Doesn't this ever go away?

I had another appointment with Dr. FeelGood today; I have to say, I already feel a lot better - or at least a lot less uneven - than I did four weeks ago. I think a significant part of that has been finally going off the Crinone and Progynova (I stopped ten days ago) and letting my hormone levels settle down to the ordinary pregnantly hormonal as opposed to the Seriously Medicated Hormonal I've been up until now. I'm too self-aware to pretend that the hormone support was the sole cause of my problems, but I'm happy to think I never have to see Crinone again.*

Now if I could only dispense with my mother issues as easily it'd be clear sailing around here. It seems unfair. Eight years ago, after my mother died, I did a lot of serious emotional work to come to terms with what had been an unpleasant and unhealthy relationship. I forgave my mother a lot of her faults, or at least found it within myself to be generous enough to acknowledge that many of her flaws stemmed from her own troubled early life and she was, perhaps, simply unable to change. I was willing to accept that her failings came from weakness and not from malice. I came to a truce with her memory, an uneasy one at times but a truce nonetheless, and I sent a lot of old hurts downstream. I lived a few years without seeing her storm cloud on the horizon and I have to tell you they were good years.

But becoming a parent myself has strained that truce; flashes of anger I though I'd dealt with long ago started turning up in my journals. I can, it would seem, remember specific petty hurts from 22 years ago with perfect clarity. In becoming a parent myself I've develped a new lense through which I view my own parents and though in some ways it has made me more understanding in other ways it has made me less so, more acutely aware of the ways my mother failed me and painfully aware of the things I was cheated out of as a child. Striving to become the parent I want to be - and it's work some days finding the extra ounce of patience, answering the question instead of saying "because", letting Small Boy work my loom even though it means later I'll have to unweave what he's done - striving to take my parenting and my child seriously puts into sharp relief all the ways my mother just didn't bother to try, the ways she didn't take me seriously, the ways - all the daily ways - she just didn't care. I've been less forgiving of my mother these past 29 months, these past 29 months during which I've tried every day to raise Small Boy with love and respect. It's not easy, being a parent, and it's not easy being a parent when you've got your own problems, I know that, but people can do it. People can try. I try. She could have tried.

Dr. FeelGood is focusing how these feelings are affecting my feelings about this pregnancy (um, scared to death of repeating history), which means we're dragging up a lot of old Mom-stuff that, frankly, I'm kind of tired of dealing with. Doesn't this stuff ever go away? It's self-evident that becoming a parent would trigger emotions about my own parents, that the daily acts of being a mother would make me think of my own mother's daily acts (or lack thereof), but doesn't this stuff ever go away? Because seriously, even though I haven't addressed it much in the blog trust me, there are pages upon pages of this in my journals and it's getting kind of old.

But I'll keep plowing through it (trying not to bore you with the details) because plowing through it will pave a better way for this baby and that's what I do. I do the hard work to pave better ways for my babies. I try to be a better person so that I can help my child(ren) become a better person. Something my mother didn't do, which is what is pissing my off in the first place.

How ironic that my indifferent, alcoholic, troubled and sometimes downright mean mother is part of the reason I'm a good mother.

And no, she doesn't get to take credit for that.

*Crinone, don't take it personally. I'll always be grateful for the ways you enabled and supported this pregnancy but your side-effects range from distasteful (*cough* discharge *cough*) to debilitating (*cough* emotional roller-coaster *cough*) and I've had enough. Fare thee well.

** Oh, and did I mention my insurance company is only going to pay part of the bill? Because, you know, possibly heading off post-partum depression now as opposed to waiting for it to emerge after the birth couldn't possibly be a good idea, could it?