Hippie Mom Wannabe

I have been thinking a lot about what kind of mother I will be, or rather what kind of mother I want to be. As with any new journey, the first step is often to look to those who have traveled the same road. Certainly, there is some wisdom to be gleaned from this, but mothers are as varied and individual as... well, as individuals. So I moved on to magazines and websites, and those that I gravitated toward have been telling me a lot about what I value and possibly what I aspire to. My favorite magazine so far is Mothering and others like it. These magazines are for what might be described as the all-natural, granola, hippie moms. And yes, I realized, that is the kind of mom I'd like to be. I want to use cloth diapers. I want to make my own organic baby food. I want to home school. But the thing is, I just don't know how feasible a goal such a lifestyle is for me.
Let me tell you what I mean. Michael and I have definite all-natural, granola, hippie tendencies. We are well informed on the green movement, and we consider ourselves environmentalists, albeit ones who stop well short of the composting toilet. A few years ago, we decided to become more educated about our food supply and decided that simply buying organic was not enough. We decided to plant a garden. But we couldn't just plant any seeds in this garden because we had done our research and learned all about genetic modification and the evil that is Monsanto. So we researched some more, and eventually purchased our seeds from Seed Savers Exchange. Except that by the time we had done all this researching and the seeds arrived in the mail, prime planting season had passed us by. The only thing that grew in our backyard that year was grass. Burned by our own ambition, we have not attempted our gardening experiment again. I wonder how long seeds keep anyway.
I can see me doing the very same thing with parenting. What if I buy a bunch of cloth diapers and find out that they are really more trouble than I care to go to? Will a daycare even accept cloth diapers? Can you even be a hippie mom if you also work a full time job? Do I really want to cook and grind carrots when I can buy organic baby food so much more easily in the grocery store? And how in the world can a blind woman home school a child? These are the questions that have been keeping me up nights. Because I worry, see. It's what I do. I plan and I worry, then I change my plan and worry some more.
And I have started to wonder about the hippie moms as portrayed in Mothering Magazine. How can they afford to buy the expensive, all-natural products if they are staying at home with their kids? Maybe they make everything themselves, in which case, how do they have the time to spend time with their kids if their days are full of carrot grinding and soap making? I have begun to suspect that the hippie moms, the ones targeted by the magazines at least, are married to corporate executives who drive Cadillac SUVs to work, and not in the HOV lane. And if that is the case, that's fine, I have no problem with that. I only have a problem reconciling that family dynamic in my mind.
Nobody is pressuring me to be this kind of mother, nobody but myself. Even after an honest assessment of the difficulties, I have decided I do want to breastfeed; I do want to make baby food, though maybe not everyday; I do want to grow a garden, but only if it's something I can enjoy later with Sprout. This is nothing new. Mothers forever have always tried to balance what is best for their kids with the rest of their world and the many demands made on their time. There is no universal answer, and comparing myself to some perfect ideal of mother is only setting myself up for failure, or at least for disappointment and frustration. I am coming to understand this, but what this all means at a fundamental level is that I am about to embark on the most important thing I will ever do, and I can't plan for it. I think I'm breaking out in hives. Excuse me while I hyperventilate.