Tears And All

1. Would it be fair to #1 to put my fears above his chance to have a companion?

2. Being a military child can be quite lonely already, so having a sibling might help mitigate it.

3. If we were to have another child, this is the time to do it.

3a. I’m only getting older. So are my ovaries. Pregnancy will not get easier.

3b. Husband is not deploying now and for entire 4th trimester.

4. Having a sibling can help build some social skills and empathy in #1.

5. Husband has always wanted more than one child, and I’ve always been ambivalent about it.

Reading “Parenting from the Inside Out” by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzel makes me wonder if my parenting ambivalence comes from my dad’s constant reminder throughout my childhood that “if we didn’t have you, our life would be so much easier.” This contrasts with C’s parents, his dad especially, who always said that having kids has been the best job he’s ever had.

I’m sure there’s something to this.

It’s weird announcing that you’re pregnant with your second child when you’re still ambivalent about the whole parenting thing. Others (who don’t listen closely) just assume that now you’ve embraced motherhood. But I haven’t. I am equally ambivalent (indifferent?) about being a mother now as I was pre-child. I fear how difficult it is going to be, I fear how it’s going to challenge my career trajectory, I fear for my sanity and my happiness, I fear it’s negative impact on my marriage. I know it is not all misery, but I can’t seem to disregard the difficulties. The challenges are real. They are scary. I don’t know if I want to do this again. But yet, we are doing it. 

When people say that you are teaching your child a valuable skill with sleep training -- that they learn how to independently fall asleep and have good sleep habits -- what they are really saying is that you force them to figure out that ability. There is no teaching in sleep training. You can't teach or show an infant how to self-soothe or go to sleep. You just have to throw them into the wind and force them to figure it out.

This is one example of positive reframing that bugs the crap out of me. You're not teaching anything!!!!! You're forcing something.

Instead of synthesizing allll my pregnancy and parenthood thoughts into one Facebook confessional post, I figured I would start jotting down all the things I've wanted to share over this past year or so.

First, parenthood is hard. If you're ambivalent about becoming a parent, like I was, because you feared how tough it would be, well, your ambivalence/fears is/are founded (or at least mine was).