Questioning My Parenting Ability.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Yeah, that seems to be a fairly common phenomenon. And since no one can love it like they can, no one can possibly take care of it as well as they can. Especially not that incompetent boob they married. If the diaper/bottle/onesie/bath isn’t just exactly the way Mommy does it, it’s WRONG, ALL WRONG!!!

These women tend to drive their husbands away from caring for Baby (who wants to do something that someone will come right behind you and redo?) and then wonder why they haven’t bonded. Or, like the women in this group, they don’t expect Daddy and Baby to bond for a long, long time. Sometimes they learn to relax and go with the flow. Sometimes they become the women who walk into their grown daughter’s houses and immediately start cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen, and then wonder why the two of them aren’t close.

Leechbabe, your decisions have led to a healthy, happy mother, father, and baby. They’ve helped you maintain a healthy, happy marriage, and given your daughter a wonderful. loving relationship with both parents and her grandparents from the very beginning. It sounds to me like you’re a much better mother than these women, if for no other reason than you’ve figured out from the very beginning that you can’t take care of anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself.

I’d go to at least one more meeting, and I’d tell them that you don’t feel supported, and why. They may not realize they’re making you feel that way, and they can’t try to fix problems they don’t know about. If they can make you feel accepted, stick with them. If not, just go to the lectures you want to hear, or go find library books on those subjects.

42

I think every family works things out best for themselves. Some of their decisions might be more right or wrong than others, but most choices are equally valid given individual circumstances.

I doubt the other moms are judging you as much as you fear. If they are, it is probably because they lack confidence in their own parenting and are trying to affirm themselves by finding something “wrong” with other people. I confess I used to do this. It was like I was keeping a little scorecard in my head: let’s see, they bought a safer car, but I weaned later. That mom stays home, but my husband is a more hands-on dad than her spouse. She keeps a cleaner house, but we hold our baby more… blah blah blah eventually I realized it just didn’t matter, I was being neurotic, and that there is no valid scorecard for comparing families.

I was on a big online list of moms who had babies born at the same time. We got tired of the infighting and judging, so group of 12 of us broke off. We are an interesting mix of choices and lifestyles–most of us breastfed, but I used formula too; four of us work outside the home; one of us homeschools; one is a Jehovah’s Witness, another an Orthodox Jew. One mom has never been away from her kids; another has an au pair and has gone on several vacations without the children. One mom delivered all of her kids at home, drug free; some of us have scheduled c-sections. I have one child; everyone else has more (one even has six). The wild thing is, WE NEVER FIGHT. We know we’re not judging each other, even though we’ve made very different decisions. You don’t have to be in a room of like-minded parents to feel support. You just have to find folk who are thoughtful and respectful.

43

Sounds like you have a philosophically different approach than the other moms. And they have some learning to do. First time moms, most of them?

Some home truths from my planet (crosses with both theirs and yours):

  1. Breastfeeding is great. I love it. If I was on meds for my health that were not safe for my child (though a remarkable number of them are perfectly safe - I always check the reference in Medicines and Human Milk first - some are truly not), I would regret not being able to breastfeed. I would not feel guilty. Do not let them make you feel either guilt (a reaction saying that you knew better and did something bad anyway), or shame (feeling like you, yourself, are bad, not related to just your actions). Feeling regret for not being able to do otherwise, either through technical fact or lack of knowledge is a ‘clean’ feeling. It requires nothing of you, no action, no remediation. You may wish to redeem any losses you feel by educating others (including this mom’s group). It will make other womens’ lives better if these women do not look down on those who make rational, reasonable choices about breastfeeding. It will also do them the favor of making them expand their horizons beyond their ‘safe’ zone.

  2. While it is true that moms who are closely bonded (secure attachment) with their kids have a horrible reaction to hearing their child cry (can’t bear it), this has not been demonstrated to be true for ‘leaving the child in a happy state’. That is, if your baby is happy with someone else, caregiver, SAHD, In-laws, leaving them content in that situation is not a sign of bad parenting and ineffective attachment, it is a sign of security. I recall being asked by a SAHM (who sounds much like this group) if I wasn’t afraid the baby would love my husband more than me if he stayed home. Like it was a competition, and being loved ‘best’ was the reward for being a good mom. It was clear to me that this mom was insecure about her own value as a mom, and her proof that she was a good mom was being loved best. Now, I’m all for adding security to the major mind-whack that new parenting involves, but not at the expense of the other major player in the child’s life - daddy/partner/co-parent. I still have to explain to those who don’t ‘get’ me working that my husband was better at staying home, that I tend to dissociate and get depressed when I stay home, and that depression in a primary caregiver is a serious problem for the child’s long-term mental health - it damages the attachment bond. So I’m more capable of being a strongly attached mom BY working. It takes some digesting for those who assume that attachment bonds ‘just happen’ because of proximity, and are not to do with either effort or situation, let alone maternal capacity and mental state, but the neurobiology basis of my being a better parent because I work is sound. Plus, I have more focus and energy for my child, personally, if I work. I get to switch tracks and really focus on being a parent at home.

  3. My husband (when he was a SAHD) had to coach me at times when my son’s cries changed. Sometimes I didn’t know what the new cry meant, and he did. I felt out of it, behind the game. I realized that’s what most men feel like - struggling to keep up with the changes is rough. It also meant that my husband was closely attuned to my son’s reactions. That was mighty cool. :slight_smile: I also pass on to you one of the best reactions I got from another mom when he quit to stay home: “wow, you’ll never have a husband who comes home at the end of the day and asks why ‘nothing is done’, if all you had to do was ‘watch the kid’…” You’ve got yourself a man who will know exactly how much work it is to take care of a child, who will grant you the extra time if you are the one in charge (say, weekends or maternity leave), and will be glad that your child is happy, fed, and played with first and foremost. You can’t buy that. I know too many moms whose husbands don’t ‘get’ how much effort goes into childcare, and who grouse about it constantly, even to the point of contemplating divorce.

  4. Lesson number 235 in parenthood. If you take up all the parenting space, the other parent cannot become the parent they should be. And kids seem IME to do better with parents who are not clones, but who have different and unique things to offer. It was a grace (even if mortifying at first) for me to realize that there were things my husband could do that I could not replicate, such as walking our son to sleep. It was also a grace to realize the same in reverse. We were a constellation, not a line betwen two points, with an outlier. The three of us (and later, the four of us) all had unique relationships with each other. Me with husband, me with child, husband with child. Each dyad has something unique about it, and something valuable. And each triad, too, and the four of us as a unit, beyond that. By keeping myself OUT of the husband with child dyad, he got to develop it into something that wasn’t just a duplicate of the mommy with child dyad. That also let us have a huge range of dynamics, when our next son came along. And I learned some valuable parenting lessons from him. Now, years later, he can catch me doing things he knows I don’t want to do, and I can listen to him when he mentions them without feeling put down by an inferior. He is my true peer in parenting, better at some things, not as good at others, and yet always WITH me as a parent, making me a better one. It sounds like you are on the same track. You have given yourself an extra method of improvement that moms who don’t leave room for dad don’t give themselves. Plus, you’ve got a spouse who won’t feel he’s a failure before he’s even started.

  5. Neurobiologically, IIRC, infants bond with up to six people in their first year. Beyond six, and they start having difficulty with bonding, but they can and do bond - have organized attachment behavior with - as many as six people. Fathers are usually person two. If they are given the chance to work it out. While some dads aren’t interested in kids under 1-2 years old, that may be because they aren’t expected to be, even by themselves.

  6. With a SAHD, you get a better balance of parenting, IME. That is, when you get home, do you take over babycare fully? Bet you do. Gives daddy a true break after a day of baby-care. How many daddies take over fully from SAHMs when they get home from work?

  7. It takes time to re-evaluate and re-balance the relationship and family dynamics after baby arrives. I found it very very useful to have date nights to help me reconnect, talk out the changes in who I was, establish the changes in who my husband was, re-set our expectations, re-set our priorities, etc. Much easier than working it out more slowly and with less free time to actually talk. I know it works out without date nights, too, but boy, the date nights were a help for us. Granted, since I was exclusively breastfeeding, it was less easy to do early on, so we didn’t do overnights until 10 months with Gabe, and almost 2 years with Brendan (my mom is older, and I wanted to give her the chance to sleep all night, instead of waking early with a hungry child). But we still did evenings from pretty early on, too. Yay for breastpumps. Keeping my relationship strong is a valuable thing to give my child, too. It is that constellation thing again. We’re all important, and all the bonds are important.

Anyway, it sounds like you’ve got a sense of youself as a good mom back, a bit. You are doing rather well, I think. My husband took over for me in the mom’s group, actually, and that helped the others deal better - they saw him as a real parent, not just an adjunct to the mom-and-baby set. He didn’t always participate in the conversations (breastfeeding wasn’t a good topic for his participation, say), but he could relate to the behaviors, and the general care and love shown to the kids helped the other moms get a better grip on the concept of a father as a bonded caregiver.

Also, just staying in the field may give the other moms a lesson. My SIL was a SAHM for all five of her kids. Loved it. Couldn’t imagine how a well-bonded mom could work. She liked me, but was afraid for my kids. Daycare ruined kids, working moms weren’t good at understanding their kids, etc. But we talked, and she saw me parent, and she watched my son growing up into a decent, bonded, loving, polite, kind, intelligent, and well-behaved young man. She finally admitted to me that she had thought it was the details of the parenting, the working, the daycare (after my husband returned to work at a year), etc., that caused ‘all those problem kids’… but having seen me do it, she realized that her assumption had been in error. Perhaps there was something in the parenting details that was the problem in those other families. That also opened her eyes to accepting that some of her SAHM contacts were awful parents, and it wasn’t in spite of being a SAHM, it was simply a separate issue entirely. It was the attachment, the responsiveness, the consistency, the reliability, the empathy, and the general parenting skills (rule setting, boundaries, rational/logical consequences, etc.), NOT whether they worked or stayed home. It was a big lesson for her. I’m glad she had the chance to learn it from me. (Not that you need to do this - you aren’t required to educate anyone, but I like it when I can…)

44

Well, I feel like a bit of a Mommy-come-lately here, but I did want to chime in.

First of all, it is my experience that other moms may judge you. I meet with a group of women IRL and I have an online community and I have a sister who is also a parent. And you know what? Some of those folks are judgemental. My sister refers to formula as “poison” all the time. She states that she reads mainstream parenting magazines to “reassure myself that I am a better parent than most of those people”. One of the online moms in my group started a huge war over letting baby Cry It Out and started accusing other moms of “torturing” their babies. People will be judgemental, particularly if they genuinely feel that what you are doing is endangering your child.

That said, not all of these women may fall into that category. Perhaps they are just as scared and confused and concerned about their little bubs as you are and this is how it comes out—big gasps and gawks toward the one who is breaking the mold. Telling them they are making you feel this way might make the less judgemental ones think about their actions and change them. There are women I know IRL and online who have very different approaches than I do and we don’t judge each other. It’s about respecting others’ choices, not only making the same choices, as Cranky said. That’s something that enters into a lot of different areas of life, not just parenting, but parenting is one topic on which there are suddenly hordes of Instant Experts.

I do feel that having a group of people who are going through approximately the same experiences is a good thing. This may not be that group for you. Perhaps you need to find one catering towards WOHMs. Perhaps you don’t need one at all.

It does sound like you know yourself well enough to know when your choices are good ones.

45

I’d say that lorene has some good points. I would not ditch the group–yet.
Does the group have 12 moms with four openly vocal tongue-cluckers? Speaking back to them might give some of the other seven the backbone to speak up, as well. On the other hand, if the group has six moms and five tongue-cluckers, it’s probably time to move on, terminating without prejudice. (No point burning bridges: they are liable to be fellow parents when bub starts school and there is no reason to start off with open hostility–in five years, some of them may have actually learned something and become decent parents.)

46

I also have to add—baby massage is a great tool, but not always easy to teach in this type of group. When it came time to do so in the group I attended, 2 of the babies were sleeping soundly, one would not stop showing off her new flipping-over skill, and the other 4 were staging some kind of scream-fest. A book or video might tell you all you need to know.

47

Thank-you everyone for your kind words of support and encouragement. I’m at work right now and don’t have time to respond to each of you individually but I really appreciate the thought that has gone into your posts.

Last night I spoke to my neighbour who has a two month old son and she had decided not to go to the parents group for many of the same reasons I had. We are thinking of starting our own little group :slight_smile:

48

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of this is new mommy-ness. New mommies are often experts at everything and have carefully researched every decision that they have made and know its right. As the kids get a little older, they will begin to see that despite the fact that Austin was bottlefed, he knew his ABCs at two, where Carin - whose mother breastfed her until two, didn’t learn hers for another six months. They will need to make spur of the moment decisions without nine months of research. They will begin to learn that regardless of what research indicates, their child does not respond to time outs and they need to find another method of discipline. They will see that maybe their child knows all their colors, but being able to walk down stairs is a valued and envied skill. They will be taught flexibility by their own children.

My own son is adopted. I know little about his birthmother or the circumstances of her pregancy (did she drink? don’t know. Did she eat well? don’t know. Did she have a medicated labor? Don’t know). When we were waiting for my son, several of my girlfriends were going through their “perfect” pregnancies. They didn’t realize it was hurtful, but they’d talk endlessly about the benefits of breastfeeding (not an option for us), the problems with medication during childbirth (like I have a choice), the damage a single drink can do (thanks), or the importantance of early bonding through rooming in (great, my kid will spend the first six months of his life away from us, and you think the first minutes are critical).

Two of these girlfriends (and the two worst when it came to be control freaks about their own preganancies and insisting their was one right way) then went through secondary infertility and came to us to discuss adoption. They both have lovely adopted little girls, and through the process have realized that their are more important things in the life of a child than a drink or two while pregnant, or being breastfed.

49

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of this is new mommy-ness. New mommies are often experts at everything and have carefully researched every decision that they have made and know its right. As the kids get a little older, they will begin to see that despite the fact that Austin was bottlefed, he knew his ABCs at two, where Carin - whose mother breastfed her until two, didn’t learn hers for another six months. They will need to make spur of the moment decisions without nine months of research. They will begin to learn that regardless of what research indicates, their child does not respond to time outs and they need to find another method of discipline. They will see that maybe their child knows all their colors, but being able to walk down stairs is a valued and envied skill. They will be taught flexibility by their own children.

My own son is adopted. I know little about his birthmother or the circumstances of her pregancy (did she drink? don’t know. Did she eat well? don’t know. Did she have a medicated labor? Don’t know). When we were waiting for my son, several of my girlfriends were going through their “perfect” pregnancies. They didn’t realize it was hurtful, but they’d talk endlessly about the benefits of breastfeeding (not an option for us), the problems with medication during childbirth (like I have a choice), the damage a single drink can do (thanks), or the importantance of early bonding through rooming in (great, my kid will spend the first six months of his life away from us, and you think the first minutes are critical).

Two of these girlfriends (and the two worst when it came to be control freaks about their own preganancies and insisting their was one right way) then went through secondary infertility and came to us to discuss adoption. They both have lovely adopted little girls, and through the process have realized that their are more important things in the life of a child than a drink or two while pregnant, or being breastfed.