Under the Chinaberry Tree Books and Inspirations for Mindful Parenting

Dailiness Making It Through the Day There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present. --Iris Murdoch When I first became pregnant, I was young and rather naive. I didn't think at all about the changes a child would bring to my day-to-day life. I only knew deep in my heart that I wanted a child and I wanted her now. I didn't think about never-ending diaper changes or crying babies. I didn't wonder about how I would handle the endless sleepless nights a baby could bring or how expensive raising a child would be. It never even crossed my mind that having a baby would change my level of personal freedom. All I knew was that, without a doubt, I was meant to be a mother, and I suppose I just blindly assumed that all of the details would work themselves out in the end. I was right on both counts: I was meant to be a mother and the details did all work themselves out, but it wasn't as easy as that. I had a lot to learn somewhere in the middle. During about the fifth month of my pregnancy, a near-paralyzing reality hit home: I was going to be a mother. All my pleasant fantasies about the future were replaced by sheer terror. Suddenly, I was no longer so sure this was the right thing for me to be doing, and I was literally left quivering with fear. Was I really up to the challenge of caring for and loving this child? How did you really love a child, anyway? For a few terrible days I considered the awesome responsibilities of being a mother and I was immobilized. And then, quite suddenly, I realized that worrying about all of this was simply too overwhelming. So I decided to stop fretting and went back to the business of being pregnant. Mercifully, I stopped obsessing about the end product of this pregnancy process (i.e., the baby) and started focusing on things like childbirth classes and labor breathing techniques. (Denial is a wonderful thing sometimes.) Time passed, as time always does, and a few months later, my beautiful, wonderful, incredibly divine baby daughter was born. I knew then that without a doubt, I could love my baby enough and that all we had to do was maintain this amazing bond of ours, and all would indeed be fine. The intensity of my feelings for my daughter came as quite a shock. (Somebody really should have warned me!) I never knew the power of emotion that a child could evoke in a parent. Whether that feeling be anger, fear, protectiveness, love or joy, the sheer magnitude of emotion can be overwhelming. I was lucky: my first response was pure and simple love, so I could just revel in that warmth. But I knew other new mothers (wonderfully caring women) whose first response was terror. Their passion for their baby incited all of their insecurities. What they had wanted the most for years (their baby) was suddenly this all-consuming, almost immobilizing project that they had no idea how to handle. Faced with a pile of dirty diapers and a crying infant, they were reduced to tears (but when faced with an intense, stressful business meeting, they felt comfortable and in control). What they had imagined to be pure joy was transformed overnight into, quite simply, a lot of work and a feeling of incredible helplessness. Negotiating a big contract or planning a conference? A piece of cake. Getting her baby to stop crying? Don't even ask. How is it that we can love someone so much and have such conflicted feelings? It must be one of those mysteries of being human. The more we feel toward someone, the more we feel--period--regardless of the emotion. Somehow, as parents, we have to learn how to live with all of this contradiction and still let our children know how much we love them. And we have to find a way to accept our children when they are expressing their corresponding mess of emotion toward us, too. "I hate you, Mommy" doesn't mean I hate you forever, but rather "I am angry and wantPitcher, Patti is the author of 'Under the Chinaberry Tree Books and Inspirations for Mindful Parenting', published 2003 under ISBN 9780767912020 and ISBN 0767912020.