Lay off the caffeine

I was lying in bed last night reading... I'm totally engrossed in a book called "Motherless Mothers" that explains how women who have lost their mothers engage with their children. As if I don't feel sorry enough for myself, right?

It's actually a very interesting look at a situation I wasn't aware existed for myself. I'm reading this shit, thinking, "Don't all moms feel this way?" Apparently not.

It's nothing psychotic or anything. Or at least I don't think so. I'm not that far into the book yet. There were a few things that just smacked me right over the head. One is that I'm insanely jealous of women who have their mothers to call up when they need parenting advice. I remember when Zoe was first born being extremely disturbed by the fact I didn't have that resource, and made it a point to read every piece of literature about parenting that I could get my hands on.

My dad wasn't much help. Despite giving my poor mother three children, he remembers little about our upbringing. Did she have drugs during the delivery? "I think so. I don't know." Did she breastfeed us? "I think some of you. At least one. I don't remember." How many kids do you have, Dad? "I think two or three; one looks a lot like the milkman."

The other thing the book points out is that once these motherless daughters become mothers themselves, they not only stop defining themselves by having lost a mother, but they see their mothers in a totally different light. I sobbed when I read that part. I hadn't realize I had gone through that, but I had. At some point in the past five years I stopped being mad at my mom for leaving us and started feeling sorry for her that she missed all these things her kids were doing that she probably had looked forward to sharing with us.

And while I'm reading this stuff, as if on cue, I felt the baby move for the first time.

I was lying still and felt a definitive whoosh. I don't know how I even noticed it, it was so subtle, not like a fist jabbing me in the rib or anything. I thought I was crazy, but I looked up fetal development and sure enough, I should be feeling that around now. Perhaps with Zoe I wasn't so intuitive, because I don't remember feeling that so early.

Maybe, after too many cups of coffee yesterday, the kid was trying to tell me to go to sleep already.