4.08.2010

Salt

I recently asked myself, "Is there any way I can become more of a mom?"  The answer, of course, was to join some sort of community of mothers in the only place where community still matters: the internets.  So I joined some sort of internet community of mothers called "Circle of Moms," and they asked me some questions (20), I guess to authenticate my motherliness.  An excerpt of the interview follows.

CoM: Do you think it's harder to be a mom or a dad?
eE: The fact is that the baby-workload for a stay-at-home mom is much heavier and never ends.  Twenty-four hours a day you are a mother.  Even when Dad is holding or feeding the baby or giving you a night off you aren't excused from helping him or giving him tips.  Still, I think the emotional toll being a working father takes is much harder to handle.  Can you imagine leaving your baby and wife at home for nine hours a day, not knowing if you're going to miss some huge milestone, wondering what new thing your wife is going to learn about your baby today that you won't?  I wouldn't want to trade places with my husband, anyway.

CoM:  What surprised you most about being a mother?
eE:  The guilt I feel if I have to go to the bathroom before I give Oak a bottle or if I need a drink of water while he's eating and I sit the bottle down and he starts to cry.  It's like he's saying, "Couldn't you have done that 10 minutes ago?  What kind of mother are you, putting yourself first like that?"

CoM: Is there anything good about being a mom?
eE: The smell of Oak's head, even if he hasn't had a bath for a couple days.  And sometimes when someone else is holding him and he won't stop crying and they're like, "Here, Mama, you take him," and instantly he stops crying.  That's pretty cool.

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