What "Mommy" Means to Me

Mommy was not my daughter's first word - "dada" was. Followed by "milk", "more" and a slew of others. "Mama" would come months later. It was as if my daughter was purposefully withholding bestowing the title on me. But whether the only human who really had the right to call me Mommy called me that or not, the world pinned the title on my chest before she was even born. 

Heather Havrilesky is right. Mommy is a label that the world now defines you by. But I disagree with her assessment that "becoming a mother doesn’t change you so much as violently refurbish you, even though you’re still the same underneath it all." It didn't just change me to the outside world. It changed me at the core.

At first, it seemed almost surface. Like waking up in a new dimension. The world around you has completely changed but you are the same person you were the day before - or you think so at least. But now your brain is full of random facts and figures you didn't even know existed. You're obsessed with basic human functions on a level you could never have imagined. And your party conversations, on those rare occasions where you find yourself at a party, are strikingly different. 

I remember attending a birthday party at a beautiful house at the top of a hill. Waiters passed h'ourderves, roulette and blackjack tables were set up outside. My husband had a drink in one hand and cards in the other. I wandered around with a baby strapped to my chest and found myself sucked into a conversation about another child's bowel movements. I nodded politely, sympathetically, but inside I was screaming. Is this really the new dimension I live in? Is this what my life is going to be? Not long after I left to go breastfeed in the backseat of my car and cried over the loss of adult conversation. 

The concept of being a mommy felt alien to me. To be lumped into this group made me question who I was and who I would be going forward. But as sleep deprivation loosened its grip and my daughter uttered the word "mommy" for the first time, I started to appreciate it as well. I am someone's mommy. I feel it intensely when I look at my daughter in dance class or when she's not feeling well. Being a mommy has brought joy into my life that I couldn't have comprehended before. 

It's changed me and even thought my daughter is now two years-old, I'll be honest, I haven't quite figured out who I am now beyond being a mom. Being a mom has seeped into every part of my life - my job, my sleeping patterns, the way I eat. I can't compartmentalize it. Like Havrilesky said "as we’ve learned to treat children as people with desires and rights of their own, we’ve stopped treating ourselves and one another as such."  

She's right. And more so than the world doing it to me, I've done it to myself. I've stopped thinking about my own rights and desires and myself as a human being and a person individually and not connected to my kid, my husband or my job. 

My "Mommy Problem" is that becoming a mommy has both given me a new identity and stripped me of one at the same time.