juliarose
09-16-2006, 03:07 AM
THis is the first year I have not been pregnant or nursing since 2000. My youngest will be two oct. 11th. When I joined here she was a few weeks old and I was in a whole new world of three kids in diapers. Now I feel like a seasoned traveler thru the vast and slippery and overly-critisized terriane of mothering young children, and I have emerged 20 years older than I was five years ago. :?
But I seriously never thought I'd ever be typing these words. I knew eventually one day it would come, the day I would not be waking up in the middle of the night to nurse, change diapers, try to decipher what that cry means, i.e., ear-ache? gas? teething? fever? some mysterious illness that no one has ever heard of and that could have been totally prevented if only she would have had a better mother?
But seriously, I can say, and I know everyone said this to me and now I CAN SAY IT!
IT GOES BY FAST.
I think the reason it was so hard for me is not hte actual work of it, which was daunting and unbearable at times, but it was the constant nagging feeling that 'what if I was doing it wrong?' Does Mr. and Mrs. Jones raise their kids like me? Am I going to raise a god-hating criminal that will blame all their bad choices on how much Elmo I let them watch and the fact that we don't sit at the table every night? (not that if you have a god-hating criminal for a child you did something wrong, I don't really believe that.)
Does or did anyone else feel this way? I think it is because I was raised in a divorced home from a very young age and then by a single dad and have no idea how a family functions. Should I birng this to a counsler? Are you all bored to tears? Should I go type the rest of this laying down on my leather office couch? (No, I don' t really have a office couch. :) )
Well, this is my ode to leaving the world of infants and infant things and issues and concerns. I truely never thougt I'd see that day when "how do you put your baby to sleep or 'babywise' or nursing concerns would not rule the conversation. But it is here.
THere is a season for everything.....
But I seriously never thought I'd ever be typing these words. I knew eventually one day it would come, the day I would not be waking up in the middle of the night to nurse, change diapers, try to decipher what that cry means, i.e., ear-ache? gas? teething? fever? some mysterious illness that no one has ever heard of and that could have been totally prevented if only she would have had a better mother?
But seriously, I can say, and I know everyone said this to me and now I CAN SAY IT!
IT GOES BY FAST.
I think the reason it was so hard for me is not hte actual work of it, which was daunting and unbearable at times, but it was the constant nagging feeling that 'what if I was doing it wrong?' Does Mr. and Mrs. Jones raise their kids like me? Am I going to raise a god-hating criminal that will blame all their bad choices on how much Elmo I let them watch and the fact that we don't sit at the table every night? (not that if you have a god-hating criminal for a child you did something wrong, I don't really believe that.)
Does or did anyone else feel this way? I think it is because I was raised in a divorced home from a very young age and then by a single dad and have no idea how a family functions. Should I birng this to a counsler? Are you all bored to tears? Should I go type the rest of this laying down on my leather office couch? (No, I don' t really have a office couch. :) )
Well, this is my ode to leaving the world of infants and infant things and issues and concerns. I truely never thougt I'd see that day when "how do you put your baby to sleep or 'babywise' or nursing concerns would not rule the conversation. But it is here.
THere is a season for everything.....