FTM

Advice on Advice

/ thedairydiaries / 2 Comments

So often parents, especially new and expectant mothers, get bombarded with advice from resources near and downright bizarre. Thanks for the intel on how to cope with nipple biting, middle-aged single dude at Starbucks! This bounty of insights leads some guardians to universally rebuke all outsider commentary. How foolish! How short-sighted!

“Enough with the unsolicited advice!” “Unless you’re advising me on which wine goes with Cheez-Its, keep your advice to yourself!” “Why does my mother-in-law bother giving me baby-rearing tips… it’s MY baby?!” Some mothers vent.

I counter: accept the advice, every nugget you can scrounge. Ask present mothers in all stages of life for their learnings. They are your greatest resource. Then, dig through the mound. Sift out the out-dated, the unsavory, the inapplicable, and the ridiculous. What you’re left with is a priceless tool box with which to address your greatest life challenge yet: parenthood.

When strangers and loved ones are offering you advice, they are selflessly giving you free insights — lessons learned the hard way — so that you needn’t suffer. How beautiful is that?! What a gift (and you don’t even need to return it to Macy’s if it’s not to your liking!) The advisors are not implying you’re incapable or unfit by sharing their knowledge; they’re simply lending you a hand. They’re reaching out. Accept that donation with open arms!

Just because you listen to the advice from an elderly woman in line at Target, doesn’t mean you must follow her parental algorithm. Just because a co-worker emails you a list of her baby must-haves, doesn’t mean you are destined to purchase her recommendations precisely. Just because a neighbor chats you up about bottle vs. breast doesn’t mean you are contractually obligated to ammend your feeding choices. Instead, it means you are humble enough to know you are not omniscient, that you are aware your journey has only just begun, that you properly honor the knowledge of those who’ve gone before you. Basically, it means you’re wise enough to learn from others.

So, drop the ego. Holster the defensiveness. Ditch the dramatic tendency toward offense. And accept advice for what it is: a free gift that you may do with as you please. You may just learn something! I know I do.

 

Balance

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Parenthood is all about balance: enough fresh produce to outweigh the chicken nuggets, enough activity to counteract the episodes of Doc McStuffins, enough good mommy moments to blur the bad mommy moments. Balancing time is, perhaps, the most challenging balancing act. It’s an ever-changing scale and fraught with imperfections.

To balance “you” time with couple time, one-on-one child time, family time, socializing time, household duties time, extended family time — the list goes on — is a juggling act that’s bound to falter. If you throw work into the mix, it gets incredibly complex.

Four months after having #1, I returned to my corporate job but as a part-time employee. “What a perfect arrangement!” “You’re so lucky to have such a great balance!” People would say upon hearing of my work situation. It was good… but it wasn’t as perfect as it seemed.

Instead of being fully stay-at-home mom or entirely full-time employee, I existed somewhere in the middle with both home and work lives pulling me to give more. I felt as if I was half-ass’ing both sets of responsibilities. I couldn’t prioritize work without falling through on parenting and home duties, and giving more of myself at home meant scaling back at work. The one item missing in this work verses home balance: me. I was so harried trying to simultaneously be both working mother and stay-at-home mother that I had left “me” time out of the equation entirely… and couple time was nonexistent.

After having #2, and still working part-time, the only “me” time I had was when I was pumping breast milk for my son and eventually for donation. Then, a few significant corporate reorganizations presented me with the opportunity to adjust my hours. I cut back to 15 hours per week instead of 20 hours. That worked for a bit, until work expectations rose to the level of a 20-hour workweek despite my abbreviated schedule.

When I became pregnant with #3, another ruthless set of corporate reorganizations was sweeping through the cubicle farm and I was one of the casualties. It was a hard hit, at first, and I made the long drive home in a fit over how I could figure out another work path. I had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, but I was so accustomed to working and living the chaotic balancing act, that I didn’t know another way.

Then, while sitting at a red light positioned at a dead-end, my inner voice said, “This is what you’ve always wanted. Why are you fighting it?” A calm swept over me. I smiled. And with that, the light turned green and I turned left toward home.