Exhausted. Writing in the pm instead of when I first wake up. Boy what a difference. Great day of constant movement, continual washing, folding, organizing, boxing, cleaning…fed, bathed, attended to kiddos. Wish there were more hours in the day, more energy. Cousin said she’d like more positive entries–definitely need to write when I have more energy. Feeling positive, peaceful, tired to the bone. Sweet dreams. zzzzzzzzz Diane

My home is a bit of a scene at the moment. My aunt and cousin came from Chicago yesterday for an 11th hour maternity leave visit and helping session. They are both wonderfully lovely, beautiful, highly competent individuals and my expectations for this visit are equally spectacular. In anticipation of the visit, I’ve compiled a list of about 1000 ways they can transform my life in their two day visit. After yesterday, I now have a list of 2000 beginning with putting my home back together again.

For almost any activity, one can find an expert to support their method or approach to a task. Having just watched “Sharon the Hoarder” and Oprah’s team of experts the previous day, we chose the comprehensive organizational strategy of take everything out of the closets and make 4 piles approach–Keep, Donate to Goodwill, Donate to my pregnant friend (in lieu of Sell), and Trash. That Sharon had a huge lawn for sorting, 100 helpers and Oprah’s show behind her did not deter us. It should have.

Of course my home is in disarray at the moment. Bags of things to be donated along with piles and boxes of random stuff that I hauled out of the back of the closet, baby’s diaper leaked so lots of new laundry, hungry kids, Saturday activities, grumpy husband…glad I had that moment of peace yesterday. Gotta go. Diane

Last night I got 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep and I feel like a new person. I still wound up getting out of bed early (4 am) after I put Quinn back to sleep but the difference in how I feel when I have not slept is remarkable. Today/right now, I don’t mind that I am going back to work in 10 days. In fact it feels funny to be counting down–I can see that in the bigger picture it doesn’t matter. Whether I am working (outside the home) or not, I want the same things for myself, my family, my friends, the world at large…I want peace. Peace of mind for me, for you, for the world. And at the moment, while everyone in my family sleeps and I sit with only the sounds of their breath, the gurgling of my automatic coffee machine,and the distant whir of the westside highway, I have peace in my home at this moment.

I once read that the two most powerful words one can use are “I am”. That the universe responds to those words like a genie in a bottle (no I didn’t get this from the Christina Aguilara (sp?) song). So, my thoughts for today encompass my greatest desires for myself: That I am a positive, loving, laughing and peaceful presence in the world. That I am present-centered, patient, forgiving. I am liberating others from being and doing what I think they “should”, and I am accepting me for all that I am–at times forgetful, obsessive, annoying, kind, generous, and everything in between.

I am thoughtful and intentional. (I am not psychotic though I may sound that way). I am fairly well-rested and all too aware that this too shall pass. I am “locking in” and appreciating the beauty of this exact moment. May you enjoy at least a moment or two today as well. xx Diane

Two weeks ago, I was behind the mother of one of my daughter’s classmates in the grocery store check out line. She accidentally paid for hamburger meat and then left it behind on the counter. By the time the clerk and I noticed, she was gone. The clerk was handing it to another clerk to restock in the meat section when I offered to take the meat to my friendly acquaintance. It was only $4.72 but it just didn’t seem right to restock her meat. My intentions were pure.

The next day I saw the woman, Umma, and cheerily mentioned that I had her meat in my freezer and wanted to get it back to her. She kindly responded “Oh thank you. I got half way through making lasagana and realized I had forgotten it. No worries though” she said good humoredly, “please go ahead and use it.” I pressed “are you sure?” and she reassured me she was sure and please use it. End of dumb story, right?

Unfortunately for me (and Umma), every time I’ve seen the poor woman for the past two weeks I’ve mentioned her hamburger meat and wanting to get it back to her. Then the other day, my husband put it in the refridgerator to defrost and cook. For whatever reason, he never wound up cooking it and so I threw it out when I noticed its color turning. I felt compelled to share this outcome with Umma after I tracked her down yesterday. (I think she was trying to steer clear of me). Embarassed by my ruminating over this $4 meat, I burst out laughing so hard I could hardly finish the horribly boring and trivial tale. Umma patted me on my shoulder and laughed along with me as she said, “I hate it when I get something stuck in my mind.” Amen sister! I hate it even more when I then obsess about what the other person thinks about all my obsessing.

Baby Quinn woke me up and I haven’t been able to fall back asleep. It’s 3 am and I feel compelled to write about the cruel flipside to memory loss…OBSESSING.

I have so much more on this topic but alas, sleep beckons. Diane

In full-disclosure, I will share that I have been working on-and-off, part time one day a week and as needed throughout my maternity leave. Knowing that I would be returning to work full-time in less than 3 months was enough incentive to keep my hand in things at work. Better to not get completely out-of-the loop and some aspects of my job are easier to attend to myself than to adequately explain and delegate. Plus I have control issues.

Since I will be returning in 12 days, I decided to attend a meeting this morning for psychologists from all the independent schools citywide. They/we meet monthly to discuss relevant issues. I thought it would be a good way to get my feet wet, so to speak, as far as attending a professional meeting. I had the babysitter come (more on that later), wore a nice outfit, put on make up, looked and sounded ok. I find it comical though that I was ever contemplating whether I should bring my darling baby boy with me. The now obvious answer is “NO”. Wonderfully kind, smart, caring group of adults but definitely not a good professional move for me to bring my baby. Note to self: having beautiful baby cooing, spitting up or crying for my breast is distracting for all at the least and likely to result in guilt and anxiety. I’m making a note of this because I often imagine him sleeping quietly in his carrier while I go about some important business. And murphy’s law dictates that will not be the case…. Meeting went fine. Didn’t break into hysterics or disclose my difficulty focusing though I did mention feeling paranoid and hormonal. Perhaps my judgement is a bit off.

more soon…Diane

Hello out there. In keeping with the sentiment expressed in the previous entry about “normalizing” what mothers experience, I will be writing here regularly about the dread, fear, joy, glee, insanity…I feel about returning to work full-time, outside my home, in 12 days. I try to always mention “outside the home” because people forget that staying home and caring for your kids can be the most difficult job in the world. (Thankfully, one person who never seems to forget though is Oprah–she mentions the fact that taking care of your children is difficult all the time on her show. I know this because I’ve watched approximately 1 billion hours of Oprah over the years and many of them in the past 12 weeks. Did you know she’s on at 3 different times in the day–4 pm, 7 pm, 1:06 am after Jimmy Kimmel? Guess how I know about these different timeslots and channels…)

Right now it’s 5:20 am. I’m up because my beautiful baby boy let out a piercing scream about an hour ago and I could not fall back asleep after feeding him. Did I mention I have a new baby boy? No? Well, his name is Quinn and he is 12 weeks old. He is lovely and I adore him of course. However I’ll forget to mention him and 100 other central aspects of any story I tell because memory loss is a major issue these days. Sleep deprivation, hormones, advanced age, years of binge drinking, and who knows what else, all contribute to making my brain like a seive (spelling?). Most information goes in one ear and out the other regardless of its import. I forget the trivial like “I’ll call you for lunch” to the significant “I was supposed to be where, when? oops” unless I write it down. If I remember to. You can see it’s a bit of a bind.

All is quiet in my home at this moment. I’m enjoying a very strong cup of coffee which my brand new programmable coffee maker produced immediately upon my waking. Immense joy. Now I can alternate between my cold coffee concentrate I keep in the fridge (for immediate caffeine ingestion any time day or night) with hot coffee waiting for me at whatever time I request. Frankly I could almost be in a coffee commercial at this exact moment–my husband and children are asleep, the city lights are twinkling outside my window, it’s quiet except for the distant buzz of morning traffic on the westside highway and the breathing of my baby. All is right in the world. Except of course, one would need to keep the camera off of me–I’m wearing oversized maternity shorts, a breastmilk stained tank top, bed head hair and glasses. And an extra 30 pounds I still need to lose.

My commercial moment just ended with the reminder of what I look like these days. Not completely awful but distinctive in its totality of “mommyness”. This distinction was punctuated for me when I happened to pass Kyra Sedgewick on the street two nights ago. She is gorgeous and she is one quarter my size. And I’m talking height and width–I almost accidentally flattened her when distractred by my two warring children. Picture me with my many unwanted post-preganancy pounds, wearing Quinn in a Baby Bjorn, struggling to separate my fighting children, complete with frumpy clothes and hair. Along comes Kyra, magnificently coiffed and dressed, looking thoroughly the movie-star, seeming to pass in slow motion. That was like a Calgon commercial…take me away.

Someone is stirring so I will be getting up now. The thought of moving from this spot reminds me of another ongoing post-pregnancy theme–aches and exhaustion (are those two different themes?). My body aches when I move. Not horribly but I don’t remember being so aware of my muscles before I had no sleep and carried Quinn in a Baby Bjorn or carried him in a stroller up subway stairs….

Memory loss, excess weight, aches and exhaustion…a moment of joyful calm. That about somes up my maternity leave though the proportions of each experience changes constantly. Doesn’t this make you want to read on??

Crying baby. Gotta go. More soon… xx Diane

People have different comfort levels when it comes to personal disclosure. I have a friend, Sarah, who turns crimson and stares uncomfortably at her corduroys when the topic of sex comes up. She isn’t a prude, she’s just private. I, on the other hand, have a hard time leaving my first friendly outing with a new acquaintance until she knows my entire social, family, medical and dental history along with my feelings on adjustable rate mortgages. I try and remind myself that this person isn’t doing a psychiatric intake-interview, she just wants to get a cup of coffee and test the waters. Despite vows and promises to keep it casual, I can’t help it. Self-disclosure is as natural to me as shedding hair.

So when Sarah and I met near her house for a hike in the woods, I expected our usual banter to include routine information about kids’ progress in school and a cataloging of what was shaking on the work front. As we walked deeper into the woods, Sarah grew quiet. The silence intensified until I was sure she was either on the cusp of bludgeoning me or divulging something significant. That’s when it came out. She had lost her temper with her six-year-old daughter the night before and screamed uncontrollably until her daughter cried. She didn’t turn to look at me. I muttered a sympathetic, “Mmmmm.” My very private friend had spilled her guts about what was to her, a very private matter. I could only imagine how much pain she must be in.

Then I asked, “Was it the kind of yell that made the muscles in your neck seize up and then throb with excruciating pain? Did you lose your bearings and have to grab the wall for balance? Because that’s what I was reduced to yesterday.”

She laughed. Not because she was proud of her actions or happy that my children were forced to face their mother’s meltdown, but because in that moment she knew she wasn’t alone. That she was Not the Only One.

Psychologists refer to the process of hearing others’ responses to similar situations as “normalizing.” It’s an important first step for trauma victims, which I sometimes feel like after my most challenging days of mothering. Knowing that most of us faced with the inevitable stressors that accompany being a parent lose our marbles from time to time reaffirms that we aren’t crazy and we’re Not the Only Ones. None of us wants to scream until our sight is impaired and if you feel that your responses to your children have become unsafe, we urge you to get help. But we’ve all lost our composure. And no matter how much mindfulness we bring to our mothering, chances are we’ll do it again. When we keep our mistakes and difficult feelings private, we miss the opportunity to provide others with the solace that we’re all in the same boat.

11.9.06

It took a lot for me to sit down and write this entry. Like most things in my life, I have to be compelled by a strong hand before the wheels of action are set in motion. And nothing makes one feel the need to connect with others about how tough mothering can be like being up all night (for four nights in a row) with feverish, vomiting, crying, hallucinating children with no spouse in sight – gone for eight days on a business junket. In the middle of the night, I hear a plaintive wail from my daughter’s room. “Mommy the bugs are all over the bed.”

“There aren’t any bugs, honey. It’s just your fever making you see things. You’re safe and sound. How about you take your medicine?”

“No, I hate that stuff. It makes my throat burn,” she refuses for the fourth time.

This goes on until three in the morning at which point I have been walking between their bedrooms like a thermometer wielding zombie. On my fifth trip of the night, my begging has worn her down and she agrees to take the Motrin. We all sleep until the medicine wears off at dawn.

My first phone call of the morning is from their piano teacher informing me that we are being fired as clients because we don’t possess the requisite dedication and rigorous practice schedule she expects from her clients. After 18 months, we had made very little progress. This was unacceptable. We would be refunded our deposit and had the rest of the month to pick up our books and make “other arrangements.” I feel guilty. Surely it’s my fault that they don’t practice as assiduously as they should.

Vomiting persists throughout the morning. Soon thereafter, I receive a call from their school upbraiding me for failing to inform them of the kids’ absences. Next, comes a message from my patient and understanding boss whose caring and empathic voice reminds me that the entire work week has slipped by without my meeting most of my deadlines. And to seal my psychological fate, my husband calls from a golf course to inform me that San Francisco was “sunny and at least seventy-five degrees.” I can hear the clink of the ice cubes in his ice tea as he asked, “So, how are you?”

To compensate for my lack of REM sleep, I substitute a pot of coffee. This predictably raises my eye lids, but frays my last few nerves. I plant the kids in front of a movie which only increased my feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Shouldn’t I be smoothing their feverish brows with wet cloths and dripping ice cubes onto their chapped lips? A friend’s mother recently informed her that she loved it when her kids got sick. It gave her a chance to fuss and fawn over them. She felt needed and useful. All I really want to do is climb out the window and escape down the street like a convict who has dug through the cement floor with a tin spoon.

The last straw came when a close friend calls to tell me a personal, delicate matter and I burst out with the always welcomed, “My God. Are you crazy? What is wrong with you?” At that point I realized that perhaps I was not my usual, happy-go-lucky, optimistic self. But at what point during the week did I actually crack?

When we wrote Mommy Mantras, there was one mantra that didn’t make it because the book was in production by the time we thought of it. It is one of our favorites: take your medicine. Lest you think we’re insinuating that you’re sick, let me explain. Late in the summer I was listening to a well-known physician talking about women and self-care. She stated what we all know, but often fail to heed – mothering can be a stressful and at times overwhelming endeavor and we need to tend to the caretaker. Despite this cerebral knowledge, we regularly put ourselves last on the priority list both in terms of psychological and physical ministering. Sometimes circumstances demand that we put others before ourselves. Puking children tend to take center stage. But when the storm breaks, it’s time to doctor ourselves.

My husband is taking the red-eye home tonight. When he returns I will greet him at the door enthusiastically, welcome him home, and then continue on my way past him to play hockey for two hours. I’m sure he has to be in the office, but his faxing and phoning will have to wait until I can regain my equilibrium. On the ice, I will escape the frustration and fatigue of my home-turned-infirmary. For me it’s better than a spa or a meditation retreat. Afterwards, I will care for children with a new found patience and compassion. “Why don’t they get sick more often?” I may find myself asking.

The basic premise of Mommy Mantras is that mothering is hard and often out of our control, but there are ways to reframe situations to grant us a greater sense of peace and equanimity. Sometimes, however, we need a mantra to drive home the importance of restoring ourselves. With the holiday and cold and flu season rounding the corner, the mantra take your medicine is the gift you give yourself.

One more time I approach my daughter on my knees and ask her to take her medicine. After she is tucked in her bed, I will start counting the hours until I can take mine.

Basically, Says who? applies to all judgement calls in the gray (and sometimes not so gray) range.  Anyone who has tried to raise a child knows that for every piece of expert advice, there is often an equally persuasive counterargument.  As with highly complex tasks, there’s no one right way to mother.  Of course your child should not drink Drano (all the experts agree).  But when an officious passerby tells you your one-year-old shouldn’t have a pacifier or that your five-year-old mustn’t play with dirty cans in the park, it’s time for says who?

Cut the suckers is a mantra that asks us to bring awareness to what is essential in our lives. It encourages us to cultivate what we need and snip off the rest. Cut the suckers is a signal, paarticularly for working mothers with limited time, to resist the tendency to fill up every moment of our lives with action… The mantra isn’t a call to live like a monk or refuse our children’s cultural exposure, but it is a call to be intentional about what we take on. In doing so, we increase our chances of thriving or at least maintaining some semblance of sanity.