Posts Tagged ‘motherhood’

My mom, wearing a fab knit hat despite the sweltering heat, came to visit yesterday. It was a present from her friend’s mom in the U.S. she said. My mom is looking good despite the absence of hair, or the presence of little ones sprouting all over her bald head, and her hat looked good on her. As I was preparing Lia for her afternoon walk, putting her shoes on and trying to tie her hair so that it doesn’t get into her eyes, my mom took out the feathered flower from her hat and clipped it onto my daughter’s hair. My daughter did not take it off.

I put her on the the pink and blue tricycle (that can be converted into a bicycle for when she is older) that she made us buy for her last Saturday in Megamall. A trike she loves so much that a few days ago, she insisted on taking her bath while she sat on it. A trike she loves so much but does not mind sharing with our dog Ewok as long as she gets to push it, just the way her Mama pushes it when she is the one sitting on it.

Yesterday, I decided it was fun if Lia and Ewok both sat on the chair – and they both loved it! I ran inside to get the Canon camera, as mine is still at the service center, but found that Ryan had brought it with him to work.  I got my mom’s digicam instead and took photos with it until it ran out of batteries after three shots.

The following photos were instead taken with my Nokia 5630.  The nice photos with Lia and Ewok both sitting on the tricycle are in my mom’s digicam.

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The wind blew the feathers in her hair and she just had to wonder…
what is out there in the world yonder?

A look of love was in her eyes
Enough to melt her mother’s heart..

I love you and days like this, it seemed to say
And her mother thought, “Baby, I hope you will always look at me that way.”

Ahh, the days pass us by in the blink of an eye…

And we all try our best to hold on to pictures and memories
For in the end, we will have nothing else but stories..

I sat on my chair, with myself and the dog, rested my head on the top of the back support, only to look up at a graying blue sky and one lonely, shining bright early evening star; and I think to myself, you are my one shining bright star, even more made lovelier in the wet pools of my eyes.

This is not supposed to be that hard. I am supposed to enjoy this time for myself yet here I am wallowing in my loneliness, missing you like I have never missed you before. I realize that for the past two years, there was nothing else in my life but you. You for whom I quit my job, my studies, my friends and almost everything else to have. You for whom I have basically lived my life for. You, the one lovely, the brightest ever, star to have graced my life.

I sat there and hit my head against the wall. I’m supposed to be doing things I cannot do when you are around. I’m not supposed to be sitting here, doing nothing and just wallowing in my longing for you. I am supposed to do some thing, many things.

So I gathered your laundry and prepared to wash them, breathing in the smell of you. I gathered the dishes in the sink to wash, your bright pink plate, spoon and fork making a plastic sound against the china and the glasses. I took out the Kleen glass cleaner, sprayed it on the giant mirror hanging over our dining area, on the television set and on the living room side table and started wiping your hand prints off the surfaces as my vision blurred, my eyes swimming once again in little pools. I almost held my hand back, hesitant to wipe the traces of you off our little surfaces but I remember that I have to clean it, so you can make new hand prints. I thought of the wonderful big smile on your little face as you wipe and splatter food all over the television yet again and I had to smile myself.

I went up our bedroom and started taking the sheets and pillowcases off to wash tomorrow, hoping that you would not mind the clean springtime smell when you come back. I know you always resent it when the bed does not smell of Mama and you. I know you resent it when I change the sheets without asking you so I always had to change it as you watch so you would know that even if it does not smell the way you like it, it is still the same bed.

I had to clean up our little play-work room so I can work and think better and also so that you can have more fun looking for your things in all their proper places – that is, not in all the places where you last left them, scattered and cluttered about.

After all this tidying up is done, I have to mop the floor. I know you don’t mind the dirty floor but I do. I’d like to walk around and not have all kinds of things stuck to the heels of my feet.

We must get a maid soon I know so I can devote more time to myself and to some form of work instead of spending all my time cleaning up after you and the increasingly amount of mess you are able to make each passing day. I know when we had the maid before, it did not benefit you at all. It was all for me and the next time, it will still be. I know you’d be happy to spend all your time with me here at home but Mama has to do things for herself too. For that, you will have to forgive me and I hope you understand.

If you are wondering why you’re not where you’re supposed to be right now – sleeping in our own room, in your own crib, waiting for your Mama to move you to the big bed so you can sleep the rest of the night next to her and wake up to the sight of her face, it is because Mama has to be out tomorrow afternoon for a little job interview and she has no one to leave you with. Papa is out of the country again because of work and there is no one else to look after you but Lolo and Lola.

I know I asked for some time away but I did not ask for three days and two nights. I know it is not the first time you will be sleeping without me, waking up without me, and maybe you wonder why Mama is all distraught. Let me tell you that I do not mind sleeping in another bed, in another room without you for a night or two, as long as its not in this house. I have always slept with you in this bed ever since you were born. I spent every waking and sleeping moment with you for the past twenty months and tonight will be the first night I will be sleeping in this bed without you. Until this evening, I guess I have never really known the true meaning of longing.

I hope you are having a good time wherever you are. I know you will be very busy exploring your new environment and perhaps might not even notice my absence, until the middle of the night, when in your sleep you search for the scent of my skin or the feel of my arms and even my palms on your own little ones. After all, the kids never miss the parents as much as the parents miss the kids..

… but I will see you soon my love.

Contrary to what some people might think, I did not have the baby by accident. I had wanted the baby. It was not even as easy a “task” as I thought it was. There came a point when I even thought that I, unlike other women whose fecundity can only be admired, did not have the ability to.

Still, when the lines turned violet, I was not prepared for the barrage of emotions that washed over me. I remember feeling so excited, so happy, so scared.. and so lost all at the same time and one after the other in quick succession that I could not help but feel confused. The first of a wave of totally new emotions that would overwhelm me in the succeeding months.

Before I had the baby, I was getting good grades in graduate school. I even made it as a University Scholar with a general weighted average of higher than 1.25 – a thing I could only dream about and could never have done during my undergraduate as a Biology major. I dreamed about getting a doctorate in Media, Technology and Society at the Northwestern University in Illinois.

Before I had the baby, my marriage was rocky. It had been a very difficult journey from day one. Many a day and night were spent contemplating and even talking about how best to go about the marriage. Many a cup of coffee or even bottles of beers or even glasses of cocktails were downed talking about what went and is wrong and what to do.

Before I had the baby, all I ever wanted was to get away. I thought about coming back to live in the province, anywhere but the city where life the hustle and bustle of the city and the many people living in it seemed to confuse me, if not totally tear me up at the seams. I gave up commuting all together. I frequently went on out-of-city trips by myself, in search of myself, an inspiration, a thought, an experience that would help me make some sense of what is missing. I was adamant about finishing my masters in the shortest time possible so I could pursue a doctorate some place else, best if abroad. The motto was anywhere but here.

I went on therapy on and off for months at a time. Looking back, I am not ashamed to admit that I went on therapy and I do not regret a single bit of it. Yes, not even the taking of five different kinds of meds everyday and yes, not even the thousands spent. Those were not the best of times in my life. I moved from El Nido, away from a place whose beauty and rusticity and whose people I have grown to love, away from a job of teaching science to kids ages seven to ten that I thoroughly enjoyed, to move back to the city; to living alone in the condo, to teaching high school science and chemistry at an exclusive school for girls, to pursuing a masters in theatre arts – a field that has totally captured me and the most life-changing of it all (or so I thought at that time) to getting married. I was totally blown away in the whirlwind of change because my life was too much all too soon. A year later, I was still faltering and stumbling along. I taught theatre for a change, in the hopes of putting an end to my forever being torn between science and the arts. I had the misfortune of having a very disobliging boss who was biased in many ways and seemed to always set me up for failure. I failed my students; but most of all, I believed I failed myself. Failure never did become me. I got very lost and confused. Looking back, my husband says he never really believed there was something seriously wrong with me although he admits it was a very good experience to learn about ourselves. We learned a lot and in the end, I found an unlikely best friend in the doctor I started out hating and ended up loving.

The doctor who made sure I was making a good decision when I first announced I wanted a baby. The doctor who made sure I knew what I was doing and prepared me as much as he could for what I planned to do.

I had wanted the baby because I believed I was getting old. The best age for childbearing is still below thirty five years and I realized that if I took the doctorate, I would have to wait at least four years before I could have a child. I was not getting any younger and my husband was actually getting sadder. He said, “Yes it’s good to have a career. It’s good to have dreams and chase after them. It’s good to be successful but what about a family? What about your family?” and then on to, “Buti pa ang bakla may anak, ako wala,” and then finally to, “Ph.D. or me?”

I had wanted the baby because I did not know where my life was headed and I honestly did not know where to take it. I thought that if I had a child, I would at least know how the next nine months would be – and I thought that was good enough for me.

Still, no one can really be prepared for having a child. I read a lot of books and talked to as many people as I could about it but when I got there, it was still just me and no one else but me.

Some days I cannot help but hate my baby. On the average, I probably hate my baby once a week, four times a month, because even if I am a mother, I am just human too. Some days I do not want to go home. Some days I want to drink and get drunk too and forget things that are painful, feel the way I used to, before I had the baby, before I got married, when I was still younger and cared not about what I did.

I am not perfect. The last thing I want to come off to others is that I am someone living an easy, rosy, perfect life. What I want and have been doing is to live this life as humanly as possible, flawed and imperfect but whole… and beautiful, even if only in hindsight.

I have been everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I have had my shares of joys and pains. I always tend to chase after dreams, after experiences, in my endless quest for that one thing that will make this life worth living. Even if that means going out of my comfort zone, even if that means hurting and being hurt, if it means learning, growing and making the most out of this life then it’s worth it. After all, who in this life comes out unscathed?

When people see me these days, they tend to say, I have not changed. When I go out, to a play, to a mall, to the university, to see my friends, I sometimes cannot help but say the same thing – nothing has changed… oh, but I have.

Maybe I look the same but I do not think nor feel the same.

No more aimless wanderings. No more just hanging out, or hanging out with so-called friends. I make sure that every time I am out with other people or spending time on things, those are the people and things that are important, that truly matter and that are worth the every minute I spend away from baby for. When I had the baby, never has it been as clear to me what the important things in life or who the important people in my life are.

I had wanted the baby because I wanted to change. I wanted my life, me, something… to change. I still do not know where my life is headed but really, who among us can say he knows? I have changed and that in itself has been worth it.

Ferry sinks off Philippine coast 9 confirmed dead

It was a nice quiet Monday morning when I was told of the news. We read it online here. No, I did not know any of the passengers. My interest was only due to the fact that I had thought and wished it was not the one that went to Palawan.

I have taken the SuperFerry thrice. The first time was October 2007 and I was alone. In October 2007 I had a round trip ticket to Butuan. I had wanted to explore Camiguin and Siargao on my own. What was most unfortunate was that a Philippine Airlines plane crashed on the Butuan airstrip that morning and all succeeding flights were thus canceled until the mess had been cleared. The thing I hate most about traveling is unpacking. I did not want to go home, unpack my bags and pack them again for the next day for when my flight was rescheduled. Actually, I just wanted to go away, anywhere. It did not matter. I spent most of the day trying to get into other Cebu Pacific flights to other destinations to no avail.

And then I remembered it was a Friday. A SuperFerry departs for Palawan on a Friday afternoon. I thought that was a good time to go to Coron and I had always wanted to go to see what the fuss was all about. I took a cab from the airport to the port and made it. I made a friend whose name was Jeff and who was a local while waiting at the booking office and ended up spending a week in Coron hanging out with his friends. I booked myself in the cheapest accommodation available. I paid less than P900.

Though it was my first time to take the SuperFerry, it was not my first time to travel on a boat – a big boat. When I was still attending YFC leadership conferences, we took the Negros Navigation to Iloilo as well as to Bacolod. And I loved being in the top deck the most. In my experience, it was where the wind blew all day and all night long and where there was an almost 180-degree view.

I went back to Coron in April 2008 simply because the first time I was there, I did not get to see the beaches, the lakes or the islands. It rained most of the time the last time I was there and I spent my days just lounging around in my quaint little room in the main house of Darayonan Lodge reading magazines and having massages and manicures and pedicures. I took the SuperFerry again. Again, I was on the wait list at the booking office. Again, I took the top deck. Again I made a friend at the office while waiting and his name was Owen. He had a group of people and I wanted to come along with them so I could go see the islands, the lakes, the beaches and all that. This time though I paid more than P2,000. They told us the boat was full, that I was even lucky to get onboard. Didn’t matter whether I paid almost thrice for the same accommodation and that I along with the others on the wait list had to wait for almost three hours in the lobby for the receptionist to give us a bunk.

I went back to Coron in June 2008. I took the Super Ferry again. I was traveling with my husband and a lot of friends this time.  More than half of them took bunks in the tourist section because it was air-conditioned, it was cleaner and actually, so much nicer. I still took the top deck – the red deck.

Passengers at the Superferry railing

On my first trip to Coron, I flew back to Manila via Asian Spirit. On the second trip, I took a boat called the Asian Fairy to El Nido and then from El Nido took the I.T.I. plane back to Manila. On my third trip, I took the Super Ferry back. I still took the red deck.

The red deck.

The red deck has metal bunks painted in red. It is open-air. It can get either really windy or really hot and stuffy. It is easy to get sea-sick as you can feel the movement of the ship the most in the top deck. It is also where animals like roosters, chickens and birds can be kept. Smoking is allowed in the red deck. That being said, it can get noisy and stinky in the red deck. But I always have and will always take the red deck no matter what anyone says.

Because…

In the red deck, you have a 180-degree view, it is easier to see what is going on. It is also easy open and wider.

Every time I took the boat I always thought about what I would do and what would happen if ever we had to abandon ship. I always checked out where the life vests and rafts were. I always checked out where the emergency exits where. I always thought the top deck was the safest. No cramped hallways. No stifling walls. It provided the easiest way of getting out.

“As dawn broke in waters off the Zamboanga peninsula on a clear day, the SuperFerry 9 had capsized, according to officials, leaving at least twelve people dead in the panic and scramble for the exits.”

Panic. In times like this, panic is everybody’s worst enemy. The ship took hours to sink. There was no need for panic. It was a clear day with calm seas, a generally good weather. There weren’t big waves or rain to make evacuation or rescue worse. I hate panic.

And the most appalling of all…

“Survivor Raffy Borro said it was his first time to see babies and children thrown out to the water as their mothers cried.”

I was, WTF?!

I spent the rest of the day thinking, trying to understand why these mothers thought it was best to throw their babies and children out to the waters. Did they think they were gonna float on their own? Did they think other people were gonna take pity on them and save them first? I was so angry.

If I were on a boat with my child and we were told to abandon the vessel, the last thing I would do is throw my child into the sea and spend the next hours wondering how or where she is. In fact, I would not let my child out of my sight or out of my reach. I will keep her safe and she is safest with me. A human’s natural tendency is to put himself or herself first and so in a time of such panic, one is not to depend on anybody else but himself. A human mother’s natural tendency is to put her child first – unless she is so freakin stupid. Yes I am still angry. In fact, I don’t think I will get over it.

I hate panic but I hate stupid selfish parents more.

Surprise #1: Your relationship with your partner will change
Surprise #2: You’ll have no idea where the time goes
Surprise #3: You may look different
Surprise #4: You’ll join an exclusive worldwide club
Surprise #5: You’ll be stronger than you ever imagined
Surprise #6: You’ll make “mistakes” you never anticipated
Surprise #7: Your friendships will change
Surprise #8: There’ll be times when you hate parenting
Surprise #9: You’ll be overwhelmed by love (and other emotions)
Surprise #10: You’ll have to let go sooner than you think

No matter how much you prepare for it, parenting will blow your mind.

Your kids will challenge you, bring you to tears, crack you up, and make you forget what you urgently had to do. They’ll shatter the life you knew into a million pieces. Then they’ll put it back together, like a stained-glass window, into something infinitely more complicated and beautiful.

While every parent’s biggest surprises are different, there are common themes to the ways that kids revolutionize our lives…

This article was lifted directly from another site.

You can read the whole text in full here.

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Fighting during the first year of the baby is, I have found out, very common. One Sunday, Father’s Day it actually was, I took off to get some refuge at my friends’ house like I always do after Ryan and I had a fight. I called my eldest sister to talk and cried on the phone with her for hours. I could not talk to my friends about my issues since none of them are married. I was one of the first ones in all my many groups of friends to get married and for a time longed the company of married women like myself for some good talk about married life; and all the more did I look for mothers after I had the baby. Now I even join online groups for moms just so I would have an outlet for the myriad of issues I come across with and, sometimes, just to know that I am not doing so bad as a mother. My sister told me there will be a lot of fights as exhaustion and stress build up. It happens. It’s normal. We’re all just humans anyway and taking care of a baby is just really hard. That was just one of the many times I am thankful that I have sisters and that they are mothers like me too; and even more that they were mothers before I was.

Though most of my friends say I look the same, I know I don’t. Some of them say I am prettier. I think only because I have gained weight and this added weight looks good on me. At 95 lbs, I am still actually 5 lbs off from my ideal weight and 10 lbs off from the standard ideal weight for my height class. I have always wanted more weight on my frame, it just was so difficult to meet the 6,000 calories per day my nutritionist-dietitian recommended. More than the added weight, my body shape is different. Aside from a fuller chest, I now have wider hips and bigger thighs. It came as a surprise to me when two months after I had the baby, I took out the box of shirts I stored last January and found that eighty percent of my shirts did not fit me anymore. My body shape is different, but I love it.

I was never a party girl and thus did not have friends who were all about partying. I had different sets of friends, some of them drink a lot, some of them drink socially and some of them don’t drink at all. I stopped drinking beer back in 2005 and only had cocktails thereafter. I stopped having cocktails too in 2007. (I still smoke though, because it really is a hard habit to break.) I still see most of my friends. We still have good times together. I try not to talk too much about babies though, only when they ask, so as to avoid making my friends uncomfortable. Most of them do not have kids and some of them do not even have boyfriends. It’s a girl thing. I am happy though that at twenty-seven, I have friends (few they may be) who are now planning to get married or are planning to have kids of their own. It means our friendship will grow stronger. I am excited for them and excited at being able to possibly help them out too.  People evolve and it is only natural that friendships do too. Friendships are still relationships and like all other relationships, it has to be nurtured. Nurturing relationships come from a common desire to maintain communications or in other words, simply not let each other go. I am very grateful that I have managed to, so far, make such wonderful friendships. My friends are one of the things I think about when I am down, and that never fails to make me smile.

I had my first Mother’s Day a month after I had the baby and though there weren’t any gifts or even a hint of a celebration, just simple text greetings on the phone, I felt every minute of it. I got teary-eyed at every Mother’s Day commercial I saw on TV. I was even crying at the opening scene of Star Trek. I have always been such a cry-baby, but now that I am a mother, I am even more so.

Surprisingly, even if they said it would, my relationship with my own mother did not change at all. My mother and I never got along and we have always had a strained relationship. She almost never goes anywhere with just me. For a long time I dreaded having a child of my own because I was so afraid of what my own relationship with my own daughter was going to turn out. When I was pregnant, I even prayed the child I was carrying inside me was not a girl. As a child, I made my mother cry one too many times, perhaps even as an adult and, perhaps even now, and that made my mother say, “You made your mother cry. Your own daughter will too.” So afraid was I of this curse my mother put on me that I was not too happy when we confirmed, a week before I gave birth, that the child I was carrying inside me was indeed a girl. Now that I think about it, my daughter’s making her mother cry, was one inevitable fact.

We will always make our mothers cry. Be it out of sorrow or joy.

I cried and cried when I left my baby on top of the pillow and found her moments later, crying face down on the bed. When I first saw her face down on the bed like that, my first thought was, “Oh God I hope she is not dead!”, but she was crying and therefore was very much alive. I cried and cried because I felt so guilty for leaving her on top of the pillow like that and because I realized that the fear of losing my child is very real. It used to be that my biggest fear in life is losing everything in a fire but now that has been undeniably and understandably surpassed by the fear of losing one’s child. Material things are just material things but people, especially one you carried inside for thirty eight weeks, went through hours of labor for and made the center of your life, are worth more than any material thing I have, ever had and will ever have.

I have only been a mother for three months and have already shed a lot of tears. I know there will be more but it’s something I am prepared to have. Only because I love. I will cry buckets if I have to, and maybe, I even want to.