Thoughts on my journal entries

Holy crap. Reading through these was both traumatizing and cathartic. Now after having gone to four therapy sessions I feel so much empathy and compassion for my past self. I couldn't really feel that before I went to therapy, I just felt frustration that I wasn't "back" to being me yet. Looking back I realized it was so TOUGH, I should have asked for SO MUCH MORE help, and I should have been SO MUCH KINDER to myself.

My sincerest desire for you dearest Ali is that I can ease your motherhood journey by being a listening ear and empathetic heart. I want so much to help you in any way I can. Best friends forever and ever.

Love,

Carla

December post partum

December 21, 2018

Observations on Charlotte. Charlotte keeps taking steps into fully forming as an adult. Or rather, she is more fully formed than we think and she opens more windows for us to see that as the days go on. For example, now she expresses happiness in more ways than one. Before she used to just smile, then she added screaming to convey extreme joy. Now she can express happiness in a middle stage, laughing.  She laughs when my mom arrives in the morning. She laughs when I pull out the milk carton to get her a bottle.  

She also is wanting to do more things like us. She wants to open the fridge and hands things to us in an attempt to be useful. She is more amenable to cleaning up when we start cleaning up, but after she puts all her crayons back in their box she will dump them out again. So she still doesn't know that cleaning up means you are done playing. The other day I was laying on the couch home sick and she toddled over to me and did the all done sign with her hands and pulled on my finger as if to say "You are all done laying on the couch mom. Time to play."  

The other day when I was folding the laundry she handed me piece of clothing to fold.  

She is understanding more the social mores around visiting. When people come over she will be very shy, but by the time they are getting ready to leave she is waving bye and saying "Baaa."  

She LOVES her crayons and coloring board. She has found all sorts of things to do with her crayons; toss them in the air, roll them under the couch, hide them within the flaps of her coloring board, put them in their box and take them out again, color.  

Happenings in our life. We took a trip to Utah last week to see Daniel's grandparents and also to attend Ali's baby shower. It was so good to hang out with Ali. It really filled my soul to spend time with my best friend. Lately I have been undergoing a feelings renaissance. I am connecting more with my emotional side and trying to feed it what it needs. This came after intense dissatisfaction with the way life was. I have gone to a therapist twice now and I have learned to give myself permission to need these emotional things; like being there for your best friend's baby shower. It also has helped me feel a lot more positive about school because I'm more forgiving towards myself for not progressing like I want to. I'm learning to accept more help and to accept the fact that it's okay that I can't do everything. We are starting to work on our relationship more too. I realize that is hugely important and something we have been ignoring.  

Today I had a nice long talk with Susan about all of this. Something else I'm learning is that talking about problems makes a world of difference. I don't have to solve the problem, but just talking makes me feel so much better. Mostly it validates that I'm not crazy. It was comical and frightening to hear the similarities between Susan and Dula's relationship and our relationship. Comical because I think our problems are unique to us but clearly they aren't, scary because even they don't have everything figured out.  

I want to start writing more about motherhood. I would like to compose a series of vignettes about scenes from motherhood. My motherhood, but also my friends' motherhood which is different than mine. Things that are joyful and things that are subtly unfair.  

1. All the observations on Charlotte that I just mentioned.  
2. Feeling like you are becoming friends with your little person. First understanding more their likes and dislikes, but also being amazed and them intuiting your feelings, or your next actions. Receiving from your little person in ways you weren't expecting, whether that be a head nuzzle or a pat on the knee, or them pulling you to a Christmas tree and saying "Wow." 
3. Expressing your worry to your econ male classmates that your child is looking at screens too much. Then having them lecture you on the best ways to raise kids (none of them have kids, hmph).  
4. Putting your husband in charge of getting Charlotte ready for the day and having your mother tuttuing tutting you because Charlotte is not wearing a headband, as if it's your fault your husband doesn’t think/care to put one on. In general all the criticisms about Charlotte (no shoes on, no sweater, she hit her head) and all the worries (her cough sounds worse, should we call the doctor) from my mother and mother-in-law are directed at me while Daniel is laying on the couch looking as his phone. Why is it that everyone acts as if I'm they only one they can tell do things? Like I am the only gatekeeper to Charlotte's well-being? It's so much strain. I feel like I can't get a moment of peace when I'm with them.  
5. Letting go of not giving your daughter the childhood you had and hoping that you are making it up to her in other ways. For example, I will never be a masterful cook like my mom. But maybe more organized?  

November post partum

(3/9/2019 note: November 25 is a completely happy blog post. I've had a few of those before Nov 25, but they weren't as long)

November 5, 2018 

I go through ups and downs of being a grad school mom and this is a down 

  

Down: feeling like my research is going nowhere and worryingly I don't care too much. 

  

Silver lining: started looking at industry jobs as motivation to get the heck out of here and that's been fun.  

  

Down: unclear how to navigate the rest of grad school.  

  

Feeling exhausted all the time. I don't have a million deadlines, but the looming graduation date, the thought that I'll never finish stresses me out constantly. And working on Daniel's school stuff with him evenings and weekends makes me have very few breaks. 

  

Sometimes I fear I've locked myself in a terrible battle of trying to handle a career and a child. What if I had waited longer? Would this have been easier? Having a child could on the other hand be forcing me to reveal my preferences about career path sooner. I think industry is the right choice for me (although I toss and turn at night about this decision too) and I would have been slower to get there had I not had a child and really thought long and hard about what I want as a career.  

  

Why is this so hard? I can't put my finger on why this is so difficult but the general feeling i get is that I always have white noise going on. Worries about my dissertation. Trying to arrange everything to do with Charlotte. And I'm never by myself doing whatever I want. Except for on the bus and when I work from home alone. But I wouldn't call that free alone time. That is what I miss the most. Being alone and getting lost in something and only thinking about that one thing and not having that thing attached to my future career outcomes.  

  

I feel guilty because Daniel has even less alone time than me and he doesn't seem to care. But we've always been different this way. He never seemed to need alone time. He grew up sharing a room with 2 brothers. Whereas I always had gobs of alone time.  

November 25, 2018

 Having a child is like falling in love over and over again. They change so often and so quickly you are getting to know a whole new person from week to week.  

These past 3 weeks I feel like Charlotte has especially blossomed. She seems to be more communicative, understanding more of what we say to her and expressing herself more to us. One day as I was reading Animal Sounds, her favorite book, she started whispering the animal sounds under her breath. She remembered them! What does the crow say? Caw-caw. What does the sheep say? Baa-baa. What does the turkey say? Gobble gobble gobble. She whispers them and smiles at you like the has just told you a wonderful secret. It's adorable. Also when reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to her she starts saying "Cook, cook" when we get to the hook, nook, cook page. I am crazy in love with Charlotte and I can't get enough of her.  

She also understands discipline more. When she is getting into something she shouldn't, like a drawer, I noticed she reacts a lot better if I don't immediately send a bad message like "Don't do that." Instead if I compliment her on her exploring skills and explain to her that she can look and not touch and direct her to play with something else, she is much happier and more receptive. I learned that from "No Bad Kids." After reading that book I'm learning see the world through her eyes. She isn't trying to get into trouble, she is just exploring. So I need to teach her instead of just telling her no. It's so rewarding to see her respond to my improved parenting skills.  

This Thanksgiving weekend Charlotte met Uva again and Charlotte went bananas for Uva. She screamed with delight when she pet Uva and would toddle after her. It was endless entertainment for Charlotte.  

One of my favorite things to do with Charlotte is tuck her in for the night. Our last official day of breastfeeding was November 16, but I still love to snuggle her at night. Sometimes if Iook her in the eyes while I'm rocking her to sleep she'll start laughing then I'll start laughing and we just keep making each laugh. It's such a wonderful intimate moment between us.  

October post partum

(3/9/2019 note: Sanity looks like it has started to come back. I started writing longer blog posts about other things than just how tired I was)
October 16, 2018

I've been thinking a lot about motherhood. Parenthood. I was playing with Andrew and Victoria in the gym today. Xiomara was there too and we were talking about work/life balance. And I slowly stepped into the idea that I'm in it. I'm in motherhood and I'm in the kid phase for a while. For the rest of my life I've signed myself up for this juggle. How to spend my time. What do I want? What do I want for my family? Not a shocking, panicking thought process. More like running a marathon and realizing you were only one mile in. You knew you signed yourself up for the marthon. You knew "26.2"miles, but the first mile has been hard and I have 25 more to go. Usually in a race when I get to this point, I just clench in my teeth, suck in my breath, put my feet into a metronome and just distract myself from my weariness. Then I start to notice trees, store signs, people ahead of me, it takes my mind off the weariness.  

But I feel like this is much harder because I can't robotically march through the weariness. I want to really consume life. It's so full and great. But the trick is to not be exhausted. And to feel fulfilled. It's tough.  

What I do totally understand now is "giving up." Before Charlotte, it was distasteful to me to hear the story of the Fullbright scholar who dropped out of her physics masters because it was "too much." Why didn't her husband just drop out of his job, huh? Why is everyone celebrating because she "did what was best for her family?" It made me mad when the Winns shared that story with me of their daughter. What I saw was a broken dream. Brought down my drudgery and chores.  

But now I get it. It's totally exhausting. Thirty percent of my RAM is always used up by stuff I didn't used to worry about before. I can't just go out tonight. I can't stay up late. I can't sleep in. I need to feed, diaper, tend to Charlotte. I have to make sure what we are doing is best for her. I've added another variable to my optimization problem and it's really hard. So yes, people get exhausted. And I've got my parents and Daniel is a pretty supportive. He certainly doesn't think about all the things I do, but I'm still figuring out how much we need to meet each other in the middle on that (I discuss this more later). And the thing is a lot of the time I WANT to be with Charlotte. I want to toss my work plans out the window and just take her to the park. Not every day, but a lot of the time this feeling happens. So now I've flipped. I feel like the world should freaking value how much WORK kids are. I think that is the biggest problem. Because if a mom wants to stop working and be with her baby, that is awesome, that's great. But a mom shouldn't have to make that choice out of desperation. If she wants to work, that should be possible too. And employers have to realize that families are a big job and that their employees, men and women, are loyal to their families first. That a job is fulfilling, and pays the bills, but that family is first. And for too long because of rigid employment structure the choice for families has been binary. It's too hard to make it work with two working parents so one has to stay home. And it's usually the one who is totally spent, ready to call it quits because of double duty. So I've learned two lessons. Stay-at-home moms are heroes. And society needs to wake up to the importance of rearing families and not just shove all the work off to the women. Families should be celebrated more. WAY MORE. And I'm not talking about "we are all one big family and I love everyone and I don't discriminate and the human family, blah, blah, blah." But families who pore their sweat, their sanity, every iota of personal freedom into forming this thing that is resilient and steadfast. That should be appreciated more.  

PhD and motherhood. I'm so glad I have Charlotte. I don't know what I would do without her. All the cheesy crap about kids is TRUE. It's like falling in love over and over again. I'm absolutely crazy about her. Juli a while back told me that her mother said once she had kids, what mattered was her kids, not her anymore. And Juli said she's not ready for that. And it's true. That happened to me. My things still matter to me, but with the snap of a finger, if Charlotte needed me, I would do whatever it takes to help her. So it's scary, that feeling. But it's like the country song, "hurt so good." And it really gives life direction. Which makes me happier, in general I feel. Humans don't like to have a million choices. And when you stop trying to decide what's the most important in your life, you feel calmer. Although it invokes a whole lot of crazy too. Weird paradox.  

Things that happened this week. I went to the NBER conference on business taxation in Cambridge this week. It was awesome. I feel like I'm breaking out of my shell. I've worried so much my whole life about what people would think of me. It's been especially crippling in grad school because I"m afraid to ask questions. But because I feel this urgency, extra pressure to get things done and be efficient now that I have a baby I've been breaking out of my shell. And I've come to a self-awareness that often people don't give a second thought to me at all. When I sound nervous to myself, I may sound nervous to them, but it's not a huge deal. One bad interaction is not the rest of my life. Things still scare me. Talking to Reed on Monday is really anxiety-inducing. But I've been shedding my initial layer. I say what I'm thinking and I don't cringe to hear the response. I am actively telling people about my research and instead of feeling crushed when they ask me how something is going to work, I let them know I've thought it through. And if I haven't thought it through I swat away the feeling of stupidity. I'm not perfect. Nothing is perfect. The more I realize that, the more help I'm actually able to get to improve myself. But it's a pretty hard struggle. I want to talk to Mom about how she has such a resilient personality. Because I really want to teach Charlotte that. To be strong. I don't think anyone growing up to me said, "It's okay if it's not perfect." I just got praised for everything being perfect, from teachers, everyone. What I need to focus on in improvement.  

Had a great meeting with Chris Palmer. I actually felt like he was interested in what I was doing and if I were at MIT would ask me about it and be happy to meet with me. I realize that I don't have that at Berkeley, whcih makes me really self-concious, but I just have to stop caring. I feel like an ugly duckling. But an ugly duckling who hides in a corner does less than an ugly duckling who puts themselves out there. Even if they are still ugly.  

Being with Jim and Mary makes me realize the importance of flexibility. They are pretty rigid. I offered to do the dishes and Mary spent 6 minutes explaining to me their "system." It just seems like they should be okay if someone doesn't do the dishes using their system. No need to comment or fret. I see this fault in me a lot. I do it to Daniel all the time. I get angry often because I feel like Daniel is not hauling his weight in the family planning, running, organizing. But I think Daniel is right a lot of the time that it's okay if stuff doesn't work out. If Charlotte's costume doesn't get made in time for the Halloween party, whatever. No need to freak out that my "systems" aren't runing smoothly. But I think I do it as a reaction to my dad being the complete opposite of Jim and Mary. He's a little too unstructured for me. No wallet, messy desk drawer. Asking me for the same phone numbers over and over again. No semblance of chores, how to keep the house clean (while growing up). Buying planters and not having them together 8 months later. So I compensate. Lots of things made me nervous when I was a kid and it would have made me feel better if we went in with a plan. For example, I remember going to Hearst Castle with Meemaw and Andrea and the rest of the family. We should have bought the tickets ahead of time, but we didn't and we ended getting into a tour by the skin of our necks. Then the bus was too full and they had to turn others away and the whole bus looked a little angrily at us because they had heard my dad haggling about letting us on the bus. Stuff like that. Going on vacation with no plans. So I think the two brothers are too much on the opposite end of the spectrum and I'm going to try to find the happy middle. But I usually overreact on the Jim side of things.  

Jim had a pretty heart to heart talk with me about this. He told me he's been wondering if his strive for achievement is too much, because he always feels anxious to get the next thing done. And he's never satisfied. He either has too much on his plate, or when he's taking a vacation, he's worrying about what he's not doing. I wonder if it's affected his kids. When I'm in his company, often I feel his slight disapproval for pretty minor things. I don't really care, but as a kid, this would be hard.  

So lots of thoughts this weekend about time, how to use time. And how I want free time. But I also want to do a lot of things. Maybe if I get the mindset to do the things I want to accomplish in my freetime, but don't get stressed about "doing them," "achieving them." Just learn how to step away when I truly need a break and how to engage in them in a light-handed not super stressful way.