At the end of my maternity leave at 2 months, I struggled with the guilt of leaving my son home and zooming off to work.
After a month at work, I realised that my son began to take a preference to my mum , who is his caregiver in the day. I convinced myself that it naturally occurs, because he spends most of his waking hours with her. Yet I feel a tinge of jealousy when he looks at her instinctively to be carried,and how quickly he responds to her beckoning to sleep. But in my relief, I feel silly to be jealous of my own mother. It would have been unbearable if it were some other person.
At times, especially when things get bad at work, I question myself if I have arranged my priorities correctly, whether I have made right choice to spend time away from my son in this manner. I worry that this decision undermines my duty as a mother. To some extent there is a personal regret that I may not be there to get a slice of the action in his development milestones. This element of surprise will be masked, like how we watch the news or listen to the radio, outside the box. I dreaded the fact that I may not be the first or only person he will look to for comfort. Whether I like it or not, eventually it will happen. Just as I have weaned from my parents emotionally when I became a teenager to confide in my friends, and later to my soul mate whom I married.
I noticed how women who have had domestic helpers for their children continue to build fulfilling relationships with them way into adulthood. Our feelings and emotions overwhelm and deceive us to thinking that we become less involved or incapacitated when we are not able to step up to our 'role' in society. I began to draw the same inferences on breastfeeding where I experienced the same guilt just contemplating at giving my son formula milk. In fact, there is no correlation between breastfeeding and being a competent mother. It became apparent to me that I was overridden with guilt and filled with all these pent up, see-saw feelings for nothing. It would be almost absurd to impose similar expectations on fathers. Are they any less of a father because they work and leave the child-minding business to someone else? What if they were single parents, would it be any different ? Do we still hold the same expectations for them to act as mums?
I look deeper what is construed as a good mother. Is it measured by how much we are able to give to our children in terms of our time, money, or effort? Or by how our children reciprocate our love? Or by the extent to which we are able to satisfy our children's needs? Is it measured by how much we love? Then again, love cannot be measured. So it is again subjective as what we perceive as being good or bad in a mother.
To breastfeed or not to, to be a stay home, part-time or full-time working mother, these are just choices to be made with given circumstances. But I will always know deep in my heart how much I love my children and should choose to demonstrate this in my own unique way, guilt-free.
