As you may (or may not!) have read in my goals for 2012, I’m ready to finish working and be a mum. I thought I could do it all. But all it has brought with it is stress and what seems like bad mothering!
This is the year. This year I’ll be playing mums and dads. This year I’ll stop working. This year I’ll be less controlling and more trusting by letting someone else run the practice. Motherhood is a huge job all on it’s own. My baby deserves my time and attention, and I deserve a happy baby, a less stressful life and some time for myself.
I never stopped working when I had Evie. The day after she was born I was organising the payroll. The next day I was visiting family. The next day I was out for lunch. On day 4 I was at the practice (work). Sure, I was only visiting but am I ever really just visiting? Every time I walk through that door there is something to be done, a conversation to be had, a decision to be made.
I remember my midwife telling me I was supposed to rest. I heard it, but I didn’t really hear it. I thought I was invincible. 12 months on and I was a wreck. The second time around, I would take a leaf out of some of the Asian cultures books and stay home for 6 weeks. Someone else can get my groceries. People can visit me rather than me going to them. And by then I won’t even have work to think about because I would have trained someone else to take over.
So last night I sat down and wrote out a vision statement for myself. I wrote out a speech that would be presented at my 80th birthday party. And then I thought about how I would get to that point and how I would live according to my vision statement.
I’m sorry for anyone with radical feminist views. Let’s face it, Patricks nipples don’t produce milk as well as mine do and he doesn’t have a vagina. He’s just not as talented in the baby growing, birthing, feeding and mothering as I am. I want to be a good mum. And a healthier person. I am doing this for myself.
I want to be this onto my housework:
And I want to look this happy about it:
I want to look this calm when motherhood seems chaotic:
Well, actually she seems kind of removed from the children. And I certainly wouldn’t choose this woman to be our babysitter! Bad example. Maybe more like this:
She seems relaxed enough.
