Mother's day... 3 posts in one

After a lovely breakfast in bed, a card, a gift and a private "concert" from my singing 3 year old, I've come here to try to post some thoughts I've been entertaining for a while. Since they're all about mothering, it's just fitting it's mother's day...

"Post 1": Twofold Mothering Question

There's a question in two parts I wanted to ask - whether there'll be responses or not is yet to be seen :)
First, I have been crazy about babies and young children since I was a young "tween". My neighbor had two beautiful babies, a girl and a boy, one year apart, and I spent the most of the 4 years we were neighbors playing with them. The girl's first word was my name. After we moved, I would still play with young kids whenever I had the chance, and they usually adored me. (note: in Brazil girls don't baby-sit for neighbors and friends, or else I'd have been a dedicated baby-sitter). Second, like my mother before me, I had my children after I was 30, and I often think that being older makes mothering easier for me, since I'm more mature and more patient.

Question, is mothering "easier" (or comes more naturally) for the baby-inclined women and/or older mothers?

Apparenly the answers would be simple, but I'm sure it's more complex than that. For me, a yes seems to be the case, but I'd be curious to know how it's worked out for other moms.

Probably this question is hardly original, but I started thinking about this when in our last visit, my sister-in-law said I was very patient with my kids, and I thought that this was because I'm older, since I was a nervous and anxious wretch as a teenager and in my early 20s. I also talked to her how I thought that perhaps mothering came more naturally to people like us, who had always loved babies and children...

Well, I just thought I'd ask!

"Posts 2 & 3": Ayelet Waldman and me on...

This past week I stayed up until 1 a.m. one night reading Ayelet Waldman's articles in Salon.com and also the NY Times. I want to comment a bit about 2 of them. Of course there's the whole polemic about her suicidal post on her blog and the subsequent end of it, which I only found out about (here - see Pop Culture) last week too, but I won't write about that...

1) Husband over kids
Apparently, Ayelet has been criticized (see last link above) for saying she loves her husband more than her kids in a NY Times article (adapted from an earlier essay of hers). Well, this is something my mother has been saying for as long as I can remember, and is the refrain of her daily emails now that she and my dad are newly retired: "Oh, I'm so glad that I love your father so much and that we get along really well now that we only have each other and spend all day together!" She has always emphasized the need to love your partner "above" your kids because she says kids grow up, move (to another country, right, Lilian?), and in the end you're left only with your partner or spouse. I just begin to feel that it's very hard to let go off one's children, but I think knowing you can count on someone's love and, in a different sense, dependence on you as enduring, will make it easier. In the first years of parenthood, though, it's hard (for both parents) to keep one's spouse in the first place of one's life - children are so demanding... But I hope to follow my mom's advice, and meanwhile, I'm happy to see another mother writing about those things, no matter what other mothers say (yeah... "mommy wars"...). I think Ayelet is right - children definitely benefit from a healthy and passionate relationship between their parents, and she's lucky to have that!

2) Wanting another baby
In a Salon article, Waldman writes about the desire to have another baby. I have briefly mentioned this issue in a previous post, but her article got me thinking about it again. For me, this desire, or lust, as Waldman calls it, comes and goes. It first surfaced when Linton was 3-4 months and began to look utterly cute and "scrumptions" (as Catherine Newman often said of Birdy) - I felt I just HAD to have another baby, since I knew mine would grow up. A few more exhausting months of little sleep, and I was on the "down" side - no, I didn't think it was such as good idea after all. Right now I'm in the middle of a "neutral" spell, which feels good. I don't really care whether we have another baby or not.

Sometimes, however, in comes the lust, the need, even, to have another baby, especially because Linton is growing so fast (he's so much bigger and less "baby-ish" than his brother was in the same age), and I have to try and think rationally: no, we can't possibly afford another baby, unless Klebert gets a really good job in two year's time (we'll not know until then, of course) - but then, I'll be over 35, oh!, but that's not too late, is it? And so on, and so forth... my brains juggles with the desire, the unrationality of it, all the pros and cons...

I also love how (yes, I'm mentioning her again...) Catherine Newman describes her reaction to not being pregnant with a 3rd child:

"All the cells in your brain are cheering — throwing their pompoms in the air and turning cartwheels, their little white skirts flipping up while they yell, "Not, not pregnant! N-O-T! P-R-E!! G-N-A-N-T!!!"
But your heart — your greedy, irrational heart — is sitting on the curb with its head in its hands."

Sometimes my heart is there too, when I think we'll uphold our decision to keep a family of four...

Sad/scary closing note:
While I write this, my neighbor's 4 year-old niece is being taken by ambulance to the hospital. She fell out of a 2nd floor window, and we are praying and hoping she's OK. Our houses are identical - with very low windows - and I feel so scared just thinking that something like that could happen to us!! I'll let you know how she is as soon as I find out.