Seasons

They say a woman goes through seasons in her life. Any woman will know that even within a month, a woman can do a Jekyll and Hyde based on the amount of hormones swirling round her body. And now, as a mother, I have discovered a somewhat Melbourne-sque quality of being able to cover all seasons in a day. But here, the seasons I mean here have to do with my feelings towards the kids. And even babies, especially my girl baby has the ability to be both in the best and worst of moods in the same day.

For me, it pretty much is a reflection of how they feel too. In the morning, when they're all cheery, all is good. Baby J laughs and chatters, Evan grins like a loon and cackles at every grin you throw in his direction. And my heart soars. If only they could stay that way the whole day. But then again, that's akin to asking for that first flush of warm fuzzy romance feeling to stay for the rest of your life. Through the day, if I'm lucky, they sleep when they have to and feed when they have to. And I look at them and feel warm and fuzzy and happy to be a mother.

Unfortunately, today was not to be such a day. We took Evan out because we were short of minders to help watch the kids. And since Baby J spent the whole afternoon with us two days ago, albeit in a hospital waiting room, we took him today. He was good and just chilled in the sling and then in the car but the moment we got home, he refused to be put down. So the boy became sticky and refused to eat, refused to sleep and refused everything, only dozing for seconds before popping his bright eyes open again.

If we only had him spread out between the 2 or 3 of us, it wouldn't be an issue. But Evan has a big sister, who is the quintessential girl, temperamentally unpredictable but charming at the same time. Today however, she chose to be just temperamental, screaming her little lungs out in long drawn screams that are often interspersed by long silences where she's just drawing more breath to let loose an even louder one. Times like that, when calming her down is as futile as draining the ocean with a spoon, drains me of every positive feeling I have towards motherhood. She is inconsolable and I become more desperate to soothe her. I try hard not to let her see how exasperated or desperate I'm getting and I try to be patient, afterall, there isn't much point losing one's temper at someone who is irrational and cannot be reasoned with. Eventually when our very effective helper comes round to relieve me because she feels so sorry that Baby J has spent the last half to full hour screaming, I feel like a total failure. That I cannot even calm down my own daughter and that a stranger that I employed does the job better than I do.

That's when I break down, beat my chest in despair and bemoan my inability to be a mother. If you looked at me in the morning and you looked at me after I have miserably failed to calm my own child down, I think the two me-s are unrecognizable. The confident, "I can take on the world" mother and the " I don't deserve to be a mother, someone call child services and rescue these children" mother. The thing is like Tym reminded me, it's not like school where the harder you work and the harder you try, the more likely you are to succeed and that's where I am. Because I find it so difficult to calm her down or put her to sleep, I try even harder. I stay home in the evenings, I have dinner at 9 pm because that's when all is finally quiet on the front, I sing and dance with her, I rock her and I do everything in my power including nurse her with sore nipples just to try to break through and be on her good side. Once in a while I succeed and my day, night, everything is made, I am in a good mood and I could skip through meadows. Unfortunately, most evenings end in despair, with me surrendering her to my helper. And what kicks me in the gut even more is that, I've spent two hours trying to soothe her or get her to sleep instead of dozing off and wake up screaming to no avail and the minute I hand her over, she keeps quiet and falls asleep on her shoulder.

Some will tell me and play deep into my already inflated guilt complex that it's because I don't spend enough time with her and this is my punishment. And I, stupidly enough, will believe every single word of it because it feeds into my "bad mother" self-flagellating insecurity. But realistically, I spend every moment I am at home either with them or doing things for them. I don't know what more I can do. I guess I could stay home more but I also know my limits before I hit the wall with severe cabin fever and start resenting the kids. So, this is where I am. Stuck.

I make it sound like Evan is a whole lot easier to handle. If I thought about it carefully, I don't think so. Handling Evan comes with its own challenges. The only difference is Evan is generous with his smiles and at the end of the day, our responses are based on very primal, basic conditioning. Smile at me and I will go to the ends of the world. I read somewhere, that's why babies are made cute. It's their means of survival. Anyway, that's Evan. No matter how difficult he can get and trust me, he can be quite a handful to handle, it doesn't feel so draining because he responds. He lets you know he loves what you do. Baby J makes us work a lot harder and I'm never certain that she loves me. I moaned to Packrat about being very low on her packing order and that hurt. He assures me that it's impossible because she's only a baby, is pre-verbal and has no sense of spite.

In my darkest moments, I'm not sure. I'm racked with insecurity that I don't know how to parent my own daughter and how she will not love me and how this might be the beginning of a difficult mother-daughter relationship. And all it takes is for her to smile and to chatter to me or to fall asleep nuzzling into my chest for all these insecurities to melt away. Similarly, it just takes a day like today to cause all the insecurities to come flooding back ten fold, making me doubt myself and driving myself crazy.

While listening to her cry and feeling so helpless in the midst of her screams, it dawned on me why people end up accidentally killing their kids. When you're at wits end and the husband is out somewhere, it's very easy to employ any means to stop the kid's crying. No, I would never do that because my coping mechanism is to try and work it out, keep it all inside and then burst into tears after that. No doubt that has got repercussions too- stress induced headaches, swollen eyes, severe sleepiness- as if I'm not sleepy enough. But thankfully, these side effects only affect me and leave the children unharmed.

But yes, within a day, I went from " I miss you and I want to spend more time with you" to " my daughter hates me, I am a complete loser and faliure, I do not deserve to be a mother". Tomorrow is a brand new day and who knows what it'll bring. By the way, to who ever who told me, that after they hit a certain age, they stop being difficult because everything around them becomes more fun...You obviously have not met my daughter.