My day

We make plans to have friends and their kids over this Saturday for a late brunch, and see what other families might want to go to Sunday brunch early for Mothers' Day. It is Mothers' Day weekend and I ask M for two things: (1) flowers (because I like them a lot), and to let me sleep in Saturday morning. Sleeping in mostly means that when Baby A wakes up, he takes her and maybe the dog out. Because if they stay here they will probably come find me, or at least the dog will need a morning pee walk. Basically it is asking him to take both the baby and the dog for an hour.

I sleep the night before with baby A, but she wakes some 5 times (maybe it is getting too warm at night for the heater?) looking for her binky. So when morning comes and M has had a decent night's sleep, he grabs the baby, and I head to our bedroom. The three of them take off towards town, in search of flowers, and I fall blissfully back into bed.

Such a treat.

Mothering is so different than I expected, but I feel pretty good at it. I am learning to roll with the punches, I don't freak out anymore when baby A acts out more at home than school (after all, she also "paints" the crib sheets with her poo at school and not at home), I take her tantrums in stride. I trust that I know what I'm doing when she's getting cranky as I insist on her trying to nap. I try to be her solid rock when her emotions and temper start to storm. The calm to her tempest. And most times, I succeed. We laugh together, I love hearing her voice and watching her eat things she really likes.

And then I realized, just as our friends arrive for brunch, that this time last year was hard. Really hard. It is at the hospital in the countryside that I met this friend coming over today. A year ago we were both in a treatment program for mothers and families having a tough time. Who were at the end of their rope.

Which means I've reached another milestone that takes me a step further away from the painful beginning - a year since the hospital stay, and almost a year since she (and then we) started sleeping better. Since we could start not caring what the problem was those first many months of her life, because we were no longer so dangerously close to falling apart. And that all the milestones now, with the weather coming back around to each season to remind my body and brain of that last year, will be improvement milestones. The coming of Mothers' Day has not made me nervous or scared, like the coming of baby A's first birthday did.

I've learned, also, to give other mothers in other situations more leeway for ways in which they parent differently than I do. Single moms, full time work-at-home moms, and full time back-to-work moms. We love our kids, and do our best. I do my best.

And I'm a mom. Whose little girl doesn't want to fall back asleep with when she wakes in the night, or on a plane, but who will run in to greet and wake her the next morning. I let her stand in her stroller, even after I flipped it running across a street median and fell on top of it (granted, I go slowly now). I let her have her binky to calm down. And the decisions I make are ok. As am I.

I'm a good mom. And I love my baby.