My live in nanny had to run off home for almost 2 weeks, some personal family emergency.
This unfortunately also coincided with the time that my husband was all set to leave for England for a year. In fact his departure was half way down the nanny's leave time.
Needless to say, what with all his last minute preparations, and the lack of baby sitter support at the same time, I had to take off from office and work from home. Whatever little work one can manage that is, with a 3 year old.
I plunged in head first, to 12 days of insanity. Office calls, emails, baby bath time, feeding time, play time, story reading time, husband packing time... and I knew I was in for some very messy times...
And I was totally wrong. Tiring, physically, yes. Bad? No.
I realised that I hadn't been a full time hands on mom for almost 2.5 years. I had spent 6 months on maternity leave after my little girl was born, and during and post that I have always had a live in nanny. Or at least, during their various evictions, illnesses, replacements and leaves, at least some sort of part time support.
In those first 6 months the help were not of much use beyond being extra hands and feet because I wanted to do everything myself, even my little baby had decided in her preocious, pre verbal way, that she only wanted mommy...
But after that I needed to rejoin work. I got very good support, my daughter would be dropped off everyday to my mother's, and gradually, while mommidom remained a spectacular, central part of my life, my other inate personality began to take over, like beautiful shrubbery in an untended garden...
My baby and I continued to discover each other in the most unique and myriad ways, in that profusion of our various selves...
However, this last week brought me back to bootcamp. The brass tacks of one of the simplest and oldest roles in the world.
Being a mother has been not just the central but often the only identity a woman has worn across societies, over generations. Some of us, brought up in our liberated, cosmopolitan, privileged set ups, have then gone on to challenge that automatic role playing and outsourced a lot of the drudgery, to put it bluntly.
Yes, I am one of those women who don't derive satisfaction from the basic wash-bathe-feed-clean routine of rasing a small child. I often feel that women treat these chores as exalted only to lend meaning to their own dull lives.
That may be true. It may also be a very one sided view of mine. I don't know. Because I will not be doing this full time bit much longer than another 4 to 5 days. But I know for sure that its given me pure joy, pure satisfaction and a lot of relief from the heart wrenching sadness of seeing the man I love leave for a year.
Thanks to my kid, I have been too busy and too cheerful to mope.
It would be an exaggeration to say I got to know my child better in these days. No, I know my child even otherwise; we are extremely intuitively bonded. But what I did get to know are those little things that impact her daily schedule, her appetite, her physical comforts and therefore her moods... I discovered the basic, the simple, the day to day part of parenting. What I got to experience was the sheer ordinariness of motherhood.
And that precisely turned out to be extra ordinary.
If you are reading this blog, you are probably a working mom like me. And therefore you probably also have a pretty established support structure. I know the other wonderful facets of your myriad personality are important to you. I know that you have allowed choices to govern your life, and not compulsions. And possibly, what makes you gloriously you is the fact that you view motherhood as extraordinary rather than ordinary, a vibrant choice and not a given fact.
Here's a suggestion: stay who you are. But tell the help to take off for a week, every 6 months or so. I know I will!
This unfortunately also coincided with the time that my husband was all set to leave for England for a year. In fact his departure was half way down the nanny's leave time.
Needless to say, what with all his last minute preparations, and the lack of baby sitter support at the same time, I had to take off from office and work from home. Whatever little work one can manage that is, with a 3 year old.
I plunged in head first, to 12 days of insanity. Office calls, emails, baby bath time, feeding time, play time, story reading time, husband packing time... and I knew I was in for some very messy times...
And I was totally wrong. Tiring, physically, yes. Bad? No.
I realised that I hadn't been a full time hands on mom for almost 2.5 years. I had spent 6 months on maternity leave after my little girl was born, and during and post that I have always had a live in nanny. Or at least, during their various evictions, illnesses, replacements and leaves, at least some sort of part time support.
In those first 6 months the help were not of much use beyond being extra hands and feet because I wanted to do everything myself, even my little baby had decided in her preocious, pre verbal way, that she only wanted mommy...
But after that I needed to rejoin work. I got very good support, my daughter would be dropped off everyday to my mother's, and gradually, while mommidom remained a spectacular, central part of my life, my other inate personality began to take over, like beautiful shrubbery in an untended garden...
My baby and I continued to discover each other in the most unique and myriad ways, in that profusion of our various selves...
However, this last week brought me back to bootcamp. The brass tacks of one of the simplest and oldest roles in the world.
Being a mother has been not just the central but often the only identity a woman has worn across societies, over generations. Some of us, brought up in our liberated, cosmopolitan, privileged set ups, have then gone on to challenge that automatic role playing and outsourced a lot of the drudgery, to put it bluntly.
Yes, I am one of those women who don't derive satisfaction from the basic wash-bathe-feed-clean routine of rasing a small child. I often feel that women treat these chores as exalted only to lend meaning to their own dull lives.
That may be true. It may also be a very one sided view of mine. I don't know. Because I will not be doing this full time bit much longer than another 4 to 5 days. But I know for sure that its given me pure joy, pure satisfaction and a lot of relief from the heart wrenching sadness of seeing the man I love leave for a year.
Thanks to my kid, I have been too busy and too cheerful to mope.
It would be an exaggeration to say I got to know my child better in these days. No, I know my child even otherwise; we are extremely intuitively bonded. But what I did get to know are those little things that impact her daily schedule, her appetite, her physical comforts and therefore her moods... I discovered the basic, the simple, the day to day part of parenting. What I got to experience was the sheer ordinariness of motherhood.
And that precisely turned out to be extra ordinary.
If you are reading this blog, you are probably a working mom like me. And therefore you probably also have a pretty established support structure. I know the other wonderful facets of your myriad personality are important to you. I know that you have allowed choices to govern your life, and not compulsions. And possibly, what makes you gloriously you is the fact that you view motherhood as extraordinary rather than ordinary, a vibrant choice and not a given fact.
Here's a suggestion: stay who you are. But tell the help to take off for a week, every 6 months or so. I know I will!
