Mama PlaygroundA Blog for Moms

Oh, the spectacle of it all. You would think we were conquering a planet or at the very least traveling across the country. Nope. We need an oil change. This requires days of advanced planning, an early rise, and multiple hours of preparation. Eating, diapers, naps, wardrobe changes all need to be planned out for three kids under two.  I return from said “quick” errand completely exhausted and ready for my husband to come home from work. Oh, it is only 10:30 am. Someboy needs to get the memo to my kiddos that pre-dawn wake up is not working for mama. I feel like a lifetime has occurred by noon.

Maybe one of the little one has adjusted positions in my belly. Maybe they are both just growing rapidly right now. But the toilet and I are now good friends. Pretty much anything sends me in there: a sip of juice, walking up stairs, 20 minutes passing without having recently visited the toilet. Anything. I should buy stock in Charmin.

While it was at times a bit awkward with my last pregnancy, it is nothing compared to this one. Who is going to watch my kid while I am gone to the restroom all the time? Everywhere I go (grocery store, playground, friend’s house) I am trying to find creative ways to visit the ladies room without child protective service getting a call for the unattended toddler on the loose. Who is going to watch my baby while I skip out for 30-45 seconds at a time. Doesn’t sound like much time, but it plenty of time for her to stick a finger where it doesn’t belong, open a door and disappear, pull down a glass from the table, or climb on to some furniture and take a tumble. I am working pretty hard here to just exercise my own right to an empty bladder!

Sorry to break it to you ladies, but no matter what side of this debate you are on you are still a mom. I have had a chance to swing both ways – hehe – and I must say that I never stop feeling like a mom and my child certainly never stopped considering me one. It just makes me sad to see women debating this with such contention. Ladies: I consider you all to be heroic, cape flapping in the wind!

This last few months my “baby” has been in an early childhood education center while I complete the final throws of my thesis work. It was just impossible to complete my master’s degree without this few months of 1/2 time care. She is only gone for a 1/2 day but I work with a feverish efficiency unparalleled in other times of my life because I know that the only reason she is not with me is so that I can and must get work done.

Anyways, my kid got a bloody nose at school yesterday. I am so upset. I can’t stand the idea that she is out of my reach, and that I have to trust someone else to have her best interest in mind. I am 99.9% sure it was a random and anomalous event, but she was bleeding from her nose! She got a huge scrape down the bridge of her nose to boot. My poor baby. There will be more of these moments. She won’t grow safer and less adventurous with time. That would defy nature.

And all too soon she will go to school and I will have to trust some hag at her future school to know my child as well as I do and desire her well-being as much as I do. It is just not possible. No one can know her the way I do. No one will ever feel as deeply invested in her happiness and long term outcome as her father and I do.  That scares me.

She will be off to school some day soon. Some teacher or another will see her for the angel that she is and treat her like one, or they will pick her out and give her a hard time. Call it a control thing, but I wish that either I could always keep an eye on her every move for the rest of her life, or that I could trust others to care for her the way we care for her at home. Sigh. Either way Moms out there – stay at home or working – none of us can control the way others treat our babies for the rest of their lives. At some point it is out of our hands. I find this deeply troubling today…