Lately I seem to be having the same conversation over and again, except with different friends of mine. Everyone with a child between the ages of 2 and 4 seems to be on edge these days, especially those with an additional younger child (or more) in the household. Our conversations circle around the same issues and the stress and exhaustion and barely-hanging-on strain in our voices echo each other. The way we live in our society today, there is a solitude that comes with at-home parenting, a solitude for which I was not entirely prepared. Even if we make for ourselves a community of friends to fill in for out-of-town family, most are still a car ride away, and rarely do we get time to have a decent, uninterrupted phone conversation. Every at-home parent I know, most especially those with more than one child, races out of the house in the morning, panic at their backs lest they wind up in the house all day with no one and nothing but the children and the four walls.
But there are times, inevitably, when we are most definitely alone. Times when we are home and it's just us and the kids...and nothing seems to go right, and everything seems to push to the limit our tolerance for stress:
You're giving the baby a bath, in her infant tub that is sliding around within the larger tub. She's hysterical because she only slept 20 minutes all day, and her sudsy little body is so slippery that as she twists and turns and fights your every attempt to wash her (and stands up screaming...at 6 months!) you think any second she's going to smack her little head on something. Your toddler runs into the bathroom, slamming his truck against the back of your leg as you're crouched on the floor next to the tub, drenched at this point. He pokes the baby's eyes and, as she's screaming, turns around and slams shut the bathroom door, effectively locking himself in with you and the hysterical baby in the 3x3 bathroom, and begins to scream himself. Your head feels like it's going to explode and you snatch the soaking wet baby against yourself, open the door and toss your toddler on the other side, screaming "GET OUT" before you lock it shut against him. The baby's still screaming and covered in soap and you now have to kneel back down and fight her through the rest of her bath before you can dry her, nurse her, and hope to the heavens that she pass out with exhaustion. As you sit down to nurse her, your toddler comes angelically into the room with the baby's pacifier, sweetly explaining that he brought it for you. Your last response to him still rings in your ears and you feel horrible for losing yourself in the moment. "I love you," you say as you kiss him. "I love you," he says and wanders off. "I don't want to be THAT kind of mom", you think to yourself.
But if you're already worried about the kind of parent you are, chances are slim that you'll morph into some Joan Crawford nightmare-of-a-mother. I try to assess my reactions to situations and make an effort to apologize when I've over reacted. At the end of the day, parenthood is an evolving role; all one can do is learn daily and move on. Besides, if you want to see just how far you really are from "THAT" kind of parent, pick up a copy of PUSH by Sapphire, or rent the film version, "Precious", and reassess your "bad" day.
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