motherhood is hard.

The other night while Bebe was asleep, I was talking with my husband about how old I’d be when Bebe will be a certain age.

This came about because over the weekend, I asked my husband to take an updated professional photograph of me. I was interviewed for a podcast show by my alma mater about a career topic, and I wanted to use a more recent photograph that looks professional. I’d been using a more personal photo of me and Bebe for all of my web profiles, including LinkedIn and Twitter. I didn’t want to use the 2006 professional photo that hubby took of me – my hair’s since been cropped short and let’s face it – I got extra wrinkles now.

When I looked through the various photographs that hubby took, I was aghast at how old I looked. Mind you – I can see exactly how many pores I have on my nose because I was looking at high resolution proofs. I’m talking about ridiculous levels of magnification that shows you what no one should ever see on their own faces because they will be traumatized by the unbashed imperfection of their faces.

Of course, once you reduce the photo to web size, I look “mature, yet sophisticated”.

Hubby did tell me that I looked like my mom with the short haircut that I now wear, and I don’t think he meant that as a compliment. I told him that the long hair ain’t coming back, but once Bebe goes to school and I find myself having too much discretionary time to twiddle my thumbs, I might think about growing out the hair.

So that night in bed we were talking about aging. Then I started calculating.

“When Bebe’s 11 I’ll be 47.
When Bebe’s 21 I’ll be 57.
When Bebe’s 31 I’ll be 67.
Oh my god! 67!” I said.

I decided that I must (MUST!!) stay alive at 67 because by then, Bebe may have gotten married, and will be established in his life in terms of “identity” and “values”.

I’d really like to still be alive at 77 because Bebe will 41, and perhaps a dad (my husband is 41 right now, and Bebe is just over 1 year old). Then I’d be able to see Bebe’s baby, or “Bebe’s Bebe”!

I ain’t changing no diapers though, I’m saying that up front.

OK, maybe occasionally I’ll change Bebe’s Bebe’s diapers.

Anything for Bebe.

(It does put me in a sober mood, to think that I’m closer to mortality than I used to be, except now I have a lot more to lose than I used to have.)

Image credit: hourglass by yunior.

Bebe has a cold and he is feeling miserable. That means he’s ultra clingy and not enjoying himself even when he’s outdoors, which he usually enjoys. It’s been awful sleeping next to a sick baby because he would wake up and wail loudly and thrash his arms about (one of his fists usually land on my head or my eye), crawl up and fling himself down on my face. I tried suctioning his snot out with the suction bulb, which of course he absolutely hates.

Today while I was eating a snack in the kitchen, hubby was playing peekaboo with bebe: hubby would look about and say, “where are you bebe? where are you? hello? hello?” while bebe hides behind hubby with both of his hands on hubby’s back. After a while bebe would walk around and show his face, then hubby would said “there you are!” and bebe thinks this is the best game ever.

Then hubby told me that some weeks ago, he was driving to the gym. On his way there, he saw a nanny holding a baby. He thought about a nanny holding our bebe, and hubby said he actually felt sick. Hubby said that it didn’t seem right that someone else other than us should be holding bebe, especially outside the house. I was surprised to hear it, I thought that he had been open to daycare and nannies, but I was very relieved and happy that he had strong feelings about someone else taking care of bebe. As long as our finances are taken care of (i.e. the mortgage payments), hubby’s left it up to me to decide how I want to proceed with childcare arrangements when my mom leaves. Still, I needed to know that he feels as strongly as I feel about this being the right decision for us.

I don’t know how this will all play out… this being my business plans and career development for the next few years. I do worry about how people would think about me, if they would shake their heads and say that I was wasting my talent. I worry about how I would manage myself – my emotions and my intellectual energy that had gotten used to being expressed in various intense ways, usually through fast paced entrepreneurial activities. I worry about my earnings, whether I could create a way to generate revenue such that we could actually be “financially free”.

This worry is further amplified by the reality that this year, for the first time since I started working and since I started my own business – that we’re getting a tax REFUND instead of paying additional taxes over my estimated tax payments. For the first time in 10 years we went down the tax bracket. Even though this had been part of my plan (I see a diminishing return where after earning a particular amount, it was worth less for us to be in a certain tax bracket – to work harder but keep less). I did want us to come down the tax bracket and keep more of what I earned even as this means I’d be earning less. I wanted to impose this new “selection pressure” the way that a microbiologist creates a hostile environment in a petri dish: it forces the life in that petri dish to adapt and in fact, use the hostile environment as a new food source and thrive. Did I mention that my undergraduate degree was in microbiology?

The fears are there. The anxiety is there. What people would think. Whether we could pull this off. How I would manage.

But the way I see it, the way I feel about my decision to stay home and be bebe’s mom and make things work around bebe is much stronger than the fear and anxiety I feel.

Who knows… I may just figure out a way to make this work, and I can then teach others how to do what I did.