I must be the worst mother on MKP

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 19:55:36 -0400, Vicky Bilaniuk
scribbled:

Nan wrote:

The bathroom is one area my dh never cleans. That's his "I don't care
what it's like" zone. So I clean it, but not fanatically.

Our bathrooms are finally quite clean. My secret? A MIL who hired
cleaning service. (I love the service so much that we're going to keep
it after her gift runs out)

I would *love* to hire a cleaning person. I used to run a cleaning
business several years ago.

Nan

Nan wrote:

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 15:46:34 -0400, "Sophie"
scribbled:
Okay I've noticed this with my neighbors as well as women on other boards I
post on. Why do people seem proud that they don't clean?


Well, for me it's not that I'm proud of it. Just that I'm not all
that interested in having a really clean house. Finding others that
think the same is great, as it flies in the face of the stereotype
that sahm's need to be doing it all.

Yeah I love breaking the stereotype, too. It's hard around here,
actually. I've got lots of elderly neighbours who think I'm being a
regular 50's style housewife. They make conversation by saying things
like "you just *can't* get a kitchen floor clean unless you get on your
hands and knees and scrub it." I always keep my mouth shut in those
instances. (of course, if they asked, they would get a shock, heh heh,
but thankfully they haven't asked. Although these days, my kitchen
floor *is* getting scrubbed by hand, but not by me!)

Vicky Bilaniuk wrote:

Unadulterated Me wrote:

Mum of Two wrote:

" and manage all this even with a dozen other children"

You must be talking about me as I'm the only one here with anything
near a dozen children...and well yes I am perfect, suck it up and get
over it while I polish my halo.


Let's remember what is probably Andrea's secret... Having a dozen other
children means having *older ones who can help*, heh heh.


yeah yeah whatever makes people feel better about how much better I am
than them.

;-)

Andrea

Sophie wrote:

I'm not a great housekeeper, I don't particularly *like* cleaning,
but it has to be done, so I do it. shrug
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

No it doesn't. There is no rule anywhere that says that you must do it.
You can live in a totally filthy house and be just fine. I know
because I have seen people do it. I can't do it personally due to
allergies, but those who are perfectly healthy can get by with a *lot*
more filth around them. As long as the basics are done, like keeping
food areas clean and keeping the toilets and showers in working order,
floors just don't matter.

Despite my allergies, I'm still a bad housekeeper. I only do it out of
necessity for my own health (DH doesn't have a problem, and we have to
wait and see about Max), which means that I push it until I'm starting
to feel really bothered by it all - then I do it out of desperation.
Now that we've got people coming in to clean, though, life is much
better. We're definitely keeping the cleaning service, despite the
cost. I look at it this way: some people have cable, we have cleaning
service (the cost is about the same). ;-)

Mum of Two wrote:
"Sophie" wrote in message
...

So what is it about pushing that freaks some folks out? I'm genuinely

It's not the pushing, it's where the baby comes out - lol.

Even with what happened with L, I'm perfectly A-OK with c-sections and

that

I never had to have a baby come out "there"


"There" is probably the fastest healing part of our bodies though.

I dunno... I can still feel pain from my scar down "there". It has
been 7.5 weeks. I don't think it's fully healed, yet. I keep wondering
if I'll actually be scarred in other ways (think marital relations...).
I can't imagine ever being touched there again. At all. Ever. I'm
hoping that time will heal that particular wound, but it sure is going
slowly. It doesn't help that I currently have zero interest. I
sometimes think of people who have had c-sections, and I'm envious of
the fact that they avoid this problem altogether.

Certainly
faster than the abdomen. I had a deep labial graze (at least I thought it
was deep lol) from where DS was born with his hand up by his face. It was
gone within a couple of days, I was amazed. And urinary alkanisers take away
any pain from grazes while peeing.

I must have been missing those, because it hurt to pee for quite some
time afterwards. :-(

Actual delivery was nothing worse than the Chinese burns my Dad used to give

Mine would have hurt a lot. From what I could feel of the ring of fire,
I was THANKFUL for the epidural.

Mum of Two wrote:

I worry that now that I'm at home, he's going to want more of a
Stepford Wife personality type, after all now I'm sitting at home on my a$$
all day, it doesn't really matter if I'm smart or not.

I went through something like this, too. I used to work full time, but
then I quit and went back to school. I was in school full time at
first, but then due to many varied reasons, I dropped down to part time.
That's when the guilt over house work started up. It got especially
bad because I felt that there was actually a difference between *my*
money and *his* money. The trick to living happily was to first get
over that money thing, and second to be reassured by DH that he didn't
suddenly expect me to be a perfect little housewife. In fact, he told
me that he would find it strange to live with me if I changed so much
that I suddenly became a housewife type. The only way I got over my
issues, though, was to sit down and actually ask DH what his
expectations were, and to tell him what mine were. We had to do this
several times before I finally got it past my thick skull that his
expectations of me hadn't changed. ;-)

"Vicky Bilaniuk" wrote in message
. ..

I dunno... I can still feel pain from my scar down "there". It has
been 7.5 weeks. I don't think it's fully healed, yet. I keep wondering
if I'll actually be scarred in other ways (think marital relations...).
I can't imagine ever being touched there again. At all. Ever. I'm
hoping that time will heal that particular wound, but it sure is going
slowly. It doesn't help that I currently have zero interest. I
sometimes think of people who have had c-sections, and I'm envious of
the fact that they avoid this problem altogether.


Vicky, fwiw, 7.5 weeks is still relatively early after you've had a tear or
episiotomy. Honestly, I felt very sensitive for several months afterwards.
It's not the ideal situation, but it's not unusual. It *will* get better.
Don't beat yourself up. Just thought you'd want to know.

JennP.

newfy.1 wrote:

Vicky, fwiw, 7.5 weeks is still relatively early after you've had a tear or
episiotomy. Honestly, I felt very sensitive for several months afterwards.
It's not the ideal situation, but it's not unusual. It *will* get better.
Don't beat yourself up. Just thought you'd want to know.

Thanks. :-) Reassurance is nice.

Believe it or not, whenever I worry about the darn thing, I think of
Leslie, who had an episiotomy that she said bothered her for months.
Ahem, she's pregnant again, and I don't remember hearing anything about
her having used artificial insemination, heh heh... So now I can think
of you too, ahem...

"Vicky Bilaniuk" wrote in message
. ..
Sophie wrote:

I'm not a great housekeeper, I don't particularly *like* cleaning, but it
has to be done, so I do it. shrug
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

No it doesn't. There is no rule anywhere that says that you must do it.
You can live in a totally filthy house and be just fine.

My father tried to guilt me into being a better housekeeper by saying my
kids would get sick if I didn't keep the house cleaner. How exactly they're
going to get a cold from cookie- and cracker-crumbs in the carpet, he did
not explain.

When I start cleaning, really cleaning ...is when I can't walk across the
floor without risking life and limb due to hazardous footing. Then
everything gets picked up and tossed into bins or baskets. From these, the
kids tend to toss everything out again, but not until I've vacuumed the
empty space. I can't bear crumbs on the kitchen floor, so it gets swept
regularly. Mopping, not so often, unless it's sticky. But we don't *eat* off
the floor, do we?

But - as Shena Delia O'Brien once pointed out after a visit to my home -
this is about clutter, not about dirtiness. If somebody spills food, I clean
it up. If somebody threw up, I'd clean it up. Dirty laundry gets taken to
the laundry hampers. Food in the kitchen gets put away. Everything else is
clutter. I could get rid of clutter right *now* if I was willing to simply
toss it. I'm not.

More to the point, do I have time to clean? Absolutely. All I have to do is
get off my tuckus where I sit at the computer, and clean. But I get no
satisfaction from it, and therefore, no motivation.

--angela

newfy.1 wrote:
"Vicky Bilaniuk" wrote in message
. ..
I dunno... I can still feel pain from my scar down "there". It
has been 7.5 weeks. I don't think it's fully healed, yet. I keep
wondering if I'll actually be scarred in other ways (think marital
relations...). I can't imagine ever being touched there again.
At all. Ever. I'm hoping that time will heal that particular
wound, but it sure is going slowly. It doesn't help that I
currently have zero interest. I sometimes think of people who
have had c-sections, and I'm envious of the fact that they avoid
this problem altogether.

Vicky, fwiw, 7.5 weeks is still relatively early after you've had a
tear or episiotomy. Honestly, I felt very sensitive for several
months afterwards. It's not the ideal situation, but it's not
unusual. It *will* get better. Don't beat yourself up. Just thought
you'd want to know.

I agree completely. I think I probably recovered quicker-than-average from
my episiotomy (with #1) and my tears with #2 and #3, but I'm sure I was
pretty lukewarm to the idea of sex for a bit longer than 6 weeks, especially
after my first. I'm sure recovery is even shorter for folks who manage to
keep their perineums intact, something I never managed to do (even with good
care the third time, I couldn't slow pushing enough to stretch rather than
tear).

The thing is, I'm not sure nature really intends us to hop "back on the
horse" in terms of sexual relations so soon after the birth of a baby,
anyway. There's probably a certain amount of space between babies that's
built into the system by virtue of the amount of time it takes to fully heal
from birth, and that's a good thing, I expect.
--
Be well, Barbara
Mom to Sin (Vernon, 2), Misery (Aurora, 5), and the Rising Son (Julian, 7)

This week's suggested Bush-Cheney Campaign Slogan:
"Why change horsemen in mid-apocalypse?"

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