worries

[flea]

Someone asked, what do you, as a mother, worry about?

I have worried that:
I was starving my baby and I'd never get the hang of this.
I would go insane due to the constant demands of an infant.
I would never find adequate child care.
I would never be able to pay for adequate child care.
I would go insane due to sleep deprivation.
I would not be able to pump enough milk to feed my infant while I was at work.
I would project my own emotional issues onto my child.

Have you noticed a trend here? I have very few worries about Casper herself. This is the big one:
I worry that the lovely person she is developing into will be unhappy in this world.

(And this in itself is partly a projection of my own emotional issues).

Relatedly, the thing that has been most disappointing to me as a parent? My mother has not proven to be of any use at all as an emotional support during difficult times, nor as a source of simple advice. We are trapped in a cycle where any conversation about parenting instantly devolves into suspicion of criticism and hidden motives. I know my mother loves Casper (and me), but I really wanted to feel that she supported me in my mothering.

Comments

[loligo.livejournal.com]

It only took 36 hours into her latest visit (this weekend) for my mother to make me cry. (But really, I was only in her presence for about 13 of those hours, so that's pretty fast work.)

I will say that she mostly supports and approves of my parenting style, but when things get bad, her version of being soothing and supportive is to say, "Oh yeah? You think *you* have it bad? Well, when you and your sisters were little..." blah blah you wuss justsuckitupcakes. But for some reason it's the stern disapproval of my (lack of) housekeeping skills that *always* makes me cry. And she knows this, and yet she is compelled to do it anyway.

[minim_calibre]

Wait, are you secretly my sister?

Except for the housekeeping part, that's my mother.