Last night we were at Mum & Dad's house for dinner, and Mum pulled out my baby book. Sure enough, I got my first teeth at 5 months and about 10 days, just like Talia. Rolling over at the same time. We'll see about the walking and the talking. I definitely had it on her for weight - at 6 months I weighed 17lbs. Talia weighs 14 and a half. Of course, I was started on solids at TWO AND A HALF MONTHS! I think this is now considered a form of child abuse and if experts today were to be believed, I should be allergic to everything and probably diabetic. And obese. Oddly, I survived this and seem to be quite average and un-allergic. We'll see how long that lasts...
But there under the record of me eating about a pound of turkey a day at 5 months is this line: "Alison slept 'through the night' at about 3 weeks, although she wakes at 3 or 4am to keep us in line." And then later, "Alison slept 12 hours straight April 18th." Okay, not an exact quote but something like that.
And I was like, "Damn. Talia didn't sleep through the night at 3 weeks. What have I done wrong?"
Honestly, I'm not sure if I was comparing my Mum-ing (read: feeding & sleeping training, the only part of parenting that matters in the end) with my Mum, or baby Talia with baby Me but either way, I felt like shit because this other baby was clearly so much more successful at being a baby than Talia is. Seriously, this is how my mind works. Now in fairness, at 3 weeks it seems I weighed about 11 pounds. Talia didn't weigh 11 pounds until about 4 or 5 months and surely those extra pounds become extra sleep in some magical baby math formula.
But that's hardly the point. What concerns me this morning is that the competition and comparison is so built into mothering, so sewn into the fabric of parenting, that I can't even read my own damned baby book without evaluating how we're doing against my own baby story. I hate that. Because it makes every encounter with every other family an evaluation and I think that constant evaluation erodes community and friendships. And for someone who loves community so much, it is sad to know that my automatic, unthinking reaction is always something so diminishing to my truest heart's desire.
I think that what is true, is that gratitude is the only antidote to that. Being mindful of being thankful is the only cure I know for this form of mental illness, but it is so much work and so hard to do. I want to enjoy my friendships and the children in our world without grading them on some scale of success who's source I don't even know. I want to enjoy Talia, enjoy her unique life and not wreck it by holding it up against the little lives around us.
That's all. Today.
1 comment:
Amen, sister. As far as I can tell, we never stop learning about the land mines of the whole comparison thing. And speaking of comparing with one's mother, remember that my mother always told me she had me toilet trained at 8 weeks. Kind of explains a lot, doesn't it...
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