I read a very interesting article on Feministe this morning, about the decisions of mothers to work/stay at home and the struggle to find some sort of work/family balance that maintains happiness or, at the very least, a minimal amount of guilt and stress. And I’m sufficiently hopped up on misery, hormones and general fatigue that I’ll bite.

It’s no secret that the United States is not high on the world’s list of countries that mandate some sort of paid maternity leave. In fact, according to a link from the article, the United States is “…one of only five countries that does not provide or require employers to provide some form of paid maternity leave.”

While there is FMLA, or the Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires employers to give most workers (not just mothers) up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for births, adoptions and certain other medical care, that leave is wholly unpaid. So while you are guaranteed your position back after 12 weeks, unless you have private or employer-provided short/long-term disability insurance, those 12 weeks come at your expense.

There are a few states that do provide some amount of short-term disability for maternity leave. Pennsylvania is not one of them. California is, and I believe Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington either do or are considering it.

Working in a global consulting firm, I have colleagues spread out across virtually every continent. Many of them are women and the majority of those women are mothers. I am wildly envious of the support their governments and/or employers provide to women in the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Sweden and Australia, to name a few. Paid leave can extend (in decreasing percentages) for up to a year in some cases, with additional unpaid leave available. 

My colleagues are shocked to discover that not only does the United States not have a mandated policy on paid maternity leave, that even the most generous employer (like mine) will provide only a limited number of weeks, which often needs to be augmented by saved vacation and sick time. But that paid leave only applies to full-time, salaried employees, of which I am not.

While I work a full-time gig at this global firm, I am a contractor, meaning I am actually an employee of a contracting agency, not the firm, and paid on an hourly basis. My agency takes care of taxes, has benefits and a 401K available, but there is no coverage for maternity leave. There are no paid sick days or vacation days in my job, and very few paid holidays. The six weeks of maternity leave I am planning to take starting July 28 has been meticulously scraped from my weekly paychecks during the last several months. Fortunately, my compensation has enabled me to save enough to cover all bills and expenses through mid-September in the absence of a regularly scheduled active paycheck. I’m already thinking I’ll try to work 10-15 hours a week after the first few weeks off, just to keep a little money coming in. When people ask me why I’m not taking more time off, I respond, “I simply cannot afford to take any more time.”

Hey, give me a break. How many times in the past 2.5 years have I talked about what Emerson does?

People ask me if Emerson talks a lot for his age. Frankly, I have nothing to compare it to, so I don’t know what is considered “a lot of language” for a two and a half year old.  I know we are always talking to him and around him. We tried to never use baby talk. The talking thing was something Michael and I both had to really work at. We’re usually pretty quiet around the house and don’t readily chatter about every little thing, so it took a real effort for us to realize that Emerson wasn’t going to spontaneously burst into language through osmosis. But I guess our efforts have had some effect. Emerson has a decent vocabulary, usually talks in full sentences, even if his pronouns are a bit mixed up. (He refers to himself as “you” rather than “I”)

He also does and says things that we didn’t know he either knew about, or was paying attention to. Including all the stuff we’d rather he didn’t.  One big lesson we’ve learned…you can’t slip up ONCE on the things you say and do around toddlers. Especially the naughty things. Casually toss a piece of track onto the train table? Henceforth, all toys need to be thrown onto every surface. Surreptitiously lick the edge of your plate of the last delicious morsel of strawberry pie? Prepare for all plates to be licked. Use a bad word? Except to hear it. OFTEN. But ask them not to flush the toilet without permission? Somehow that information doesn’t compute, even after the 72nd reminder.

Yesterday we were curled up on his favorite place, my bed, and he laid his head down on my belly. “Baby brother.” He said, giving my belly a pat and a kiss. “Yep, that’s your baby brother.” He nodded solemnly, “When baby comes home to the people’s house…baby fusses and cries?”

I answered yes, that your brother will come home to our house and babies often cry because that’s how they tell you what they want. But I couldn’t figure out where the hell he learned that. I asked Michael, did you teach him that? He says no, thinks for a minute, then hits on it. Apparently, there is a show on Noggin about a family bringing a new baby home and all the things that go on with the baby and the big brother. Emerson picked it up and applied it to HIS baby brother. And they say toddlers don’t pick up new language from television.

It’s the newest, most effective WMD.  That would be the Whining of Mass Destruction - the pitch and volume of continuous whining by a cranky, tired and obviously misunderstood toddler. He’s three rooms away, separated by a wall of no-shitting you 14 inch stone. And I can still hear him.

Virtually every molecule in my body is screaming to go pick him and and cuddle him. The Mommy Bosom Magic (now with more support!) always works. And I’m willing to sacrific my clean shirt to tears, snot and Fig Newton mush if it’s going to give us a few minutes of quiet.  But I’ve got so much work to do and mamma can’t pay the bills and buy new Melissa and Doug blocks if mamma doesn’t get paid.

I jokingly shared with Michael my latest grand idea about setting up a home office in the backyard, in an old AirStream trailer. If this is the way toddlerhood is going to be, I think it’s less of a joke and more of a fund-draining guerrilla action of self-preservation. Especially if there’s any thought to having another one of these little people around in the near future.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Oh wait, I think he’s done.  Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.

NOPE. He just needed a juice break. False alarm.

Now I’m just waiting for the neighborhood dogs to start howling.

Right down to a penchant for walking around pantless. Happy Father’s Day.

So I’m off to the doctor this afternoon.  AGAIN, I might add.  Between the anxiety-induced hypochrondria, the Discovery Health induced-hypochrondria and the actual things that are kind of not functioning exactly the way they should, I’m going to need a second mortgage to cover the co-pays.  Our doctor’s office is getting to know me so well that I’m now greeted by name and “would that be your eye, ear, neck, or mysterious, nonexistent and asymptotic multi-organ failure you are here about today?” Today it would be a persistent earache.  Which, of course, I think is a tumor on my salivary gland. Somebody smack me.

And as if I don’t have enough of my own illness windmills to attack, I found a lump in Emerson’s neck last evening.  Let the insane hand-wringing commence!

As if that fun wasn’t rollicking enough, throw in some depression and raging PMS and you have someone who CAN’T. STOP. SNACKING.  (Must be that mysterious tapewormalitis I’m currently dying of.) The pathetic part of this is that trying to mood-binge in the Karma Farmhouse must be a professional eater’s idea of raw, reduced calorie hell. Our house is a perpetual snack-free zone. It’s impossible to wallow in your vast and sundry sorrows when all you have to choke down is broccoli, bok choy, low-fat bread, apple butter, Jello cups and fat-free herbed croutons.  I may have to start hitting the Yo-Babies.

If you don’t think fat-free herbed croutons and raspberry Jello are exactly the grossest things to wash down some delicious Blue Moon beer?  You would be WRONG. It’s blasphemous to ruin such good beer, but what are my other options?

Excuse me while a grab more boy choy.

Also, my son now bites me. And pinches.  Sweet Jesus.  But he also knows how to imitate a wolf, duck, bird, dog, cow and sheep and says ma-ma, da-da, Holly (the dog next door), cup, hot, pop, clock, circle, elbow, oval, apple, bottle, night-night, hi, bye, diaper, shoe, foot, pute (computer) and two (although he steadfastly refuses to say “one”). He has also started bracing himself in his high chair like a wrestler off the ropes when he needs to take a particularly spectacular shit. And that never gets old.  So I guess that evens things out a bit.

First baseball game evah!

Yes, I realize that Mother’s Day was Sunday, and I’m only getting around to posting about it now. That’s the way we roll around here, day late, hundreds of dollars short ALWAYS.

I think I’m still trying to get my head the whole Mother’s Day thing, the being a mother part.  I mean, I get the actual mechanics of it straight, from the phantom stitch pains through the ever-entertaining toddler tantrums.  But it still weirds me out, you know?  Everyone’s got their internal age, and most of the time I feel my needle is stuck at a still staggeringly irresponsible 27 years old.  Every morning I still get that frisson of shock when I first see the sunny little boy with my tilty eyes grinning at me over the top of his crib.  It never gets old.

Sunday morning, Michael sneaks out to tend to Emerson while I luxuriate in the delight that someone else will be addressing the first noxious poop of the day.  Surprisingly quiet in there.  Ten minutes later the door is thrown open, and Emerson staggers in proudly holding aloft a leopard-print bag from my favorite day spa.  Inside is a gift card for a massage and “Emerson Loves Mommy” on a yellow construction paper heart, with his handprint in the middle. (I would have loved to see that wrestling match and the clean-up that followed THAT project).

Perfect.

The rest of the day was pleasantly non-eventful.  We just did what we normally do but, apologies to all you anti-Hallmark holiday people out there, it felt special to me.  I know EVERY day should be Mother’s Day, just like every day should be Father’s Day, blah-diddy-blah.  But I have a yellow construction heart here on my desk telling me that this one day was just a tiny bit more special, just like I have a tow-headed boy delivering banana-scented kisses to remind me that every day is OUR day.  And I couldn’t be luckier.

I’m tired. And still sick. And have been crying for the past hour. And that’s not counting the hour from earlier in the evening. Also, sad and pissed and kind of angsty. And definitely pathetically poor-me-ish.

Sometimes marriage just fucking sucks. Just...yeah.

But you muddle through, somehow.

Giving your spouse two full childless days while you and your son schlep to the grandparents’ house gains you the right to some awesome parenting passes.  Like a pass to lay on the couch with a beer and yell “Not It!” after your son detonates a nuclear bomb packed with three lethal days of cereal-induced toxicity. And the fecal fallout includes everything within a two-foot radius of the diaper.

Hi dad! Guess how much I missed you?