Mommyblogs November 15, 2006

Confession: I read Mommyblogs.

More specific confession: I read Mommyblogs with vigor.

I blame it on Amalah. I started reading her when she was just a married girl with a penchant for writing hilarious run-on sentences and purchasing expensive shoes (and so much more, lord, she is so one of my Favorite Bloggers Ever). And then she got pregnant. And then she had the Most Adorable Son In All The Land. And then I was hooked. Hooked on the whole “welcome to the mind of a new parent, trying to figure it all the fuck out, sit down, stay awhile” thing.

I sought out various other Mommyblogs and ended up with a steady roster that I check in with daily, including but not limited to: Whoorl, The Wait & the Wonder, All & Sundry, Not That You Asked. I didn’t even start reading Dooce (I know, gasp!) until she had Leta.

And y’all? I’m terrified. Sure, they write about the good. They right about loving someone so much more than you thought yourself capable of and finding joy in your child’s bowel movements. And all of that gooey goodness excites lil ol’ me, sitting over here, vaguely imagining a future that involves little feet, pitter pattering. You know, eventually.

But the great thing about Mommyblogs, the thing that makes them a more reliable and candid source than, say, baby books or new parents who are always “sure we’re tired, but wonderfully tired, isn’t little Madison/Jaden just perfect?” is that they’re real. “This sucks so bad sometimes” real. “I yelled at my screaming one year old son to SHUT UP” real. “I question my parenting skills ALL THE TIME” real. “I drank three martinis during a playdate” real. “I haven’t showered in two days and leave the house in sweatpants” real. “I hate breastfeeding” real.

Motherhood ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, clearly. And while I enjoy the inside peek at what it’s really like – no, what it’s really like (you know, like the definition of thrush which sounds like it should be the name of a new X-treme water slide at Six Flags, but no) – it terrifies me. I’m terrified that I’m going to be a bad mother. I’m terrified that it’s going to be too much for me to handle. I’m terrified that my future child is going to die. I’m terrified that I’m not going to like being a mom. I’m terrified that my body won’t be the same afterwards. I’m terrified that I’ll lose my sex drive. I’m terrified of post-partum depression. I’m terrified that my baby will have liver disease. I’m terrified that my baby will do nothing but scream for the first few months and will, in turn, do nothing but cry and/or curl up on the floor in a fetal position.

Being terrified right now isn’t so worrisome seeing as I have no plans to get pregnant any time soon, as evidenced by the pills I take religiously each and every day for 3 weeks out of every month. However, I just hope that the terror eventually, gradually gives way to a sense of adventure. To a sense of it being the right next step. To a sense of being prepared - emotionally, physically - for it. To a mental preparedness to give up wine and sushi for nine months.

Fortunately, as I said, I’m not yet even remotely close to being even remotely close to thinking about having a baby (got that, MOM? LET IT GO.) However, I will still sit at this computer and giggle to myself over Amy’s latest Gymboree misadventure, silently pray and pull for Annika and gush over pictures of Asher, all the while explaining to co-workers that “well, no, I don’t actually know these people who have these children – but it feels like I know them!” I will also continue to read, saucer-eyed, the not-so-sunshine-and-sausages stuff. The stuff that plants itself deep in the recesses of my brain because there’s just no way of un-learning it, the stuff that makes me cringe and hurt, the stuff that makes me scared that’ll I’ll ever be as strong as you need to be to take that next step. The stuff I will inevitably hunt through archives to reference for when I myself am a parent and need a reminder that someone else has gone through this and survived to write about it, HALLELUJAH! Praise the Internets!

Praise Mommyblogs.