on maternity leave together wouldn't be a toxic formula concocted with the net result of draining our families' bank accounts. Sure the verses about "laughing and nursing" and "lunching and learning" were created as a caricature of what women at home, raising children look like. But when I think about what something like this song might accomplish in the world, juxtaposed against the antagonism I was part and parcel in breeding, it doesn't appear so cliché.
Maybe what all of us mammas need is a metaphorical sister/sister maternity leave; the time to come together without fear of judgement. Perhaps then there would be more nursing mothers, more women confident to push through the struggles that this role certainly provides. Today, I think that being a mom just might be the case where most women deserve a ribbon for playing, especially if it comes in the form of support and encouragement from someone who has run the race before.
