One Bad Mother Runner

(With thanks to One More Mile Running Apparel, purveyors of my new racing uniform)

I recently ran my first post-Bug half marathon. I ran 13.1 miles in 3 hours, 1 minute, 5 seconds, over 34 minutes faster than my previous personal best.

Here's how racing with a child in the picture is different from running before:

1. Running with the stroller is like running hills, it slowed me down, but it also has increased my strength, which increased my speed. 
2. As someone I used to know said all the time, 'it ain't gonna run itself.' No matter how the Bug slept the night before, no matter how much fun hanging out on the couch with her would be, no matter how warm and cozy the bed is, I had to put the time on my feet in. Making that time was harder than I expected it to be. 
3. I used to be able to devote a lot of time to my running; planning runs, recovering from runs, fueling for runs, shopping for running gear. (See Sally's recent entry 'Being a Good Triathlete Date'; she was writing about her experiences with triathlons, but it applies to athletic endeavours in general.) As a Running Mommy, however, I now have to come home and pretty much directly resume my Mommy duties. No ice bath, followed by a hot shower, followed by tea and carbs. The evening after the race, when I could barely walk, I raced up the stairs despite the pain, to cuddle my sad little girl after a nightmare.)
4. Skipping a run once in a while in a training program doesn't hurt. I'm not saying I could have paired down my training to 2 runs a week with ice cream in between, but I won't lie, despite #2, and knowing that if I didn't put the time in, the race would go badly, I still skipped some runs, and more than 1 speed work session turned into just being upright going forward. I still PR'd.
5. Having my little girl meet me at the finish line was the best feeling ever. Someday she's going to know that her mom is active and hopefully follow along, and beat the pants off of my time. 

It's hard. I won't lie, but I'm going to keep doing it. It was super rewarding, too. 

Priorities (the Mom Snark Manifesto)

I read a variety of Mommy Blogs and various forums about babies and children. There is at least one forum I participate it because I genuinely love the people there, but there are some that I read largely for the fun of judging people.

One of those, however, recently made me think about something, and think hard. It posed the following question:

I was just curious about how other moms feel, do you put your DH/SO first or your kids. It seems like a hard choice to make but my vote is for my kids. I do believe that if I am happy my son will be happy, but I feel as though I will always be a mom not necessarily someone's spouse.

The poster then continues to offer a poll which allows people to rank what order they prioritize the elements of their life. In the comments below that, the general consensus is either that paying attention to one's spouse is important, but anyone who says that they put anyone other than their children first is clearly so selfish that they don't deserve to have children at all.


All I can think of, though is the old saying "if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Ignoring the double negative there, it is true. If I don't take the time to be right with myself, how can I take care of my child or my spouse? If I'm strung out, unwashed and still in my PJs at 6pm who does that serve, even if the Bug is bathed, dressed, and entertained in the scientifically proven best way for her developmental stage? I'm not saying that I plunk her in front of the TV while I have a spa retreat, or hand her off to the homeless while I get a bikini wax, but I do try to take time for myself every day. I look at taking time to renew myself as my responsibility to her: if I am refreshed, I can be fully present to being her mom. If I am fulfilled in my own being, I can have the energy and love to give to her.

Furthermore, if she sees me being a fulfilled individual apart from her, she will have an example of what it is to be a well-rounded adult, which might lead her to aspire to be many things, not only a mommy. I want her to be a great mom someday, but I also want her to have a career that challenges her, friends she enjoys, and a sense of self-confidence. Also, I would like to be more than a husk of my former self as I see her off to college. While being a parent doesn't really end, it will certainly be less time-consuming when she's 30 (I hope).

So I take care of myself. I do this because it is the only way I can have something of myself to give to my daughter, my husband, and my friends.

(Next time, the lighter side: non-mom uses for mommy products)

Brooke Sheilds or Betty Draper?

So babies really only come with a limited skill set. Eat, sleep, poop, cry. The Bug is no different. And she's hit a patch that the baby doctor calls a "bit of colic." I call it, alternately, "demon baby time" or "the witching hour." Whatever it is called, it goes like this: she is pleasant and cute and sleeps for blocks of time during daylight hours.

Then 10pm hits, and she yells for no good reason until around 2am. The DH tries to help with this, but google is only so useful. He does try, but he doesn't feel her crying in his body the way I do. (Stupid let down reflex; a baby cries on TV, and I spring a leak) Furthermore, he can sleep through anything and has to work in the mornings. Just to mess with me, this doesn't happen every night, just often enough to make me crazy and sleep deprived.

This leaves nights wherein I sit up with her, sometimes watching bad TV, and we both cry. I'm pretty sure that the mommy doctor would call this a case for vitamin P. And I'm not dismissing that it would be possibly useful. Nor am I pulling a Tom Cruise here and claiming that psychiatry and psychiatric drugs are a conspiracy of the evil alien overlords. (Although I would love the opportunity to spew crazy all over Matt Lauer. I've always wanted to be on TV.) Here's the thing, for me right now: I actually think that what this might call for is a drink with some girlfriends while the Bug stays at home with my husband.

So in this case, "Mother's little helper" may not be a pill. It may be my very recently acquired Medela Pump in Style Advanced so I can leave a few bottles with DH and go be a grown-up for a bit. I'm certainly going to try this before I try medication.

Dress Like a Mom

I was recently socializing with some of the yarn ladies at a yarn shop.* We were talking about the adjustment to motherhood, and one of them, a 40-ish lady with a middle-school aged son related that when said son was an infant, she told her husband that she was dressed "like a mom" and he said "well you are a mom." This was, for her, the moment it sunk in that she was actually someone's mother.

I've been thinking about this, and here's the conclusion I've come to: I don't know what "dressed like a mom" is. I know how I like to dress and how I generally dress for going out in public, but what I don't know is if I dress like a mom. I do know that my clothing preferences haven't changed substantially since the Bug was born. Okay, nursing tanks weren't a part of my wardrobe before her birth, but an outfit built around jeans and a tank top was a pretty central feature, to be honest.

Just because I'm not happy about my ab muscles (and let's be honest here, I wasn't happy with them before the Bug), I'm not going to start wearing high waisted jeans**; I'm just going to accept muffin top, and start running as soon as the doc gives me the okay.

I might wear a trifle more lounge wear than I used to, but I assume my desire to do that will diminish as my postpartum discomforts also diminish. Washable items seem essential (she spits), but then I'm lazy enough that they were a fairly significant part of my wardrobe. Button downs and wrap-fronts might be more important than they used to be, but she won't be nursing forever (no matter how much it feels like it when she eats every 2 hours overnight during a growth spurt).

I will admit that I don't get make up on every day. But this is something I've gone back and forth with over the years; times when I won't leave the house in full "face" and times when I just accept my blotchy skin for what it is. In recent years, I had found a happy medium of minimal make up that still covered anything I was self-conscious about. But mostly that was what I did for work. When you work with teenagers and don't quite look your 30+ years, you have to find ways to make sure you aren't mistaken for one of them. One that I picked was subtle, tasteful make up.*** I'm not working at the moment, so...

I guess if some hormonal shift triggers me to start dressing badly, I'll have to ask Lady to let me know. Because the DH isn't stupid enough to say anything about it. I hope.


*By the way, hanging out with my knitter friends is possibly the easiest way to get some grown up time with people I'm not married to. As most of them are older than me, most of them have been parents, and know how babies work. Furthermore, if the Bug wants to be held, there are all of these folks who are up for it-- most of them have grandkids in other states, and really want a baby "fix." I get to sit and enjoy the company of adults.
**Sorry to my non-US followers: this inspired SNL clip isn't available on youtube, and I'm betting the Hulu link doesn't work for you. Here are some monkeys dancing, though. Meagre consolation, but... it's the best I can do.
***As opposed to the utter lack or whorish tartiness favoured by most of my students.