Martyrdom and Motherhood

It took having a child for me to realize that mothers are also people. Sounds silly, I know. My own relationship with my mother was hampered by my expectations of what and who a mother is, or at least what I perceived they should be. I’m not sure what led me to have those expectations. I’m not even sure I exactly remember what they were. I’m certainly not the only one. I think children, despite their age, always have a hard time seeing their mothers, and possibly their fathers, (but mostly their mothers,) as thinking, feeling independent beings with needs and desires outside of their commitment to serve the children. Despite what children, young and old think, your mommas are in fact, people just like you.

But some of us, me specifically since I’m writing this, have a hard time accepting that once we become mothers, we still get to be people. Maybe it is by design that we put aside our selfish ambitions in order to produce the fittest offspring for insurance that the species might flourish. And it does indeed seem, at least to me, that those mothers, who are the best mothers, are the martyrs. They are the women who put their children first and foremost at almost every single moment of every single day.  And if they don’t, the cruelest punishment known to mothers awaits for those women who buy into the martyrdom and motherhood but fail to abide by it, mommy guilt. For me, mommy guilt started before I left the hospital when my little was born.

One of the strangest feelings I had after giving birth was the confusion that came from the lack of immediate transformation into super mom. I was still me, with the same flaws, the same habits, the same issues, the same wants. It sounds stupid to have expected, well something, anything different from what I was before. It was, of course, stupid, but I did end up with the mommy guilt. Now 2 ½ years later, I still have it. If I go somewhere without my kiddo on the weekend, I count the hours I’m gone and feel just rotten about it. After all, since I’m working we don’t get to spend much time together during the week. So I owe it to him to spend every waking moment I’m not at work nurturing him and giving him the absolute best of me, right? And it isn’t enough to just be with him, we have to be doing an enriching activity that will make him more able to achieve his potential. Once he has been bathed, read to, sung to, and snuggled sufficiently for optimal future success, I have a few hours to clean the house, exercise, hang with the hubby and pups, and have personal time. As you can imagine, I’m lucky if even one of those things gets done. Then there is more guilt that my kid is growing up in a messy house or some other personal failure I deal with. While my son seems happy, well adjusted and all around awesome, I’m left wondering if I’m doing things the right way. And many times I feel very lost and I simply can’t figure out what my problem is so I conclude that I’m failing everywhere.

Do martyrdom and motherhood necessarily go hand in hand? Is sacrificing a great deal critical to successfully rearing a great kid or great kids? I recently watching a program which stated that human babies are by far the most helpless of all infant species and that evolution made up for that by providing both a mother and a father that help raise the human infant (in many cases). Well, I don’t see dads killing themselves mentally every time they ignore the kiddo to watch football. But it is obvious that their presence still contributes significantly to their kid’s successes. Of course, not all moms get mommy guilt or feel they must spend every waking moment surrendering what makes them who they are in order to make their children the best kids possible. But it seems like lots of really good moms do. I want more than anything to be a really good mom. I still want to feel okay about going shopping, or reading, or writing, or working. I still want to be able to consider my own happiness and feel okay to pursue something that might help with that sense of being lost without feeling like the slightest little change will ruin my son. For now, I’ll keep playing the martyr because it is my role, I’m used to it, and the bottom line is that our kids are always worth every benefit we can give to them.