(Yes, I'm still pregnant)
I was able to DVR the Oprah episode that came on yesterday (did you really think Eric would nap and let me watch it live? Ha!). Wow. Ever since Eric was born, I have felt duped by motherhood. I've felt alone and angry that my identity and everything about my life changed so drastically (especially when it seemed to me that my husband's hadn't).
If you have kids (or want them) and didn't catch this, I hope you can find it on hulu or somewhere online. It made me laugh and cry to know that lots of other moms out there feel the same way- and that it doesn't make us bad mothers!
4 comments:
funniest - I loved the sound bytes from the moms, but oprah might as well have been dr phil or maury - but at least they have kids. Her "there's no right or wrong answer if you're working in the best interest of your kids" was obviously a rehearsed phrase that she (or a writer) created in advance of the show. Sigh. Glad I watched, though (just finished from the dvr)
Ever since Eric was born, I have felt duped by motherhood. I've felt alone and angry that my identity and everything about my life changed so drastically (especially when it seemed to me that my husband's hadn't).
It is that concern that made me feel kind of sympathetic to Hanna Rosen when everyone else was jumping on her for saying that breastfeeding sucks (pun intended):
In 2005, Babytalk magazine won a National Magazine Award for an article called “You Can Breastfeed.” Given the prestige of the award, I had hoped the article might provide some respite from the relentlessly cheerful tip culture of the parenting magazines, and fill mothers in on the real problems with nursing. Indeed, the article opens with a promisingly realistic vignette, featuring a theoretical “You” cracking under the strain of having to breast-feed around the clock, suffering “crying jags” and cursing at your husband. But fear not, You. The root of the problem is not the sudden realization that your ideal of an equal marriage, with two parents happily taking turns working and raising children, now seems like a farce. ... I dutifully breast-fed each of my first two children for the full year that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. I have experienced what the Babytalk story calls breast-feeding-induced “maternal nirvana.” This time around, nirvana did not describe my state of mind; I was launching a new Web site and I had two other children to care for, and a husband I would occasionally like to talk to. Being stuck at home breast-feeding as he walked out the door for work just made me unreasonably furious, at him and everyone else. ... I met a woman from Montreal, the sister-in-law of a friend, who was young and healthy and normal in every way, except that she refused to breast-feed her children. She wasn’t working at the time. She just felt that breast-feeding would set up an unequal dynamic in her marriage—one in which the mother, who was responsible for the very sustenance of the infant, would naturally become responsible for everything else as well. At the time, I had only one young child, so I thought she was a kooky Canadian—and selfish and irresponsible. But of course now I know she was right. I recalled her with sisterly love a few months ago, at three in the morning, when I was propped up in bed for the second time that night with my new baby (note the my). My husband acknowledged the ripple in the nighttime peace with a grunt, and that’s about it. And why should he do more? There’s no use in both of us being a wreck in the morning. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to seethe.
I need to find this online! I saw some aof the clips on Oprah's website, but not the whole episode.
I'll have to see if I can dig it up somewhere....
Just wanted to stop by to send hugs and hope that you'll soon be a lot less pregnant. =)
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