Young Mothers :: How I Can Be A Career Driven, Feminist, Mother Of Triplets
Nathalie Diab, a young Lebanese mother in Beirut, writes on how she can be a career driven, feminist, mother of triplets.
When I think of my mother, the first word that comes to my mind is “strong”. She is the first woman in her family to go to school, pursue higher education, and eventually have a career in teaching. This is how she always defined herself and her self-worth. When she envisioned my future, as her first child and only daughter, I am sure she would see me as a “powerful career driven woman” rather than mother.
I was raised in this first instance of gender equality, and I was supposed to take it to the next level. This is the way I perceived myself as well; unconsciously, I was supposed to have goals in life, dreams of greatness, and any thoughts of having kids was a hindrance to my destiny. Later on, when my husband and I would talk about having kids, when we were dating or during the first few years of marriage, I always felt “Ugh it’s so unfair”-Unfair that I will be the one, in the couple, bearing that burden, the burden of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and most baby-related tasks…because in every other part of our relationship, we were equals, partners.
When my husband and I decided it was time, I was faced with unexplained infertility. I was shattered. I felt like a failure. I felt like my body couldn’t do this basic task that seems to come naturally to everyone else. After medical assistance, I finally got pregnant…with triplets.
Until that moment, I had not realized how much I wanted to become a mother. I was dealing with the problem on hand -infertility, as a problem to be solved. I still didn’t give much thought about the children themselves. But then it happened. People ask me what I felt when I learnt there was 3 of them. The truth is I felt a rush of serenity going through me, as if it was something I was waiting for to happen my entire life. Cliché I know, but it was the moment everything in my life started making sense. The doctor kept on talking about the risks of multiple pregnancy, but I wasn’t listening. I knew everything was going to be alright. And it was.
Becoming a mother is still until now the most powerful event in my life. Having triplets was the best thing that ever happened to me. Apparently, I had always carried the weight of an identity crisis, and I suddenly started asserting who I really was, as a person. It was because of the difficulty of having three babies at the same time that I had no choice but to dig deep, giving it all my heart and soul. My husband and I knew we had to do it on our own. It was our new reality, and ours to deal with, so we refused to have my mother stay with us for the first 40 days, as is the custom in Lebanon. We just did it, with the knowledge (or lack of) that we had, and all the love a person can have.
Before having kids, I thought I would be a strict mother, a demanding one. I thought having kids would not affect my career, as before the kids were born and to this day, my job is a highly demanding and competitive job in the tech sector, requiring me to travel for one or two days multiple times per month. I was appalled by the idea of breastfeeding, changing diapers, or any baby related task. Before the kids, I thought I would learn parenting from parenting books. I thought that I wanted to raise successful kids. Before the kids, I thought of myself as a strong woman, independent, a feminist. I cringed at the thought of women giving up their “lives” to bear children and to raise them. I had certainly liberal ideas about family. I judged women who let themselves go after having children. I was sharp, edgy, I knew everything.
I look at myself now and i see a much softer woman, physically and emotionally. I see myself as a mother, first and foremost. I don’t believe I can be as good, as useful at doing anything else. I still have a career, but I made sensible choices, that allowed me to work from home, with my kids, until the day they will go to school .
Daycare is not for our family as it turned out. Apparently what we do is called attached parenting. We co-sleep, bed-share, we love, hug and kiss on demand. We make sure to create experiences, memorable ones, of love, compassion, and real joy. We don’t do parenting books, we follow our instincts, as we have come to trust ourselves and each other’s intuitions. We try to respect our children, their emotions, to give them empathy.
My dreams for them are simple. I really wish they grow up to be gentle and kind. The rest will come. I still perceive myself as strong, as what I do is not easy. In terms of being a feminist, for now feminism means for me something completely different. It means that women need to gain the right to exist in harmony with nature, with biology, and not against it. For me the fight now is to empower women with the resources to be present for their children’s first years, without making that be a financial and professional compromise. The fight is for mothers’ friendly workspaces, for daycares at places of work. Most importantly, the fight is for awareness, of women about their own bodies, about giving birth, about breastfeeding, about bonding with your child, as this is what I lacked most.
It’s ridiculous that I was never prepared for this role, the biggest of my life so far. I also learned not to judge myself so hard, not on any level. I still struggle with accepting my new body. Sometimes I feel very glorious and other times I feel deformed, but regardless of how I feel on any given day, I don’t judge myself for feeling the way I feel. I think vanity is not vain after all, and empathy towards myself is something I am learning, as I start to see myself in the eyes of my children.
I also feel that my view of the world has changed. I feel more involved in environmental matters, in the safety of food, in all wellness related issues. This was never important for me before, but now these matters have become very personal. The world in which my kids will grow up in is important to me. I have become much more conservative about family values and relationships. I never cared about my roots, my village, and my country. Home was wherever I lived. Now I feel, without fully understanding why, the need to pass on to my children a certain heritage, that it’s part of my duty towards them.
Without changing my views about personal freedom, I have come to believe that much of that “freedom” in matters such as abortion (not all cases of course) is really women reacting to oppression — That the “choice” is not as free as it seems, and that given a healthier social and economic model, many of these women’s definition of free choice might be different. Feminism for me now as I practice it is to stop being apologetic about being a woman. Recently I was interviewing for a new job and I bluntly told the interviewer when asked about my availability that sure, I am not available 24/7. Definitely I will skip work if a child is sick and yes being home for dinner every night is a huge priority. But also that he doesn’t have to be upset about that. It’s OK, not only because being a mother also has given me more skills to do the job, I have more focus, more patience, more understanding, more motivation than before, but also because having children and taking care of them is the way humanity survives — too bad for 7:00 pm meetings…I eventually got the job.
If I am to write about the challenges of motherhood, It will be mostly about the challenges of a working mother. Having briefly experienced being a stay at home mother during a transition between jobs, I can say without a doubt that being a stay at home mother is a privilege, and it’s a shame that not many women have the option. Sure sleep deprivation is challenging, but much more is the stress. The stress of your job, proving to your manager that you are still the dedicated employee you were, the stress of time management, the stress and fear of losing the connection with your partner, the stress of connecting and bonding with your child while you are not the main caretaker, is all stressful. I believe that working mothers of my generation are all living in guilt. We feel guilty about everything, as we are still supposed to be the primary person taking care of the house, of the children, while looking perfect and having successful careers. This leaves women of my generation with a deep sense of guilt as we feel the need to achieve what our stay at home mothers offered — A perfectly clean house, elaborate homemade meals, and giving just enough of everything to our children. Enough attention, enough love, enough time. Women of my generation don’t have the chance to live within a “tribe” as our mothers and grandmothers did, where children are sort of collectively raised, and where family members act as a safety net. We have to raise our children within a nuclear family, and that puts a heavy burden on the relationship between mother and child. Kids are extremely attached to their parents, as the other family figures traditionally bearing some of this emotional need are distant, but at the same time we have less energy and time to give. The result is living in omnipresent guilt. When I get asked how I balance my job, the kids, the house, and the relationship with my partner, I always answer that I don’t. I just respond to the most urgent task, always, which leaves me in an ongoing state of firefighting, which is in turn very stressful (at least for me, I am a planner). From the outside, we look put together, but from the inside, we are racing every day, fearing at the same time that we might be missing out on the best days of our lives.
It seems unfair to me to talk about motherhood without talking about my husband. He stepped up from day one, as an equal partner. People say: “You are lucky he helps so much.” I answer: “It’s hardly “help” if he is doing at least half the parenting.” I cannot count the times where he was up all night because one of the kids is sick and I am traveling. The times he let me sleep in on weekends, the meals he has prepared, the discussions we have had on every single aspect of raising the kids. I don’t feel like “mothering” the kids the way my mom mothered us. We are parenting together, while trying to stay a couple, to follow our passions outside of the kids related world, and to have date nights from time to time, even though these are more stressful than fun.
Do I struggle to identify myself outside of motherhood? No, because I choose not to. I am mostly a mother now, and it’s totally fine if I miss out on new movies or books or if my friends now are mostly people I run into at the playgrounds. It’s totally fine, as I have learned that no role is less than another. It sure gets lonely sometimes, as my former friends are mostly still without children and we have drifted apart, as I cannot be a good friend at this time. I only have left the few people who accept that they will be the ones giving, without huge expectations of return from my side other than the fact that I will always love and appreciate them.
Motherhood was always depicted to me as a sacrifice. Mothers are portrayed in our culture as giving martyrs who are almost iconized, respected,and feared. It’s a totally different experience for me as really, the pleasure is all mine. It’s such a rewarding experience. If we would like to think that life and people have a purpose, then the personal growth I have had would have taken a thousand childless lives to happen. If life is about fun and enjoyment, then the laughs of one day can fill a thousand hearts with joy. It’s truly amazing how little I knew about myself, my limits, and what I really wanted in life before kids.
