BarefootinBoston

So I just finished this amazing book called Mommies Who Drink.  It may be a little extreme for some of the ’super moms’ out there but it was right up my alley.  I laughed out loud at several parts throughout the book.  One can tell how into a book I am by how quickly I finished it.  While raising my son, working part time, and dealing with a myriad of other things, I finished this book in under a week.  I intend to quote a few passages from the book in the next several weeks, maybe so I can just remember the best parts without re reading the book.

I would highly recommend this book to any mother out there-I think the level of enjoyment that a non-mother would get out of it cannot compare to being a mother and reading this.  It’s a very real account of motherhood, extremely enjoyable

I have NO idea what is wrong with E.  As I write this he is crying away in his crib.  He woke up and was fed at 5 this morning, since then, he has had two bottles and some breakfast.  Three meals in 5 hours…I can’t imagine he’s crying out of hunger (although if I feed him, he will calm down but he will just eat until the cows come home, which was proven when S watched him and fed him 14 oz!).  I try to entertain him, put him in his exersaucer, play with him, nothing works.  I have no idea what I am doing wrong, and what I can do to make him a happier baby.  I feel like such a failure.

Some people suggest he has colic…I thought that was something that passed after 3 months.  Maybe he has the cold I currently have and it is making him miserable although he shows no signs of it.   I just have no idea.  And no one else who I talk to has any suggestions.  I am so thankful to go to the doctors today, but am worried that E’s pediatrician won’t have any suggestions or offer any help.

He’s fussy all the time…hours a day he spends fussing, crying.  I can’t step out of the room he is in or he freaks out, if I’m not constantly paying attention to him, he freaks out.  I have, in fact, created a monster.  But I just can’t seem to stop.  When he’s playing alone and starts crying, what am I supposed to do?!  A suggests just letting him cry and he’ll learn to play on his own.  I can’t stand to listen to E cry, it’s the worst sound there is (especially when I listen to it for HOURS a day!).

I am just lost.  What happened to the mother instinct.  Do I just not have it?  I look at all the other mothers pushing around their happy babies, hanging out with their happy babies, happy babies everywhere.  And here is E, crying and fussing for what seems like the entire day.

To make matters worse, A is working all day long too.  No break for me today-E from waking to bedtime.   I am seriously losing my mind.   And I just wonder the judging I will receive from this post-why won’t she pick him up and comfort him?  That will make him happy.  He’s a baby, of course he needs your attention all day.   You SHOULD be playing with him all day, not trying to do other things while he’s awake.  Yup, I guess I’m not the super mom, but I’m getting by.

And as I end this, E has fallen asleep in his crib, after 10 minutes of crying.  Maybe he just needed more sleep-I need to figure out the nap thing, among a million other things…

I just finished reading Momzillas and enjoyed it quite a bit. I don’t have to deal with such uber moms on a regular basis but know how they can be. My favorite quote (however insightful it may be) was:

You can run but you can’t hide. Momzillas are everywhere. Some might compete about being thin, or having better dressed kids, but others compete about being cooler or a better breast feeder.

Ever since having E, I feel that I have judged other mothers less. Prior to his birth, I would always think, sometimes even say, all the things that I wouldn’t do that I had seen other mothers doing. After having E, I began to understand that you do what you must to get by and can see how mothers would do things that didn’t seem to make sense. I wish that I could say that with that realization I no longer judge. What?! Me no longer judging people? Something world changing would have to happen for me to stop judging, but I can say that I now judge mothers a whole lot less than I used to!

I guess the title of this post was to reflect on some mothers and the importance of image. I guess having a Bugaboo stroller is the ultimate waste for me to imagine. Don’t get me wrong-if I were given a Bugaboo, I would use it, and probably enjoy it. But I cannot even fathom spending almost 10 Benjamin’s on a stroller. Maybe because we don’t own a house yet, maybe because I’m all about the bargain hunting, but to spend such a large sum of money on a stroller is something I can never understand.

And apparently I did pretty well with the NBA teams-I missed only 6, not bad, not bad!