Becoming a mother

When my parents divorced, I was a teenager.  It was a horrible, devastating experience that felt like a death.  It is the marker in my life for when things changed.  Or I changed.  Or my perceptions changed.  I played the dutiful daughter through  high school and college.  Occasionally, I attempted to stretch out on my own, but I was always guilted and manipulated back into the role that had been chosen for me.  I met my (now) husband in my early twenties.  And I began to brake away.  And my relationship with my mother began to brake apart.  It was volatile and dramatic and stressful.  I was suicidal at times.  But I slowly kept swimming away from the tide.  And I gained strength and insight.
And then I had my son.  Things crashed into focus and I began to see my relationship with my mother for what it was.  Up until then, I had hope things would change.  Blamed myself.  Thought if I just tried a little harder things would be better.  If we could just talk about it, we could work it out.  Nothing worked.  But when I had my son, he became the most important thing in the world to me and I knew I needed to heal myself.  Needed to live in the truth.
When I became pregnant, my mother became obsessed.  For years, she had told me she wasn't ready to be a grandmother.  And then one day she was ready.  Not that her readiness effected my decision.  But I'm sure she thought it did.  She kept track of every appointment I had and wanted details.  But she offered no support.  She never had an sympathy for my months-long morning sickness.  She never asked how I felt about becoming a mother.  She DID buy endless amounts of crap.  She would parade it in, acting as if she didn't buy all the stuff, my child would be naked, sleeping on the floor.  She was the hero.  She was the doting grandmother that provided for her grandchild, which her poor, pathetic daughter should be grateful for.  Not that I didn't appreciate it.  But the fact is, my husband and I were more than capable of providing for my son.  We were not dependent on her.  And most of the stuff she bought was junk.  Random things that were obviously more her taste than ours.  This was a deliberate act.  She clearly was taking ownership of my son.  (In fact, for a year, she repeatedly 'slipped up' and called herself "mom" and me "grandma".)  As the delivery date approached, she ramped things up.
I had asked her if she wanted to be in the room. No, she said, it would be too difficult.  She couldn't stand to see me in all that pain.  It would be too hard on her.  No matter, I didn't really want her there anyway.  But she insisted she be at the hospital.  Insisted she be there.  She just didn't want to see me.  So, I was given orders to call immediately.  So, I sent her directions to the hospital (she lives across the state).  She made a point to say that she and stepdad had a good laugh over that.  Implying that I was neurotic and overly anxious.  My purpose in giving her the directions was so that, as I labored, my poor husband wasn't besieged by a 1000 phone calls asking how to get to the hospital (lord knows, she wouldn't have just tried to find it on her own).  She poo-pooed me and belittled me and made me feel as if I was overdramatic.
My due date arrived.  I will spare the details, but I had an emergency c-section and was minutes away from death, as was my son.  It was all very scary and quick and happened in minutes in the middle of the night.  There had been no time for phone calls.  The next morning, we sent out a photo to everyone's cell phones and prepared to call our families.  My mother called first.  "Did you have your baby?"  "Yes."  Long dramatic pause.  "Why didn't you call me?"   I explained it was an emergency, that I'd almost died, that she turns her phones off at night anyway (my sister had the bad habit of calling hysterically).  "You should've called me." She replied coolly.
No, she didn't ask if I was OK.  She didn't express concern for my safety.  She didn't sound upset about me at all.  But she did later that day.  She breezed into the hospital room.  She had taken her sweet time driving up.  And she called a million times asking for directions.  Even with me on the phone, she missed the street three times.  Those directions I had written for her? She "misplaced" them.   And then the diluge began.  How horrible it had been for her.  How worried she had been.  How I better not have another child, because she can't take it.  It's too stressful for her.  She could hardly take it.  She was even critical of my MIL, saying "she has it easy.  She just gets to come in and have a grandchild.  She doesn't have to worry about her daughter dying.  She doesn't have to deal with the stress of a pregnant daughter".  Um, OK.   I'm lying in a hospital bed, drained, exhausted, recuperating from major surgery after almost dying, and all she can talk about is how hard it was for her.
This scene would be repeated when I had my second son.  How hard  MY pregnancy was for her.  How hard the birth had been on HER.  How stressed she had been.  A nurse pointed out to her that it was probably a lot harder on me.  She didn't agree.