Journey to a New Life

Continuing from my previous blog: Day 43: And the Race Begins! | Motherhood Paranoia

In my previous blog I described how I came to a point within myself where I saw myself participating within a point of competition, wherein I saw how I was using the reference of developmental milestones not just as a frame for his own personal development, but also used it to get an idea where my baby is at ‘in the greater race’ of babies, where I as a mother wanted to know how advantaged/normal/disadvantaged my child was compared to his peers, so that I could be ‘reassured’ that he has what it takes to survive in this world.

Once I got through this point, I saw another point emerge. Where it was not just about ‘my baby winning the race’/’my baby having what it takes’ – but where this strange sense of ‘responsibility’ and ‘duty’ started creeping in within the greater context of ‘generational lines’ and ‘ancestry’ – where, your mother had gotten you this far; in raising you and being set up in a situation where you can have your own child; just as her mother did before her. So that when you look back into your own personal history and lineage; there’s been all these thousands of mothers before you who had been successful in raising their offspring and getting them to a point of survival far enough to have children of their own; where you are now the ‘last’ one of the lineage and where you are now supposed to be just as successful as they have been.

Again – it’s not like I was consciously thinking things like “Oh, I have to make sure I carry on the bloodline of my ancestors and fulfil my duty just like my ancestors before meeee” or anything like that. There was just a slight, odd sense of ‘duty’ that I had noticed and when I went and investigated; this whole pot of worms opened up.

Now, this also bring me to my next point, which is how I see that this whole ‘offspring bearing’ point of importance is connected and linked to the whole Female’s Ego Design.

There’s already this notion and perception of women that they always want to be ‘right’. Especially if you put two females together and they disagree, it’s quite known that things can get ‘heated’ or that things get ‘bitchy’ lol. While I’ve been reading around in books, magazines and on discussion boards online within the context of mothers with babies – this point of righteousness is very much ‘in your face’. Once they’ve made up their mind about something; there’s no point debating it.

So now that I had seen how this point that I have been walking in my blogs unfolded, it made total sense as to ‘how’ and ‘why’ females tend to be so into ‘wanting to be right’.

In my previous blog I went over how I was allowing my relationship with my baby to be shaped through scoring his behaviour into categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as how I saw it fit in with developmental milestones for his age. In this blog I am continuing with this point, where I not only look at how I see this point affect myself but how I see this being linked in at a societal level as well.

I remember the one day I was doing some research in terms of babies’ development. I have a few books where I had gotten info from before, but since each source seemed to vary in its timeline and approach of developmental milestones, I took it on me to go through quite a bit of sources so I could get a wider picture and not only use one or two sources as my frame of reference. I watched some videos and in the one video the development of a typical baby was shown at X age, and alongside the development of an ‘atypical’ baby was shown.

When I saw how the atypical baby was moving and compared Cesar to him, I was happy that Cesar did not turn out to be a ‘atypical’ baby, because it was clear that the atypical baby was struggling and did not have an effective body to develop and grow effectively. I saw myself going into this point of satisfaction where I kind of went ‘Aaah, everything is okay – I can be relaxed now’ – and as I was allowing this experience to take over, there was a moment of silence within me – and then I asked myself: Wait – what is going on here?

Because what I saw in that moment, is that I could care less about this atypical baby that’s struggling it’s ass off to move himself in his reality and carry his development forward. In a way, it was almost as if there was a form of being pleased that this baby is struggling, where there is this odd logic existent where ‘because this other baby is struggling, my baby has a greater chance of being a winner’.

It’s like, we’ve become so accustomed to the idea that there are always those who lag behind, those who are normal and those who are always at the frontier in society. Whether it’s in growth/development, school, relationships and ultimately jobs/careers. So if someone else in your ‘peer group’ fall in the category if being part of the ‘losers’, then that’s already one less statistical chance of you being in that position.

So when you’re faced with a situation where someone else is disadvantaged, you’re happy because, at least it’s not you or – at least it’s not your baby. Who cares about this other person/kid who is struggling and where this might follow him/her his/her entire life? At least I/my baby’s part of the winners and he will make it in life.

So there’s no regard whatsoever for other people, other children, other forms of life. All that matter is you and your baby. So here I could see, how in the way I was participating in this point of developmental milestones, where I had allowed it to become emotionally and feeling charged – this was another form of Survivalism, where I was trying to gauge and measure ‘how good my baby’s chances of survival are in the world’ – and where an unspoken decision had already been made that I would look after ‘only my baby’ and that I care for ‘only my baby’ – as if there is some tacit rule that each one must just look after their own offspring and ‘may the best win’ type of thing.

And I mean, it was not as if I was consciously voicing thoughts of this nature within myself – it was just like an overall ‘feeling’ that was just scarcely noticeable which was just silently hovering around, like a slight mist present all over inside myself. And only once I started investigating my conscious fears, and then investigating the emotional charged, I really became aware of this presence which is kind of like the rules of the game you are playing, which you once upon a time had agreed upon but had forgotten about. Yet, you were still playing within those parameters as the rules has become normalized through acceptance and allowance.

To be continued

In my previous blog I talked about how little we are aware of the implications and repercussions from participating in a singular thought.

The thought pattern that I am specifically looking at so far in this series, is about comparing one’s child/baby to the timeline of developmental milestones, and from there creating either an emotion or feeling response which becomes part of how you view and participate with your child/baby.

Here, the first ‘level’ of mind interference that I noted was the either negative or positive energetic experience that came up, and that this now in part formed the ‘lens’ through which I would start looking at my baby. Initially, when this point the first time arose, it wasn’t even noticeable, but then as it started coming up more it became more and more apparent. It was apparent that ‘something’ was going on, because I wasn’t necessarily having the thoughts, but just the memory of the experience. Then as it would occur more, it was as if the experience started to solidify more and more – to the point where I actually experienced myself being claustrophobic, where I felt this experience ‘closing in on me’ – and that’s when I knew for sure that something’s up and it’s not cool. Because each time I would look at my baby, these nagging feeling was here. I couldn’t just be here, sit with him, play with him, watch him – without this experience pushing itself into the picture.

So when looking at the point of comparing my baby’s development to the ‘standards’, I noticed that a point of value assessment came in, terms of ‘how well does my baby do compared to the standards’, ‘what value does my baby have in terms of the standards’.

What is quite funny is that I always disliked being valued through things like ‘grades’ at school. Though in that moment of looking at my own baby, I could see how easily such a pattern develops and becomes permanently engrained. Because in a way, I was translating the ‘developmental milestones’ into grades as well, and then looking at ‘how well my baby scores’. Then depending on how I was interpreting my baby’s behaviour and translating it into a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ score – this in turn would determine my experience and attitude towards my baby.

This was obviously not cool as this completely warped my presence and relationship towards my baby, where I was already categorising and compartmentalizing him in my mind, removing myself from him further and further as I was less and less dealing with him as who he was, as a being here, just naturally developing himself – but with a mental projection of mine pasted over him.

And this is just one point, one thought – and yet how I could see it influence me and how I was changing towards my baby was just frightening.

The experience wasn’t ‘overwhelming’ or ‘really intense’ – but since I could notice it, and since he’s only a few months old (back then), I could see that if I let this slide, and he grows older, and more and more points emerge: I would slowly but surely lose touch with reality and lose touch with my own baby/child as I would become more and more enthralled by my mind-reality instead of physical reality.

To be continued