Seven Months: seven choices

I can hardly believe all the month of February has gone by without my writing down anything about motherhood. Or that our child has now passed the halfway mark into his first year on the planet.

I held him the other day close, whispered about how he was growing up and it was a sad time for me as his mother.

People always go on and on about how fast they grow. And it's not that he's growing up fast: it's that time is fleeting the older I get. Soon he will walk, he will run, he will go off to college, fall in love, make mistakes - in that order or not.

Children are a great way to mark the passage of time as my nearly 12 year old neice reminds me of being in college and spending the summer carting her around with me in the Florida heat.

My absence from this blog isn't because I haven't been experiencing or thinking about motherhood and the baby. It's just that during my Saturday writing times I focus on my main blog, articles, or other pieces I'm trying to get done so that my career as an academic or writer doesn't suffer from my day job(s). This plus the meetings that often happen on Saturdays as well mean that every single second of my day is accounted for.

This is the life of the working mother, or indeed a mother's life in general. My hsuband is generally great and does pitch in to help but his hours are not close to mine. And mine are nothing near what our nanny spends with the baby. This is modern parenthood. You have to pick your battles. There is no other way.

Other friends seem to suffer from a lot more guilt and don't have the luxury of help. I also have come to the realization that I don't want to worry about things like sleep schedules and other dilemmas. I'm trying to be a relaxed mom so that our child will get from me a sense of what's important and what's not.

Figuring out how to spend my day is a skill I want to transfer to the baby. Being at work is crazy because I'm still doing all the programs I was before, I just have a reduced number of hours to do them in.

Add in again the fact that social obligations intrude on these hours and you have a receipe for a very hectic day to day. I know I put more pressure on myself than others do and often I now see why they take the easier path of not commiting to as much.

But I would rather have a bit of stress so that I could do more and sleep a bit less. These are the choices I've had to make - going to church 30 minutes late, but going nonetheless. Exercising for 20 instead of 60 minutes, but exercising nevertheless.

I hope the baby realizes that you can have most of what you want but it will come at price. And most days that prices is completely worth it.