Judgements of Motherhood

A friend of mine will soon see her baby for the first time.  Due in 2 months and preparing for her baby’s arrival, her life is about to change forever.

I remember those first couple years of motherhood.  Suddenly you are in “the club” only you are a rookie; and sometimes the club is not too kind to the newbies.

I can remember being told: “You shouldn’t put your baby to sleep in that manner, he will NEVER learn to sleep on his own.”  

Or how about, “Really, you need to give that baby a soother.  He will NEVER stop sucking his thumb!”  

Or my favourite (being a pharmacist), “Dear, you just need to put ‘blah blah blah’ on that rash and it’ll be cleared up in no time.”  

All this well-meaning advice can be hard on a new mom.  While finding their way and trying to do what is best for their baby and themselves, it can be difficult to stand your own ground.  Unfortunately, the sense of self-doubt tends to stay with moms as we continually wonder if we are making the right choices for our kids.

As I became more experienced as a mom I began to see my own judgemental nature.  I was a mostly ‘stay at home mom’, an ‘attachment’ parent who kept my babies close at night and in a sling by day.  Wasn’t that the BEST way to be a mom??

Now, after many years of homeschooling, my kids are in school full-time and I am running a full-time professional practice.   I am still the same mom.

I have met many stay at home mom’s who feel it is the ONLY way to raise a child.  And I know many working mom’s who feel that THEIR way is the only way.    Having been on both sides of the fence I can say that there just is no “one right way” to be a mom.

What IS the right way is to lose the judgement.  Moms need to support each other.  It is one of the most difficult journeys helping a child grow up to be responsible, kind and a positive member of society.

As for the well-meaning advice….Ben now sleeps like the dead, Noah hasn’t sucked his thumb for at least 6 years, and the rash….that was food allergies.

Nod and smile… and remember that there are many paths.

at least one of us is tired..

Worth It

ccFlickr shared by Eduardo Llanquileo

It’s been awhile since I’ve been here…. I’ve gone from regular posts to a lapse in writing of over two months!  Even worse for my professional site which has been three months!  I sat down today and thought about what had changed and why I haven’t been writing.

I guess I have just been tired… It has been an overwhelming couple of months with many changes.   Changes that have taken the pharmacy practice I love into the scary place of perhaps not being sustainable.  Government decisions, which have been short sighted and without consultation with the front line health professionals who are affected, have been devastating.  Even as the government back pedals on some of their inane decrees in an attempt at damage control, the changes will continue and have a vast impact on the health of Albertans’ and the sustainability of pharmacy.

The emotional roller-coaster of connecting with hundreds of other pharmacists across Alberta who are in the same position has been both inspiring and enhausting.  I have met so many professionals who are utterly committed to their patients; but it is heartbreaking to hear of some colleagues, near retirement, who may lose the value of their practices they spent years building.

I am many years from retirement and am hopeful this will not be the case for me, but there have been days I have walked into the place I love and found it difficult.  Wondering if decisions, which are in government’s hands, would take away what I have been building.

Then yesterday I received a letter from the College of Pharmacists that I have been anxiously waiting for.  For over a year I’ve been putting together my case to apply for prescribing rights.  I finally completed the process and sent it off.

While I have had limited prescribing rights for years, there have been many times when caring for patients that I have felt like I had my hands tied when I couldn’t prescribe what I knew they needed.

My son handed me the letter from the College, and when I opened it he asked me why I was grinning like crazy!

I had received my prescribing authority; and it was more than the expanded ability to serve my patients that had me grinning.  It was hope.  I could see that I had been losing my joy…the reason I was building my practice in the first place.  This affirmation caused me to take a step back and realized that I am exactly where I always wanted to be.  I practice with colleagues whom I highly value and continue to learn from and I am in my own pharmacy able to care for my patient’s exactly as I want.  Definitely worth it.

“The Talk”

I just had “The Talk” with my kids.

It started like this:

“Boys, when I need to hire someone do you know what one of the first things is I do?”

Nope, they had no idea.

“I google them,” I said. “I see what they post on Facebook, Twitter, blogs. If they have posted anything that is calling someone else down, is sexually inappropriate, or if they’ve made blatantly disrespectful comments on other people’s postings, I would tend not to hire that person.”

Social media is a relatively new invention. Young kids now are posting things on the internet that will follow them into their adult life —>for the first time in history, creating a permanent personal digital identity. This is the first generation creating that type of history, and without being aware, kids can be damaging their future unintentionally.

So far, my boys only foray onto social media is Instagram. It is a starting point, and I am allowing them to learn as they go. So tonight, I asked my son to come sit with me and show me what he has posted so far (yes, I look at it regularly, but I wanted to encourage discussion.)

Among the mostly silly pictures, there were a few I would consider inappropriate (mostly for language). I asked him about them and he said, “Mom, I like to post things that make people laugh.”

Yup, that’s good, I said. So I asked him what kind of job he wanted to do when he grew up, and he said a musician. So, I told him to picture the future scenario of a man who had to choose between him and another musician to come entertain his guests. If the man googled Noah Oleksyn, what would he see? It would be terrible to not get that job, or the next one because of some dumb stuff you posted when you were a kid right? I repeated a similar conversation with my other son, substituting “Fifa Soccer player” for musician. What I heard from both of them is that they hadn’t thought of that at all.

I think as parents we need to do three things for our kids:

• Be aware of what our children are doing on the internet
• Be on sites with them and teach as they go.
• Be examples with our own digital identity.

I love this post shared by Royan Lee. Great questions for all of us to keep in mind.

Kids using social media and posting content on the internet without any sort of direction is like dropping them off at a grocery store and saying, “Choose some food.”

Without some education on healthy eating and good choices, mine would definitely come out with a bag of chips and a case of pop.

We teach our children how to talk in a respectful manner, how to keep healthy, be kind, have manners and a myriad of other things throughout the time they are entrusted to our care. Today, becoming literate digitally is just as important as learning to read and write. We need to be alongside our children in this new area that encompasses so many aspects of their life. Social media and interaction on the internet is not going anywhere, and as with talking about sex or drugs, our conversations need to be continuous as they grow up in the digital world.

True Love

I came across this quote today, and it reminded me of what true friendship and love really is.  I feel fortunate to have experienced such love in my life.

 

 

“Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.”

African song

ccFlickr shared by smig44_uk

Visitation

Carlene and Carl

I was born on his birthday.

I share his name….and every year from the time I was born until I finished university and moved away, we would celebrate our birthdays together.

The baby years where all I wanted to do was grab the cake, through the awkward years where I was “too cool”,  to our last birthday together when he was in hospital.

I didn’t get to see him before he died.  Family members all went to be with him, to be present, say goodbye.  But I was too far away to get there.  I figured it was okay.  It hadn’t been that long since I had last seen him.  But when I got the call that he had died I felt not only loss, but a horrible sense of guilt that I wasn’t there.

That night he came, in a dream that wasn’t a dream. He said to me that it was okay.  It was okay that I hadn’t been there, and that he loved me and he would always be with me. That was it.  So brief, yet with complete certainty it was him.

Today is our birthday and he is on my mind.

I know others who have had such visitations; from a child lost as a baby, a grandmother, a beloved dog.  The stories need to honored as much as the memory.

Happy Birthday Grandpa.

Love Matters

ccFlicker shared by deeplifequotes

I had an interesting conversation today with a teacher as I was giving her a flu shot.  When I asked her what grade she taught, she said she taught grade two and went on to tell me that she felt lucky everyday to come to work.

How often do you hear that?

She told me that she really loves her students, but went on to say that maybe she cares too much, becomes too attached to her students and maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

I told her I actually thought the opposite was true.

The more you care about those you serve, the more you know them, the better you are able to teach them.  When a child feels that you actually care about them, can depend on a connection, they are more apt to listen, be more open to taking risks in their learning and stretch to meet expectations.

Love matters.

For me, it’s the patients for whom I’ve stayed up late at night researching drug therapies for, those I’ve called to see how their chemo is going, how their son’s depression is, and those that I’ve checked on by email when I am away; the connections I have with those patients make me a better practitioner.  They remind me that the better I get to know a patient, the more I know about their family, what matters to them, how they feel about their health and other matters in their life, the better able I am to advise them, help them make decisions regarding their therapy and teach them how to manage their illnesses and disease.

Love matters.

If you love what you are doing, ultimately you are happier.  If you are happy in your life’s work, whether it’s education, health care or other pursuits, you will do a better job.

As that teacher walked back to her classroom I thought, “That’s the kind of teacher I wish I would’ve had as a child.”

Bridges

ccFlickr shared by Dave Pearson

 

A question can become the bridge that connects us to the lives of others; to those we love and to those we’ve only just met.

I have a friend who, no matter what is going on in her own life, always asks questions of the person she is talking to.   Whether the person she is speaking to is four or ninety-four, she will ask about their family, their work, their day to day, often remembering the smallest details from previous conversations.

The beauty is not that she asks the question but that when you answer her she is completely in that moment.  She has a beautiful way of making the other person feel like she is totally focused on them; that what you are saying is of utmost importance to her.

It took me awhile to discover what it was that made people in her presence feel as if they were receiving a gift. It is in the listening.

So often I find myself listening with an agenda or with the intent to reply rather than with the intent to understand.  I may think I am listening but my hearing is selective, deciding what the person’s meaning is before they have even finished talking.

In the five years of our friendship I have received this gift of being listened to over and over again. But the real gift has been in having this type of listening modelled to me which reminds me always to work at improving selfless listening in my own life.