Mom Curse
I've come to realize that the Mom Curse, as I've come to call it, is the great lack of privacy.
It starts off when you're pregnant. Total strangers think it is acceptable to touch your stomach, you're constantly at the doctor getting probed and examined, and it peaks with the birth process. An event where you're stripped from the waist down in a room full of strangers. Welcome to motherhood!
But it doesn't end there. If you're a nursing mother you end up feeding your child pretty much wherever you are, with just a little cloth for privacy (and that's assuming the child doesn't rip the cover away at an inopportune moment... which they do the moment they learn how to grasp at things). As your tiny infant grows they have no compunction whatsoever about disrobing you... pulling shirts and skirts up and/or down without warning.
But this past week it was the last straw. All I wanted was 90 seconds. One and a half minutes of privacy to go to the freaking bathroom. I put the boys in their bedroom, put up the gate, and asked them to play for a couple of minutes. They weren't locked in an empty closet, or a dank dungeon. This is a bright happy room where there are about 30 stuffed animals, a bucket full of baby dinosaurs, 15 giant dinosaurs (1-2 feet in length), puzzles, a costume box, and a giant library of books. You'd think that they could find something to amuse themselves for two minutes.
Nope.
The second I walked into the bathroom I could hearHoudini Colin, working to open the gate. BANG! It was down. Now I had to worry about Ryan careening down the stairs. Or someone walking in on me. Or someone shouting at me with some spectacularly urgent request: "MOMMY!! COME LOOK!! A BUG IS ON THE WINDOW!!!" or "THERE'S A ROBIN ON THE FENCE!" or my personal favorite, the mysterious "MOMMY... MOMMY? MOMMY!!!!"
No, this isn't the first time I've dealt with the boys and their utter lack of understanding about privacy. And yes, I know what I really need to do is get a good freaking lock installed in our bathroom. And yes, I should have worked to draw better boundaries when my boys were smaller so they understood that people might not want an audience when they're in the shower. That having a boy grabbing at you while brushing your teeth isn't ideal. That they shouldn't just wander into the bathroom when someone is on the potty and get 6-inches from their face and start playing with their hair while asking crazy questions. Or any of the 7,432,895 other insane things that I've experienced over the past 4 years.
And so I've come to the realization that the true Mom Curse is the utter lack of privacy.
Thankfully I've also realized that I'm darned lucky that my boys adore me so, and that they want to be around me. And that while this can be spectacularly frustrating, it won't last forever. Until then, whenever I get frustrated I'll just have to remember that for every time that I have a boy wandering into the bathroom at an inopportune moment, I probably have 100 moments where I get an unrequested hug, or kiss, or giggle. And that's a curse I can happily live with.
It starts off when you're pregnant. Total strangers think it is acceptable to touch your stomach, you're constantly at the doctor getting probed and examined, and it peaks with the birth process. An event where you're stripped from the waist down in a room full of strangers. Welcome to motherhood!
But it doesn't end there. If you're a nursing mother you end up feeding your child pretty much wherever you are, with just a little cloth for privacy (and that's assuming the child doesn't rip the cover away at an inopportune moment... which they do the moment they learn how to grasp at things). As your tiny infant grows they have no compunction whatsoever about disrobing you... pulling shirts and skirts up and/or down without warning.
But this past week it was the last straw. All I wanted was 90 seconds. One and a half minutes of privacy to go to the freaking bathroom. I put the boys in their bedroom, put up the gate, and asked them to play for a couple of minutes. They weren't locked in an empty closet, or a dank dungeon. This is a bright happy room where there are about 30 stuffed animals, a bucket full of baby dinosaurs, 15 giant dinosaurs (1-2 feet in length), puzzles, a costume box, and a giant library of books. You'd think that they could find something to amuse themselves for two minutes.
Nope.
The second I walked into the bathroom I could hear
No, this isn't the first time I've dealt with the boys and their utter lack of understanding about privacy. And yes, I know what I really need to do is get a good freaking lock installed in our bathroom. And yes, I should have worked to draw better boundaries when my boys were smaller so they understood that people might not want an audience when they're in the shower. That having a boy grabbing at you while brushing your teeth isn't ideal. That they shouldn't just wander into the bathroom when someone is on the potty and get 6-inches from their face and start playing with their hair while asking crazy questions. Or any of the 7,432,895 other insane things that I've experienced over the past 4 years.
And so I've come to the realization that the true Mom Curse is the utter lack of privacy.
Thankfully I've also realized that I'm darned lucky that my boys adore me so, and that they want to be around me. And that while this can be spectacularly frustrating, it won't last forever. Until then, whenever I get frustrated I'll just have to remember that for every time that I have a boy wandering into the bathroom at an inopportune moment, I probably have 100 moments where I get an unrequested hug, or kiss, or giggle. And that's a curse I can happily live with.
Comments