the loss of innocence = the loss of the cleaning lady

I will write a couple of posts about my cleaning lady. I had her coming to clean my house for three months after my baby was born. Then, my mother came for a month and I thought we could manage with the house and the baby, the two of us. Then, we went on holiday. Then, my partner convinced me that we do not really need a cleaning lady, we can do everything ourselves.

My insomnias, my really bad sleeping period started soon after that. I wonder if there is not a connection with the cleaning lady leaving. It was great to have her. Having the entire house ordered and cleaned (I was ordering in order that she can clean efeciently) was giving me a sense a control, a rhythm in the week, was structuring me and helping me to focus. Moreover, I felt I could completely dedicate myself to David. I felt supported and cared for, by this weekly act of scrubing. It was like doing yoga (?!)

After she left, I have been struggling for months to do household chores while taking care of the baby. It implied a lot of fragmented work. As a result my head and my thoughts were fragmented too. So my sleep got fragmented. (that´s a new idea, I like it)

I was starting in a direction with a task in mind and I was ending up beginning three others on the way. Not to mention that none of them was really finished. It also sapped me of energy because it implied I was forced to grow some indiference to the needs of David. Such as: I know you need me right now, but I have to finish hanging these cloths first. Well, one could say it was about time he started to grow some tolerance to frustration, but it made me feel very bad (mother). And I would have prefered he grew some frustration tolerance while I was doing something pleasant for myself.

Washing cloths was the nicest activity, cause I was putting david in the laundry basket with the dirty cloths and taking him on a trip to the unexplored underworld of the basement. Cooking was the most difficult, because I cooked poorly and with no pleasure, if I had to interupt myself a hundred times in the process.

Well, in one word, I had lost my cleaning lady. My saving angel. Loosing her was my growing up, my rite of passage as a mother. I was waking up to the new situation. Well, maybe I was more of a mother as a result, joining hands with all the frantically scrubing mothers of the world (imaging holind hands with someone scrubing), but my awakening as a mother ment my sleeplesness as a human being.

I was so wide awake I could not sleep anymore.