Browse by Tags

• Motherhood/Sisterhood

  Each time I see a mother, especially one with a child or two under four, I want to run over and give her a cookie.  Not her (always adorable) child a cookie, but her.  The child's strong, capable, beautiful mama.  I feel like I have an unspoken bond with all mothers of young children.  We should all get together for the world's biggest cocktail party and toss back a few martinis, on the house.    You haven't slept more than five hours straight since the constant nightly bathroom trips brought on by the third trimester, I want to say, and you still look fabulous.  Sure, all of your dry-clean-only sweaters have been baptized with spit-up, but that's just a part of the rocky induction into the sisterhood of mamas.  Maybe you haven't had your hair cut in six months, or your belly's oozing over the top of your jeans like mine is, or you forgot to brush your teeth yet again, but you're still on top of things.  Hey, you got out of the house on time, and everyone's wearing a matching pair of socks!  Oh, and here's a piece of cinammon gum to cover that sour breath until you get a chance to brush your teeth.     Because I'm afraid that my fellow mothers will think I'm crazy, I rarely go up to them in the mall or the grocery store and offer over-the-top compliments or stealth hugs.  I am not a person who likes hugs that much, other than those from my baby or my man or my own mother, yet I kind of want to have a group hug with all the mothers I see at Target, despite the deep invasion of personal space that would bring on.  I understand that such unsolicited contact could really freak some people out - it would freak me out if a random woman ran up to me, wrapped me in her arms, and told me I'm doing an impressive job raising my child.   While I have kept my hands to myself, it's been surprising how often I do end up talking to fellow parents on the street.  I'm more on the shy side, and really took that whole don't talk to strangers thing they repeated in preschool to heart, yet I find myself engaged in conversations about baby socks or dirty diapers with fellow parents I've never seen before all the time.    The world seems friendly to me now that I have a baby.  We're all sleep deprived.  We're all just trying to take care of our children in the best way we know how, in a way that keeps our families safe and healthy.  We all have moments in which we wonder how we're going to be able to do this, to get through the newest challenge, and then we figure out a way and we make it through.  We're trying our best to be loving and resourceful and keep our sanity, all while remembering to feed the dog and buy the diapers and balance the checkbook and fight off diaper rash and read a story and make something relatively healthy and delicious for dinner.  I feel like all of us parents are in it together, like we are the world, and we have the children, and we can make it a better place.    I'm sorry I had to bring up a song co-written by Lionel Ritchie.  Please don't smack me.  I'm so cheery about mothers that I kind of want to smack myself.  And fathers!  I love all you dads, too, especially the one I saw juggling a baby on one hip and a coffee cup in the other, or the one I ran into while walking the dog with Axel who talked to me for a good fifteen minutes about the merits of various front and back carriers and the one he and his wife picked out.   I confess that I feel a bit more of a bond with mothers who I don't know and really have no reason to feel deeply connected to than I do with fathers, perhaps since we see one another juggling children and diaper bags in the ladies' room, but I still recognize that you fathers are pretty fantastic yourselves.  And don't even get me started on my adoration of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, or I might have to be locked up in a rainbow-painted room with a dozen caffeinated candy stripers, all the jelly beans we can eat, and "What the World Needs Now" playing as The Care Bears Movie shows on a flat-screen TV.   I have romantic notions of inviting all the parents in a two mile radius from my house - who I'd ID by the strollers on their porches - over for a playdate/brownie and margarita fest, but then I'll remember that I've got to fold a load of laundry or clean up the cat's vomit or play airplane with Axel and let him drool all over my face, so I haven't gotten around to setting a date yet.  It would be great, though - we'd have a big bouncy castle in the backyard, which I would test out myself before any of the other families arrived, and a huge vat of my sister-in-law's delicious gazpacho, along with mountains of guacamole.  The babies would crawl around on the grass (meticulously cleared of dog poop for the occasion), and the rose bushes would be in bloom.  Unfortunately, we don't have any rose bushes, and I've got a feeling that I exceeded the bouncy castle weight limit at age twelve.         Maybe it's all that bond-promoting oxytocin that's floating around in my bloodstream that makes me turn into a walking early Mother's Day greeting card.  Maybe it's because it's springtime, and Axel's been drawn to the blooming daffodils we pass on our walks, and the weather's flip-flopping between sunny 75 degree perfection and overcast and snowy.  I know there are parents out there who I wouldn't really want to invite over for a playdate, and there are parents who feel the same way about me.  My sunny view of all parents of young children probably won't last long enough for me to get it together to host a neighborhood-wide baby party.  I figure by the time Axel's five I'll have scaled back my plans and hosted a barbecue, catered by my husband and Whole Foods, for the fellow parents living on my block.  But while I've still got the sunshine spirit, I just wanted all you parents out there to know that I love you, I admire you, and, anytime you want a cookie and I have one, I'll split it with you.  I'd even give you the bigger half.            Posted Apr 17 2008, 06:16 AM by knockedup with | with 18 comment(s) Filed under: motherhood, mothers and bonding, sugar and booze

• I'm Better Than You Are

  I've always had a bit of a competitive streak.  I have been known to challenge people to a push-up contest, often if someone has implied that I'm weak, and especially if statements about weakness seem connected to my gender.  I couldn't beat any Navy SEALS out there, but I think I can take your average couch potato American.  I'm also a little rabid when it comes to board games.  When I was in elementary school, my best friend and I competed at everything - who read the most Baby Sitters Club books, who held on the longest in the flexed arm hang, who bounced the longest on a squeaky pogo stick, who ate macaroni and cheese with a butter knife the fastest.  My man is a little competitive, too, and we both have slightly stubborn streaks.    For some reason, I didn't expect to be stubborn or competitive about soothing our crying baby.  Who imagines they would want to hang on to a crying baby longer than they have to, if capable help has arrived?  Relief is usually welcomed.  The trouble is that, deep down, I think I'm better at soothing Axel that everyone else.  When he is fussing in someone else's arms, I quickly decide what's wrong - he's tired, doesn't like the harsh overhead lights, wants to be rocked, hates the scent of the person's cologne - and think of ten things that the person should be doing that he/she isn't doing or should be doing faster.  Since, usually, the person holding him is related to me or a close friend, I restrain myself from swooping in and snatching Axel away at the first sign of a whimper.  When I am holding Axel, I often have no idea what's wrong with him; when someone else has him, I suddenly think I'm a baby mind reader, and the best fussy baby calmer around.    It is not at all clear that this is true.  Sometimes, my man (after having to work to convince me to relinquish the baby) takes Axel and, in a few minutes, he's placidly sleeping.  Sometimes, he takes Axel and the kid keeps on raging.  Other times, I'll take Axel from Sean's arms and calm him quickly by cradling him and shushing right next to his ear, while the baby's slightly sour milky breath coats my cheek, and we happily snuggle in the rocking chair.  But just as often, I'll take him and he won't settle down for me any better than he would for his father, or anyone else.    My husband is in the business of taking care of people - putting out fires, rushing people in the midst of heart attacks to the hospital, taking care of car loads of folks injured in wrecks during snow storms.  He takes care of me when I'm sick - which is not always easy to do, because I am usually in denial about how sick that I am, and, even if I have food poisioning and have been puking for days will still try to go run errands - so I know, firsthand, his skills in this area.  I'm a better skier than he is and I read much faster, and he's a better snowboarder than I am and a faster runner (and he could easily beat me in a push up contest) but our caretaking skills are probably about equal.  But, when it comes to my son, I can't shake the, "I'm the mama so I should always be the one who calms him down," instict, which implies, "You're the father and I, as the mother, am better at this than you."  This irrational belief that simply recently becoming a mother means that I should be a rockstar at baby soothing makes me feel that much worse when I fail to quiet Axel in thirty seconds flat.  And, while some relatives or friends might not know our baby and I might be better at reading Axel's very mixed signals than they are, my husband spends almost as much time with Axel as I do.  He knows our boy pretty well, too.    The thing is, I don't want to be the only one who calms down Axel.  I will be going back to work, and I also might want to spend more than an hour away from the baby some day soon, so I need to stop second-guessing other caretakers - especially my baby's very loving and capable father.  And I don't always want to hold Axel while he screams at me, especially on days when my husband isn't working and could easily take on his share of ear abuse, but it's still hard for me to hand the baby over to anyone else, even my husband, when he's crying.  The I'm the mother so I'm best instict - or maybe it's not an instict, but something ingrained in me by years of watching TV shows with perfect, calm, capable, soothing Claire Huxtable types, or perhaps from seeing my own mom as the go-to-girl when sick or things weren't right - is hard to shake.    Posted Dec 21 2007, 12:48 PM by knockedup with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: motherhood, mama knows best, parenting instincts

• Cliff Jumping

  We've got a stack of clean baby clothes.  We've got diapers and a thermometer and baby lotion and two types of baby carriers.  I've read a couple of books about child development, and we took a mess of baby preparation classes - Taking Care of Your Baby, Baby Safety, Breastfeeding.  The car seat is now properly installed in the back of my baby-friendly station wagon.  I've knit a couple baby hats and a sweater, and we have far more store-bought and hand-made baby blankets than any one child not living in northern Alaska could possibly need.  Assorted baby gear fills the closet in the former office, soon-to-be nursery. The upholstered glider and the crib are ready to be set up - once the remodeling is done and we can get back into our house, of course.  It's snowing here today, a heavy, wet snow, the first snow of the year in the city.  We're ready for the colder weather - we have a fleecy little suit for the baby, and at least six hats and a bright red pair of mittens sitting in the stack of things to put away.   It seems like we've got the stuff we need.  Most of the lines on my baby stuff checklist have been crossed off.  Things aren't all set up yet, which is making me just a wee bit anxious, but, that anxiety aside, I've got a deeper sense that something else isn't quite ready for the baby yet.  I've tried to do my getting-ready-for-baby homework.  I've read some books and taken some classes and talked with newer moms and grandmas.  I've tried to remember babysitting and nannying experiences, and what I learned while working at a daycare with toddlers (Lesson One: Toddlers loooove to play in the sink, especially the lower-height sinks built just for them, regardless of their level of interest in using the other facilities in the bathroom.  Lesson Two: Toddlers loooove to take off their clothes and run through the classroom naked, especially when it's time for their parents to show up and wonder what kind of a naked baby daycare their kid is in.).    I've taken all of the steps to be prepared to have this baby, to be a mom.  I've seen a lot of parents in action, I've got a bunch of baby and child experience.  But no checklist, no book, no class, no countless hours logged watching the baby down the block can really prepare me for the big new world of mommahood.  It's me that, despite my longing to meet this baby, isn't quite ready.   On our second anniversary, my husband and I went paragliding.  I couldn't wrap my head around skydiving - the whole jumping out of a plane thing was too dramatic and crazy.  Jumping off a cliff at 13,000 feet, though, was something I could comprehend.  So, the paragliding instructor told us the whole spiel, we snapped into our harnesses, and we got strapped to one of the experienced paragliders for a tandem jump.  The instructor spread the bright yellow fabric that would keep us from plummeting to our deaths out behind us, and we waited for the wind to pick up.  He told us to lean in to the wind and run, as the chute filled with air and started to lift us off the ground.  Until the moment that I was running off of the cliff, my toes scrabbling at the rocky earth, and into the emptiness above a jagged garden of rocks, I'd understood the steps to take to jump off the cliff, but I hadn't really known what it meant to jump off a cliff, to throw myself in the air and weave and dangle above the earth under the colorful parachute, with a mix of fear and joy and awe.  Once we were floating, I couldn't stop laughing in amazement - despite gravity and pesky things like our lack of wings, we dipped and soared far above the mountain town and hills below.     The first leap into motherhood must be like jumping and floating off of that cliff.  I have all the gear; I have the basic information.  But I feel like I won't understand it, and won't know what to do, until I'm deep in it, until the baby is out of my belly and in my arms, perhaps months after we've settled back in our house, surrounded by the gear and the books and the piles of blankets.  And even then, there will be new developments every day, and new cliffs to jump off.           Posted Oct 21 2007, 08:51 AM by knockedup with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: preparing to be a parent, paragliding, motherhood, 38 weeks pregnant