Mother Working...

Before I was married, I taught preschool full time. I used to cover the nap room shift on many afternoons and if all of the children were fast asleep, I'd walk over to the CD player and put one of the lullabies, "You Can Close Your Eyes," by James Taylor on repeat. That was one of my busiest years not only teaching, but also meeting the man who is now my husband, becoming engaged, and planning a wedding. Cozy afternoons watching a room full of sleeping preschoolers were just the space I needed to clear my head. I could very abstractly imagine what it might someday feel like to hold my own little bundle of joy and rock that cozy bundle to sleep with these words:

Well the sun is surely sinking down, but the moon is slowly rising.
So this old world must still be spinning round and I still love you.

So close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right.
I don't know no love songs and I can't sing the blues anymore.
But I can sing this song and you can sing this song when I'm gone.

It won't be long before another day, we gonna have a good time.
And no one's gonna take that time away. You can stay as long as you like.

So close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right.
I don't know no love songs and I can't sing the blues anymore.
But I can sing this song and you can sing this song when I'm gone.

Those days leading up to our wedding sometimes seemed to stretch on forever, I recall. I'd watch the clock, and the hands may as well have just stood still. Now, just over a year later that all seems like a whirlwind. Now I am teaching preschool part time and I am a full time wife and mother. The days now often feel like a whirlwind and I long for the hours, the minutes, or even just a moment to stretch on forever. What I didn't know when I dreamily imagined holding that cozy little bundle of joy was how heavy and exhausting that joy can feel by the day's end. I didn't realize then that even though my baby boy might be excited, playful and ready to fly like a helicopter around the room at 10:00PM, I would be struggling to stay awake while I nurse him once more before hopefully getting five hours or so of sleep myself. What I never imagined was that I could put in 110% of my energy, intention and desire into working and mothering and still desire to give so much more however impossible that scenario may be. 

The numbers just don't add up; the hours somehow always fall short. It is all a much more delicate dance than I had imagined back in those days of waiting for the hours to pass. Now my steps are heavier and my feet a little more worn for the ware. Still this new rhythm moves all around me and within me and I try to dance between it all with pateince and with grace. I feel wholeheartedly that being a "working mother" is the right choice for me, for my son and for our family as a whole. I'd prefer to call it a "mother working," though, as I am first and foremost a mommy. Yes, I feel confident. And I feel ambivalent. I am excited, fulfilled, exhilarated and I still feel all of the guilt and anxiety as any other mother working. Teaching, I believe, shaped me into a more sensitive Mommy. Motherhood now shapes me into a more compassionate teacher. At the end of the day, I like to think that my students and my son go to bed peacefully exhausted. I know I do! 

And every night as his heavy eyelids fight impending slumber and as we both seem to sleepily long for those final moments to last just one more hour,  I want so much to sing these words to my son. I've tried on occasion, but every time I do a lump in my throat seems to get the better end of my voice. So instead sometimes, on a rainy afternoon like this one, I hold my smiley, sleepy, chatty little infant in my arms, rock him gently back and forth and let James Taylor do the singing. (Thank you, YouTube!) My son is almost four months old now. He does not yet have separation anxiety. I am almost thirty; I do. My greatest dream for my son is the same dream I have had for every one of my students. This world is full of friendly faces. In times of uncertainty, I encourage my children--both borrowed and biological--to find the helpers. Everything we could ever possibly need we already have. It is within us and around us and all we need to do is find those friendly faces. My little boy is loved by many friendly faces and I feel blessed to see him look lovingly into his babysitter's eyes or smile when a friend picks him up and holds him. And I feel blessed to feel him peacefully drift off to sleep in my arms each night and find him awake and smiling from his bassinet in the morning--because even if I can't muster the words to tell him that he can stay as long as he needs and no one's going to take our time away, I believe in the deep of my heart that my son already knows this to be true. It won't be long before another day and we're going to have a good time...

The (Now) Hilarious Thing That Happened Right Before Rosh Hashanah

Picture it: it's a couple of hours before Rosh Hashanah. My husband and I are feeling ecstatic and quite proud of ourselves. Even with an infant, half a work day for each of us, and a three hour trip to our destination, we are running early enough to stop at the bank, pick up a few items at the local grocery store, and my husband is looking forward to even having time to stop by the mikvah before yuntiv. We are cool, calm, and collected as we unpack our now slightly cranky car-seat passenger and the copious items of luggage we hauled along. We greet our lovely hosts, and I carry S up to the guest room. My husband mans the baggage. As he prepares to step out again and make his way to the mikvah, he double checks that I'm all settled.

"I'm good to go," I say. "I just need you to bring up the suitcase."
"The suitcase?"
"The suitcase. The one you said I shouldn't carry downstairs myself that has all of my clothes and S's things inside."
"The suitcase..."

It's two hours before yuntiv and the aforementioned suitcase is three hours away in our home. It took me three hours over the course of two days just to pack it! (Ever tried packing for a three day yom tov/Shabbos while entertaining a 12 week old baby, preparing seven preschoolers for Rosh Hashanah and maintaining some semblance of order and sanity in your home?) I lost it, just a little. Actually, I cried. S looks most adorable in any and everything he wears and it wouldn't be too hard to get extra diapers and wipes and probably even borrow some clothing for him from some friends in the area, but I was still in my weekday clothes from teaching preschool. Complete with some paint stains, spit up and who knows what else? This is what I had with me to wear for yom tov: A rain coat, rubber boots covered in orange and yellow flowers, pearl earrings and a pearl necklace, and my sheitel. My husband felt terribly, though it truly is no one's fault--we both worked hard, we both tried our best, and we both forgot together. Now, being the master problem solver he is, he took care of arranging for me to borrow an entire wardrobe from a good friend in the neighborhood (even better friend now that I've shopped through her unmentionables) and for S to borrow a few changes of clothing from some other friends. Another very generous friend went out in the midst of his own preparations to buy diapers and wipes for our little guy. All three of us arrived fully dressed (aside from my husband's hat, which we also left behind) and only a little worn out to our dinner hosts in time to enjoy a festive Rosh Hashanah meal. We dipped our apples in the honey and welcomed in a sweet new year, and as we did, I reflected a bit on what I could possibly learn from this situation (aside from making a list and checking it twice!)...

Everything I need, I have and everything I have, I need. Baruch HaShem, we had everything we did need with us. My husband and my son were here with me: that was most important. Also, any medications and medical equipment had made the trip successfully. The rest was really just more about comfort and sometimes we need to feel a little uncomfortable in order to make a change or remember something important. So everything I needed, I had. But on the other side of that is the lesson to be learned: everything we have, we need. This was a challenging situation and HaShem provided this challenging situation to me. If that's the case, then for sure it was meant to happen.

You can't take it with you; travel light! We're meant to enter Rosh Hashanah fresh and anew. This is when we take the time to reflect on the previous year and decide what's worth being carried forward and what should be left behind. We have those more difficult conversations with one another and ask for mechilla (forgiveness) when we've done someone wrong. We have those more difficult conversations with G-d and ask for His mercy in the areas in which we struggle spiritually. We have those even more difficult conversations with ourselves because at the end of the day, the one person who can be the quickest to anger and slowest to forgive is me. And we're meant to let go. To spend a set time in teshuva and self-reflection, but then to shrug it off, shake off the dust, and make a plan. This is not the time of year to be weighed down by old baggage; it's the time to travel light and move ahead.

The King is in the Field. It is said in the month of Elul preceding Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that HaShem is most accessible. Throughout the year, He is, of course available, but at this time of year, He leaves His holy palace to reside with us in our mundane environment. He's ready to talk and ready to listen. We just need to be willing to start that conversation. Just as resolving a crisis of luggage left behind requires us to be humble and ask for help, so too are we called upon in the month of Tishrei to be humble and ask for help from HaShem. He is ever so willing to answer our call, we just have to be willing to dial the number.

And so with the excitement and drama of Rosh Hashanah behind us and the sweetness of that honey still fresh on my tongue, we are hours away from entering one of the holiest days of the year: Yom Kippur. While the haunting melodies of Kol Nidrei give forth a sense of somberness and severity, this is truly one of the most joyous yom tovim of the Jewish year. This is where we celebrate our deep connection to G-d and our true commitment to Torah values and mitzvot. It's the wedding anniversary, so to speak, of the Jewish people's marriage to HaShem. No longer are we weighed down by the struggles behind us. Nor should we feel burdened by the work that lies ahead. Tonight and tomorrow as we pour our hearts and souls into tefillah (prayer) and teshuva (repentance), we release the disappointments that kept us from moving forward and the expectations that hold us back. May this be a year of blessings, peace, and prosperity for all and may it also be the year of redemption. Wishing all a meaningful Yom Kippur and an easy fast. G'mar chasima tovah!

The Day I Broke Up With My Lactation Consultant

I just went back to work two days ago and I think I broke up with my lactation consultant. More accurately, I think I got dumped over pumping. I just joined the elite and ever growing group of mommies who turned to their lactation support for, well, support, and felt judged, bullied, insulted, and overall, unsupported. And it totally feels just like a high school break-up, complete with tearful bouts of remembering the good times, the hurt of words that were exchanged in the end, that empty feeling of imagining life without her--only now I have a husband who is sitting up with me in the middle of that first emotional night and encouraging me to remember the good times and focus on the ways in which our relationship was so positive, rather than the ugly ending. Ok, not such a perfect analogy after all! Nonetheless, I find such great comfort in repeating the same mantra today that I so often repeated after those turbulent teenage unrequited love stories: it hurts a lot right now, but that pain will soften over time and it won't hurt forever.

The truth of the matter is that my husband is right. I should focus on the good times. After I gave birth to my son, I felt hugely empowered and supported by this lactation consultant. I really even put her on a pedestal (which always leaves such vast room to fall)--stating excitedly to anyone who would listen that the greatest benefit of laboring and delivering at the hospital I did was that you came home not only with your baby but with access to this amazing lactation consultant for life. The issue that came up is not entirely so important--everyone is human, lactation consultants included. When you are really great at something, it can be hard to imagine anyone else being able to do your job and threatening to believe that someone else is. Inadvertently I may have caused this person to feel that I was double dipping and crossing her authority when from my perspective I, like so many new mothers am just trying to utilize the resources I do have and do what is best for my child. I am not double dipping, I am proverbially just dipping the other end to maximize use of both my chip and my dip. And my chip could have many ends, you know, chips come in all shapes and sizes. This adorable chubby little baby on my lap did not come with an owner's manual. The one key phrase I took such comfort in hearing from my former lactation specialist was that there were a million right ways to feed and care for a baby; the most important thing was that he is loved and he had no shortage of that.

Knowing that there are a million right ways to care for, raise and parent my son is both empowering and intimidating. In that blank canvas kind of way. And when you hear that it takes a village to raise a child, you just want to utilize that whole village to the best of your ability. In the weeks preceding my return to work I had, thank G-d, major success with breastfeeding and also major struggles with pumping enough to supply my son with bottles when I would return to work. I brought up the issue with my lactation consultant and sought the advice and experience of friends. I was assured by the lactation consultant that things would be ok and it would get better, even provided with some suggestions. Some of them were helpful, others not as much. I took comfort in her telling me that although I feared "the worst"--not being able to breastfeed my son anymore--I was miles away from that point. There were a million steps between here and there and we would cross them as they came up. Friends and other mothers offered suggestions of things that worked for them and empathy for the challenge of the situation. Pumping with a newborn baby in the house who wants you right then no matter when right then is, is very hard. When I met with my son's new pediatrician where we moved, I was actually relieved when he and his nurse provided me with information on how to supplement with formula in these first weeks until I could build up a supply. It felt good to know that my situation was a common one and that this solution was not necessarily permanent but was perfectly safe and acceptable.

Now I did not need to worry about my son starving while I was at work and could focus on the multitude of other worries a working mom has when making this transition. The ambivalence is not about whether I want to work or not--I am comfortably settled in my desire to return to teaching part time while being able to devote my afternoons and evenings to my baby boy. I feel supported in my workplace, supported in my family and supported in my community. I don't know how many mothers can say that--whether they are working-out-of-the-house moms or working-at-home moms. My husband and I even sat down with a wonderfully supportive postpartum doula to help iron out and air some of those other myriad worries. I walked to work on my first day with a genuine smile and feeling of confidence. My son was in good hands while I was gone--hands that are entirely focused on caring for him in that time and not also reaching high and low to complete household chores and other tasks. Returning home at the end of the day was a joyous reunion and a relief. Everything really was OK. I just needed to navigate my way through pumping while at work and when it came to those issues, my former lactation support specialist was always the person I called. So it caught me off guard when in talking she got stuck on the fact that I had spoken to my pediatrician about supplementing with formula and also to my postpartum doula about how to arrange a space and environment to pump at work. She seemed uneasy with my decision to use formula at this point (though I'm not sure what other choice I had) and expressed that she was used to working with the pediatricians where we used to live who "deferred to her unless what she said didn't work." She said as nicely as I think she could that having too many people help me would be "confusing" and that when it came to pumping the only advice she could give me was to "just do it."

The feelings of judgment and the blow to my confidence are not really external factors; I know they are just a heightened awareness of my own feelings of ambivalence and insecurity. The sadness that followed isn't really about losing her support; how supportive is it really to have to nurture someone's feelings of authority while trying to nurture your baby? They are also just displaced emotions and guilt about leaving my boy and actually feeling good about it. But that is where the most important point in this whole experience rises so clearly to the surface. It does take a village to raise a child and thank G-d, we have one. Both in our home and family, in our neighborhood, in our community and extended family and beyond. We have a village standing on the front-lines ready to wage battle when necessary, ready to celebrate victory when they can and ready to console and empathize when that is needed, too. The amount of support and love that my son has in his six short weeks of life is immeasurable. We are blessed beyond comparison. And if my abrasive desire to quell my wounded ego leads me to say that this village is also lucky to have rid itself of one idiot, then be it. I will carry with me the pearls of wisdom that were so helpful when I needed them: there are a million right ways to care for my baby and the most important thing is that he is loved. He has no shortage of that!