Mom jealousy

I can't really get into all the ways I am screwing up motherhood. Just know that for someone who has read an absurd number of parenting books, you would think I'd taken a holy vow to do exactly the opposite of what was written in each one. I'm not, like, shooting heroin while the baby plays unsupervised in a bucket of water or anything, but it is fair to say I do not have the best handle on a number of parenting aspects.

So I spend a fair amount of time wandering in public in my saggy mom jeans, wilting under the scathing gazes of superior mommies. Or the scathing gazes I perceive from these women. These beautiful, thin, stylish women who seem to have avoided the amazing hair loss I am still experiencing and definitely do not have a deeply, deeply disturbing relationship with milky way candy bars.

I do not know why these women, who have children the same age or younger than my kid, have it so together. Why their thighs are so skinny. How they have time to apply their makeup so expertly.

I assume their children sleep angelically for multiple naps every day and snooze without a peep for 12 hours every night. Nary a shadow can be seen beneath their eyes, which it goes without saying are definitely not bloodshot.

Yesterday I decided to visit a blog I hadn't seen in several months. I knew the blogger had had a child and was curious about how it was going. I really, really should have known better. The woman already leads a sort of charmed life. For starters, she makes a living off her food blog and is a willowy blonde yoga instructor. Her pregnancy had gone off without a hitch and she spent most of it hiking, doing yoga, eating extraordinarily nutritious food and generally looking like the most gorgeous pregnant woman alive. (I, on the other hand, looked like I'd been injected with chemo drugs and got a bad nose job)

So naturally, this woman's baby is enormously fat and at five months weighs more than my 11 month old. And yeah, I'm jealous her baby is fat. She's never had a doctor peer down at her and interrogate her about her breast feeding techniques and never had to wonder if her kid is getting enough calories.

And naturally, she is thin and sporting a lustrous head of hair and talking about all the dates she and her husband go on. At this point I began to feel a slight hint of murderous rage.

And then, naturally, her baby has slept 12 hours a night since he was 15 weeks old. And he takes "two good naps every day." This is the part when my left eyelid began to twitch uncontrollably. I turned to my husband and said -- If there is a God, this woman's next child will be straight from Hell.

And then I admitted: I am not a very nice person.

And my husband said: No, you are not.

That is not to say I feel my child was sent to me by The Devil. He is actually a very charming, hilarious, adorable boy in every way except for one -- sleep! And it happens that lack of sleep affects every other aspect of my life. I might -- might! -- be able to give superior mommies a run for their money if my little chunk of love was a champion sleeper.

And I feel that, given enough time -- say, 12 years -- I can probably get him to sleep through the night, and probably to sleep past 7 a.m.