In Loco Asparagus

The three most important people in my daughter's life are Mommy, Daddy, and the nanny.

During any given week, the kidlet spends more time with her nanny, who we'll call Leta, than she does with either parent. I used to find this a little troubling -- we went through a phase where the kidlet would run into Leta's arms immediately upon her arrival in the morning, showing no further interest in either mommy or daddy. Same thing when I got home in the evening: I'd get a rather perfunctory smooch hello, and then she'd return to whatever game she was playing with Leta. Leta would do a little cajoling to get the kidlet to give Mommy a little more affection -- which always made me feel worse than the initial lack of enthusiasm. But I'm pleased to announce that the all-Leta-all-the-time stage has passed, and Mommy is ascendant! (I figure I have maybe another year until Daddy overtakes me as my daughter's true love, so I'm trying to relish my fleeting role as Favorite Parent as fully as possible.)

Now that my natural place in the universe has been restored, I have returned to my usual level of satisfaction with how the nannying arrangement is working out. Leta is very sweet and gentle, adores the kidlet, and enjoys telling me all the stories about what they did that day. A friend actually asked me today whether I'd quit my job without telling her, because I'd relayed a number of playdate stories in such detail that she assumed I must have been there.

I of course have a few gripes here and there, but they're relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Leta isn't particularly creative on either the dressing or the feeding of my daughter. She rotates the same several outfits over and over rather than digging down a little deeper in the drawer to put on the fifteen other outfits that lurk beneath the favored few. And I could stock a refrigerator full of interesting things to tempt the little one's palate, but unless I explain each particular item, Leta is extremely unlikely to come up with any innovative new lunch for her. She is kind of a wuss about walking in the rain, and so the kidlet tends to skip her little toddler gym and music classes on days when it's raining. But really, these quirks are far from catastrophic. At the end of the day, she loves my kid, is sweet and kind to her, and lets me share in the fun of their day. The quirks are just quirks -- and I'm sure that as a caregiver, I myself have quirks aplenty. So I'll happily remind Leta for the eighth time that there's asparagus in the fridge, so long as I know my daughter is getting the love she deserves.

Everything I Need

As of today, I have everything I am required by law to possess in order to bring my newborn home from the hospital. I possess both a car seat and a digital camera. Thanks future-grandma and future-grandpa for my early Chanukah gift!

Sweet Dreams Are SO Not Made of This

Like every other expectant mother (so I've been told), I've had the baby dreams. In the first few months, they all involved horrible things happening to the baby, either in the womb or afterwards. After a while, some of them got to be pretty sweet - I dreamed about playing with my baby in the park, my baby growing up and going to school. But now, I'm having nightmares - honest-to-goodness, sit-bolt-upright-in-bed, cold-sweat nightmares - about CRIB LINENS.

I have picked out the nursery furniture but have not yet chosen crib linens. I've been all over the web for a few days now, and have narrowed it down, and am merely waiting for swatches to make my decision. This will all be done by the beginning of next week - they'll be chosen and ordered, I'll order some cute accessories, and we've decided we'll do things like paint and get new carpet in December. This particular checklist is one I actually feel good about.

Apparently, my subconscious feels otherwise.

Mr. Banana will see this as a vast improvement. During the first trimester, I woke up in a cold sweat one night yelling that I was a terrible mother because I'd forgotten to teach my child its own phone number. Somehow, he will see nightmares over crib linens as more manageable.

The Shopaholic has a Baby

It's official. I've gone nuts.

So my family/ethnic group has this superstition about not bringing anything into the house for the baby before the baby is born. Not unusual, right? Except I'm having a really hard time with it. I've never had a kid before, and the last thing I want is to have it home for a few days and realize at 3am that there's stuff this kid needs that I DON'T HAVE. I'm a planner. There should be notebooks and checklists at work here. I should be comparison shopping, finding deals, laying in enough supplies for quintuplets. But I'm not supposed to buy anything yet. Irresistible force meets immovable object.

Enter the Type-A Queen of Rationalization.

Rationalization #1. Ordering Things is Not Buying Things. Nursery furniture has to be ordered 12 weeks in advance to ensure it can arrive anywhere near around the time that the kid arrives. So it's been ordered, and the good people at the store will hold it until the kid arrives. I will call them from the hospital, my mother or mother-in-law will let them in, they will set it up, and I will come home with the child to a set-up room. Amen. Not much of a rationalization there - nothing is actually being brought home until the kid is.

Rationalization #2 - Planning Is Not Purchasing. I can make all the checklists and spreadsheets I want. I can register, so long as I don't let anyone buy anything on the registry yet. I can research products, brands and such all I like. I can visit Consumer Reports on-line as often as I want. And I can certainly own and cart around that great bible of expectant mothers everywhere - Baby Bargains - and take notes in it until the pages fall apart.

Rationalization #3 - Used Things/Borrowed Things Have Not Been "Purchased For the Baby." So the hand-me-downs from my cousin don't count. The things I've borrowed from local friends don't count. And the stuff I've bought on eBay obsessively for the last week doesn't count. None of this was *originally* purchased for my child, so it doesn't count. Right? Right?

Rationalization #4 - If I Have to Have It BEFORE the Kid Comes Home, I Can Buy It Now. I had to buy a carseat. They won't let me bring the kid home without it. I probably didn't have to have it 3 months in advance, but do I really want to be at Babies R Us when I'm 9 months pregnant? Of course not.

Rationalization #5 - My Office is Not My Home. If I buy stuff for the kid, I can keep it in my office until the kid arrives without running afoul of the rule. See also Rationalization #5A - My In-Laws' House is Not My Home.

Rationalization #6 (this is the big one) - The Closet in The-Bedroom-That-Will-Be-The-Nursery is Not Actually Part of My House. Take the big leap of faith with me here. I have officially declared this particular closet to be its own sovereign nation, with its own ruler, parliament, and plat of subdivision. Anything in this closet, therefore, is not in my home. After the baby is born, I will use my omnipotent powers to immediately annex the closet, anything that's in it, and its tax base, back into my home.

In other words, superstition be damned. I'm not losing any more sleep over not being prepared for this child! But I'm not going to spit into the wind either. May the gods of fate not strike me down for being obsessive and pregnant.

Making the Most of the Minutes

One of the things that's often mentioned as a benefit of being a working mother is that you don't get sick of your kid(s) the way stay-at-home moms apparently do upon occasion. It makes sense, I guess -- if you're doing something all day, every day, it's going to wear on you at a certain point, no matter how cute and talented the something is. But as a working mommy, the time I spend with my offspring is both limited and precious. And so there's the desire to make the minutes count, which in turn leads to a real sense that the time I'm spending with Toddler Metropolitan is of a high quality.

My own mother didn't work during my childhood, and I think it would have benefited her to do so. Not only would it have been helpful in keeping her nose out of every iota of my business (which is another issue entirely), but I think she would have been much happier during the time she was spending with me and my sibling. I remember a lot of hassling and aggravating and not a lot of time spent just hanging out and enjoying each other's company -- because, frankly, we didn't find each other's company terribly enjoyable. I keep my mental fingers crossed regularly that my relationship with my daughter will not develop along those lines. And I suspect and hope that having my own life outside the home will help to keep our relationship vibrant and loving even when I am no longer the epicenter of my daughter's world. (Sniffle.)

So when I feel inclined to complain about my work situation -- which these days is quite often -- I am acutely aware that it's not the fact of being employed that's bothering me, but rather the circumstances of my particular employment situation. The goal is to find a way to be happy and content in both my professional and my personal life, not to entirely sacrifice the former for the latter.

A Rose By Any Other Name....

So now that I've seduced you all with Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing... this is merely upping my stress about naming my child.

You see, I hate my name. Always have hated my name. Suffice it to say that if Lola Banana were my real name, I'd hate it less. It's unattractive, hard to spell, long, and completely out of sync with the names in my generation. So now I'm left paralyzed in naming my own child. Something too common? Something too unique? Something with a crappy nickname we hope never gets used? The stress is killing me. Add that to the restrictive naming conventions of my particular ethnic group and you have a nightmare. My child is doomed to be Baby Boy Banana for a long time to come.

I've done all the right things - I've read at least 7 baby books cover to cover. I've called names loudly down the hall to see how they sound. I've consulted with friends, relatives and random strangers. I've trolled the Net. And I've still got nothing.

How do you name a kid in this day and age without setting either you or them up for therapy?

Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing

If anyone out there is reading this before giving birth, you have to visit my favorite baby name site, Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing.

We're having naming issues, but at least we're not naming our kid Oleo.

The Downside of Equality

I have a number of friends who are stay at home moms, and a few who are (or are about to become) stay at home dads. The idea has a certain amount of appeal to me, and also to my husband, who would love to be a stay at home dad. But there's an inherent problem here:

My husband and I have nearly identical salaries.

It's something I never thought about. All the couples I know where one parent stays at home fall into one of two categories: (1) one parent makes more than twice what the other parent does, and the other parent makes little enough that it won't even cover the cost of day care, or (2) one parent makes such a good amount of money that even the loss of the second income, no matter how decent that second income, isn't felt enough to make it worthwhile to have the second parent keep working if they prefer to stay home. Neither is true for us. One of us staying home full time means losing half our income, and we both have chosen "lifestyle" jobs in otherwise rat-race-ish professions so that we get a chance to see each other and future offspring once in a while, so while we're certainly not poor, neither income on its own would allow us to live the way we want to live, nor in our current apartment.

So we're left considering daycare or a nanny, both of which are pretty pricey for people in our income range. I find myself wishing that my husband and I weren't so economically equal, so that one of us staying home were more of a viable option. Not what I thought I'd be wishing for.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one I know in this position - one option we're looking into is a nanny share with some local friends that may work out for the best for all four Urban Mommies and Daddies.

Shoes Without Guilt: A Benefit of Working Mommyhood

A stay-at-home mommy I know was telling me recently that she's kicking around getting a job because her husband the breadwinner has been exercising an iron-clad grip over the family pursestrings.

It's an interesting situation. Her earning potential isn't terribly high, and she and her husband decided early on that it made sense for her to stay home with the new baby because, among other reasons, her salary wouldn't be much more than the cost of a full-time nanny. Her husband -- who makes quite a healthy living by any standard -- was always the manager of the family finances, but now that he's the only one bringing home the proverbial bacon, he's apparently gotten quite strict about what she can spend. He literally doles out a weekly cash allowance, reviews every item on her credit card bill and quizzes her about it, and shares very little information about what he's earning or what he's doing with the earnings.

This situation sounds more than a little excessive to me, and I suspect that there's more going on here than meets the naked eye. But I do get the feeling that a significant percentage of stay-at-home mommies need to report their spending habits to their bacon-bringing spouses to at least a certain degree.

That's one thing that can be said for being a working mommy. With gainful employment comes the freedom to buy (several pairs of) shoes on a whim, should I feel so inclined. I don't feel any particular need to rationalize what I spend. We do have melded bank accounts and credit cards, so my husband certainly has the information he needs to offer his views on my spending habits (which he does). But there's a measure of freedom associated with being a working mother -- when I feel a bit fenced in by my harried schedule of work and toddler and errands and and and and, it's nice to know that I can always go buy some shoes with impunity.

Personal Space

Certainly this is not unique to Urban Mommies, but it's new to me, and this is, after all, a place to post such things....

I cannot figure out which is worse - the people who just touch my (now visibly) pregnant belly without any regard to whether I might want them to, or the people who ask if they can touch my belly and then pout when I say no. In what world does ANYONE want people - whether strangers or friends - touching their belly? And why would I want this MORE when my belly feels distended, itchy and uncomfortable?

Things I Thought I Knew

Even before Mr. Metropolitan and I decided that we were ready to propagate, we made a number of decisions on eventual-offspring-related grounds. Back a few years ago, I switched jobs in significant part because the new job would be more family-friendly than the prior one. Family-friendliness wasn't mission-critical to me at the time -- we were a hard-working professional couple and planned to remain so for quite some time -- but I knew that somewhere along the line, I'd care about my hours and would want the kind of job that had a clearly defined start and end to the day, wouldn't require me to travel as often, and that wouldn't tie up my weekends. And it even paid better. No brainer, right? So off I went, with full spousal encouragement, to start over with a brand new job and a brand new career.

The theory had been to work on getting me knocked up starting about a year after my move to the new job. But shortly before we were to get rolling, one of my managers took me out for drinks one night and told me that if I really knocked the cover off the ball over the course of the next twelve months, he was confident that I'd get promoted a year earlier than I'd anticipated. Mr. Metropolitan and I had a long talk about it while sitting on the beach at a lovely Caribbean resort, and resolved that we'd wait another year before trying. So we waited.

We actually didn't quite wait the full year -- my grandfather, who would have adored being a great-grandfather, died a few months later and we decided that the time had come to repopulate the planet before we lost any more prospective great-grandparents. I did get promoted early, and was several months pregnant at the time. Having checked off that box (the one labeled "Get Promoted Before Having Baby"), I relaxed, brought a yummy little daughter into the world, and didn't think about work too often during a very enjoyable maternity leave.

When I returned to work post-baby, it became clear that a number of things had changed. All of the people I had originally worked for had left my company to pursue other opportunities, and the vibe at my office was substantially different. People worked a lot later at night. They started working earlier in the morning. They worked weekends, for God's sake! Everyone said they understood my situation -- as part of a two-working-parent family, I had to leave by a certain time and sometimes wouldn't be able to arrive until a certain time and would have to excuse myself to the medical suite a few times a day to provide my daughter with sustenance served up in little plastic bags. Everyone was cool with that. Until they weren't.

I guess I shouldn't say that. Everyone still says that they're cool with my schedule. (Let me be clear -- by any normal calculus, they're still full-blown full-time hours. I'm in the office for 8-10 hours a day and work at home on evenings and weekends when necessary and carry a blackberry and cell phone at all times. It's not like I'm at work from 10 am until 2 pm and calling that a full day.) But my reviews, cloaked in the freeing aura of anonymity, tell another story. "Not terribly hard-working." "Often inaccessible." Funny thing, that. Especially since no one ever questioned my work habits before I went on maternity leave.

So now here I am, in this job that I took several years ago for the express purpose of being able to be both a successful professional and a successful mother. In my heart of hearts, I am about 75% sure that my career switch was the right one. I still don't work most weekends, I still can keep the hours I need, and I still don't travel. But it gives me a pit in my stomach every day to know that I'm looked down upon by my colleagues for doing the right thing by my child. Am I supposed to look for another job that will accord the working mother who chooses not to blow off her kid the respect that I think and hope she deserves? Am I supposed to stay put, ignore the terrible feeling in my gut, and accept the fact that I'm apparently viewed as a slacker? I have no idea.

The one thing I do know is that working longer hours and seeing my daughter less frequently than I currently do is not one of the choices. But of all the things I thought I knew back when I made my career switch, the thing I didn't know -- and couldn't have known -- was how much it would bother me to be looked down upon for insisting upon spending an hour or two a day with my daughter.

Into the Abyss

Welcome to our blog!

I'm the one who posts here who doesn't quite yet qualify as an Urban Mommy. Well, I'm urban, but I prefer to reserve the "mommy" title for myself once I have a child. I'm expecting in January, with about 12 weeks to go.

So far, so good. I feel good, am suffering only relatively minor aches and pains, and our little fetus seems perfectly healthy. I feel very lucky, and very apprehensive. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Getting me into my pregnant state required a lot of time and a lot of medical intervention, so my poor paranoid little brain is simply waiting for something else to go wrong - namely, for this to be other than a perfect pregnancy resulting in a perfect little boy. It's awfully hard to convince myself otherwise - I dream about the horrible things that can happen to my unborn child, both now and when it arrives. I have thoughts when I'm awake that are truly horrifying. Only the arrival of this kid safe and sound is going to quell these fears. Oh well - at least I finally believe I'm pregnant...

Work in my 28-week-pregnant state hasn't changed much. I'm done travelling, which is good, because I discovered that on some airlines, I can't lower my tray table any more. My work life hasn't changed since I told everyone here - of course, that first tri-mester was tough, as I kept falling asleep on my desk. It's awfully hard to explain to someone why you have the imprint of a computer keyboard on your cheek if they don't know you're pregnant. Other than that, the only ramifications of this belly growth so far are that it's often harder to remove myself from the bathroom stalls at my workplace, which have inward swinging doors.

I am living in constant worry about maternity leave. I still don't know how long I'm taking off and under what conditions. I've been putting off the conversation with my boss for a while now. Have to just do it, I guess.

I'll save my worries about day care for a later post.

Welcome

Welcome to Urban Mommies, a place for working mothers who are trying to figure out the best way to navigate the often treacherous waters between a successful career and a fulfilling personal life.

We are professional women who built our careers before building our families. We are exuberant mommies who are fanatical about our offspring and offspring-to-be. We are urbanites who relish the things our cities have to offer. We are wives who cherish the time we spend with our husbands. We are talented individuals who pursue a variety of hobbies and pastimes. And we are people without nearly enough time to do everything we want to do.

Urban Mommies exists so that we can talk about the issues we're facing as working mothers in the big city. Everyone here is strictly anonymous -- you think my mother actually named me Felicity Metropolitan? -- so every topic is fair game. We hope to hear your stories as well, and encourage you to comment early and often.

Again, welcome to Urban Mommies! We are planning to have a lot of fun, and hope you will too.