CompuServe Thread

Welmoed….. still laughing over your closing …."not for wimps"…you said it!! Somehow, the world, including us, has gotten the idea that we can nonchalantly pop into the hospital, "drop" a baby..<g> and be back in the fields before sundown….. both the physical and hormonal changes, I think work against that, and even in my case where my second is adopted, the whole web of connecting to a child works against such practices…..now I'm sure that many mothers manage it differently and find that their bonding can go along with full time work and use of daycare, etc…..but such has not been my way or my desire…..the time when our children really need that one-on-one consistent care is so short, proportionally and so valuable. I remain infuriated at the never-ending sets of requirements for mothers…I don't know if you found this with toxemia, but I know that with my first, a c-section birth, I was constantly barraged with voices telling me what I should do ..down to a pediatrician who prophesied doom if I choose not to breast-feed and "friends" who wanted to know what I had "done wrong" (gosh, it's been 12 year, does the bitterness still show? <g>) ….. somehow in all our supposed liberation, we have yet to reach a point where we validate the individual woman's experience and sense of what is right for her… and this leads us to making incredible demands on ourselves ….we all plan an idyllic, rational, sane method for handling it all while pregnant ..then the baby, that real/separate/needy person appears and we must revise all our pet schemes … with my first it took me quite a while to say "hey, guys, I'm doing what I think I should, not what some book/theory/"expert" says" …after that all got a lot easier…..and happily, with children, one's sense of time alters…I no longer think that it all must happen this week or even this year…..and I have learned that the perpective that motherhood has given me has greatly enhanced all of my work and added insights which could never be gained [continued in reply]

Welmoed– Have you considered moving your office into the house temporarily? My "office" has been in three separate places, in attempts to find an arrangement that would work with a toddler. I took a cue from a neighbor and finally put my office in one end of a large downstairs rec room. Then I put all of my daughters toys at the other end. (She calls it "her house" because she has fisher-price kitchen stuff). Anyway, all is not perfect, but I get *much* more work done with this arrangement because she can see me and get to me when she wants to. (When I had my office in a separate room, she'd cry every time I went in there to work.) Still, I eventually began leaving her with a neighbor in the mornings (she's 2-1/2 now) so that I could have a few hours for unhampered work. Even so, I often get up at 4:30 to finish deadlines, or stay up late. It's definitely a challenge. But yesterday, when I was finishing 3 projects at once, feeling a bit flustered, and my daughter and her friend were running around the house playing "monster," giggling hysterically, I realized it's all worth it. She has those hours at home, and I have those hours with her (even if I AM distracted!). Dianne

An interesting point you might want to consider is that it is just as difficult for involved fathers to run a business at home. Janell and I talked about it at one point and realized that it would not be possible. She would assume that since I would be at home, I would be available for whatever needed doing (Diapers, babysitting, meals…) Unfortunately, running a business requires 8 hours. Not a reality in our situation. Mark Niemann-Ross Quark 3rd Party Marketing Manager