transcended.net

Yeah, my ability to think positive seems to be fading quickly.

Maybe it has something to do with the pure and utter exhaustion.

And knowing that having to be in the office by 5am every day, all week starting on Monday, is only going to pile the exhaustion on.

The upcoming return to work has me all kinds of panicky. I have been snapping at Paul and much to my own dismay, snapping at the poor baby.

It’s my own fault really, I am jealous in my care for T. I want to be his sole source of comfort, food, everything and so it has come to be that way. Maybe Paul could put him to sleep but I’m so scared that if he tries and fails I’ll end up doing it anyway, except it will be two hours later and he will be all riled up and harder to put down. And then I get irritated that no one can help me with this screaming infant, who through no fault of his own currently can’t seem to stay asleep!

I get annoyed at my mother. For implying that she knows better than I do how to care for MY baby. For implying that she can do it better. That she is more “natural” at it than I am. I’m jealous that she’ll be getting all this time with my baby which may lead her to feel even more so that he is HERS and not MINE. But he is mine! I know what he likes! I know what he needs! I KNOW him.

I have a pretty good relationship with my mom by most people’s standards. I tell her almost everything. She tells me probably more than I want to hear quite a bit. I know she loves T very much. But we are definitely having some boundary issues and the funny thing is she thinks she is very cognizant of boundaries but she isn’t. She also thinks she is not critical and judgmental, but she is.

I can’t do anything different from how she raised us without her taking it as a criticism of her mothering skills. I’ve told her it’s not about her, it’s about me and how I want to care for my child but somehow this only makes her even more defensive and upset. So I really don’t know how to address this problem because every time she starts criticizing me and I defend myself it descends into an argument I can’t win where she essentially tells me “It’s my way or the highway” and the problem is, I have no choice. I’m going back to work. As others have pointed out, hiring a Chinese nanny (which is what we can afford) would just be like paying someone to do exactly what my mother will do. In fact, my mom brought up hiring my grandma’s previous helper, the one who kept telling my mom to tell me not to do this or that while I was pregnant.

Um, yeah, thanks but no thanks. I am not going to pay someone who thinks their opinions on child-rearing trump my own in regards to MY OWN CHILD. And at least my mom truly loves T.

But the fact remains, my mother doesn’t respect me as a mother and I don’t really know what to do about that.