The Mommy Truce

Can we talk, Other Moms?   I know this is awkward; we’ve been in a fight for kind of a long time.   People are calling it “The Mommy Wars;” not that it’s any of their business.  I don’t even remember how it started– you looked at me funny, I rolled my eyes, you said something you didn’t mean, my response came out wrong, you told your friends in a restaurant bathroom, I dunno.  Whatever it was, we’ve been glaring at each other across this line for a while now, and I want to make up.

I know it won’t be easy–we’ve hurt each other deeply.  At some point, someone said (loudly, no doubt) that natural childbirth is the only right answer no matter what or ELSE.  While I totally get the benefits of taking that road, I see now that we can’t really make these decisions for anyone but ourselves. I don’t know what your labor was like, whether you thought you were going to die, how much pain you can tolerate and for how many hours.  And you know what?  If you went in saying “give me the drugs,” with no attempt whatever to feel a contraction, or you scheduled a c-section between a manicure and a massage, more power to you. It’s just not my place.

One of us might have said that breastfeeding is the single most essential thing you can do for your baby and that baby formula is more or less roach motels dipped in swamp water.  I think one of us was being a little dramatic.  I don’t know your life. Maybe you really wanted to breastfeed, but you couldn’t make it work, and you envy the other moms who can. Maybe there was a medical reason. Maybe you thought, “you know what?  Not for me.  My boobs are my business and formula is a-ok.”  I think it’s safe to say that you love your baby and don’t consider roach motels to be an appropriate form of baby food.

It’s possible that in a moment of late-night weirdness I MIGHT have said that letting your baby cry it out is cruel and awful and goes against all our natural instincts.  What do I know?  And plus, I mean…maybe I said it because I’m a wuss and couldn’t bear the sound, even though it probably would have worked.  Maybe I envy you your moxie, that you could stay strong enough while crying in a stairwell to see it through to the end.  Maybe  I am stuck with a terrible napper forever and ever because I just couldn’t hang.

Sometimes when people fight, they say things that are hurtful.  At one time or another, you said I was CRAZY to give up my fancy-sounding job and fancy-sounding education to be a stay-at-home-mom.  I know you didn’t mean it.  Just like I didn’t mean it when I said that letting babies watch TV is bad parenting.  I just didn’t know yet that sometimes you are on an airplane for five hours, or you haven’t had coffee yet and it’s 5:30 a.m., or you JUST FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NEED FIFTEEN MINUTES.  Just fifteen.  I know that now.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since we started drifting apart.  I can’t say I know how we got here, but I’m pretty sure we can blame at least some of it on the internet.  And baby books.  Can’t we support each other, even when the websites and the sleep-solution experts are trying to tear us apart?  When we think the other one might be making a weird choice, maybe we can hold our tongues and not assume anything, especially not that we’d do it better.   This mothering thing is no joke.  We’re each doing our best with the information we have, trying to have some kind of control over a time that is basically chaos. Let’s all just admit that NONE of us knows what we’re doing, and try to love each other instead.  Ok?

It’s Mothers’ Day.  Let’s get back together.  For the good of the children.

Kids are weird

The stuff of nightmares. Also, grounds for divorce.

Hilarious things my toddler is doing these days:

• After seeing someone (his father, no doubt) dipping something in ketchup, N now prefers all his food with some kind of dip.  He spends mealtimes smearing finger food into sauces, pinky extended daintily.  The best part, though, is that he narrates: every dunk is accompanied by an exclamation of “Bip!”  Seriously. Every single one. He also refers to all sauces as “bip.”  I totally have that weird kid yelling “Bip! BIP! BIPPAHHHHH!!” when we roll through the condiment aisle at the grocery store.
• C owns multiple guitars, which he plays for N pretty regularly.  N knows the word, which he pronounces GEE-towe.  He’d be right at home as a member of a Dire Straits tribute band.  Which I should start, and call Custom Kitchen Delivery.
• He’s a budding choreographer.  Make that Choreographer/Dictator (which, incidentally, sounds like an AWESOME job).  He’ll sit or stand somewhere, and then proceed to point to a spot near him where he wants each person to stand.  He generally positions us so that we are facing him in a row.  Awaiting orders.  Or a firing squad.
• He recently learned how to give high fives.  He won’t high five humans who request it of him, but he will spend half an hour running around after squirrels, birds, bubbles, and helicopters, fat little hand outstretched, demanding that they give him five.  I don’t have the heart to tell him that none of those things technically have hands.
• He loves animals.  Like, LOVES.  We have been to the zoo several times, where he has (like you do) demanded that the meerkats give him five.  We go to the aquarium, to the pet store.  We have two enormous dogs, a cat, and a bird feeder where he can watch them to his heart’s content. His favorite pet? A computer keyboard.  He drags it around by the cord like a puppy on a leash.  

Not-hilarious things my kid is doing right now:

• He is learning lots of words (in two languages), which is fascinating to witness. However, he gets stuck on a new word and will say it over and over and over again at an extremely high pitch, with a question mark on the end like a valley girl in an 80s movie about shopping malls.  He’s into birds rights now.  The soundtrack to my day goes, “birdie?birdie?birdie?birdie?birdie?birdie?birdie?” interrupted by the occasional crash when he slams into a glass door trying to see said birdie.
• Taking every diaper-less opportunity, no matter how brief, to drop a deuce on a carpeted surface.  Or in the bathtub.
• Acting like he has never been fed in his life.  I have to be careful not to let him see me eat, if I want any of what I’m having.  Or crinkle paper, since that’s the sound of food packaging being opened.  And not to walk by the bakery, since he has learned that’s where they make the cookies.  I feel you, kid, I do, but sometimes mommy wants to eat her lunch, and not just the half-chewed strawberries and still-warm-from-your-fist hunks of string cheese that you left on your tray.  The other day he had what appeared to be a low-grade seizure because the macaroni was still in the pot and not IN HIS MOUTH.
• He loves music, which is great.  It’s adorable to watch him bounce around when he hears something he likes.  Unfortunately, what he likes best is the devil’s own invention: the “Meowsic Keyboard.”  This is a truly terrifying piano in the shape of a cat’s head that my not-yet-forgiven husband bought for Christmas.  There is a setting that makes every note sound like a “meow.” There is a setting that plays songs sung by tone-deaf children.  They are written to the tune of well-known songs, but all the lyrics have been changed to be about cats. And if you stop playing it for a few minutes, it will purr (read: growl) and meow, to remind you that it’s NOT going to be IGNORED, Dan.  I love my baby, and I love that you make him happy, but I will see you in hell, cat piano. HELL.

A Baby Story, Part III

I ask Regina what’s wrong.  Something is wrong, or there wouldn’t be an oxygen mask, right?  She tells me to stay calm, that they aren’t worried yet (YET?), but that the baby is having some distress.  We’re all wide awake now, and there’s a new kind of crackle in the air.  Shit is about to go down.  The doctor comes in to check out the scene (as it were) and talk to me about what’s going on.  The hard truth is this: for some reason, my body is not doing this on its own.  The Pitocin is causing contractions, but every time I have one, the baby’s heart rate drops dramatically.  As soon as they try taking me off it, the contractions stop and I don’t progress.  Bear in mind, I am already two weeks past my due date.  There isn’t a lot more time.  Going in, I hadn’t wanted a c-section, and they know this.  The doctor says there are a couple of things we can try if we monitor him really carefully, but at this point I don’t care anymore.  I used to joke that my birth plan was “everyone makes it out alive.” So I look at C, look at my mom, and decide.  Let’s DO this thing–cut me open and give me my baby.

For the past day and a half, I’ve been in a warm, quiet, mellow room, nurses floating in and out and machines whirring softly.  As soon as the phrase “c-section” is out there, it’s a full-on Broadway musical, like they’ve all been waiting behind the door with canes and straw hats.  Suddenly there are at least five (and what feels like 50) additional people in the room; lights are bright, people are talking over each other at me, and everything is moving really fast. There will be more medicine; I can only have one other person in the room with me.  My mom goes out to call the family and tell them what’s happening, and C gets suited up.  I am hoisted up onto a gurney (no small task, given the size of me at this point) and wheeled into an operating room.  I remember thinking that it looks just like they look on tv, with the big bright lights and everything shiny and gray-blue.

The sheet goes up, the drugs go in, and I start shaking like a motherfucker (motherfuckers shake. Like, a lot). I am scared, I am drugged, I am unprepared, and I do NOT take it well.  The doctor tells C that I am shaking too hard for them to cut, and I have to calm down somehow. Turns out I DO get to use that Lamaze breathing after all! C talks me through it, his head right next to mine, and we manage to turn it down enough for them to start.  I’m told that I will “feel some tugging,” but what I feel is A HUMAN PERSON BEING PULLED OUT OF MY BODY.  I am positive it isn’t as bad as natural delivery, but I bet it’s just as surreal.  I learn later that they actually take your organs out, pile them on top of your body, take out the baby, and layer everything back in. Holy sci-fi.

After that it’s like the movies again.  They hold him up, bloody and wet and curly-headed.  He screams, they bring him right up to my face to kiss. I think I remember it; I hope I do.  Then they ask C if he wants to stay with me while they sew me up or go with N, clean and swaddled and no doubt wondering what fresh hell this is.  I imagine this was one of the harder decisions of C’s life, but at my urging, he goes with the baby through the double doors and into the arms of our waiting family.

This was the most terrifying half hour of my life, but it was just that.  Half an hour.  And in the end, thank my lucky stars, we all got out alive.

A Baby Story, Part II

So we’re all checked in. We’re hanging out in our room, doot-de-doo, while we wait for the nurse to come in and get this show on the road.  She arrives and informs me that the IV she’s about to put in my hand is “the worst part.”  A) Awesome. B) I’m a first-time child-bearer and a needle-phobe, but I’m pretty sure that the IV is not the WORST PART OF GIVING BIRTH.  The hits keep on coming with this nurse, who later informs me that the woman in labor a few rooms down “sounds like she’s dying.”

They hook me up to the IV and the monitoring dealies, and they have a look with the ultrasound to make sure he’s not in a weird position.  They are as convinced as I am that there must be some REASON he hasn’t even attempted to get out.  But his head is down and in position.  My body, it seems, is just being a bitch. They give me a pill that’s supposed to make me efface and tell me the process will take eight hours, so I should sleep.  Right.  Because I’m feeling nice and relaxed and not at all nervous on the eve of bringing a human out of my body and into the world, and then having to take him home and raise him.  My mom sleeps, C sleeps, and I try not to puke from nerves and restlessness.

In the morning two things happen.  First, the nurse shift changes and Regina comes into our lives.  Regina, whose name and awesomeness I will never forget, and to whom I will someday dedicate an entire post.  Second, the doctor checks my progress and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.  We’re on to plan b, which involves a drug-on-a-string (really) that is supposed to go in there and tell my cervix to get its shit together.  This will also take eight hours.  Sigh.   A few hours in, this one seems to be working.  Here’s how I know:  BECAUSE OW.  Cramps.  Big, bad, cramps.  They get worse as time goes on, just like they are supposed to, and it hurts–but in a recognizable way. They are the worst period cramps I can imagine, but it’s a pain for which I have some frame of reference. I’m ok.

Nighttime again, and the doctor comes back.  Hallelujah!   It’s go time.  Time to start Pitocin.  This is the big one, the one I’ve been warned about, and I’m scared. Particularly since the pain has already been, you know, painful, and I haven’t even started the real part yet.  In an effort to plan ahead, I declare it epidural time. Given that I am more scared of that goddamn needle than I am of squeezing out a baby, I am surprised by how not a big deal it is. There is a moment when I feel the catheter wiggle around, and I remember thinking that stuff should NOT be squirming around in my spine, but whatever.  The effects, however, I do not like. My legs feel like they are covered in Saran wrap, and I have some MAJOR shakes. Unpleasant for sure, and since I haven’t been in unbearable pain, it’s not like it’s this HUGE relief. I’m sure if I had been in full-on labor when I got it, I would have been too relieved to notice some pesky tremors.

The shaking wears off a bit, and they start the Pitocin. Regina comes in after a while to tell me I’m having some solid, bad-ass contractions (which I cannot feel AT ALL), and we might be on our way.  She says we should try to sleep, since I’ve been at this for 24 hours now and I’m going to need my strength.  We turn the lights out; my mom is on the plastic couch, C is in the hospital rocking chair, and I am propped onto my side, waiting in the dark.  I listen to the machines beep, watch C slip in and out sleep, try to stay calm.  But when Regina comes in a couple of hours later and puts an oxygen mask over my face, I know the plan is about to change again.

A Baby Story, Part 1

Not me. Not C. Not how it went.

I’ve never been particularly hardcore about natural childbirth vs. chemical interventions.  This issue can be insanely divisive, but I kind of feel like, it’s your day, lady.  Do what feels right.  Initially, my philosophy for my own birth experience was similar to Kristen Bell’s recent statement which I swear I did not read in Us Magazine:

“When I arrive at the hospital, I want a glass of whiskey, I want the epidural in my back, and I want to be hit in the face with a baseball bat.  And just wake me up when it’s over.”  

A girl after my own heart.  I make jokes about 1950′s morphine-induced “twilight sleep” and how I want to wake up to a fluffy clean baby, Betty Draper-style.  After some reading and some (really) excellent lamaze classes, I start to think, why the hell not?  Let’s take this body out for a SPIN and see what it can do!  I can be a warrior woman!  I mean, I can TRY, anyway.  I settle on laboring as long as I can without drugs (just to see), and when I can’t stand it anymore, I’ll take the needle in the back, no hard feelings.

Little do I know it will be needles, chemicals, and scalpels from beginning to end, and nothing natural about it.

As I’ve mentioned, this little boy does NOT want to exit my uterus. I go to the doctor a few days before my due date, all ready for her to tell me that I have to stay because it’s HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.  Instead, I’m told there’s been no dropping, no effacing, no dilating. I cry when they make me schedule an induction.  I think surely something will happen before then.  At 3, 7, and 12 days late, still nothing.  FML.  Chemicals it is.

Interventions are becoming more common, and a lot of people blame doctors who are in a hurry to play golf, pharmaceutical companies that are in a hurry to make money, and the dismal state of our healthcare system. Each of which may be the right entity to blame.  I decide to trust, because it seems like the best option.  Trust the doctors, trust the nurses, trust everyone.  I mean, in my case at least, they have a point.

I always picture it going the way it does in the movies– an extremely public water-breaking (elevator, coffee shop, the Improv) while wearing an adorable dress and smiling sheepishly, or reaching over in the night, calmly squeezing C’s arm and saying, “it’s time.”  My packed bag will be all ready to go, but my adorable husband will stumble around all nervous and wound up, speeding us to the hospital while I glow maternally and do some deep breathing exercises.  I know it doesn’t REALLY happen like that, but when it’s all said and done, I do feel like I missed out on that moment. We know it’s time because, well, it’s the appointed  time. Scheduled.

We leave the house at 12:30 a.m., since inductions are scheduled to start overnight.  We’re all packed, we’ve eaten, we’ve mostly slept. We drive slowly, no traffic, no ticket we have to use the baby to talk our way out of.  I’m still secretly hoping that we’ll hit a pothole or something and I’ll go into labor.  I have a very clear memory of  pulling into the hospital parking lot and thinking,”this is where we parked the car when we came for our having-a-baby appointment.”  We go to the desk, no pain, no doubling over.  I fill out paperwork, get a bracelet, am shown to my room.  It all seems terribly anti-climactic; I am a non-event.  By the time it’s over and N is finally here, I can’t believe I ever lamented the lack of drama.

How would Tyler Durden sleep train?

I can’t sleep on you forever? That’s what you think, fool.

I am talking to Tough-Love Mommy (TLM) one day, asking her something or other about baby sleep, a topic that obsesses and terrifies me.  She shrugs, looks anywhere but directly at me, and proceeds to tell me guiltily about her children’s insanely perfect sleep habits.  When my chin hits the floor in awe of babies that sleep like frat boys, she says, ”good baby sleep is like Fight Club: the first rule is you don’t talk about it.”

Baby sleep: the reason for all misery in the early months (or year, in our case).  It’s nightmarish for every parent at some point or another –except, apparently, for ALL OF MY FRIENDS, whose babies sleep until 8:00 in the morning and take 3 hour naps.  I hate everyone.  Those bastards aside, though, MOST parents have to deal with the hardest stuff right when they are least equipped to handle it.  How can anyone so sleep-deprived deal with sleep journals and controlled intervals and apps that track every minute your baby sleeps? Dick move, universe.

I read all the books.  Back and forth on the spectrum that has nursing-until-age-five on one end, and approximating-Eastern-European-orphanage on the other. I just don’t know who (oh, fine: WHOM) to believe.  They all claim to be experts, they all have people who swear by their methods, and they all say something different.  Oh, and they all intimate that if you don’t do it their way, BAD THINGS will happen.  And it will be your fault.

One of them says that you should never rock your baby, because it will always need to be rocked.  You should hold your crying baby upright against your chest and stand perfectly still. Ummm…even someone who has never held a baby will rock; it’s instinct.  For the first few weeks after I came home from the hospital, I rocked on my feet even when someone else was holding the baby.  Another one said you should never pick your child up until he’s crying so hard he throws up, because then he’ll associate crying with being comforted. Which, as it turns out, is… bad? And one I will never forget: you shouldn’t develop a long bedtime routine, because then you’ll be stuck doing it every night. Isn’t that the best part of having a baby?  Call me crazy, but if you don’t want to be stuck scrubbing a naked giggling baby, putting him into footie pajamas, reading him stories that require touching the fuzzy/furry/squishy page, and watching him fall asleep in your arms, perhaps what you are looking for is a ficus.

I get hung up on the fact that all mammals sleep curled up with their babies, and that sleep training asks us to ignore all our most basic maternal instincts. I hate it.  On the other hand, there’s maternal instinct and then there’s SURVIVAL instinct.  At some point, dude, you have to SLEEP.  As TLM told me, “don’t worry– you’ll know when he’s fucking with you.”  And I did.  After months of feeling like N would never sleep if he wasn’t strapped to a human body, he learned how to do it. Hallelujah!  Saints be praised!  My baby can now fall asleep on his own!  Without crying! He doesn’t need me to rock…wait. Hold on.  Now I’m depressed.

 

35

So today is my 35th birthday.  Yikes.  I’m not complaining; life is really good, and I’m happy.  But 35 sounds CRAZY grownup– so much more than 34.  34 is still, like, I’m a cool young professional who goes to gallery openings and does tequila shots. 35 seems more, I dunno, “get off my lawn, hipsters!”

One of the cool things (read: the ONLY cool thing) about a birthday on January 2nd is that it dovetails nicely with the new year.  New year for the world, new year for me.  What it lacks in wild celebration (since everyone is partied out and still hung over, and there’s always some kind of sleet/ice/shit storm), it makes up for in fresh start.  This birthday has me feeling a little introspective (whaaa?  A blogger thinking about herself??):  a lot has happened in the last year, and I guess there’s no arguing my way out of the fact that I’m totally, officially, no-turning-back a grownup.

When I was a kid, I decided that I would get married when I was 23 and have babies when I was 26.  I don’t know, it sounded good at the time.  23 came and went, and thank the sweet baby Jesus I didn’t get married.  I didn’t know my ass from my elbow when I was 23, and I am positive that I didn’t know anyone who was husband material.  Pretty sure the guy I was dating at 23 told me he liked to make me cry.  26 came and went and was a crapload of fun–living with best friends, karaoke every Thursday at the same dirty dive, and a little career starting to take shape.  Still, though, not at ALL ready to be responsible for another life.  Not when Thursday nights started with chardonnay in the shower (which is, incidentally, what I am calling  my band).

My 12-year-old self would be shocked to know how late in life all the big things happened.  So here I am, 35, reflecting on life as it stands now:

• I am married to my favorite person in the whole world.  However, it took me FOR FUCKING EVER to find him.  It was totally worth it, given that some of the highlights of my relationship history include the bipolar yogi, the totally-fine-but-zero-chemistry-NJB, and the shit bird  who stole my identity (true story).

• I have a gorgeous, sweet, brilliant baby, and in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t have TOO hard a time making him.  On the other hand, though, he’s 14 months old and being kind of a whiny jerk these days.  Also, I might never get a full night’s sleep again as long as I live, none of my pants fit the same as they did before, I have stretch marks, and I interact with feces on a daily basis.

• I have more money than something like 99% of the world’s population, but I have less than 99% of the people in my immediate circle of friends, which makes me envious (my petty, tragic flaw) and self-conscious.  And I live in a basement apartment.  With a baby.

• I have amazing, patient, helpful family around me all the time.  On the other hand, I have family around me all the time.  To quote my best friend, “you spend more time with your parents than the average third grader.”

• I am able to plan for a life that includes two kids.  My brother and I are super close, and I’d love for N to have a sibling.  However, as I found yesterday, as of today, my uterus is considered “elderly.”  ELDERLY.  Awesome.

So there it is.  Happy new year, everyone, and please be sure to check out Chardonnay in the Shower’s first single, entitled Elderly Uterus.  It’s a chart topper, for sure.

Teeter-Totter

Concerned parties: the truck was on blocks.

I speak to the baby in Spanish, and C speaks to him in English, so he’s learning words in both languages.  He recently learned the word “no,” and when he shakes his chubby finger back and forth saying “nonononono,” he says it with a heavily Spanish accent.  Guess we know which parent I am.

There are ways I want to be as a mother that don’t come naturally to me.  In particular, I don’t want to hover.  I want to let him learn and explore and make mistakes without trying to protect him from every disappointment or frustration. I check myself every day, a hundred times a day.  Let him play alone, it doesn’t mean you’re ignoring him.  Let him cry a little, he’s fine.  Let him try to put the sock on his foot four thousand times (dude–you have to OPEN IT) and don’t intervene until he gets frustrated. Think before you say “no.”

To be clear: I do not intend to be all hippie-permissive.  I don’t think a baby needs to make his own decisions based on what his soul tells him.  No, you may not slap mommy in the boob because you think the sound is awesome.  No, you may not throw all your lovingly cut-up food on the floor because  it makes the dogs like you (even the one that REALLY doesn’t like you).  No you may not stick that spoon/toothbrush/pipe cleaner in that outlet because the allure of putting a thing into another thing is too strong to resist.

If there’s no real risk, though, I’m trying to let things play out.  Yes, you may put that playdough in your mouth–tastes like crap, right?  Yes, you may walk a little further from me than is totally comfortable for either of us, because you will look back and I will be there (and I’m faster than you are).  Yes, you may open and close cabinet doors, even though you mooshed your finger once, because now you know that mooshing is a possibility and you are careful.  I read a great article recently about kids crawling up the tube slide.  Yeah, they are going to take it in the chest once or twice, but after that they will know to look before they go in.  Remember see-saws?  They don’t exist anymore, because kids get hurt and their parents sue.  I remember vividly (as I’m sure we all do), the day I thought it would be a good idea to put my feet up on the see-saw.  And then the rat bastard on the other end jumped off, and I broke my ass.  Happens to us all.  But you know how many times it happens? ONCE.  Because after that, you learn to keep your feet down, and more importantly, to watch out for rat bastards.  These are important life lessons.

On the playground the other day, I was reading the rules posted on the fence.  Pick up your trash, don’t leave kids unattended, the usual.  And there it was at the bottom: “No Running.”  ON THE PLAYGROUND.  Yes, little boy, you may run.  Because you are learning.  And if you fall on your face, it will hurt, but you will be fine.  I will applaud you if it’s a minor tumble and hold you if it’s a big spill.  And I will try not to laugh, because let’s be real.  Falling down is hilarious.

A view from the basement

I assume I won’t want to be a stay-at-home-mom.  A friend says to me at some  point, “I LOVE my kids, but I don’t want to hang out with them all day long.”  This seems totally right to me, totally reasonable.  I’ve heard stories about people who go weeks without having an adult conversation, grown-ass women describing their one-year-olds as “my best friend.”  I like work.  I like productivity. I will love my baby, but surely I will want to keep the rest of my life the same as before, right?

Keeping life the same is, of course, a ridiculous notion in itself. It is, to quote Monty Python, “an act of the purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.”

In the first weeks, I am a weepy mess, swearing that I will never remove him from the Moby wrap, let alone leave his side for even one second. A little later, postpartum depressed, I can’t stand to be away from him, but I can’t care for him myself.  My new life will be lived watching my mother watching the baby.  She’ll just have to quit HER job.  After proper chemical calibration I think, sure, I can go back to work in 3 weeks.  I can totally go back to work in 2 weeks.  Work in a week?  Um…yeah!  Work tomorrow? OH HELL NO.

I extend my leave twice.  I change the arrangement so that I go back half days at first.  After all this generosity, I am allowed telework 2 days a week, indefinitely.  I am lucky (for the U.S. anyway.  I’m totally moving to Sweden before my next baby), and for a while it’s going ok.  Eventually, though, he starts to get more fun.  Like, WAY more fun.  They should really make you go to work right after you give birth, when the baby is basically a good-looking meatloaf, and let you take maternity leave from like 8-11 months, when the party starts.  I get to a point where I’m missing him all day, and I can’t believe I’m leaving those eyelashes and giggles and first words to come deal with the cloak-and-dagger drama of my workplace.

I talk to C. I ask him if there’s a way to make it work.  Many discussions later, with each other and with our families, we decide.  There is, in fact, a way to make it work: we will sell our condo and move into my mother-in-law’s basement apartment, so that we can afford to live on one salary.  I know– but truly, she’s fantastic; this is not an arrangement I’d recommend for everyone.  I feel like a deadbeat sometimes, being a full-grown adult living in a basement with my husband and a toddler. My childless friends look at me like I’m batshit insane, although how much this has to do with their mothers-in-law, I don’t know.  Some of my friends with babies, though, are quick to tell me that they would do the same thing if they had the option.

I know there will be times when we all think it was a terrible idea.  I know there will be times when I will long for a giant coffee, the internet, a door to close, and sweet, sweet silence.  But last week, I quit my job.

Because who knew?  Who knew I’d feel so strongly about being with this little person as much as I can, while he’s still adorable and not yet a douchebag teenager? Who knew that watching a baby thread dry noodles through the holes in a colander would be every bit as fascinating as a fancy job?  Who knew that even on a bad day, when there’s whining and bitching and food-throwing, seeing him point to the cat and say “GA-TO!” would make it all worth it?

I sure didn’t.

Can’t win ‘em all!

Mother of the Year!

Before I get pregnant, I know exactly what kind of pregnant person I’m going to be.  I’ll lose weight at first (from the nausea. Oh, and the not drinking), and I’ll stay active, going to the gym or to yoga or whatever.  I am not going to let pregnancy turn me into a super lazy fat person.  As it turns out, I LOVE being pregnant, largely because it turns me into a super lazy fat person.  I go to the gym exactly once and yoga three times. I eat whatever idiotic thing pops into my head (three words: Totinos. Party. Pizza.), and take a lot of naps.  I do walk, mostly out of boredom and restlessness, and I eat a metric shit ton of citrus fruit, because that’s what I crave.  Still, in the end I gain 45 pounds.  And I would do it again in a HOT second.

Another way I spend my pregnancy, since I’m clearly awesome at predicting the future, is deciding what kind of mother I’ll be.  Piece of cake.  Here’s what I will and will not do, what I will be fiercely committed to (no tv!) and what I don’t care that much about (germs. meh.)

In a SHOCKING twist, I turn out to be wrong about some of these things.  In spite of my best intentions, my most militant based-on-nothing opinions, there are things I cannot stick to.  It’s hard to be rigid about stuff while covered in spit-up, trying to identify cry-sounds and hunger cues, and running on adrenaline and fumes.  In no particular order:

I will never, ever let my baby “cry it out.” This concept terrifies me from early on.  I cannot, will not allow my poor little nursling to scream in his crib, abandoned and alone in the dark. I stick to this for a long time.  Don’t get me wrong, when we finally cave and do it, I hate every second.  But at some point I realize, dude, my poor little nursling is totally screwing with me.  When I’m getting up with him every two hours and he starts laughing the second I walk in the room, it’s time.

I will never, ever let my baby eat junk food. So ambitious.  I do pretty well at this– he eats mostly organic, but not being a billionaire, I can’t make this happen all the time.  Sometimes I envy how clean his system must be– no Taco Bell!  No cheap champagne! No Halloween candy from 2007!  On the other hand: restaurants, airplanes, crowded rooms, screaming baby?  Here kid, have some french fries.

I will avoid toys that have batteries. Babies are entertained by tupperware and uncooked pasta.  Pulling kleenex out of a box is like the height of amusement.  Why do I need things that light up and sing songs? All wooden toys for me, thanks.  Not being a billionaire, however, means Melissa & Doug gets miiiiighty pricey after a while. Also, one look at my child’s face when he discovered the Fisher Price Baby Grand Piano, and it was all over.  For that kind of smile, I can almost forgive that horrible woman for singing “Can you hear the RHYTHM? Can you hear the BEAT?” to the tune of the fucking itsy bitsy spider.  I’m lying. I hate her.

My baby will never, ever see TV.  We are still doing a solid job with this.  I hate the idea of him just staring at effing Dora and effing Boots (I can’t even believe I know that Boots is a thing), when he could be interacting with a living human.  This is not to say, however, that I don’t understand the urge.  Whereas before I thought my baby’s brain would remain unpolluted because I am a shining example of motherhood, now I have to fight the impulse several times a day to plop him down in front of the Real Housewives of Miami and make myself a martini.

I will use cloth diapers.  Sigh.  I’m bummed out about this.  I really, really wanted to do this one.  I did a ton of research, hounded my mommy friends who do it for reassurance that it was easy, and cheap, and totally doable.  All of which it is.  And I am SICK thinking about those awful diapers taking 500 years to biodegrade.  It kind of fills me with self-loathing.  Next kid, maybe.

I will do my best not to swear in front of the baby.  Yeah. Pretty sure we can all guess how well that’s going.  20 bucks says N is the first kid in his pre-school class to drop the f-bomb.

How about you?  What did you swear you’d never do that you totally went back on?