Upstate NY Babies

Do you ever wonder?

Do you ever wonder how your parents did all they did when they were raising you (and your siblings)? I think of this a lot because I feel like DH and I depend on help from my parents a lot and I hate it. Especially when my parents and his family tells us stories of all that they did without help from family when we were young. Things like remembering my Mom never sitting down she was always doing something with us, for us, or cleaning the house, and  like all of them having us (including my Mom and Dad) stomach flu and just having to tough it out and get through it, or like my Dad went back to school to get his masters....he would work all day then drive 1 1/2 hours to take night classes...took him 10 years but he never gave up. I don't know that I could do that! I get home now with just having one child and I'm exhuasted after working all day and just want to sit and do nothing after T goes to bed. Sometimes scares the crap out of me because we definitely want more children. I wonder how I'll be able to do it and how they found the energy and stamina to do all they did.
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Re: Do you ever wonder?

  • Pretty picture of Teagan!

    I think you just get used to it and it becomes your new normal.  I know my parents did a few years like what we are doing - DH and I working opposite hours so one of us is home.  When everyone else said how nice it was, my mom was the one to say it is going to be hard - especially on the relationship between dh and I.

    But when I feel like things are so busy and tough, I try to just look back.  The newborn to 6 month age was really really hard on me.  It makes me nervous for when we have a second one, because while some if it won't be as bad, then I will be also running after a toddler.  But then I also remind myself that it goes by so quick.  Really, overall, it does.  Pretty soon they will be older and then you will be doing more running around for their activities, but they will also be assigned chores which will help with the housework, kwim?

  • I was just talking to my Mom this morning.  My cousin is deployed and his wife had a 3 year old and a 1 year old.  She posted on FB that she spent the night in the ER with the baby (105 fever, shaking, elevated blood pressure).  We were talking about how hard it has to be for her.  My Mom was telling me about when I was that age and my brother was 5.  Even when my father wasn't deployed...he didn't deal well with children.  She stepped on a big piece of glass outside and cut her foot bad.  My father told her that he would watch my older brother...but she had to drive herself to the hospital with a bleeding foot and a 1 year old me.  Plus all the time that he was actually deployed.  (They got divorced not long after that.)
    Bianca image.
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  • I ask my mom about this too.  My "little" brother and I are 13 months apart, and I just can't imagine having two that little and getting everything accomplished.  When I ask her how she went anywhere, like shopping, or just out of the house, her answer is she didn't.  She would go shopping after we went to bed, and basically never left the house with the two of us on her own until my brother was 1, and even then it was a trick.  To think that they didn't even have all kinds of fancy car seats and double strollers when we were little... I can't even imagine.
  • imageBitsyKelly:
    I ask my mom about this too.  My "little" brother and I are 13 months apart, and I just can't imagine having two that little and getting everything accomplished.  When I ask her how she went anywhere, like shopping, or just out of the house, her answer is she didn't.  She would go shopping after we went to bed, and basically never left the house with the two of us on her own until my brother was 1, and even then it was a trick.  To think that they didn't even have all kinds of fancy car seats and double strollers when we were little... I can't even imagine.

    my mom was the same way.  she didn't do anything until my dad came home and then she would go shopping.  i know she didn't have a carseat for me but she can't remember how she ever went anywhere with me.

  • imageBitsyKelly:
    I ask my mom about this too.  My "little" brother and I are 13 months apart, and I just can't imagine having two that little and getting everything accomplished.  When I ask her how she went anywhere, like shopping, or just out of the house, her answer is she didn't.  She would go shopping after we went to bed, and basically never left the house with the two of us on her own until my brother was 1, and even then it was a trick..

    This is my life.

    We have no help and when our parents visit our kids aren't that comfortable with them so they don't really babysit. 99.9% of the time we go out after the kids go to sleep when we are staying at our in-laws - and that happens once every six months or so.

    But I am also not one that takes a kid shopping every day in the middle of winter because "I can't stand to stay inside all the time"....I feel like I belong at home with my babies. And I'll take off the second DH comes home or after the kids go to bed.

    Our house is always messy - but mostly because I HATE cleaning and organizing and am not the domesticated type. And when I have a few minutes - I play on the computer not clean the kitchen. So maybe it's technology that is the difference between the generations...my mom watched One Life to Live while folding laundry and that's it :)

     

  • No, I don't wonder how my mom did it all because she didn't.  I am rather spiteful toward my mother when it comes to parenting.  I remember being shuffled through random babysitters, who ever was the cheapest.  Places with a half dozen kids running around, another half dozen in playpens, the stench of dirty diapers and a couple places with dog crap on the floor, all while the "sitter" sat on their arse watching Soaps.  And the sitters especially never liked me! I ended up spending a lot of days at my father's barber shop just sitting there watching him cut hair all day because the sitter of the week would take my sisters but refused me.  Then my mother would pick us up after work, no dinner, no cleaning, she sat in her chair reading her books complaining she worked all day and was too tired for us.  Don't get me wrong, my house growing up wasn't gross, but it wasn't clean either.  Basically, my parents did the bare minimum.  We used paper plates and my mom never cooked so there really weren't any dishes to pile up, things like that to keep housework at a minimum.  I remember fighting with my mom at a very young age over her basic lack of parenting, as young as I remember, at least as young as 4.  I hated that there was never dinner on the table because she didn't cook, that I wanted to do gymnastics and dance but she didn't have time to drive me, I remember being in 1st grade despirately wanting to learn to read and write asking her to help me and her response was that it was the teacher's job and that is why she pays taxes...  The list goes on right through college when I asked to BORROW $200 for books (I was 18 working full time to afford tuition and living) but she didn't have that kind of $, only for her to call me two days later to tell me how they had just bought a pair of brand new sea Kayaks. 

    Oh, and my parents are still married, she wasn't a single mom or anything.  My Dad wasn't around much because he worked two jobs.  Owned a small one man barber shop during the day and worked as a Silver Smith on the night shift.  They just make a LOT of bad financial choices, and still do.

  • Yes, I do wonder this.  My parents had me a year after they immigrated to the US.  My mother barely spoke English, didn't have a Driver's License or a car of her own, she lived in the Deep South and had no friends or family there, and my dad worked full time and then went to school at night.  I really wonder how she didn't go insane, but I guess the answer is that she probably did a little! 

  • My Mom is pretty easy going, so I have to imagine that is how she did it.  Plus, she was a SAHM until my younger sister went to school and we are all spaced apart...9 years between my brother and I and 5 years between my sister and I.  I think that things were just simpler back then.  She had a lot of indoor hobbies, but I do remember going a lot of places too.  She spent a lot of time with us, and went back to work when it was right for her.  My parents also were in bowling leagues and went out as a couple on a regular basis...unfortunately despite making time for each other, they still got divorced after 25 years of marriage, but both are now better off because of it.  My Dad worked a lot, but I remember him doing bath time a lot with us, as I am sure it was a way for him to spend some time with us after he worked all day.  We always sat down together as a family for dinner.  

    My parents and my ILs are really supportive of us, and we tell them at least weekly how much we appreciate it.   

    imageimage PHOTO Credit: Meryl :)Baby Birthday Ticker Ticker Baby Birthday Ticker Ticker
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