Childbearing years. It will be over soon. The process has started some months ago, but now it is truly coming to an end.
To me, that includes getting pregnant, staying pregnant, giving birth, and then breast feeding. No.1 will be turning 9 this year. Which means I have been childbearing for almost 9 years. I have successfully exclusively breastfed all my 3 children until they are/were 2 years old. No.3 will be 2 in 11 days. I have started weaning her off (not quite successfully yet, as she still looks for the breast for comfort before going to sleep, or when she wakes up in the middle of the night) since new year's day, but I am firm in my decision that the breastpump will finally be boxed up for good, perhaps even be given away.
Mixed feelings. I look forward to the coming days when I do not have to plan my wardrobe according to my baby anymore. For many years, dresses were a big NO-NO. How in the world do you breastfeed discreetly in a dress, especially form-fitting dresses? I have dressed up in 2-piece most times, or particularly low-necked dresses for baby's easy access. Even my swimming gear is a 2-piece (eventhough I have always thought a 2-piece (unless if it's a bikini) swimsuit is the most ridiculous thing in the world). Each time I travel, for the last 9 years (6 years of breastfeeding, 27 months of pregnancy - it DOES come up to about 9 years) I was always worrying about where to store my milk. Or how to transport my stored milk in those longer journeys. Throwing away unused pumped milk has always been the greatest regret. Basically my life was all about breastfeeding, pumping, storing and washing all those pumping stuff (including the milk bottles of course). I even had to ask a new employer to get me a fridge because I needed to store my milk at work.
Speaking of work, it doesn't really work (no pun intended). No, it doesn't. I tried, and looking back, I am amazed I could accomplish all that. I mean, working full time for someone else, with no flexibility whatsoever, travelling on a week's (or couple of days') notice - rushing back to feed baby, pump and driving back to office while grabbing something to eat, all during that 1 hour lunchtime. Baby sick and cranky the entire night for days and days (sometimes weeks) in a row, yet we still have to wake up early in the morning to go to work. Or to catch that flight for an out of town assignment. I finally handed in my resignation letter when No. 1 was slightly over a year old, and each time I look at my career path - I regret that decision. I would never be able to make a u-turn and go back to that path. And practising law in a smaller state where sole proprietorship 'one-man-show' is the norm, an aspiring corporate ladder climber who feels more comfortable in a 'big-firm' setting like me would never be able to get back into that one-and-only big firm in town without some form of humble pie swallowing (think : someone 9 years your junior being your superior and bossing over you). So anyway for almost 7 years now I have been a work from home mom (refer to my previous post to know that it's NOT as glamorous nor 'oh-how-lucky-you-can-earn-while-seeing-to-your-kids' as it seems). While we are at that, I am happy to announce that I am more than ready to jump in right back into that corporate climbing bandwagon (ok, even if I have to swallow that humble pie) - any kind employers out there looking for someone?
Ok, back to that mixed feeling of ending my childbearing years. I will always miss the feeling of being pregnant. If you read my other posts (especially the first 38 posts documenting the 38 weeks of my pregnancy - it applies to all 3 pregnancies), you will know that my pregnancies aren't your run of the mill pregnancies, I had this thing called incompetent cervix - ok go read those 38 posts to get a full picture of what it was all about - but in a gist, it is where you have this weak cervix that can't hold your pregnancy so you need to have a little stitch in (ouch) at your 12th week pregnancy and then bedrest the remaining 6 months (sounds like a favourite leisure activity? Try it yourself first then talk to me) and then at the end of the 38th week have that stitch removed (even ouchier) and wait for baby to come. Ok, all that. Yet, the feeling of baby kicking in the stomach. The queasiness, the lightheadedness, the bloatedness, the EATING AND GETTING FAT WITH AN EXCUSE-ness... Pregnancy would be something I miss dearly. And of course, all those wonderful contractions and pain and anticipation and drama in the labour room - will totally miss that. No, no sarcasm, I will truly miss all that. Even the sleepless nights, the sore nipples, the messy baby who burps, spits, farts, feeds, soils (and then some) 24/7 - I will miss all that too.
The last 9 years have taught me so much about Life. I can write a book, actually, this little blog wouldn't do any justice to how much I have gone through and how much I have learnt. Not only about Life, but about children, about the world, about human nature and human behaviour, about relationships, about economics, faith, and most of all, about ME. All my 3 little munchkins have very very separate and distinct personalities - and as I transition into my CHILD RAISING years (yes, we made them, now we raise them and bring them up to be good people), I know that more is yet to come. I was just driving on the road yesterday when it dawned upon me - if some truck come barging into my car right now, the last thing in my mind wouldn't be, "How would the world remember of me as a lawyer?" Instead, it will be, "How would my 3 kids remember me as a Mom?"
This is despite the fact that being a lawyer has always defined me. My relatives refer to me as 'the one who is a lawyer'. Recently I found out neighbours do that too. I bumped into my husband's cousin's in-laws (yea, distant) yesterday during breakfast and after much explaining to the elderly lady about how we know each other (we meet like, once a year during Christmas so she couldn't place who I was), she finally went "Oh, the lawyer one?" Well, maybe because the last 7 years I have been taking it easy, working from home only doing a lot of drafting of documents, court papers and contracts, going to court very minimally - I don't feel much like a lawyer. But being a mom - will that ever taper off as the kids grow up? I pretty much doubt that. My dad is 74. My eldest sis is 50 with a family of her own. Yet when he was in my car yesterday and she drove past without a working brake light, he was seriously about to jump off my car, wave her down to tell her she needed to fix that. I had to stop him and remind him that these day, a Whatsapp message would suffice. My point is, motherhood will always define me.
I know I should look forward to the next stage of my life. Where I can rebuild my career (nothing is ever too late, I remember the KFC Colonel story), get back into shape (we had a high school get together recently and it is quite noticeable those who didn't have kids still look pretty much the same, unlike the rest of us - especially me who ballooned to almost 30kg more than my pre-pregnancy weight during pregnancy due to the bedresting and no-guilt eating - ok, this is another topic and another blog) and enjoy my children. Yes, enjoy them. It is indeed a joy seeing them relate to each other, their fights, their bickerings - but how they end up in each other's arms in the mornings and how they look out for each other whenever they are out in a different social setting. Well, as much as I look forward to this transition, I am also very worried. Worry for their future, worry for our future, the world that is has become - we used to think that the best thing to do is to pack up and go to a safer place, but globally, we all know that the world everywhere is not safe anymore.
Perhaps this is why my prayers have become much simpler lately. All I pray for is that all my children will be Safe, Healthy and Happy always.
