When Motherhood Isn't Wonderful
September 15, 2014 in Blogs
The old man in the wheelchair looked over, his eyes meeting mine from below the brim of his Buffalo Sabres cap.
I apologized for the infant squirming in my lap. It was mid-April, and Max, our baby boy, had wailed the entire way from the newborn ward of Sisters Hospital to the building’s main entrance. Now, as we waited for our ride by the facility’s revolving doors, Max continued to scream. But the old man wasn’t upset.
“A new life,” he told me in a quiet rasp, a smile behind his eyes.
I turned my head so he wouldn’t see the tears.
*
Growing up, I never wanted to be a mother. Until we had Max, I wasn’t sure how I would find the experience of being a parent.
Now, I know.
My heart broke when he struggled with the simplest things — when he couldn’t get milk flowing into his little mouth, or when he got the hiccups and couldn’t stop them and didn’t know what they were.
Sometimes, late at night, I would watch him, imagining how scared he must be. He would squeak and gurgle in his sleep. He often gasped. They say that infants have something called the Moro reflex, where they wave their arms because they feel as if they’re falling.
I loved our baby more than I ever could have predicted.
As time went on, though, I found that I did not like being a mother.
Everyone says, “Congratulations,” but no one tells you how hard it will be.
I often felt that having a kid was the worst decision I ever made. When one friend kept asking, “But it’s a wonderful time, too, isn’t it?” I kept replying, “No.”
There is an episode in “Battlestar Galactica” where humans being hunted by Cylons find that the pursuers are able to pinpoint the people’s location every 33 minutes. So every 33 minutes, the humans “jump” their convoy of ships to new coordinates in space, then reset …read more
Source: ALTERNET
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