The not-so-secret confessions of a Phd mum

An original 100 part miniseries

When I started my Phd, I felt like I was on top of the world. I was literally this dancing pink girl. I had gotten into a good program, with people much more experienced than me, and I thought I was the shizzle.

But see that little speck? That smidgen is me now, cut loose in planets catapulted out of their orbits by a swirl of equations and tables that is statistics. I loathe it, always have. Is there a doctoral degree on earth that doesn’t involve statistics? Show it to me please, I will be happy to shift. In all seriousness though, in a short two months (that have felt like years), I have gone from thinking I know my trade, to I Know Nothing, and the realization that the world is big, and we are microscopic.

That’s my life there, drawn in a framework during a class on (you guessed it), frameworks! The Phd is trying to edge the baby out, but the baby doesn’t get pushed around easily, so he is holding on. The husband, not as tenacious as the baby, has gone off quietly in that tiny bubble of green in the corner, occupying himself with the very many things he likes to do.  Gym, groceries, paying bills, hobbies, are all taking a backseat. Friends and family, which lets face it, we all need, hopefully will be around by the time I am done. And leisure? Hah!

 

I have loved it so far, honestly. The nerd in me—I was one of those kids who had a badge that said ‘a reader is a leader’ on my schoolbag—has embraced academia like you would a friend returned from war. Being at the library makes me intensely happy, there is something about the smell of books, the hum of fans, the quiet.

But I struggle with the guilt of leaving my 18 month old and going off everyday. It was different while I was working. But now, this degree is a privilege I feel, and something I am indulging in. And many times a day, when I think of that smiling little face, my stomach does a flip, and I question my decision. Is it fair to go off on my own pursuits when they grow up so quickly, and this time is so fleeting? I was perilously close to tears the other day when a colleague asked me admiringly “How do you do all this with a baby?” I wanted to sob out, “He is a good baby, and makes sacrifices for me, his terrible, terrible, mother.”

Thankfully, I didn’t.

I am also on the road to burnout. I walk in the jittery steps of a caffeine addict, my laptop clutched to me pretty much the same way I hold the baby, telling myself to slow down, take in the green that is the campus, and eat a lunch that is not 10 seconds long, while running to the train at 5 pm. I rationalize that even presidents have time to eat lunch, and I am no president. The husband (lets call him B and the baby A for future reference), says that one day, he is sure to come home and see me typing away on my laptop, only to discover that, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, I was typing “All work and no play makes GG a dull person” over and over again, all along.

 

Not quite there yet, but I did spend time trying to come up with different permutations for the letter Phd, so not far either.

And there we are, trying the last one

 

 

Disclaimer: This is original ‘artwork’ by the author. Any attempt to reuse this without credit will be taken very happily! 

 

 

You know nothing, Gina F

Last week was  World Breastfeeding Week, and yesterday was  Mother’s Day in Thailand. Two things that I thought would come naturally to me when I gave birth seventeen months ago, in spite of people telling me repeatedly what a challenge it can be to be a first time mother. Unless it happens though, it is difficult to imagine; the sleep deprivation, recovery from surgery, and a bawling infant depending directly on your body for sustenance, combined with the fears that you don’t know what you are doing, that nothing you do is good enough, becomes….

….not the picture I had envisioned. You see, when I was in the glowing stages of a pretty easy pregnancy, I had pictured my future as a magazine mama. I was going to sit in my rocking chair, in white, while my baby cooed on the white rug in front of me. Note that I don’t own a single piece of white furniture. Obviously, reality resembled this more.

I found breastfeeding very challenging, although I was hell bent on it. I couldn’t hold the baby properly, the little bugger would not latch for three whole weeks, I pumped so that I would not have to give in to one drop of formula, which I was convinced would poison my baby, to the point that I was about to drop from the sheer fatigue, and more often than not, was crying louder than the baby. I convinced myself that the baby had silent reflux, was lactose intolerance, and I was not producing enough, because he fed every 45 minutes, and the books had told me a well fed baby should go three hours. Whenever I was not feeding, I was reading up on feeding, and as my husband likes to joke, fenugreek supplies in Bangkok had run out, because I was stuffing myself with tea, powder and tablets.

There are so many misconceptions surrounding breastfeeding, and some amount of reading help dispel some of the myths, but the rest don’t. My favourite among these is the Gina Ford book, How to Train Your Baby to be a Robot. No, that’s not the real name of the book, but it could be. The routine goes something like this, “Your one month old will wake up at 7:14:56 am, take 3.4 ounce of milk from one breast. Then he will change himself, while you pump the other breast, to get exactly 3.8 ounces. At exactly 9 he will fall into deep slumber, and then you, magazine mama, can paint your toes, or the many things mama has the luxury of doing, before the next feed.” Ok, so this is not what she really says, but you get the drift. It is so regimental, and so precise, that no human baby can possibly achieve this. Or a human mother.

As new mothers, there is so much pressure that society puts on you, overshadowed only by the expectations that you put on yourself, that it is a constant struggle. Post partum depression is a serious issue, and is not helped at all by people saying there is only one way to do things, when new mothers already feel so inadequate.

Seventeen months on, I am still not the magazine mama, no coiffed hair or impeccable whites. The baby doesn’t coo. But he is one boisterous, gleeful little monkey. And I am the kind of mother that I always wanted to be: casual. Does my baby eat sugar? Yes, at times (I can hear the collective gasp), but he also eats his vegetables like a champ. Does he have a routine? Roughly, but we have a lot of flex for fun times. Did I ever end up feeding him formula? I did, although I breastfed for as long as he wanted to. Are we the perfect mother-son duo? Not by a long shot.

But we love it.