The mommy blogs are alive. . . with the sound of. . .

judgement.  And of course I have to chime in.  I'm not going to judge, for the record, but more jazz-riff off of what she wrote.

Here is the article in question.  Here is a follow up. I've been sitting here this morning reflecting on what this mother has to say. Because I teach writing, I've been contemplating the word love and what she means by that and because I'm a parent, I'm wondering if she meant like instead of love. Maybe not.  I don't know.  Who am I to say.  I didn't honestly have much to say, really, until I read her follow up wherein she claims that the rest of us mothers have these ugly thoughts too and we ought not get too judgmental of her and if we don't like what she has to say, we should probably keep our mouths shut.

And anyone who knows me knows darned well that the best way to get me to start talking is to tell me to shut up.

So in response to her first entry, I have to say I have not had moments when I thought "I love my son more."  I have often wondered if I'm more bonded to him, due to our failed epidural and the post-birth high that accompanies a natural birth.  Or whether I was more bonded to my daughter who I nursed for nearly three years whereas I lost my patience with nursing my son at 14 months. I daily wonder which child I like better and let me be clear: that changes moment to moment to moment, though overall I am in utter wonder of both of them.  I love and like both of them deeply -- and not in the same ways but not comparable in a quantifiable less or more sort of way. 

When I do have rare moments of quantification - of I love him less or I love her less, I often reflect on the fact that what I'm feeling in my heart might well be manifesting in my actions toward my children- and whether it can be fixed by changing those actions.  I watched a documentary once on oxytocin - it's considered a sort of love hormone - and the most successful relationships have high levels of individually programmed oxytocin responses. How do we program oxytocin response?  By touching.  When I'm feeling less loving toward one of my children (or, frankly, my husband for that matter), I correct what I'm feeling in my heart by acting more loving - by hugging more - snuggling more - by spending more time with that child (or my spouse).

In other words, the relationship is what I make of it - and while I do not attempt to love my children the same or treat them the same (after all, they are different people with different needs and desires), I love them with equal ferocity.  If or when that love begins to fade - it's my job to reignite it.

This woman is pregnant again - with a third child - and expressed in her blog that she hopes it's a girl so she can start over on that girl/mom relationship and hopefully do it right.  Anyone who knows me can probably guess how I'm going to respond to that.  Gender preference is far from my thing.  But more than that, using one child to cure the ills of another relationship is never, ever, ever going to work.

When I discovered that Tenacious E was a girl, I worried that my relationship with her might suffer like my relationship with MonkeyMoo sometimes does. Based on his age, I think The Budge and I did have a closeness that was fading with MonkeyMoo.  But rather than thinking of Tenacious E's arrival as an opportunity to fix what was wrong with MonkeyMoo, I saw it as a daily reminder to fix what could go wrong with all three relationships.  A cautionary reminder to daily strive to be a better parent to all of my children.

I know that this woman is feeling the sting of the blogosphere right now - and I want you to know that I truly and honestly do not judge her, I just wish she'd take this monster down, wrestle it out of herself through her actions, rather than parading it through her blog.  And I hope, above all else, that one day she'll erase that blog so that her daughter might never, ever see it.  It's one thing to discuss these issues quietly with friends.  It's another to commit them to permanence, to highlight them, to loudly and proudly discuss them.

I cannot imagine as a daughter reading that one day.  It's hard enough to be a functioning member of a family, to be a woman in this world.  How heartbreaking would it be to see in print that your mom loved your brother more than you - and that rather than redoubling her efforts to love you - she wrote it out and shared it with the world.