Spoonful of Sugar

Very soon I'll be heading back to work and we've hired our nanny to come to the apartment and care for Sophie. I never really saw myself as a nanny person. Nannies are for Prada wearing devils and British bankers and other book deal subjects. I figured I might be a daycare person, but there aren't really any quality daycares in our neighborhood who take children Sophie's age, so nanny it is. The good news is that I really like her.

I've already returned to work, sort of. A few meetings, a day teaching upstate. Sharon (Tutu) has been caring for her and I brought the whole family to the Catskills when I taught. Sophie is a pretty excellent traveler at this age. Around the neighborhood she still has moments out when she seems to want to return to the apartment tout suite. When traveling she tolerates restaurants and cars and airplanes almost indefinitely. At least, as I said, for now.

I've met a group of young mothers in the neighborhood and we get together once a week, although my attendance will wane when I really return to working mode in a few weeks. It's so nice to have some people to bounce ideas off of and share possible guilts with. There was this one incident a few weeks ago when Sophie was having one of those "APARTMENT NOW!" moments and I was feeling very BAD MOMMY. Feeling BAD MOMMY still remains as one of the biggest traps of early motherhood, compounded by the mommy wars which still sometimes exist despite our best efforts.

It's true, there are some actual bad mothers out there, I just don't know any. For the most part we all want the best for our children. At this point the level of competition on whose baby is the most developed is pretty ridiculous, if almost inevitable. And sometimes when she's fussy, even a well meaning comment on what might be ailing Sophie sends me into BAD MOMMY mode. BAD MOMMY mode is basically the insane fleeting despair that my baby is the only baby that cries, ever, and it's all my fault. It's a brief embarrassment, as if I'd farted loudly in a room full of proper lactose tolerant people. Like I said, sometimes even a well meaning comment can rile me, but a comment coupled with competitiveness is almost an unforgivable curse. For weeks I told anyone who would listen about the "good baby" that Sophie scared with her crying in public. Mostly I think I was angry with myself for falling for it.

Then I was overly sensitive. A few weeks ago I mentioned as I was leaving that I was getting a coffee, and then answered the (what I perceived as uncomfortable) silence with the announcement that "Yes, I was one of those mothers who drinks coffee." Not that there is anything really wrong with drinking coffee, but in our neighborhood non-organic food and plastic bottles are akin to feeding your baby mercury laced rat poison so who knows where coffee ranks.

Anyway, my point is that now I've found my people I think, the moms who don't make me feel bad while still being excellent mothers. Last week we all admitted that we're probably doing everything all wrong, letting our kids sleep too much or whenever they want or fall asleep on the breast, or creating routines that we wouldn't be able to replicate forever, or eschewing routines all together. Maybe I should get a book I said, and another mom said, don't get that book it will only make you feel guilty, and another said, I found that book helpful but I discarded the information I didn't like.

What I'm trying to say is I'm finding my village.

And finally, I think I'm a pretty good mom. I guess at what is bothering my daughter and (for now) I think I'm right almost every time. And right now, while she's this age, I can almost always fix it. That won't be true forever. In fact, it may not be true for very long at all.