Working motherhood...

Mom and stepdad were over tonight, a rare occurrence since they live several hours from us. They gave up a day of their spring break to come sit with Cap'n while I worked and Angel went to go tour this university that he's going to be doing his Ph.D work at in the fall. Mind, he'll be gone all night and part of tomorrow, which makes me a single working parent of 2 for the second 2-day stretch in the last week. That's right; I'm trying to juggle Cap'n and Cups and my job and feed us all and still have a house left when Angel gets home tomorrow. So far we are all fed and the kids are bathed and I have not heard a peep in the last 5 minutes from the Eye in the Sky in Cups's room so maybe the repeated instructions about how she is not going to get any toys or books back if she continues to jump on the bed are having an effect. I know she was very angry about no stuffed animal to sleep with.

Dinner was lasagna that we made and froze in the pre-baby blitz of preparation, along with some asparagus that l saved my mother from steaming and ruined a cookie sheet broiling instead, along with peas for Cap'n, whom we are trying to start on foods now that he is 5 months old and interested in it. As I was Ninja-ing the peas from a previous night's supper (peas, a little water, blend until no longer round) I started thinking about what I am doing with the baby and how I'm not sure what demographic I fit into any more.

I plan on breastfeeding this baby as long as possible, but I am acutely aware of the crushing emotional stress that made me give up with Cups at 6 months. We have planned better this time. I don't buy baby food; we make our own. We use cloth diapers most of the time but keep disposables for short trips or where others are caring for the baby. He'll have his first excursion to daycare tomorrow since I have nowhere else to send him but mostly he stays at home. With his dad.

But the kind of blogs that cater to people who make their own baby food and read food labels and wash cloth diapers and breastfeed their babies are mostly written by stay-at-home moms. And most of them seem furthermore to be written by moms who are ecstatically content to spend their time staying at home. They are, occasionally, smug in their ecstasy even. And I find it hard to take.

I like working. I love being a doctor. I love running out in the middle of the night to deliver a baby and I we gelting shy smiles from kids in the clinic and I love what I do. It is exciting and fulfilling and hopeful and tragic and it is part of who I am, this being a doctor. But that means that Cups goes to daycare and Cap'n will too; that some days I get up at the crack of dawn and come home after dark. It means that I have made sacrifices, and so have my family. And I am not a stay-at-home mom and I don't intend to become one - so where are the websites for me? Where are the tips on how to chart over a nursing baby; how to organize so when I come home on my afternoon off with two kids, one Tae Kwan Do class ending at 4:30 and Angel not home until 5:30 before leaving for his class at 7, I can cook dinner and play with Cups and feed Cap'n in 90 minutes, including time to shop for whatever I didn't know we didn't have?

Where is the blog that tells me that a Bamboo pen tablet wasn't a frivolous waste of money but a way to write this blog entry one-handed instead of the laborious hunt-and-peck one-handed typing I had been doing?  Why is it always that I can work or I can be a real mommy? Who made that rule? Who says that I can't know my beautiful, creative, eclectic daughter and work a full day in the office?

She knows her mommy is a doctor and she's okay with that. She knows where the snacks are on the OB floor and she carries charts to the nurses' station and she is a part of my life every single day. And I hope Cap'n, who has finally fallen asleep, will be the same way. This is who I am. I want my children to know that mommies can work and daddies can do laundry and that both of us carry them with us, even when they're not right there with us. I want them to be free.