No Thanks For Being A Friend

Posted by Anonymous

This friendship is over. I am not in the least bit sad about it. It was never real to me. I thought it could be. I did try. But you could never open up enough for it to be a real friendship. You're too busy trying to present this picture to the world that isn't real.

I'm too old for this shit. And you're even older than me. I won't be made to feel bad for just letting a friendship go. If I were to have problems in my other friendships, I would talk about it. I would deal with issues, no matter how painful. But with this one, I'm afraid I don't care enough.

I'm mad at myself for letting you off easy. For making it seem as though I'm just too busy. If I felt like you cared at all, I would have made more of an effort.

I've overlooked snide comments, snotty comments, mean comments, and I've thought to myself, "I don't need this shit".

Really, I don't.

Perhaps we'll say goodbye this week. We're both moving.

Perhaps we won't. Perhaps you'll just blame me some more, even though I've been the best friend you've had for four years. Did you ever ask yourself why the other women stopped talking to you? Because you will never open up. You'll never be vulnerable, or real. You'll never let anyone see you without makeup, or let anyone in if your house is a mess.

That speaks volumes to me.

I'm over it. I'm mad that I'm even letting it bother me. We haven't spoken in a week, but I'm being blamed for this. You could have picked up the fucking phone. Or emailed. Or done anything to show that you cared. But because your husband is deployed for longer than mine, your struggle is bigger and more complicated than I could ever understand, right?

And just so you know, your son's comments have made it obvious what you say behind my back. He's too young to understand what not to say. But now I know.

I feel like I'm in high school. Can't a friendship just end without any recriminations? It's not working, move on, end of story.

Where I Wish I Was

Posted by Anonymous.

I am so disappointed in myself. And so jealous of her. We are the same age. We both graduated from high school the same year, went to college and both have a bachelor's degree. She makes $50,000 a year and I make $14.00 an hour. I feel like a failure. That should be me. I'm just as smart, just as capable as her. The difference? I have 2 kids. The position she was given over me requires her to travel 75% of the time. I am not in a position to do that because of my children. I cannot be away from home for extended periods of time and overnight. I love my children so much...so why do I resent them and feel like they are holding me back from a promotion? When I see her in the office (she has an office with a door and I work FOR her from a cubicle), I feel insufficient. I doubt myself. She is going on to get her master's. I can barely afford $200 a week in daycare, I can't even consider going back to school. She immediately got a job in her field of study after college and has 7+ years experience. Me? I worked at a zoo, then for a graphics company, then I had a baby and another baby. Now that I actually have a job relevant to my degree I have zero experience. If I hadn't married young, if I hadn't started a family so soon, if I had chosen a career path and stuck to it - I could be where she is. My husband has a good job, but does not even have a college education and he makes $20 an hour. My self esteem is in the toilet. I know I can't compare the joy of having two beautiful, healthy children to having a career, but I will be fully honest and say I wish I was where she is instead of where I am. And I get even more depressed about feeling that way.

Privacy Is As Privacy Does: A Poll

Have you ever been freaked out when a casual acquaintance from ‘real life’ found your blog? Or when your Sitemeter showed a steady stream of Google pervs visiting your site? Do you wonder about whether to put up photos of your children or your friends on your blog, for fear of your privacy? Many of us have experienced these unsettling moments, and questioned or even changed our writing styles and our habits as a result.

What strategies do you use to reach the audience you want, while maintaining your own privacy? Most bloggers use some kind of anonymization or privacy strategy, a ‘screen name’ being the most simple and obvious.

Mommy-blogger and researcher Aimée Morrison (Department of English, University of Waterloo, Canada) is conducting a study of writing strategies to protect privacy. She has set up a voluntary, anonymous 15- to 20-minute survey at http://english.uwaterloo.ca/~ahm/ that asks questions about such strategies, for example, if you use password protection to limit your writing’s audience. Follow the link to learn more about the study, or to participate. You can also contact Prof. Morrison directly at ahm [at] uwaterloo [dot] ca for more information.

Aimée is going to BlogHer in San Francisco, and she’d love to interview you in person if you’re going—send her an email at the address above.

Please feel free to repost this message, unchanged, to your blog to encourage others to participate too.

-----

This study has been reviewed by, and received ethics clearance through, the Office of Research Ethics, University of Waterloo.

Birthday

Posted by Anonymous.

48 hours from now (6/25/08) I will be broken. Beaten down, heartbroken, aching, longing, destroyed. Just for that day.

It will be your birthday. Your first birthday. I never got to meet you, but I knew you. You grew inside of me. I felt you there before I even knew for sure I was pregnant. I say, "before I knew", but I knew. I knew you were there long before I even missed my period. If I'm honest, I think I knew you were there the second you were conceived. I can't explain why, or how, but I knew. I think your father knew too. We hardly talked about it, and I haven't spoken to him in months, so I certainly can't ask him now. He doesn't understand (no one seems to) why I feel the way I do. Why I miss you, why I mourn for you.

Aside from how things ended with him and I, you were conceived in love. In the greatest love I have ever known. The kind that awakens your soul, makes you feel invincible, makes everything seem brighter and more alive. That is why it hurts so bad. You were a piece of that love that I could keep with me.

But you left me. And the only way I could describe it to him is that I feel like a failure. I feel like I failed at being a woman. We are given this incredible gift to carry life inside of us and introduce it to the world. And I couldn't do it. He pointed out, "You've done it before". At the time (and still at times), that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I was able to do it before. That I have a beautiful daughter. What matters is that I couldn't do it that second time.

It took a long time after you left to get back on my feet. To not walk around with this huge hole inside of me. Feeling empty and betrayed (by who, or what, I don't know). It took a long time to stop rubbing my belly, pretending I could feel you. To be honest, I still do. To make matters worse, two of my neighbors got pregnant around the same time as I did. I couldn't look at them or speak to them without choking up. I'd stare at their bellies in amazement. Thinking, "That's what I'd look like now." Now that the babies are here, it hurts to look at them. Because all I see is you. What you would have been.

I still look at photos of your sister when she was a baby. And imagine you at that age. If you would have been anything like her, you'd already be walking like a champ. Getting into anything and everything. Lighting up my life. Your sister constantly tells me she wants a baby sister. She has no idea how deeply those words wound me.

I can't talk to anyone about it. I hear the same old things: It wasn't meant to be; These things happen for a reason; You'll have another baby again someday; Mother Nature knows best. Fuck Mother Nature. Also, I don't want ANOTHER baby. I want YOU. I want you back. I know that's not possible. I know it. Just like it's not possible to have your father back. But I want it all the same. I want to know WHY. I'm tired of doctors telling me "It's not your fault. Nothing you did caused this." I don't believe it. It was MY body. My body that rejected you. Not my heart, but my body. That is something I did.

I'll be thinking about you on Wednesday. Not that I don't any other day. You're always with me. I think about you all the time. I miss you. I don't know how to move on from this. Maybe I never will.

I never got to hold you in my arms, but I will always hold you in my heart. Always. I love you my precious baby. And I'm so, so sorry.

Living In A Nightmare

Posted by Anonymous

Is this for real? Am I living in a nightmare? Let me start by saying that my husband and I have been married for almost 4 years. We have been together for almost 8. Really and truly he is my other half. My everything along with my 14 month old daughter. Last week he tells me that he does not know if he is in love with me anymore or if he wants to be married to me anymore and that it is my fault. The bad thing is that I think it is my fault.

Throughout our whole relationship I have been battling depression and most likely pmdd along with a little late onset congential adrenal hyperplasia which has symptoms that mirror polycystic oviarian syndrome. I have been dealing with these things my whole life, along with a few ovarian tumors and the removal of my right ovary. So lord only knows how messed up my hormones are and you can guess at my moods. I don't even know if I believe in pmdd but I know that I feel like a raving nut for about two weeks out of the month.

So, for the past several years, but really getting bad over the past year since we had the baby I have been very, very mean to him. If I was a man you would call me abusive. Not physically, but emotionally abusive. I call him names, I yell at him, I curse at him, and I have no idea why. Too much mayo on the sandwich? Major tantrum. Baby not dressed in clothes that match? Better watch out. Why do I do this to him? What is wrong with me? He is a really good man who has been more than patient with this lunacy. Now he says it has killed our relationship and he may want out.

However, there is our daughter to consider, and we want her raised by both of us and we don't want to be single parents. We don't want to be arguing parents. We want her to remain happy and safe and perfect. Also, I know I cannot raise her alone financially or otherwise if he leaves us. Every day is a roller coaster.

I wish he could understant that I do not know what is wrong with me or how to stop it. I wish he could understand how hard mothering is. I wish he could know the tangle of love/aggravation/exhaustion/sadness that I feel. On top of all this we have a kid-which means we have no money, so go nowhere unless our parents are paying, and are constantly under financial stress bc the mortgage on the house we just bought and the daycare are sucking us dry. He has been at the same job for four years, which is good, but I make more money with a bachelor's as a teacher then he does with a masters at his job. This has been a point of contention for years. But the alternative seems to be he is not home much, and that is not good either.

We have had many talks over the past two weeks and some days are better than others-I am trying really, really hard to clean up my act. I also went to the doctor and got some Zoloft, I have a fabulous doctor who talks about all of this with me. There is apparently a two week waiting period for this to kick in. This is day 2 and mostly I feel spacey which could also be due to lack of sleep as I convinced myself that he was having an affair so I stayed up worrying about that all night. I asked him, very calmly, this morning if he was in fact having an affair. He said no, if he was he would not be at home every night. However, he is going out tonight with friends, something I have encouraged him to do, but he has never actually done much. He asked if I was going to call 20 times tonight-I said no, how about 3? He said no, only if it was an emergency and reminded me that he kept the baby on Friday night and all day on Saturday so I could visit friends and did not call to bother me-but let me have a good time. I know I have to do the same.

The whole idea of an affair came to me at 1:30am when it dawned on me that he worked sort of late two weeks ago on a Thursday, before all of this and I never thought about it. Now it is another Thursday and he is going out again and it reminded me of our very haunted past, when we were sneaking around behind someone's back. Not something we are proud of, not something I ever got over doing, but it was there none the less. Maybe I deserve this as some sort of kharmic payback. He says he is not having an affair. He almost laughed at me and asked me if I was. I checked his phone, not very many unfamiliar numbers but he uses the thing at work so who knows who those numbers are. I will not check his email, even if I knew his password I could not bc he always knows if I try something like that. Where did this craziness even come from? It never would have occured to me to even consider this until all of this got dumped on me last week. I breifly considered stalking him but he would hate me for it as he does not do that to me and anyway what would I do with my daughter?

We are trying to get into counseling but I have yet to get a stinking counselor to answer the phone, much less return a phone call and I do not know what to do about that. Isn't counseling what counselors do for a living? Don't they need patients? Are there that many screwed up people out there that all appointments are full?

Over the past few days he has told me he loves me, does not love me, loves me, feels good and bad on some days, might be in love with me, and made love to me. I have no ideal what to think, what to and am trying to survive my day in a zoloft and exhaustion induced haze. I will take care of my daughter and make sure she is happy and cared for. I will try not to give in to the pain building up in my chest threatening to burst out at any moment. We just go on - living together, parenting, and acting like nothing is wrong, and then sometimes we talk about it. I don't know what else to do. Any thoughts?

Home Sick

Posted by Anonymous.

two days ago she told me that the doctor has called for a test. a bone marrow test. she is my little sister and i have to help hold her while she faces what may be leukemia. maybe. i've spent two days distracting her/myself from what she describes as 'this demon inside me.'

fucking fuck.

fuck.

no seriously, fuck. i'd never say it to her, but this isn't fair. cause it's not just that, it's the triple threat. it's the my-mom-was-diagnosed-with-parkinson's-six-months-ago-my-other-sister-was-diagnosed-with-ms-one-month-ago-and-now-my-sweet-precious-love-her-like-my-daughter-sister-is-facing-the-C-word triple threat.

and i'm treading water. like a madwoman.

i wish it was me. seriously, i wish it was me who had this and not her. i always wondered how people could want to take something so horrible from someone and bear it themselves and now i get it and i wish it was fucking me.

she keeps saying that she feels homesick. like when you're visiting your grandparents over the summer as a kid and the whole day is consumed by sunny fun and then you get back to their house and sleep in a strange bed with sheets that don't smell the same in a room that's just a little too cold on a pillow that's just a little too thin and your stomach aches for home.

only, she is home, and she feel's like that.

shit shit shit shit shit.

i keep drawing a blank when she asks me where the hope is supposed to come from. how am i supposed to face this with her?

Letters

Posted by Anonymous


To the wife of my husband's cousin:

You know what, I don't NEED 37 pictures of your children pushing a toy car around on your driveway. Nor did I need that album of party photos that included the out-of-focus shots of tortilla chip bags, or the one with 10 pictures of your bathroom. For the love of God, learn to edit!

To my mother:

I can't believe you just made me feel guilty for not wanting to spend an extra $600 to take a 6 a.m. flight with a 4-hour-layover - with a THREE-YEAR-OLD. During our visit, I'll be telling her to go bug you when she wakes up at 4:30 because of the time change.

To my husband:

If you're so freaked out about us having an only child, how about you make it worth my while to have a second one? How about YOU get up at the crack of dawn with our kid, cook the dinner, do the weekly shopping, do the laundry, take care of the dishes, handle the gardening, paint the house, take on free-lance projects and hold down a full-time job, and see how you feel about another kid. Yeah. I thought so.

To my sister:

After I tell you a funny story about my 3-year-old being bossy, you tell me that you are concerned that she will grow up to be a bully unless she is properly socialized and that I need to have another kid. And when I warn you it's a touchy subject and I'd rather not speak about it, you start crying and hang up on me? Get over yourself.


To my supervisor:

Your obsession with 'buy-in' from the rest of the department on the projects I am working on is co-opting the last remaining shreds of creative joy I took in my job. In case you're wondering, yes, I am deliberately digging my heels to make your life harder. Making you hate your job too is the only power I have left, and I intend to use it.

Cruel Dilemma

Posted by Anonymous

Last summer my 8 year old son was molested by his 12 year old adopted cousin. Thankfully we found out about it right away and we were able to have good discussions with our son... We have not allowed ANY contact from the boy who molested our son. However, now we are getting pressure from the both the parents of the molester, and the grandparents to "get over it", "move on" and let the boys get together again... for the sake of "family harmony".

I just don't know how that would effect my son.

Would seeing the boy who molested him hurt him more emotionally? (We would NEVER let him play alone with him)

Or would it be good?

If we did start seeing them again, I do worry about safety. The molesters parents are very laid back... we have FOUR sons to try to keep safe.

For me, as a mother, the easy answer is never to see this boy who caused so much pain again.

But is that what's best?

Thanks for listening, any advice is more than welcome.

This Ain't A Song For The Broken Hearted

Posted by Anonymous.

My son got dumped yesterday.

Let me start over.

My teenage son's girlfriend of 8 months who started out as his Best Friend Forever and who was the first girl to hold his heart in her hands took his heart and broke it today. Into several little pieces. THREE DAYS BEFORE THE BIG DANCE AT SCHOOL.

Let me start by saying that I gave him some good advice the last few weeks when he and I felt like she might be stringing him along. She started ignoring him for no reason and hanging out with other boys. I told him that I know from experience that this is her way to be passive/aggressive about dumping him. I had been dumped that way many times. So he confronted her, and she dumped him.

I also would like to go on record saying I gave him some good advice about how he should stay friends with her since they've been friends for so long and they'll probably be friends for years. But that maybe it's okay to make her feel bad for a few days since she did dump him three days before a dance.

Now that I've sworn to you that I was a good Mom, at least a little bit. Let me tell you the rest.

I might have spent the majority of last night helping him mend his broken heart by calling this poor girl a frakkin' beeyatch and possibly offering to burn the gifts she had given him. I may have also tried to talk him into rolling her house. There may have been times when I openly mocked her annoying habits by doing exaggerated impersonations of her and then encouraging him to direct horrible insults at me, pretending I was her. And then there was the whole, "Fuck her. You're too fucking good for her anyway," comment I might have made in a fit of desperation when I thought he was going to start crying. It may have been the first time he's ever heard me use the f-word somewhere other than the car. And, of course, there might have been a moment when I told him that if she went to the dance with the boy she's been flirting with, I was going to spray paint the walls of his school declaring that she is a WHORE.

Of course, I wouldn't actually do that.

(Or at least I'll let you think that I wouldn't. But I totally would.)

But - I did threaten it and it made him laugh. Actually - all of my rants where I may or may not have called his girlfriend "THAT SKANK" made him laugh. And it's the only thing I knew to do for him. Make him laugh.

I asked him if he'd still go to the dance, just to hang out with his friends. He said, "No." I don't think he wants to risk seeing THAT SKANK dance with THAT ASSHOLE FUCKWAD. So he asked if I'd go see a movie with him instead.

And now my heart is broken.

I guess I'll just toughen up and enjoy a date night with him since this is probably the last time he'll invite me out to a movie. And then, when he's not looking, I'll totally take her off his top friends in MySpace. It's the least I can do.

Blackbird, Fly.

Posted by Anonymous.

Small Christmas lights, first red, then blue, then green, then white sent small stars of color over the ceiling where she slept. Tiny. Little hands, grasping and flexing tubes that ran into her nose. Warm among blankets that her mother brought for her. Warm among the clothes that her father bought for her. Nurses quiet and reverent in the soft lights, humming wordless songs to small babies in plastic cases.

And me.

Still wearing a scar from her exit from my body, 7 weeks to early and a lifetime too soon, for me; I sat. In the almost black of early morning, in an outside caked in the dirtiest of old snow and sharp winter air, I sat. Alone, with my daughter. For the last time. I sang quietly to her and slid my clean hands inside that incubator, pressing my lips against the side of it, willing her to feel me. One finger tracing the line of her back, one stream of tears tracing the line of my face.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
take these broken wings and learn to fly

My voice became the only one singing, as the room fell silent around me. Me and my daughter. The daughter I had failed to carry to term. The daughter I was going to permanently place in the arms of another woman, to call mother. My guilt was overwhelming in my failures to her. Failing to grow her healthy, failing to raise her. failing to be her mother.

Her dark hair, gently curling around her face, was mine, her softly curling lips, her father's. I would see none of these things day to day. To see them change as she grew, to hear her beautiful voice lilt words for the first time. To hear her cry, until her needs were met.

To be the one she cried for.

Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly

Knowing full well, that this was beneficial for her. For them. For everyone but me. My daughter sighed under my touch and moved closer. For one shining moment, I was hers and she was mine.

Read No Evil...

Posted By Anonymous.

So, I was not at work for a day recently and the guy who subbed for me used my computer. He logged into gmail and didn't log out. I read his email. It was not my finest moment... but I did it.

It became obvious that he was "seeing" several women, including his long-distance girlfriend who is 6 months pregnant. (He commented that he liked the picture that she had attached to her last message because her t*tties looked so much bigger). There were messages from the local women, flirting, sex talk, etc.I wanted to send this long distance girlfriend forwarded messages of what he had sent/received from the other women, but I didn't. I logged him off, instead. I felt a bit guilty for reading his email. Now, two weeks later, I feel guilty that I didn't let the pregnant girlfriend know what was going on.

What do you think? What would you do?

Hold On, Or Let Go?

Posted by Anonymous

My relationship with my husband used to be a source of great strength and comfort for me. We were a team. We could rely on one another and we enjoyed each other’s company. I couldn’t wait to see him at the end of the day.

Then we decided to have a baby and everything fell apart about halfway through my pregnancy. My husband quit his job from one day to the next without discussing it with me and without a back-up plan. When the baby was born we had to move back to his hometown to make ends meet. I had to leave my job.

I stayed at home for a year with my son before starting a freelance business. Eventually I began to overcome my anger with him for what had happened. We were beginning to rebuild our relationship. Then I discovered that he had been lying to me for years – almost since we met – about something to do with his family that had a direct impact on me. Again, I felt angry and foolish.

I considered leaving him, but I couldn’t afford to, and I didn’t know where I could go. I didn’t want to be a single mother, and I didn’t want our son to grow up traveling back and forth between us.

I tried to overcome my anger, to forgive my husband and trust him again, but the resentment is still there. It doesn’t go away, and I don’t know how to rebuild the open, trusting relationship we used to have.

My business is doing well now. I make as much as my husband. Last year I earned more. When my husband suggested we move to a new town closer to where he works so we would see each other more in the evenings and hopefully work through some of our issues, I agreed. I knew that moving would absorb the resources I had set aside as a way out if I needed one and so I committed myself, financially and emotionally, to staying with him.

Things have improved somewhat. I’m in therapy now, and although it has been fairly helpful, there has not been a dramatic improvement. I am still fearful that he will deceive me again and resentful for having this fear.

I just found out that I am newly pregnant. I do want another child, but I am paralyzed with fear that this pregnancy will lead to the complete deterioration of my relationship with my husband and ruin my chances of financial independence for a long, long time. Which makes me wonder if I am really all that committed in the first place.

Why can’t I just let go?

How Do You Know? (What *She* Knows)

Posted by Anonymous; follow-up to 'How Do You Know?'

(Anonymous asked the question, last week, 'How do you know when he's having an affair? If you've been through it, how did you know/find out?' This week she has more to say about why she asked that question...)

I think maybe I am grasping at straws, or catastrophizing things, or maybe I am just trying to make sense of the total disconnect that I feel between us. He never initiates sex and sex is infrequent and not really intimate (more of an exercise than an engagement). We aren't close. He likes attention. There's just something there that I have always felt. Maybe I wonder how he can go through life without being intimate with anyone. He has few friends, by choice. He doesn't turn to me for much more than common conversation and co-parenting.

We started therapy again last week. Things aren't terrible, but they just are flat and not good. I feel no positive reinforcement, no spark from him, although it's totally possible that I am just projecting my dissatisfaction on to his emotional state. I doubt he'd leave our marriage because we have 2 kids and I think it would be a rough parting. That's another thing that makes me say "hmmm....".

Maybe this is all in my head, but I still wonder.

Of course, Mr. Spitzer doesn't help things at all...

How Do You Know?

Posted by Anonymous

How do you know when he's having an affair? If you've been through it, how did you know/find out?

Thanks for any guidance you can give.

Help An Academi-Mom

Posted by Bobita

Are you a mom? Do you blog?

I am a mom trying to finish my PhD; and I need YOUR help!

I am conducting academic research FOR you and ABOUT you. I have a particular interest in studying those things that make the transition to motherhood easier, or at the very least, better understood. The growing number of “Mommy Bloggers” has piqued my interest and I am researching the experience of blogging for mothers of young children. Your help would be greatly appreciated and go a long way toward increasing the knowledge of the ways in which blogging can be meaningful for people like mothers.

Please complete my survey and let me know about your blogging experience.

Please click HERE to learn more, or simply click the web button that you see below.

I know your time is valuable, thank you so much for participating.

Save Me

Posted by Lizzy from Hilarities Ensue.

Right smack dab in the middle of my world, of my second pregnancy, I'm hit by another round with my old friend/enemy. It's been a while. It's been nearly 9 years since I've been down this round and it really doesn't ever get any easier.

I've written and re-written this post in my head a thousand times. What's too much to share? Where is that line between keeping my private life private and Keeping It Real? In the end, here's where I'm at.

We're being crushed by debt. Every day the phone rings every 10 minutes, another bill collector trying to get paid. I have medical bills of past and present, I've had to ask our pediatrician to wait a week to deposit our co-pay and I've asked the same of our neighborhood pharmacist so Henry could antibiotics for a persistent ear infection. Suddenly, where we were just scraping by has amounted to an enormous financial weight, to the tune of $70,000. SEVENTY. THOUSAND. DOLLARS.

How is it that two educated people can't make ends meet? I've worked full time since I was 17-years-old. I've never had extra money, I've always been able to get by. Get the rent paid, pay the bills from time to time. We don't live extravagantly…we don't take vacations, I'm not getting jewelery, we drive a 2000 Chevy Prism/Clown Car, neither one of us has a gambling problem, we don't really live beyond our means. Sometimes we would use our credit cards to buy some stuff for our house, or once Henry came along we liked to buy him some things. So how is that we suddenly can't move forward with our lives as a family without someone asking for more money.

I was squeezed out of my job shortly after Henry's birth and, as you might remember, The Mistah lost his job teaching on Long Island in April of this year. After spending 6 years working for the city, The Mistah had taken the risk and had accepted an nontenured position teaching out on LI, the job didn't work out. In the year he taught out there, we paid $250/month for medical insurance (while working for the city, we paid nothing for our coverage); our insurance coverage was lousy, every little thing had at least a $500 deductible so we paid out nearly $6,000 in deductibles along; gas was insane with The Mistah driving 250 miles a week, with gas prices rising by the minute, this added up so quickly, even for our "fuel efficient" clown car.

I stay home with Henry, truly the toughest job I've ever had. At this point, if it were possible for me to find another full time job for the fall after Alice is born, I would have to be earning at least $70,000/year in salary to cover day care expenses for two children. In my career, I would be leaving the house before the kids were awake and coming home after they were asleep. Which isn't to say that there aren't people who do this and make it work, but then call me selfish, but it's not a life I think I can live with. I've worked in jobs where I slept for a few hours a night, under my desk, in order to make deadlines…and for pittance, as well. It's just not a life I'm willing to go back to. I think it goes without saying that there is something very, very wrong with a society that can't allow for a working family to make ends meet. There has to be a way that a mother can stay home and raise her children and be able to afford to buy her kid a banana when he wants one.

For the first time in my life, I'm having what I believe to be anxiety attacks–rapid heartbeat and trouble breathing. I'm feeling paranoid and judged and I don't often want to leave the house. In fact, not having any spending money has basically limited our social activities to our once-weekly Music Class, sponsored by Henry's great-grandparents. With all of our young friends turning two in the next 6 months, I'm declining invitations to birthday parties because I can't afford to give the children gifts. Two weeks ago, I paid my subway fare with change from the change bowl on our dresser.

And what about this baby growing in my belly? Are we doing some sort of disservice to her that we can't afford to have her? I feel completely disconnected from her and have had some uncomfortable thoughts…should she go to a family that can feed and clothe her? I know I can and will love her, but if I'm honest, I'll admit that I have times when I can't see the forest through the trees. I hear the judgements in my head, I hear the whispers. Don't worry, you don't have to flame me in the comments. There's nothing you can say to me that I haven't already said to myself.

I want what's best for my family and for myself. I want to love and protect my family, but right now I'm feeling like I can't get out of bed. I can't catch my breath, I can't surface. How can I do what's best for family when I so clearly have let them down? I'm so conflicted between What Should Be and What Is. How can I do what is best for my family when I can't really take care of my own self right now?

How did I get here? How do I get out?

Needing Strength: An Update

An update to the post 'Needing Strength; Needing Mom,' by Anonymous.

It was really helpful to write this post when my mom was diagnosed and I thought it might help to post an update. My mom passed away the day after Thanksgiving after a torturous 2 1/2 months of "treatment". She opted to try a clinical trial since she had also seen her brother die from pancreatic cancer and wanted to help others. I was so proud of her and of course it was her decision to make, but looking back I really think the drugs expedited her decline. I have so many regrets and such extreme sorrow, it's sometimes hard to keep breathing. I feel bereft and unmoored and yet all I can do is keep moving every day.

My brother and sister and families came in for Thanksgiving and were staying at my house and we were hoping that my mom was going to be able to visit (she was in a care facility to get some IV antibiotics for a blood infection). Thanksgiving morning she was taken to the ER because she had chest pains. My sister, brother and I spent the whole day with her there and she because increasingly disoriented. We didn't know if this was because of the pain medication she was being given, her dehydration or that she was really declining. Our hospice organization sent a nurse and that was the first time someone said that she might not make it through the night. I was in utter shock. Against my better judgement, I was convinced to go home and eat dinner with our spouses. After dinner, I was getting ready to go back down to the hospital to spend the night with my mom. I was in the bathroom on the first floor when I heard screaming and my nephew shouting that Dusty had hurt Lily. Dusty is my sister's dog and Lily is my two year old daughter. I raced out of the bathroom to find that Dusty had bitten my daughter in the face because she was playing with a bone and Lily tried to take it. We called an ambulance and took her to the nearest hospital (not the one my mom was in). She had 6 stitches (luckily the dog had not gotten any of her major facial features, but she had puncture wounds in her cheeks). To say I felt like a horrible mother is an understatement. Of course, I spent that night at home with my daughter and my sister stayed with my mom (the dog went to my mom's house-that's a whole separate story). The next morning, my sister called at 6am and told us that we should get down to the hospital.

My mom died before we got there. I never got to say goodbye. The only thing I am thankful for is that she never knew that her beloved granddaughter had been hurt. I am trying to get back to "normal" becaues I feel like that's what is expected of me, but I feel like the world is incredibly unsafe. Every time I look at my sweet girl's face, I am reminded of everything that happened. She is a resilient and wonderful girl and will likely heal completely, but I still can't believe this happened to her and that my mom is really gone. Thank you for this forum - I am having a hard time sharing these things and feelings with the "real world".

Why Has No-One Invented Sat-Nav* For Moms?

Posted by MummyMania.

After months of hint-dropping – and running empty on present ideas – against my better judgement, I bought my dearly beloved a Satnav* for Christmas. Unable to cycle to work anymore, he’d bought his own car and I thought at least I’ll be blissfully unaware of the new woman in his life. But a bit like Princess Diana said, there are now three people in this relationship. Not content to confine the maddening mumbling map to his own car, he brings it into mine whenever we travel en famille.

Her irritatingly banal BBC news voice enters the vacuum of our car, disallowing any real conversation and coming between us like a filling in a sandwich.

I wouldn’t mind if we genuinely needed directions. I wouldn’t even mind if I was a rubbish map reader. But we don’t. And I’m not. Still, every journey now is delayed for ten minutes while he studiously enters in the digits of our intended destination (which is only 2 miles away down a straight road…), and then we spend the next 40 minutes being dictated to by a disembodied fishwife telling us every .2 of a mile to turn left, turn right, go straight, go here, go there. Go to Hell I want to yell, but I try to accept this new marital relationship with some dignity, even while she is leading us on a merry dance round the most circuitous route known to man (and woman).

The first time we used it, it duly took us to Bridewell Lane. Unfortunately it was Bridewell Lane in a different town to the one we wanted. As I bore into him with that well-perfected, raised-eyebrow look of disgusted condescension, he muttered something about using proper postcodes and cheerily reset the damn machine to start the farce again.

Seriously… under what other possible circumstances would a man enjoy – nay, love – being dictated to by a stern humourless woman he doesn’t know??? Ok, let’s not go there.

So with conversation impossible, and the kids screaming in the back from being strapped into their carseats for an illegal amount of time while Bossyboots in the corner drove us all round the bend, and another, and another… I got to thinking. Why hasn’t someone invented a Satnav for mums? Let’s face it. When you first bring your babe home from hospital, who wouldn’t pay their life’s savings for a kindly voice in the corner telling you when to feed the baby, when to put the baby to sleep. Make a cup of tea. Sit down. Phone your mum to come over and do the ironing. When to pick up the baby. Dress her in warm clothes – no, not that silly, the pink one! Hold her silly, she’s crying. No, not that way – over your shoulder, she needs winding. Do you know nothing???

On second thoughts…. Maybe not.

*Satellite Navigation - like a GPS system, but with a British accent.

Dance In Puddles, While You Can

Posted by MummyMania.

Yesterday a close friend of my husband's died.

Just like that.

He was 39, funny, caring, outrageous, and kind. He leaves behind a shattered wife, and the two loves of his life - aged 3 and 18 months. Yesterday, in a moment of freak accident, as his snowboard careered off the edge of a mountain in brilliant sunshine and glorious surroundings, their young lives changed forever. His exuberance for life was only matched by his adoration of his girls - girls that will now grow up without him to hold their hands, to dance in puddles, to shout "Daddy, Daddy" when they find a ladybird in the garden.

I know his wife, his many many friends, and his family will make sure those beautiful girls grow up surrounded by the best memories of their dad they can offer. And despite my lack of religious belief, I know - because it can be no other way - that he will walk beside them every step of their young lives.

Last night my husband broke down as we went in to check on our own girls. so precious. So beautiful. So needing of us. So let's cherish them. Let all of us who have them, cherish them.

Lets make sure we hold their hands, dance in puddles and chase ladybirds in the garden. We must, not only because we can, but because we owe it to those who can't.

Cannonball Run (Not So Fun)

NEED BOOB HELP.

(tapping out SOS furiously.)