Day 257--Making a Mother

Pain-1
Anxiety-5
Exhaustion-7

I've been fortunate the last few weeks that I've had very little pain.  It's been such a reprieve after months of ongoing muscular spasming and tightness.  I can remember a time not too long ago that I thought I'd never have another day without some kind of intense pain.  The exhaustion is hard to deal with, more because of expectations from my family than anything else.  My sleep patterns are a bit mixed up at the moment and that makes life a bit harder.

My son is angry that he has to attend day camp this week.  Intensely angry.  The kind of angry that makes me wonder if it's worth it at all.  In the hour it takes me to get up, get him up, and get him ready and over to the pickup spot, we both were verbally cruel to one another this morning.  He slammed things, told me how he hated me, what a bad mother I was, and how he shouldn't have to do this because he doesn't want to.  The fact that he doesn't want to is enough of a reason for him just annoys the hell out of me.  Who in this world doesn't have to do shit they don't want to do???  Like I want to be sitting in a car being yelled at by a fourteen-year old?  Like I even want to get up on vacation at seven-thirty a.m. to take the damn kid to camp?

Lately I've been considering having a biological child.  I'm in my early forties so my time is running out and I'm well aware of it.  I have a lot of doubts about being a mother again.  I worry that I won't feel that I can give this child everything it deserves, that I won't have the energy to keep up with a toddler, or a preschooler.  That I will need to continue to work full time to support my family and my time with my baby will be limited to evenings and weekends.  Maybe more than anything else, that I will find the problems I have always written off to disorders and poor prenatal care to be faults in my own parenting abilities.  Perhaps the problems lie with me, not with my children's early situations.

As I left my sulking son at camp this morning, I was overwhelmed with tears and feelings of failure.  I doubt myself as a mother probably more than in any other way as a person.  And my god, there's enough doubt to go around fully.  But on mornings like today, I doubt that I could give enough to be a good mother to any baby, because some days I fail so miserably with my son.