Not Just Mommies, We're Mortals

Ever since he saw his baby brother being born, my five-year-old occasionally calls me "supermommy." This morning as I fed my month-old baby on one breast and pumped on the other, hunched in a chair for 45 minutes, Sebastian wanted an explanation of the pump. We reviewed the concept of mammals and I told him I'm just like a cow. "No, you're supermommy," he said. Then the phone rang and I asked him to get it. When he came back, having yelled at and then hung up on whoever had called, I decided even more multitasking was in order and asked him to bring me my cellphone. Hunching farther down I could liberate a few fingers and dial the house phone on the cell. "Go answer the phone," I told him, "we're going to practice." It took a few tries to get him to answer the phone after it rang and not before, but with the cell on loudspeaker we reviewed some polite and safe telephonic conversation points.

Later today, for reasons he left unexplained, he started putting on the werewolf costume I made him last Halloween (I'm boasting, but I firmly believe Halloween costumes should be homemade, and look it. This is more important than regular meals or bedtimes, in fact.). "Can you attach the tail?" he asked me. "No honey, can't you see I'm feeding the baby and trying to eat a sandwich?" "But Mommy, you're supermommy--you can do it. You can!" Men. They know learn how to manipulate us at such a young age. "Come here, let me see if I can do it." I put down the sandwich and wedged the tail in his waistband.

Certain things are easier with this baby. I'm not freaked out by new motherhood and I've become a much stronger person than I was before I had my first son. My new mantra is, "If I can get through childbirth I can get through this." Though my brain is still terribly overactive I seem to get more done than I used to. The more you do, the more you can do, it seems--indeed, I read something yesterday that suggested there's an optimal amount of stress required for peak performance. Too much and you start to go nuts, too little and you go limp. Makes sense. As I write this I've fed the baby multiple times this evening and let him cry for awhile while I tidied up in the kitchen. Each time I think he'll sleep he proves me wrong, so now he's in the sling I'm wearing and I'm jiggling my knee to keep him quiet.

In the last week I've started running again and I find I'm writing while I run--but I have so few moments with two hands free to transcribe my thoughts afterwards. I've also had quite a few song ideas suddenly, and I told Sebastian a pretty funny story yesterday that I thought I should save as it might make a good children's book or recording, yet I'm committing the sin of not writing them down anywhere. Anyway, the hands are free now, so I'm taking advantage of it.

Another positive is that I don't have to do the whole corporate mommy BS again. The first time you have a kid and an office job you have to work twice as hard to dispel the myth that you're working half as hard. At least now I know I can do that, telecommuting, pumping at my desk, doing stupid ass conference calls and constantly proving myself as necessary. Then, the irony is, people go the opposite direction and think you work too much, or they try to take you down a notch. We had a very short experience with an expensive bilingual preschool with no waiting list (warning sign: expensive school=meaningless, waiting list=meaningful) where the owner diagnosed my son as violent and neglected. "You travel so much," she scolded after just a few days of knowing us. "Your son is starved for affection." "But all I do is go to Boston once a year," I objected. "You work so much, it must be hard," she said in a syrupy tone. "I work 40 hours a week. Don't you?" Anyway, my son never liked the place so we left after two months.

But on the negative side, I don't get maternity leave, whereas I had the luxury of four months of leave with my first child. One week after this baby was born, I was working two freelance writing jobs, and two weeks after I had to do meetings with clients! Since I was laid off in December, a number of men have commented on how convenient that must be. "You can spend time with your kids," they say. The time is a wonderful thing, I agree. But the financial stress is sure as hell not, nor the discrimination by potential employers ("Come back after you have the baby," they've said to my face!). Not to mention the difficulty of getting insurance--after a decade on group insurance, I had no idea that a healthy family of four was uninsurable these days. Fingers crossed, I've found a solution for my children, but this is the kind of thing that is not in any way convenient for a mother. Women seem to understand that better.

My point is, it's hard being a supermommy. But that's what all mommies are.

P.S. I love you, Mommy!