Yes, I am indeed one of those moms. But underneath all the warm fuzzies that come with giving birth to such a perfect daughter, I am still me. I still think and feel and write, although lately most of my words don’t make it from my head to my computer. But I decided it’s time to let those words out. So, today I am going to write a blog the only way a new mother can- quick and dirty. Quick, because I really don’t have time to write long thought out prose. And dirty, because I likely won’t have time to copy edit this either.
Been wondering what’s on my mind lately? Here goes.
Who has time for mommy wars?
Before my baby was born I worried about what other moms would think. Being bipolar I knew that I would have limitations that other moms might not. I knew that I would have to stay on my medication and would need to make sure I got enough sleep to avoid a manic or depressive relapse. Would other moms judge me for not breastfeeding? Would other moms judge me if my husband helped out with night feedings so I could sleep? Would other moms judge me for putting such a high priority on my own mental health?
And then what about when I decide to go back to work? Would other mom’s judge me for that?
What I learned rather quickly after giving birth is that motherhood has a way warping time. When you spend all day caring for an infant the endless feedings and diaper changes make time disappear at a speed much faster than you ever thought possible. Sure, sometimes the days drag on, but then you look back at weeks and months that seem like a blur. In many ways it seems like my daughter has been with me forever, yet at the same time it seems like she just got here.
When you are a mother, time goes by too fast to worry about what other mothers think. I admit before I gave birth I judged a lot of Facebook friends for their obnoxious mom posts. (No one cares about your parenting theories or wants to see 20 pictures of your child each day.) What I didn’t realize then, that I do now, is that these moms probably don’t give a shit about what other people think. They are too busy being a mom.
When you are on maternity leave you spend a lot of time feeding your baby. Whether your child is getting milk from the bottle or from your breast, feedings will consume your days. And there isn’t much that you can do during these feedings. Maybe seasoned moms know how to multi-task during feedings, but the rest of us can only muster enough energy to watch TV. And watch TV I did. I watched more TV during my 10-weeks of maternity leave than I did during the entire year of 2013. Reality TV. Daytime TV. British TV. You name it and I watched it. And my favorite show as of late? Shameless.
If you aren’t watching Shameless you should. It’s on Showtime but you can watch past seasons on Hulu. The writers of this show are brilliant. The characters are so well developed and witty that at times I forget that they aren’t real. And what I appreciate the most about this season of Shameless is that it has shown bipolar disorder in it’s most common form, undiagnosed.
Ian, the mild mannered, sensitive middle child of the family has acted different all season. He went AWOL in the army and now works as a stripper, runs 8 miles after three hours of sleep, fills journals with ideas about video games he wants to create, and is fearless enough to pull a knife on a man more than twice his size.
“Are smoking meth?” Ian’s boyfriend Mickey asked him in the last episode.
No, Ian is not smoking meth. what Ian’s family and TV reviewers have yet to realize is that Ian is bipolar like his mother and is in the middle of a manic episode. I wonder what will happen to Ian. How will his mania end? With him arrested? Or hospitalized?
Sure, I know that Shameless is just a show and Ian is just a character. This story is fiction, but this condition is not. It’s part of my life, something I think about every day when I’m watching TV and feeding my baby out of bottle instead of my breast. I know that the lithium that flows inside of my blood to keep me sane would be too much for her little organs to handle. So each day I feed her donor milk and thank God that my bipolar disorder has been diagnosed and is well managed.
When we first brought our baby home I spent every waking minute looking at her, and thinking about her and cooing over her. It’s as though the rest of the world didn’t exist. I started to worry that I would be one of those mothers who stopped caring about society. I didn’t want to be one of those mothers. I wanted to care about the world around me. And I wanted my daughter to grow up to be the kind of person who cares about the world around her too.
About a month after my daughter’s birth news of Kansas House Bill 2453 jolted me back into social consciousness. This bill, which didn’t make it through the Senate, would have enabled Kansas businesses to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples on the basis of “religious freedom.”
Last week I saw stories splashed across Facebook about World Vision’s decision to hire people who are openly gay and in same sex marriages. The Christian global aide organization went on to retract that decision because so many conservative Christians pulled their sponsorships from the organization for making a pro-gay stance. Sorry, Jesus but we can’t feed your sheep if gays are involved in the process.
These stories break my heart because they are so far off from the Jesus that I know. The Jesus that I want to share with my daughter.
We are going to have her baptized in a couple of weeks. On Easter, to be exact. Will some people judge me as crazy for believing a resurrected savior whose name is used for such hate and bigotry?
Sure. But this mom has no time to worry about those judgments. She’s too busy keeping herself sane and teaching her little girl about the God of compassion and grace and love. A God who we will never fully understand, but believe is omni-everything enough to conquer even death. And this is a belief that I will never be ashamed of.
