motherhood...

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

I liked being a mother...I liked everything about it. I liked feeding my daughter, she took a bottle because my milk glands did not produce enough for her. (Seems they had given me some kind of pills with my son that told my body to stop producing milk seeing as I was not going to be nursing him, and those pills made my milk glands shrink). I loved rocking with her and dressing her...heck, I didn't even mind the dirty diapers. She was a really good baby...she slept through the night upon coming home, she ate well,and had a sweet temperment....must of been all that cinnamon toast!

Some of my friends had babies and we would get together for coffee as the children got a little older and could play together. We were living the suburban life and life was good! But it never failed in the month of November I would sink into a deep depression. I went about my life as normal as possible but I would cry at the drop of a pin...I couldn't do or say anything right. My Doctor suggested anti depressants, but I wasn't sure about taking them. What did help was my Doctor, who delivered my daughter, called me up one day and asked if I could help him out. He was working with Catholic Charities and he had a few teenage girls who were pregnant and would I mind talking to them. Remember I had to fill out those health papers and he know about my pregnancy with my son and the adoption. Every time they would come to the office I would go in and talk with them...I would listen to their fears, and doubts about giving up their baby. I think I was the only person who told them that they had a choice...that the decision of adoption was final...and it would stay with them for the rest of their lives. That it wasn't easy, but that they did need to do what they thought was the best thing for the baby and them self. I think that perhaps I was the one person that they could count on to tell them the truth. I truly wished someone had talked to me about the way I might feel afterwards, how I should have counseling to help me deal with the raw emotions. Out of the 5 girls I counseled, one of them decided against adoption and choose to keep her baby. I was very proud of her, and secretly envious of her too.

I am not sure that I was a very good wife. I spent so much time wrapped up in my daughter that I barely had time to dolt on a husband. My husband was working at a local  camera factory. He was working trick work which meant that some weeks he worked days, some weeks he worked evenings, and some weeks he worked nights. This was hard on me because how do you keep a baby quiet during the day while someone sleeps. I did not know how to drive so getting places meant that I needed to take a bus or depend on someone to take me. That also was hard on me. I am not sure what happened but I started pulling away from him slowly pulling away. I became pregnant in 1974, it wasn't a good time in my marriage for this. My husband was discontent with his job, we were discontent with marriage, and we had very little communication skills. I remember a lot of yelling, but once we realized that we were having another child we tried to fix things, we tried to make them better. We went though the motions of being married...of being a family...of being happy. We really weren't. My husband started coming home late, working over time he would tell me, and yet the paycheck did not change. I won't go into detail here, as that is a different story, but we ended up separating. I was 4 months pregnant and we were just shy of our 3rd anniversary.

I was separated, my husband had quit the job he hated so much,  I had a 1 1/2 year old to take care of and no means of income. I did what I had to do and I went on welfare, and I got food stamps and medical coverage through the state of New York. I had a roof over my head and food on the table. 

I had a difficult pregnancy, I fell down a flight of stairs, I was extremely emotional, I wasn't eating properly. Nothing seemed to be going well, especially once again during the month of November. Now I really was questioning myself, how was I going to take care of two babies and myself? I continued on one day at a time, and prepared for the new addition. In February of 1975, my son was born. It was a hard delivery, he wanted to turn back around and stay inside the womb! So they had to use forceps to turn him around. He had a coned shaped head from the forcepts, which they assured me would go away, he had scrapes and bruises from scraping against my pelvic bone, he looked like a little old man. But he was my boy...and to me he was perfect. I loved him immediately and I just knew somehow everything was going to be fine.

Because after all I was a mother...and motherhood was something I was good at.