Work

One of the frustrations about being a new mother, with a young child, is the constant, nagging feeling that nothing ever gets done. It's psychological--in reality we're probably twice as efficient with our use of time than we were before the baby was born. But the sense is that we're constantly dropping whatever we're doing to tend to a crying baby, or a hungry baby, or a baby that just spat up all over the carpet; so simple tasks, like cleaning a bathroom or paying a bill, just don't get done very quickly.

There's also the feeling--I have it, and I suppose many other mothers do as well--that caring for a baby cannot be considered a "real job." Our society imposes that feeling on us, I guess--by suggesting that a woman is not "fulfilled" unless she's caring for a child and working.

Those two feelings add up to one big sense of failure, for many new mothers...and I'm certainly not immune to what I'm describing. Just because I can diagnose the problem doesn't mean that I have it licked.

And it won't matter that much, I know, if I succeed at holding down two part-time jobs while caring for the little guy. I will still feel as if I'm not a legitimate person in society--or some part of me will feel that way.

But these feelings of guilt and shame and failure that society imposes on us are so far from the real point of our lives that they're not even worth considering.

What I do realize, on my better days, is that no job in the world is more important than raising a healthy, happy little person who has learned how to integrate himself successfully into the society around him, and knows how to achieve a sense of personal fulfillment along the way. (I can't make my son into a success, but I need to help him find the tools to get there.)

On my best days, I realize that I myself am still, on many levels, striving for these same goals...I'm reasonably healthy and happy but could be doing better in those areas, and I'm not sure how successfully integrated and personally fulfilled I am. The real work I see ahead, then, has to do with achieving all that--for my son and, equally, for myself.