The Challenge of the Work/Life Balance

Here’s the thing.  I’ll have ideas for posts throughout the day, but by the time I finally get a free minute to sit down and right, my brain is mush.  After the big naptime take down, I plop myself on the couch, turn on the tv, surf the channels, remember that daytime tv sucks, turn off the tv, turn on NPR, and proceed to space out.  I try to type, but nothing happens.  So I check Facebook.  And Twitter.  And my Blogs.  I put down the computer and pick up a few articles that I’ve printed out and stare at them blankly.  I put them down and pick up the computer again.  And so it goes.

Really what I should do is nap while the baby naps, but I always have these big plans.  I’m home with the Chooch on Mondays and Fridays and Wednesday afternoons, and I start the day with a schedule in my mind.  It generally involves cleaning while she plays, eating while she eats, going to the playgroup or playdate du jour, and studying or writing while she sleeps.  This excellent plan lasts until about 8:30 am.  9 on a good day.  ‘Cuz that’s how babies roll.

Generally speaking, I’ve learned to go with the flow.  Naptime’s off by an hour, and we’re missing the playgroup?  Ok, we’ll go for a walk instead.  Chooch didn’t feel like playing by herself while I cleaned?  Ok, the dishes will stay in the sink for a few more hours.  Stuff like that.  Some days are good ones, and I feel like a normal person with a reasonable amount of energy at the end of the day.  Today I laid on the couch downstairs clicking randomly on my Blackberry for 20 minutes while Josh made dinner.  (I found this guy on Twitter, so it wasn’t a total waste.)  Chooch’s bedtime was rough, and I had to recover.

Why am I telling you all this?  Well, after my last post, I got some feedback from friends and readers that one of the hardest aspects of the Bad Mother phenomenon has to do with whether or not Mom works outside the home.  Stay at home Moms (SAHMs) are often grateful for the flexibility, ability to wear jeans and yoga pants, and of course, the good time spent with their children.  Those who work outside the house may so because of financial reasons, career aspirations, or the knowledge that they will go completely batshit crazy if they have to read Gossie and Gertie one more time.  (Not that I would know anything about that.  Ahem.)

But there are drawbacks.  Major ones.  Staying at home with one’s kids can be boring, lonely, mind-numbing, and just plain hard.  There are few things more exhausting than putting a fussy baby who is cutting a tooth and doesn’t want to sleep down for a nap.  Changing poopy diapers is just plain disgusting any way you wipe it.  There’s no intellectual stimulation, no water cooler conversation, no camaraderie with colleagues.  But working outside the house has its challenges too.  Working mothers feel the guilt of leaving their children in daycare or with a nanny.  They have to balance work and home life, and don’t have the same flexibility when the daycare calls with the F-word (fever, of course).  And they may miss those “milestone moments” of baby’s first step, first word, first nap without a raging fit beforehand.  To top it all off, they feel judged by the SAHM’s.

Mothers are noble beings in many ways.  We sit in intense discomfort, holding our pee because there is no way in hell we’re getting up off the couch before this baby falls asleep.  We wait to eat until the baby is fed.  We snuggle a hot sweaty baby on the warmest of days when the last thing we want to do is hold a human heater.  We get up in the middle of the night to feed or change or comfort our little ones.  Yeah yeah, we’re the greatest, blah blah blah.  But we’re also women, and perhaps the experience of becoming mothers makes us regress a little bit, or maybe it’s the fatigue and lingering hormonal rages.  Or maybe we were that way all along.  Whatever the reason, we become judgmental and bitchy at times.   Not surprisingly, one of the many ways we judge each other for being bad mothers has to do with this work/home balance.  It doesn’t matter which side of the line you land, there is something lesser about the Other Mother.  This one’s neglecting her kids in favor of her career.  That one is perpetuating stereotypes and setting back the hard work of all those feminists.

In many ways, I’m lucky.  I have a relatively easy baby (sleeps well, eats well, generally happy), and Josh and I have the luxury to allow me to work/school part time.  I get to spend time during the week with Chooch, but I also get time to work and study, which keeps me sane and feeling like my professional life isn’t completely stalled out.  Although working part-time is the best option for me, it’s not easy, and I have seen both sides of the coin.  I’m so happy to be with my daughter on the days we’re together, and I really enjoy watching her interact with other babies and children at playgroups and Mommy-daughter classes.  (Yes, I caved and signed up for one.  I feel like a sucker, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless.)  But those days with her can be exhausting, as I have described above.  I feel drained and frustrated at the end of the day.  And I’ll admit it, I enjoy the peace and quiet of my work days, the time to read and write, and meet with students.  But I miss her, and I still feel guilty for being away from her.

And so it goes.  Life is hard.  No option is perfect, and so we each make the best choice we can, given our circumstances and limitations.  One would only hope that we could all remember that we are all the mother who wants to be home, the mother who wants to work, the mother who judges other mothers, and the mother who doesn’t want (or deserve) to be judged.  Maybe then we wouldn’t spend so much time wondering if we were Bad Mothers or not.

In Which I Add My Two (Make that Ten) Cents to The Bad Mother Dialogue…

I haven’t written for awhile, and it’s not for lack of things to say.  There has been a topic, an issue, rattling around in my brain for the past week or so.  It actually took up residence months ago, but I have been reticent to write about it, because it is essentially the third rail of Mommy Blogging, and I try to stay away from the really controversial issues. (You’ll notice I haven’t blogged about immunizations, and yes, I do have an opinion on the topic, and yes, I will likely write about it one of these days.)  I’ve started several posts on other issues, but this particular matter has really gummed up the works, and I suspect the wheels won’t start moving until I get it out.  So here goes.

I need to write about The Bad Mother.  Those of you who are hooked into the Mommy Blogosphere are undoubtedly aware of this phenomenon.  Even if you aren’t a Wired Mom, I’m sure you have heard a mother at a park or in school or at a store or even in your own living room refer to herself as A Bad Mother.  There are countless blogs and books and articles and podcasts about The Bad Mother. (I am purposefully not linking to any of them – I don’t want to pin this donkey tail on anyone in particular.  You can find them yourself if you are interested.)

For those of you who aren’t entirely sure what I am talking about, here goes.  The Bad Mother Thing is a current trend in the Mommy World wherein we Mothers confess our Badness to friends, fellow mothers, and total strangers (in books, on websites, etc).  Our confessions range from the banal (“I ignored my children today while I watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars”) to the common but unspoken (“I started taking anti-depressants after the baby was born”) to the just plain stupid (“I feed my baby generic formula instead of the brand-name stuff”).

Now, before I share my thoughts about The Bad Mother Phenomenon, I need to say two things.  First, and most importantly, I am absolutely positively 100% guilty of almost everything I am about critique.  I have felt like a Bad Mother, I have referred to myself as A Bad Mother, and I have judged other mothers for their Badness (which usually ends up biting me in the ass, not surprisingly).  Secondly, my thoughts on this topic are not fully formed, but they are formed enough to be taking up space in my brain, so I welcome your thoughts and comments, as always.

Ok, here goes.  Here’s my problem with the Bad Mother phenomenon –it is representative of a lack of perspective by those of us who tote the Bad Mother line, and it only serves to continue the already damaging trend of mothers judging, criticizing, and putting down other mothers.  Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

First, as far as I can remember, I haven’t ever actually read or heard a Bad Mother confession that was actually representative of Bad Mothering.  I’ve heard mothers talk about making choices that other mothers might not make, and I’ve heard them talk about doing things that child development specialists and pediatricians probably wouldn’t support in their roles as child development specialists and pediatricians.  (For example, I fed Choochie Floorios and floorberries, and I think she ate a decent amount of sand at the lake today.)  However, I would bet my baby that if you got those people to talk to you as mothers and fathers, they would absolutely agree that they did the same thing, or worse, when they were raising their little ones.  (Furthermore, any social worker could, and should, tell you all the reasons why it’s good for children to be frustrated and ignored and challenged and annoyed on a somewhat regular basis, but more on that later.)

So, why is this a problem?  What’s wrong with mothers verbally acknowledging their doubts about whether or not they are making the right choices about the mundane yet real issues that arise all the time when you’re raising a baby?  Not a thing, in my opinion.  There’s nothing wrong with struggling with it and talking about – I think acknowledging and exploring the ups and downs of being a mother is valuable and important.  My concern has to do with the context and the framing, with the label of Bad Mothering.  There is a difference between questioning our own parenting styles and decisions and calling ourselves (or others) Bad Mothers.

In order to understand why this is problematic, you need to understand the context.  The Bad Mother confessions tend to happen in two different ways – either through anonymous confessions published in books, websites, and blogs, or during conversations between people who have chosen to identify themselves (either in person or in writing).  In my experience, those of who ascribe to the Bad Mother School (and I include myself in this) do so with pride.  We wave our Bad Mother flag any chance we get – Look at me!  I let my kid eat rocks!  I didn’t change her diaper for six hours!  I let her cry in her crib for 20 minutes while I finished reading People Magazine!  I’m on anti-depressants!  I put my baby in daycare!  I didn’t put my baby in daycare and I’m going insane!

And the conversations continue from there, with each Bad Mother doing her best to out-Bad the other Mother.  You left your baby on the bus?  Yeah, well, I *put* my baby on the bus with a one-way ticket!  It’s about distinguishing ourselves from Those Other Mothers, the ones who never let their kids watch TV all afternoon, and always have creative, stimulating activities for the kids, don’t let the babies go a week without a bath, and make nutritious, well-rounded meals three times a day.  We may be negligent, ill-informed, bored-to-tears mothers who feed our kids Chey Boyaredee and can’t remember the words to a single nursery rhyme or song, but by g-d, at least we’re not hovering, obsessive helicopter mothers who will undoubtedly chaperone every date their kid ever has, and are just one little crazy away from moving in with the kid at college.

Yes, it’s true, who among us doesn’t love a little schadenfreude to get through the day?  But dumping all of our worries and guilt into the Bad Mother Barrel is problematic in some major ways.  First, and perhaps most importantly, many of the issues that are often considered Bad Mother material just aren’t.  What we Bad Mothers often refer to as ignoring or neglecting our children is described in the literature as “low intrusiveness” parenting, and is linked to higher achievement in the first grade.  Going on anti-depressants or getting into therapy is actually about taking care of yourself so you can care for your child, which is what good mothering is all about.  Those moments when we drink a beer while the kid watches a little TV are about taking care of ourselves so we don’t fly completely off the handle, which not only prevents us from flying off aforementioned handle, but also teaches the kids that sometime she has to entertain herself while Mommy needs to take care of herself.  These are important lessons for kids to learn, and there is no perfect mother. Let me just say it again – there is no perfect mother.  We social workers talk a lot about The Good Enough Mother, and chances are that if your worst Bad Mother confession is about the time your kid dropped the F-Bomb at preschool, you’re a Good Enough Mother.

Even if your Bad Mother moment actually is a real Bad Mother moment, with no redeeming values, chances are that if you are involved in this dialogue, your Bad Mommy oversights are cushioned by developmentally-appropriate toys, safe and caring childcare, generally healthy food, and stimulating experiences.  Thus, the Bad Mother conversations often end up being something like “Your kid fell off the bed?  Dude!  My kid fell out of the high chair.  Whoop!  Gotta run – we’re off to a Mommy and Me Music Class.”

Furthermore, as I mentioned above, even if we don’t ever blatantly bad mouth other mothers in the course of the conversation, the implication is there.  We may be Bad Mothers, but at least we are Bad Mothers in small, insignificant ways.  At least we’re not fundamentally fucking up our kids by turning them into prissy, entitled, overscheduled overachievers, right?  The thing is, raising kids is HARD.  It’s really HARD.  It challenges us on almost every level, and raises issues about who we are, where we came from, who we want to be, and who we want our kids to be.  Although it sounds like a cliché, I do believe that most of us are doing the best we can to keep our kids healthy, safe, and feeling loved while not going completely insane.  We’re all going to have different ways of doing it, and we have to figure out what works for us.  As mothers, we have a responsibility to support each other, rather than judge each other.  Because nobody is going to understand the challenge of being a mother like another mother.  That means something.

In addition to the “why can’t we all just get along” issue, there is the problem of perspective.  When we spend our time focusing on the fact that we are Bad Mothers because we returned some of our daughter’s excessive number of birthday presents that she doesn’t need any way to buy a carseat for our son, we lose sight of the fact that Bad Mothering Actually Happens.  And then when it does happen, it’s hard to know when, where, or how to talk about it.  When you hear all of your friends talking about how they are such Bad Mothers because they let their babies play with dirty shoes or draw on each other, it makes it hard to talk about the more serious issues.  And, often when you do, people clam up.  You don’t often hear the same kind of “I’m a worse Bad Mother than you are” competition about actual Bad Mothering.  “Oh really?  Your daughter got second degree burns from coffee?  My daughter crawled through fire once and will be scarred for life!”  That kind of Bad Mother conversation just doesn’t happen, and it leaves those mothers who are actually struggling with real Bad Mother issues feeling lost and alone.

As long as I am talking about perspective, I feel compelled to point out that as an upper-middle-class White woman who has the time and resources to sit around and write blog posts, my world of Bad Mothering is incredibly limited.  There are mothers who cook meth in front of their babies, who plot and discuss plans to murder the landlord while the kids are listening, who physically and sexually abuse their children, who leave them for hours locked up without food or water… the list goes on, and as a social worker, I have seen and heard countless of these stories.  You might wonder what the point of even mentioning those mothers.  Well, the point is, we need to keep perspective, and remember that Bad Mothers actually do exist.  The dominant Bad Mother dialogue doesn’t acknowledge or respect the experiences and histories of those among us who had Bad Mothers or are struggling with being Bad Mothers, and it certainly doesn’t help any of us keep things in perspective.

So, those are my thoughts.  I’d love to hear yours.  In the meanwhile, I’m not going to stop talking about the craziness of motherhood, and chances are you’ll hear or read me going on about how Choochie and I were watching Wife Swap together yesterday because I just didn’t have it in me to do anything else.  But hopefully, I won’t call myself a Bad Mother for doing it.

Post script:  After I published this post, WordPress suggested related blog posts, including this one.  I know I said I wasn’t going to link to anyone else, but this particular site illustrated my point so perfectly…

The Worried Mommy

I recently sent my family members an update on the Chooch, and I got the following response from my grandfather (Yes, he’s online.  He’s also on Facebook.  He’s your basic nonagenarian technological badass):

“Thanks for the good news about my great-granddaughter.  I am more concerned about my granddaughter (you).  Your blogs et al have been indicating: worry, worry worry.”

I have to admit I was surprised by his e-mail, not because he’s wrong about the worry worry worry, but because I thought I had done a pretty good job of keeping it to myself.  Apparently not.  Seeing as how I can’t hide it, I might as well just lay it out there, for all to read.

Some women worry about post-partum depression.  I didn’t – I’m not the depressive type.  I was more concerned about post-partum anxiety.  I get anxious.  Big time.  When I was pregnant, I had all the normal pregnant-woman worries -  Is the baby alive?  Is it growing well?  What if it’s born with a fifth limb growing out of its neck?  Dare I admit to my readers that I had to google the difference between its and it’s in order to write that sentence?

In addition to those constant worries, I also had stress related to the fact that we had done IVF, specifically about the very distinct possibility that they might have implanted the wrong embryo.  In the best of all worlds, Josh and I would end up with an African-American baby, or an Asian or Latino baby, and we wouldn’t care about the mix-up because it would still be our baby, and we would sue the lab and get our child’s college tuition and I would buy all sorts of multicultural children’s books and brown baby dolls and it would be no problem at all.  That didn’t stress me out.  What had me up at night (in addition to my giant belly and tiny bladder) was the possibility that we would end up with a white baby with dark hair and brown eyes (Josh and I both have light brown hair and blue eyes) who could have been ours, but didn’t look like either of us and people would look and her and look at us and look and her and then turn to each other and murmur in a low voice, “That’s funny.  She doesn’t really look like either of them…”

And then Choochie actually was born with a head of very dark hair, and I knew it was true.

Of course, now that her dark hair has grown in blonde, and she has Josh’s blue eyes and my dark circles under those beautiful eyes (sorry!) and Josh’s ADD and my temperament (totally bitchy when hungry or tired but generally fairly happy otherwise), I know she’s ours.

Which frees me up to worry about everything else:  Why does she sleep so much?  Am I feeding her the right foods?  Do I really need to use one of those corny shopping cart covers?  What if I fall down the stairs when I am carrying her?  Will this kid ever learn to use a sippy cup?  What is this Fifth’s Disease again, does she have it, and are you really sure it won’t kill, maim, or permanently disfigure her?  Where are we going to send her to preschool?  What if she’s the only kid in her kindergarten class who isn’t crawling?  Or walking?  Or drinking out of a cup?  And of course, the perennial worry:  Is she still breathing??  (You’d think I’d be over that by now, right?  I mean, it has been nine months and she’s still breathing.  Well, I’m not over it, and I don’t plan to be any time soon.  I’m hoping that by the time she goes off to college they will have invented a remote breath-monitor.  Good for measuring BAC as well as general breathing activities.)

So, yes, I’m a worry freak.  The thing is, I always have been.  Choochie just happens to be the current hook on which I hang my worry hat.  And I’m ok with that.  I work hard to be aware of my worry, and not let it dictate my behavior (other than the night-time check-ins, but she’s asleep, so what the hell does she know?).  I let her put toys in her mouth that have been on the floor.  I’m not terribly anal about what I feed her.  I let the lady at the post office hold her so I could tape up a package.  Sometimes I *gasp* let her cry in her crib for awhile before I drag my butt out of bed to get her.  Hell, she’s been in there for 12 hours, what’s a few more minutes?

One of the greatest compliments Josh and I ever received was from a colleague of his who noted that we seem like second time parents.  What he didn’t know is that we work hard at it.  At least I do.  You have no idea how tempted I am to put this kid in a helmet and wrap her in bubble wrap.  But I don’t.  And now she has a decent bruise on her forehead from falling into the coffee table.  Nice.

Lest you think I’m over-compensating, I’m not.  I have more than enough worry to compensate for any attempts I might make to over-compensate.  She hasn’t had strawberries or honey or peanuts yet.  I buy organic baby food and BPA-free bottles.  I put so much sunscreen on the kid that she looks like an albino when we go out.  And I don’t let her watch NCIS anymore, as much as I want to.

So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, whether I like it or not.  Now I’m going to go stress out about why she doesn’t know how to wave yet.

When OCD Meets Baby

I think I may have hit my first major parenting dilemma.  Yes, I have struggled with a number of different questions about how to best parent Choochie, but most of these have to do with lack of information and experience.  How exactly does nursing work?  Which stroller should we buy?  How do I get this onesie off of the baby without smearing poo in her hair?  (My sister enthusiastically cuts them off – I must say I’m tempted, if for no other reason than to play paramedic.)  Can we feed her dairy and peanuts before she is a year old?  These questions are challenging at times, especially when I haven’t slept much, but they don’t really have anything to do with me, with my values, wants, and needs (other than my desire not to be covered in poo, but I’m pretty much over that).

This past week I faced my first parenting dilemma pitting me against baby.  Well, to be clear, it was My Kind of Crazy vs. Normal Baby Behavior.  You see, I like things in sets.  And when things come in sets, I like to keep the whole set together, even if I don’t use all the pieces.  I find it pleasing when things match and fit together.  When we were younger, my sister and I used to get pages of different stamps from the cereal boxes.  I would trade almost all of my stamps for one row of my sister’s so I could have all the matching stamps.  When we would go shopping for school supplies, we would buy the little kits that included pens, pencils, rulers, staplers, staple removers, tape dispensers, etc.  My sister would ditch half of her set, taking only what she needed to school.  I couldn’t bear to do that – I lugged that stapler and staple remover to class every day, even though I never stapled everything.  It just brought me such joy to have it all together.  And such deep psychological pain to lose even one piece.  (Feel free to draw all sorts of conclusions about my ego functioning, etc., if you so desire, but I’m sure you must have better ways to spend your time.  Isn’t there an NCIS rerun on?)

Any of you who are familiar with baby toys know that they often come in sets – nesting cups, rings that fit on top of each other, small plastic blocks that fit through the properly shaped in the lid of the box.  I love that about baby toys.  I also hate that about baby toys… the risk of losing one lurks around every corner, especially when we go on vacation.

Oddly enough, 8 month olds don’t actually care about sets, pieces fitting together, or matching toys.  They seem to prefer inserting parts and bits of said toys into their mouths, and then flinging them hither and yon.  Where they get lost.  And then I never see them again.  And then I FREAK OUT.

So, you can imagine my horror when I recently cleaned up after a baby playfest and found this:

Seriously, people.  In what world is this acceptable?  I feel twitchy and uncomfortable inside every time I look at this picture, even knowing that the green ring has been found and restored to its rightful place.  Fortunately, I found the green ring several hours after it went missing, but not before I checked under the couch fifteen times, sure that it would be there this time.  I also wasted a good number of brain cells trying to decide what I would do if I couldn’t find it.  Would I buy a new toy, and use this one for spare parts?  (I decided against this option – knowing my luck, the green ring would be the first to go missing again.  Also, I would just feel like a major jerk.)  Is there a place where one can buy random parts of baby toys?  (I bought new parts for our second hand Exersaucer off eBay.  There was no possible way I could tolerate those empty holes where toys should be.)  Should I post something on one of the many Mommy list-servs I belong to?  How crazy will they think I am?  And do I care?  Honestly, I would happily sacrifice my last shred of dignity in the service of completing this toy.

Luckily, the green ring surfaced.  However, the issue is not resolved.  Other pieces will go missing, and in fact, they have:

Yes, the missing cup is incredibly distressing to me.  But I really don’t want to be that parent who is constantly corraling toys, or obsessing about them, or not letting Choochie take things places because of the risk of loss.  Toys go missing and we need to learn to deal with it.  (Ha!)  The thing is, I can’t deal with it.  I’ve tried and tried, but after 31 years, I still can’t.  I don’t know if I ever will.  Hopefully Choochie will inherit this little quirk of mine, so we can spend our days happily collecting, gathering, sorting, and matching toys.  If not, I have no idea what we’ll do.  In the meanwhile, I give the little green ring a kiss every once in awhile, and I still mourn the loss of cup #1.  On a rough day, I contemplate buying a whole new set of nesting cups, but I haven’t succumbed to my inner anal demons.  Yet.

The Era of the Bad Mother

I’m feeling entirely unmotivated to write about the sordid details of my (in)fertility treatment (or anything else) at this particular moment, so I’ll refer you to another post that I think is worth reading.  I have a lot more to say about it, but as I mentioned, I’m unmotivated.  So check out what Her Bad Mother has to say, let me know what you think, and I’ll be writing more about it soon.

Related bad mother links:

Bringing up baby badly on purpose by Andrea Gordon

Bad Mother Promises “Maternal Crimes,” Delivers Misdemeanors by Anna N.

WTF is this??

Update on Grandma and the Clusterfuck

Yes, I will get back to my story, but for those of you who were following my conversation with my grandmother about the clusterfuck, I thought I would share this recent e-mail exchange we had:

Grandma,
So, here are some of the comments I got on Facebook about my “clusterfuck” post on the blog:
“Dude. Just seeing the words “grandmother” and “clusterfuck” in the same sentence makes my brain clusterfuck. Hmm… can you use clusterfuck as a verb?”
“You have a much cooler grandmother than I do.”
“you’ve got a pretty freaking cool gramma!”
“What an awesome thing to be able to share with your grandma! Mine is 95 and I have to sort of translate my current English into old-person English whenever I write to her — yes, we communicate via snail mail because she is practically deaf and can’t hear me on the phone and doesn’t own a computer.  Not that I’m complaining about my grandma, cuz she’s awesome. But it would be pretty cool to be able to discuss the mysteries of “clusterfuck” with her…”
“I’m not at all sure how my grandma would talk about “clusterfuck,” but she did crack up the entire family one night with a story about going to the hair dresser “for a blow.”"
Love,
SWMama

Her response:

Gee, “cool”?….truth to tell, I’d rather be hot!!…but that’s for another time….anyway. can you get me the name of your friend’s grandma’s hairdresser??????????….and your cousin’s Obama office was impressed that I could Google!!!  xoxox

Thanks, Friend

Dear Friend,

Thank you.  I was having a terrible week (a week when even a little retail therapy didn’t help) and I called you and blurted out my craziness, my worries, my fears (so much for focusing on the present, I guess) and without a pause or hesitation, you invited me over.  We sat at your kitchen table, eating our sandwiches, and I told you about the burn (even though I’d already told you the story two? three? times before).  You listened and nodded and supported and agreed and never once offered me advice or pithy statements or trite generalizations.  You just let me talk, and when I said I was done talking about it, you said I didn’t have to be, and I guess wasn’t, because I kept talking and you kept listening.  And I knew you were really listening, not just using my voice as background noise for your own inner thoughts and ramblings, as we exhausted and overwhelmed mothers often do, despite our best efforts.  I felt better.

And when I was done talking about it, you talked about your life and your family and children and your ups and downs, and that made me feel better, too.  You got me outside of my own brain, where I can get stuck all too often.  You told me about the time your baby fell onto the table, and was bleeding from the forehead and you weren’t sure whether or not to go to the emergency room, and the triage nurse wouldn’t tell you what to do over the phone so you ran outside and asked a woman walking by with a stroller.  And this woman who didn’t know you, and didn’t know your baby, said that if you have to ask you should probably go and so off you went, packing up the toddler and the baby.  And as crazy as the story sounded in the telling, I understood it, I so understood that need to find someone else, anyone else, ANY ADULT WITH A PULSE to tell you that you’re not being totally insane as you try to figure out what the hell to do with this little being that someone somehow decided you were capable of taking care of.

Your baby was fine, and still is fine, but you showed me the scar, the scar that you always see, but I couldn’t see it at all until I leaned way in and squinted and moved aside the soft little eyebrow hairs, and that made me feel better too, because I knew that you really do see the scar as much I couldn’t see it, and that’s what being a mother is all about.  Other people look at our children and see Generic Baby, and we may look at their children and see Generic Baby, but when we look at our own children we see all of our hopes and successes and fears and failures.  Oh, the failures – every fall and bump and bruise and book left unread and music group missed and temper lost, all wrapped up in this little person that we somehow manage to love beyond all reason.  And somehow that all-encompassing, anxiety-inducing, mind-warping, brain-melting love gets us up out of bed every morning for another day of poop and screaming and tears and spilled coffee, and it feels like the best, most important thing we’ve ever done or will ever do.

Anyway, thanks.  Let’s hang out again soon.

How would you describe it?

In response to my last post, my grandmother sent me this in an e-mail:

……who…….or what is a clusterfuck??????????????

My response was:  It’s like… a general life mess.  Like when the phone is ringing and you drop your purse and the baby is crying and you can’t find your keys and the cat is meowing and everything is a clusterfuck.
Or, Paris Hilton.  Like that.

She wrote back:  Gotcha!!!!!!!  Who’s Paris Hilton????????????????

Yeah, this from the lady who once asked my sister if a) she had seen the Paris Hilton sex tape, and b) if she learned anything from it.  Ahem.

I’d love to hear your definition of a clusterfuck.  There might even be a prize for the best one (doesn’t have to be Mommy or kid related, and yes, this is my way of soliciting your comments.  I’m a comment whore.  What can I say?).

Mother’s Day Recap (Also, Burns Suck)

I had a Mother’s Day post written out in my head, but before I could get it down on the blog life happened, as it often does, and changed my plans.  Life takes on many forms, and this time it was a cup of coffee, a cup of hot coffee that ended up all over F’s left leg.

She was grabbing, we weren’t fast enough, and the next thing I knew, I was holding my screaming half-naked baby under the sink in the restaurant bathroom while the waitress helped me splash cold water on her leg and Josh and I tried to figure out what to do next.  We really weren’t sure how bad it was, but we decided to call the doctor just in case.  They wanted us to bring her over immediately, to evaluate whether or not she needed to be seen by a specialist at the burn unit.  I heard Josh repeat those words back to her, our eyes met, and we suffered a simultaneous mild heart attack.  Spilled coffee is not serious.  Burn units are very serious.  The situation went from a bad brunch and screaming baby to a potential nightmare scenario with those two words.

We headed over to the doctor’s office, and by the time we got there she had blisters in various places on her leg, from her ankle to her upper thigh.  The NP confirmed what Josh had previously described – first degree burns over most of the front of her leg, with some second degree burns.  The back of her leg was fine.  The NP called the local Shriner’s Burn Hospital for Children, and after what seemed like an interminable wait, she reported that F would be fine with a little Bacitracin and some gauze, and that I could take her to the burn clinic for a follow up tomorrow.

I think that’s when Josh and I started to breathe again.

Actually, the truth is, neither of us freaked out.  Much.  Ok, Josh did ask me if they were going to take the baby away (as a social worker, I felt comfortable reassuring him that no, they weren’t going to take our baby for this).  And I must admit, I had a few horrifying memories of a girl I went to high school with who had horrible leg scars after crawling through a campfire, but overall, we did fine.  We didn’t cry, we didn’t yell, we didn’t snap at each other, we did all the right things for F after the incident, and we were actually able to hear and integrate everything we were told by the nurses.

Maybe we were just doing what nature programs parents to do – take care of their young – but I think there was another factor at play.  We just didn’t know what to make of it.  We weren’t sure how bad it was, so we just didn’t know if we should freak out.  In the seconds and minutes after it happened, later at the doctor’s office, and last night when F was gurgling and playing, happy as ever, we just weren’t sure what to do with what happened.  Even this morning after our follow-up appointment at the burn clinic, when they told me that she’s healing well, that the risk of infection and scarring is extremely low, that we should change her bandages every day and come back in a week, I still didn’t know how to mentally file this incident.

Everyone keeps telling me that “these things happen” and the logical side of my brain knows that.  Accidents happen, babies and children are resilient, and in the vast majority of cases, everyone is fine and life goes on.  But then I look at our daughter, with her little leg bandaged from ankle to hip, and my heart breaks a little bit.  (She responds by blowing raspberries and grabbing toys to put in her mouth.  She’s fine.)  I know the burns aren’t that serious (the worst of them are “superficial” second degree burns), but how serious is the situation?  How do I talk about it?  How do I describe it?  I usually respond to the difficulties of life with humor, but the thing is, burns aren’t funny.  Marbles in the nose are funny, but burns aren’t.  Burns are painful and ugly and leave scars.  So what the hell am I supposed to do with this?

Well, this is where Mother’s Day comes in.  After it happened, I called my mother and told her about it.  She was reassuring and supportive, as always.  “Don’t worry.  F will be fine.  You know what they say, Los ninos crecen en golpes.”  Roughly translated, it means that children grow in bumps and bruises (essentially a Spanish Cliff Notes version of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee).  Then she proceeded to tell me about all the accidents that my sisters and brother and I survived, and I felt better.  Josh’s mother responded with “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”  I figure if these two women, who between them have raised six amazing children, aren’t freaking out about it, then I won’t either.  At least not most of the time.

So, today I did what women do when they need to process something.  I talked about it.  I told the story, to anyone and everyone who would listen.  My mother got the update.  Twice.  I talked about it at my mother’s group, on the phone and over instant messenger with girlfriends, hell, I even told the lady at the watch repair shop what happened.  It sounds a little crazy now that I’m describing it, but this is what women do.  (At the very least, this is what I do, but it makes me feel better to pretend that other women do it too.)  Each time I told the story, that F will be fine, that the burns aren’t bad, that the risk of scarring is extremely low, it started to feel a little better.

That’s the story of my First Mother’s Day.  I guess I learned a little bit more about what it means to be a mother, and I was reminded how much I appreciate the advice of the mothers who came before me.  Don’t get me wrong though, anyway you cut it, burns suck.