My daughter turned two years old today. 

We had a small gathering, as we have a small family: my parents, my aunt, my sister-in-law and three-year-old nephew, myself and a 91-years-young friend of my late grandmother.  My friend Glen came by later.  My friend Janice made a cake in the shape of a dog; my daughter loves dogs, but alas, Mommy is allergic.  My aunt made her much-lauded eggplant parmigiana, and set up all the food (and cleaned my house). My nephew helped my girl open her gifts, which she wasn’t too interested in doing.  She was just happy her cousin was there to play and color with her.  She wore a sweet hand-me-down dress from my friend Beth.  Nana brought many mylar balloons, much to the birthday girl’s delight.  It was a relaxed, warm, pretty happy little get-together.

Now that I’ve put her to bed, freshly bathed and exhausted from her nap-free, company-rich day, and I’ve reset the house to its original, but surely temporary, tidiness, I sit here alone with time to reflect on this landmark.  My daughter turned two years old today.

How did that happen?

Every mother on the planet will tell you “it goes by so fast,” and you nod and smile politely if you’re childless.  But I’m truly stunned.  I feel like I’m just settling in to being a mother in the first place; she was just born, wasn’t she?  I’m just hitting my stride.  I’ve got the routine in place, the ‘doing stuff one-handed’ thing down pat.  I’ve still got my pregnancy weight to lose.  And she’s TWO already?  Oy.

It seems that I’m the one who’s not handling the changes and transitions well.  She’s fine with them.  As I mentioned in a previous blog about re-entering the workforce, she’s been basically fine with the sudden change of my being out of the house 20 hours a week.  She never had a second of being freaked out in her toddler music or dance classes, being exposed to a dozen or so people her own size for the first time in her life.  She’s just this laid-back, accepting, friendly little person who rolls with it all.

I’m the one who feels like I’m sliding down an icy hill with no brakes.

And yes, I know that I’ll love all her ages and stages (for the most part, ha ha), and each has its own charm and developments to look forward to.  That sweet, tiny, helpless infant, that crawling, exploring baby, that bald-headed angel… she’s gone for good.  I’m sad, and I miss her.  I can finally see why so many people have a second child (and another, and another).  But I’m in my forties, and another baby probably isn’t on the docket for me.  I had to relish that baby-time with a desperate focus that sometimes bordered on panic.

I now have a walking (make that running), talking, sentient being on my hands now.  And I love her more than I knew I was capable of loving anyone.  We interact on a different level now.  She cracks me up.  She is paying, and demands, attention.  Every day there’s a new word or funny anecdote to put in my “Mommy Journal.”  It’s exciting to see her grow and learn and change, so amazingly fast.  But I see photos of my tiny newborn baby and it’s like, who is that?  Where’s my baby?  Who switched out my infant for this (albeit wonderful, adorable) toddler? 

My daughter turned two years old today.

– or, why I’m glad I’m not a young mother

I got married when I was twenty-one.  I was that rarest of things these days: the virgin bride.  I lived with my parents until the day I wed.  I even continued to live with them and commuted to college – a Catholic women’s college.  I didn’t drink or smoke.  I was inexperienced, insulated and naïve, yet felt worry-free about making a lifelong commitment to someone.

Thank God I didn’t reproduce.

I’m sure there are many people in their early twenties who have the maturity to get married and raise a family.  But I wasn’t one of them.  I had no life experience to draw from, no sense of self, no frame of reference, no opinions and beliefs formed from hardships and painful lessons.

Well, I’ve got all that now, Chester.  In spades.  Heck, someone might say I’m twice the woman I was at twenty – chronologically and physically.  But then I would smack that someone.

I didn’t plan to be an older first-time mom.  But more women are planning it that way, establishing careers and relationships and financial security before they start their families.  But planned or not, the over-35 and indeed, over-40 first-time mothers club is getting more members by the minute.  The U.S. Census Bureau states that of the 4 million babies born each year in this country, 100,000 are born to women over forty.  Witness the multimedia barrage of information: Web sites like www.mothersover40.com; books like “Hot Flashes Warm Bottles: First-Time Mothers Over Forty” by Nancy London; blogs like www.pregnancyover40-over40motherhood.blogspot.com.  Famous faces like Geena Davis and Nancy Grace are making over-40 births seem trendy and accepted.

But this doesn’t stop the medical world from labeling me, at age 39, a “geriatric mother.”  Oy!  That hurt.  And the risks are there: Older mothers are at a greater risk for high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and difficult labors – first-time mothers 35 and older are almost seven times as likely to have C-sections or assisted deliveries.  I had all those things.  Well, labor wasn’t difficult, since I never went through it.  The scheduled C-section was a breeze.  I was amazed at what a non-event it turned out to be, despite my obsessing on the spinal and the word “vivisection” for days beforehand.

Physical ramifications of being an older mother aside (like, oh, I don’t know, my stomach muscles separating down the middle, never to return to even the flabby tautness I once enjoyed – well, maybe not enjoyed, exactly…), the emotional ramifications of being “a woman of a certain age” when my baby arrived have been overwhelmingly positive.  Even on my worst days, I know that I’m a better parent now, at this age and alone (with all due respect to my mother and aunt, who are my caregivers when I work) than I would have been at age 21, with a husband. 

I just have more life experience to draw from.  Indeed, I have come to view my life now in two segments: the first forty years, and the second.  I feel extremely fortunate that I got to live a pretty complete 39-year life that was all about me – growing, developing who I am and where I want to be, what my priorities and values are, and getting to be Kathcentric.  I could come and go as I pleased; I could explore the world and my place in it.

Now I can devote the second forty years to my daughter, using that lifetime of experience to determine what’s truly important, what deserves attention and focus and what doesn’t.  I’m more capable of not sweating the small stuff (the 3-second rule in my house is closer to one minute).  I know more about the horrible things in the world, but I have less fear about them.  I have a better big-picture grasp.  I know what kind of person I want to help her become.  And most importantly, I won’t live vicariously through her, because I’ve already lived.  I will help her find her own path, by reminiscing about my own right and wrong turns.

I will be the Aged, guiding my Beauty.

Like a lot of folks, I have worked since I was a teenager.  I have worked for decades.  It was, quite naturally, a major focal point of my life.  I defined myself and my degree of personal success or failure based primarily on my job status.  We are groomed early on to identify and pursue our chosen career path.  It’s often the first question someone will ask you: “What do you do?”  How do you contribute to society?  What is your occupation, your field?

No one goes to college to get a degree in “stay-at-home momhood.”

Well, not anymore.  Granted, until the mid-sixties, some women did in fact go to college solely to snag a husband.  But here in the futuristic twenty-first century (where’s my damn flying car?), women are expected to bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan – and pay for the bacon, the pan, and at least part of the home.

When we achieved our glorious liberation (that bulge in my face is the tongue in my cheek), we were finally free to not only cause tiny humans to exist, but in addition to keeping them alive and running a household on a 24/7 basis, we could also leave home for a good chunk of the day and get our fair share of  the work-for-salary world, and all its wonderful facets.  Now, we no longer had to say we were “just a housewife” – now we were doing something important!  Power to the she-people!

Ahem.

I’m not going to lie.  I myself have had, in the distant past (as I like to refer to my twenties), disparaging thoughts about women who were “just mothers.”  So many women have both children and careers, I was disdainful of women who didn’t bow to the pressure to conform to the overachieving superwoman standard of the new generation.  Well, things changed, and so did my attitude about the work/not work debate.  To wit: I had my own baby, and was now faced with the dilemma myself.

According to Catalyst, a non-profit research and business advisory organization, as of 1996, some key working-mother statistics include:

·  40% of working women are mothers of children under age 18

·  83% of new mothers returned to the workforce within 6 months after childbirth

·  55% of working women provide half or more of their household income

·  48% of married women provide half or more of the household income

And  my personal favorite debunker of welfare-mom stereotypes:

·  71% of all single mothers are employed

Catalyst found that only 7% of all families conform to the tradition of a wage-earning dad, a stay-at-home mom, and one or more children.  As unfortunate an indicator of the decline of the nuclear family as this may be, it does still point out that women working is no longer “an option,” but a necessity and a fact of modern life.

But as Angela Thomas-Jones asks in her article , “What do working mothers want?”

I can only speak for myself.  Initially, what I wanted was a clear answer to whether or not I “should” work.  I went round and round about the guilt of leaving my baby in her precious, fleeting early years, to go make money and sit in a cubicle away from her for hours a day.  Work would always be there; I could work until I die (and at this rate, I’ll have to, har  har).  But my baby would only be a baby for a few years.  I could never get those back. 

Granted, I was extremely fortunate that money wasn’t an issue for me.  A lot of women don’t have that freedom, especially single mothers.  I didn’t need money, per se; but I did need that part of my identity back.  As I mentioned at the start of this entry, my life revolved around what I did forty hours a week for so long, it felt abrupt and weird to be at home all the time.  I was constantly groping for excuses when people asked me whether or not I was working again.  I would always promise that I would be going back, soon, very soon.

Two years later…

I’m now working part-time, twenty hours a week.  It has been an excellent way for both my baby and myself to ease into my being back in the workforce.  I get to have time with adults, a reason to wear makeup again, the satisfaction of contributing to society, and that lovely direct-deposit every week.  And my toddler is getting used to spending a few hours away from me, a few days a week.  “Mama working?” she asks her sitter, and upon confirmation of that fact, she’ll just go about her baby-business. 

We’re both glad to see each other at the end of my shift.  And I feel more like myself – the me I was before I reproduced; the part of me that’s an independent adult unto myself, not just someone’s mommy.  But it does feel good to slip off my work shoes at the door, kneel down, and let that someone rush into my waiting arms.