(Oh) the shame

Those awful moments, when the buck stops with you. Your free choices. And bugger. Where’s the humour to be human and laugh it off. Not there. Miles away in fact. 

Haven’t written or had mental space to think creatively about much the past months. An absence in correspondence, and an absence of brain. 

A house move, winter sickness, breastfeeding, and a preschool move will do that to you. And best of all when under pressure, a nice slice of internalised shame to really ramp things up. Two reflections on this lousy time.

Firstly, parenting (in an economy and society based on normative motherhood) is ripe for having too much on the plate - with nothing to drop. Amidst sleep deprivation not too dissimilar to a persistent hangover - I consider dropping the obvious one, the parenting obligations. There needs to be a whole piece on the false economy of this option. 

Okay, leave that with me for another jot-down after this. But no, that wasn’t a quick or simple solution. I thought about dropping the breastfeeding - at all times of the night - for a sick eight-month-old who was teething, losing weight from two basic colds and two boring teeth.

No, I wasn’t cutting that. Even as I got sucked dry. Ever so literally. Oh so resentfully. Again not a quick or simple solution, which as my friend who recently had a day procedure would attest, a top Sydney surgeon and hospital too do not comprehend.

Every time I put the babe down, she cried, I peeled her from my body, she cried. I wish I cried. Instead I gritted teeth, raised eyebrows, and death stared my partner as they walked freely along the corridor - picking up clothes from the floor without the back ache of a child on one hip, or their nipple clenched in a babies mouth.

Insult to injury, the more the babe rejected solids and pulled me down to the couch, the more our four-year-old called for my attention. Please god, could someone entertain her for the countless hours to bed while my partner cooks and cleans on return from work.  

I thought about cutting my work. The one I blushed cheeks for, hiding the shamble of snotted clothes and cold porridge out of Teams view. So wanting to take the sick and carer’s leave needed to make the doctor appointments, and the string of unread messages: ‘Call for medical results’. 

The fresh mortgage not only relied on dual income, but I’d fought hard for a freelance role that I loved - and knowing the barriers for m/others and birthing folk to re-enter workplaces - the maternal “brick ceiling” - no tampering with this.

So, we dumped the reusable nappies, my meal standards dropped to zero, and yes, we hired cleaning. We also pulled back one day of my partner’s work despite him trying to rebuild internal goodwill for a contract extension that was up in mere months.

In any other framework, dropping income and increasing paid cleaning would be nothing short of irresponsible. You often need new frameworks to make sense of your world and not turn the hatred in. Lol - or like me - towards your loved ones.

The one thing I could most easily drop was my relationships. Resentment and blame in, partnership and grace out. Also, what dropped, and possibly linked to the above, was most importantly, the shame at getting it wrong, for the second time. 

This wasn’t my first rodeo of having a baby on hip while managing competing work identities and unrealistic domestic, social, cultural pressures, and insecure workplace conditions.

The new mortgage a choice, yes amidst a growing housing crisis where housing (home) security was a concern. But it was a privilege, a choice, and something to be grateful for - not hence complain about. Bugger. 

The first baby: I didn’t know. I had misleading cultural expectations for what it would entail. A baby that I expected to be in care, or with grateful grandparents, from three months while I worked full-time. Or indeed cared for by a willing generous co-parent who would be afforded the progressive parental conditions he needed to take carers leave and be flexible working.

But this time, when I felt the floor crumble (again) I knew these conditions and realities through and through. I was under no false illusion, and yet, here I was, trying to run the race hoping that I could put extensive learnings and expertise into practice and do what I had failed the first time.

But no, crumble ahoy. Again. 

Those awful moments, when the buck stops with you. Your free choices. And bugger. Where’s the humour to be human and laugh it off. Not there. Miles away in fact. 

And this comes with the second reflection: Freely chosen work. I can’t remember the academic that describes mothering as such, but it raises the brilliant question of what are the conditions that we should expect as m/others in conducting this work.

If we were to get an employment lawyer going - what would these conditions, reasonable expectations, resourcing, and remuneration look like.

Then there is, what is the community’s role and responsibility in child-raising. Safe to say, all data leads back to early intervention, early education, early early early the better. Poverty, inequality and disadvantage costs.

But to have a second a child, knowing the challenges and realities, and then to struggle. Then to complain. That’s one I struggled to provide myself with grace for. One that I now sit on, with distance and lightness and subsequent openness to possible answers to this question, which could simply be - Em we muck up and get on with it.

But one I’m not quite ready to settle on. Still tossing up. Still unsure.

The other last piece I want to touch on while the fingers go. V real threats to women’s healthcare and body autonomy in SA this week - driven and $$ funded by women MPs, m/others, and influential women academics in law in fact.

Thank you to South Australian Abortion Action Coalition and Fair Agenda for your incredible advocacy. Safe to say, I am not confident that the vote would have gone the way it did without your voice, but also nor should anti-healthcare advocates be emboldened to think these rights won’t be defended. Thank you for your national voice, now and tomorrow.

Every denial of women’s healthcare is a risk to all women and non-binary people. Principle - no woman and non-binary person should ever be denied freely chosen healthcare. Policy wise - don’t expect body autonomy and quality healthcare to be denied in one context and afforded in another.

Keep it legal, make it accessible. And of course, make it a quality service that promotes best-practice health and wellbeing.

Emma 💋