Mom guilt ... I see you.

One thing that has been terrifying about parenting — now, almost exactly eight weeks in — is how much it has amplified my screen time. I’m not even retreating to the safety of my phone, as I have done during other stressful times. I don’t feel I need a retreat. I love hanging out with my baby. But having him in my life has made me paradoxically closer to my phone as well as to him and to my husband. 

Part of it is breastfeeding. A new baby breastfeeds basically all the time. In our first few days at home, my brain was a sieve, so tracking things like how long it had been since the baby had last eaten was impossible without my phone. This meant I had my phone with me constantly. I couldn’t nurse or change the baby without it, since I needed to record how often he ate and filled his diaper to know if he was getting adequately nourished. My phone, specifically the BabyFeedingLog app, was a lifeline. Once he regained his birthweight and the urgency was gone, there was a new urgency, that of staying awake during night feedings. Again, the bright light of my iPhone was my support system while my husband snored beside me. In the early days of motherhood, I have relied heavily on my phone.

All this makes me feel guilty. Why am I not engaging more with my child while he nurses? Why am I not spending more time admiring the soft fuzzy hair on his head or counting his precious fingers, one through ten, over and over again? 

 Although I do plenty of this stuff, sometimes I want to browse what is on the Zara app or Google ‘baby heat rash’ or read about what Boris Johnson’s government is up to. And now, part of my emerging mom identity is feeling a bit guilty about looking at my phone to do that instead of looking at my baby. The guilt sneaks up on me. I think I am just having a break and before I know it I am thinking, shit, my baby is not being stimulated enough, he is going to be feeling bored or neglected or disconnected from me. It’s funny, because the baby looks content, or at least vacant. But I see the specter of the guilt, how he lurks everywhere, waiting to chime in.