Gold Stars

So. Nearly a year since my last post. Hrm. Probably best not to trawl through what’s happened since then. Better to let it all come out in the wash, a bit like a spaghetti bolognaise stain on a baby’s white t-shirt… slowly and painfully. But I'm back. At least until Baby Girl wakes up. She's cute (a definite evolutionary advantage), but you can't blog with an awake baby. That would require six arms. For some reason our species has evolved without six arms. I'm surprised by this. But, I digress. A definite risk when you're used to thinking about 16 things at the same time... and none of them very clearly...

We recently inherited these scales from my husband's granny. I've been looking at them a lot and thinking about measurement. Thoughts usually punctuated by pauses to chatter to Baby Girl, shouting because she's getting bored of banging a wooden spoon on her highchair table, or to placate Boy, furiously crying because I put the wrong filling in his sandwich. I've mainly been thinking about how we measure our value, our worth. Things I don't measure so often now. They've been replaced by the measurement of lentils, butter, flour and other daily fodder for my household. I think about how I used to weigh them... I used my achievements to mark degrees of value, degrees of worth. Not so easily done these days.

From an early age, I was driven to achieve. Apparently I came home crying on the first day of school, bitterly disappointed that I hadn't yet learned to read and write. I wanted to be the best in the class, whatever the subject. I measured my own value in the red inky comments at the bottom of my latest short story, in the score on the most recent spelling test, the praise received for my painting. My mum tried to discourage this over-achieving; telling me she'd be proud of me even if I was working in a fast-food restaurant or sweeping the streets, so long as I was happy. I pressed on regardless.

And so it was that I was plunged (or rather, plunged myself) straight from final year of medical school into motherhood. I worked hard despite growing Boy Bump, and the odd trip here and there to the Early Pregnancy Unit with one complication or another. It all went well and I achieved a pass with honours. Even pregnancy was an exercise in achievement; conceiving at the earliest possible opportunity meant that my last ever day at medical school was the same day Boy Bump turned 37 weeks; full term. I had to achieve perfect growth (ideally 25th-50th centile), delivery (homebirth, no pain relief) and timing of my baby (after 37 weeks, no later than 39 weeks). To fail to attain these self-set goals wasn't worth thinking about. There was no plan B. So you can imagine the slight ripples sent through my world when afore-mentioned homebirth turned out to be an entirely terrifying experience ending in blue-light transfer to hospital.

And then there is child-rearing. Nine months into maternity leave, over a year since I last worked and I find myself frustrated, disgruntled with my daily role. How does a person who measures their own value in concrete achievements feel satisfied with motherhood? Because motherhood is not a land where achievement is measured in test scores, and encouraging feedback is not commonplace here. There are rarely gold stars at the end of the day. Not for me anyway. Sometimes Boy gets gold stars if he manages to get himself dressed, go an entire day without shouting at me and remembers his manners at mealtimes. And thus the cycle of need for positive feedback is perpetuated... Hm. Worth thinking about that, I guess. Anyway. If you are a stay-at-home-parent you will know what it is like to expend effort until your very bones ache, but yet have very little to show for it. There are few other people who truly understand this. To spend your entire day from before sunrise til long after sunset 'doing', but yet have very little to say when asked, "So, what have you been up to today?" by an innocent party. When some days your only achievement is that you and the two small people you are charged with are still alive at the end of the day, and it's taken blood, sweat and tears to get to that point... Where is your identity as an 'achiever' then? 

So, how to deal with this? If you're me, you might make ridiculous plans to achieve ridiculous things whilst continuing in the role of full-time mum. These are usually concocted after one too many cups of caffeine. You know, when your sleep-deprived haze lifts ever-so-slightly and you feeling like you're flying? In that state I do things like borrow Arabic linguaphone cds to listen to whilst breastfeeding a newborn, signing up for professional exams that I don't need to take until years into the future so that I can do practice questions on my iPhone whilst I stir some kind of stew for dinner... Anything to make me feel like I am managing something I can look back on as a tangible achievement. Later, these high-flying paper-aeroplane ideas plummet to earth, crashing and burning ungraciously.

Why isn't the act of mothering satisfying in itself? It must be for some women, but I haven't found that to be true for myself. This feels like a terrible admission. It is certainly not that I don't love and enjoy spending time with my children. Their smiles, giggles, spontaneous cuddles, funny sayings and doings are precious gold in the silt of the river I pan daily. I think the answer lies out there, in wider society. The role of the mother has consistently been undervalued, throughout history and throughout the world. As girls we are brought up to believe that we can do anything we want, that we have equal opportunities with men to achieve our goals and dreams, but it's a rare girl who aspires to be a mother over all else. We need to ask ourselves why this is. 

ps The trite Christian answer to my problem would be that I need to find my self-worth in God, that my value to Him is not measured by my achievement. That His grace is enough regardless of what I do or do not do. I know this. I'm working on believing it.