Inner Conflicts

There are some inner conflicts that come with being a mother.

For example, I already miss traveling, both for work and for fun. I never did it all that often, but in the last ten years it was pretty typical for me to travel to at least one international location per year- and cool places, too, like Norway, Australia, and Italy; or if not work, then for fun, usually with my sister (you can read about our adventures in Peru, but we also traveled all over Europe) or with Kevin. Traveling is one of my favorite things to do- I especially love planning trips and then seeing all my hard work pay off. I'd much rather save up my money to spend on travel than pretty much anything else. Of course it helped for work travel to have an advisor with some grant money and to have conferences at neat locations- it's a lot harder to get funding to travel abroad now that I'm not a student and not in academia.

But, for several reasons, it's harder to travel now that Nora is here. There have been (and will probably be, coming up in the next year) a couple opportunities at work to go abroad, but the issue is that (a) I have no local family to watch her while I'm gone and (b) Kevin's schedule is too unknown and too packed full to be able to plan for such a trip in advance (on certain rotations, he might leave before she wakes up and come home after she's asleep on a bad day). And (c), I'm not sure I want to be away from her for more than a day or two at this point anyway! I could take her with me, but traveling on a long flight with an infant by myself and then having to deal with her jet lag and finding childcare at the destination just does not sound worthwhile to me.

Another source of inner conflict comes from how to entertain and spend time with Nora at this age. When I go to work, I miss Nora, and I'm sad to leave her at daycare; and when it's the weekend, I'm happy that I'll get to spend two whole days with her. But.... on the other hand, when I actually have a whole day to spend with her, I often find myself wondering: "what in the heck are you supposed to do with a baby all day long?"

Usually I can find stuff to entertain her in our small house up until about 3pm (and it's a lot easier on nice days when we can go for a stroller ride)- but at that point, we've gone to all the parts of the house, played with all her toys multiple times, and sometimes, I have no clue what to do next. It's made a little more difficult by the fact that she doesn't take very long naps so she's awake almost the entire day. It does reinforce the feeling that at this point in my life I wouldn't be cut out to be a stay-at-home parent. I often feel like she probably gets more stimulation and activity at daycare than with me (I mean, look at all the creativity she's using there!). I'm hoping once she is a toddler I'll feel like I can take her out to more places like children's museums and playgrounds and there will be more for her to do.

Anyway, this post isn't too say that I'm sad or upset about these sources of inner conflict, but merely to state that they are there, in case other new parents are going through the same thing. In the end, it's all worth it for this little face: