Parenthetical Me

Lets make a pledge, we sane and confident and deeply competent women who are mamas, a pledge to believe the best in each other’s words, even on the Internet. Let’s agree that sharing our experiences doesn’t automatically mean we’re judging. Let’s decide that accidental pissy-ness or pettiness or thoughtlessness doesn’t count because we’re all in this motherhood-on-the-internets thing together… and in the end, what you decide about your life doesn’t actually affect mine. This is the blessing of the Internet.

My oldest best friend is special because we’ve never really lived in each other’s lives. Except for the first year or so, we’ve lived in different cities and communicated via phone or text message only when things get roughest or to check in once or twice a year, a surprisingly great situation in that we are as supportive as friends can possibly be because we can’t judge the people or situations for ourselves. All I know is his perspective so I can’t help but be there just for him.

This is the Internet. I don’t know your husband or your son or your boss, but I can read your fear and worry and joy. If you say it is so, it is so, and we go from there; no time is wasted on debating if it really is. I am here just for you, and though I may have never met you, I care about you.

And so I assume that this is true about you for me, too. I choose to share my thoughts because in return I get confirmation and support BUT ALSO your opinions and ideas. If you only want the support when you blog, please make that clear; the default understanding otherwise is that you’re posting to interact, not just be agreed with. And hey, if that’s what you want, cool, just say so. Like many friends, I am happy to be a cheerleader.

Let’s stop caring so much about the words and start looking for the intent. Let’s drop the whole “when you say ‘working mother’ you hurt my feelings as a SAHM” and “when you say ‘choose’ to work you hurt my feelings as a non-SAHM.” Deal? Let’s cheer breast feeding mamas for being bad asses and formula feeding mamas for being bad asses too. Let’s choose to remember that in decisions not related to parenting, we disagree all the time and it’s no big deal. You’re a teacher, I’m in software. I don’t recall ever feeling like your choice to teach was a judgment of mine to be in business, do you? So why must we get all wrapped up in how your parenting decisions MUST imply something about mine?

Knowing how unstable and scary this mamahood boat can be, shouldn’t we be the people most impressed by each other?

The intent behind Kathryn Heigl’s comment was one I relate to – and so can every mama: how much selfishness am I allowed now? What IS selfishness? If I do something for myself because then I can be a better me, though that means I miss bedtime for my son tonight, I think that’s okay…but for how long? How do I decide? Who am I now that I’m someone’s mom but still myself?

I think about raising my kid like I’d think about training a puppy, except I try not to use the word “train” because then I sound like a shitty parent.

Let me explain: I will continue to maintain that my son has at least the mental capability of a five month old puppy. He can’t run or get around very easily, but we’re taking brains, here, not paws.

So if I can expect a puppy to “understand” stuff, so can I expect my kid too. But, as with puppies, it’s more about me than it is about him. We upright-standing adult human creatures are so verbal that we often make life difficult for ourselves.

Exhibit A: saying to a newborn, “Please, baby, just tell mama what you want and I’ll do it!” Like they have any idea what you’re begging of them.

Exhibit B: saying to a new puppy, “Sit! Sit! I said Sit!” as though they know what that means.

The behavior must precede the naming and asking for it.

With dogs, you mark the behavior and indicate its awesomeness. Every time the puppy does the thing you want – of their own volition – you mark it (clicker, word, whatever) and then show them that mark = good with a treat, usually.

With my kid, when he does something good, I mark it with “Yay!” and then give him a smoochie or make him laugh somehow.

{Admitting this makes me feel batshit crazy, but hey.}

Knowing he’ll eventually hate diaper changes, I’ve been “marking” the behavior that is stretching his legs so I can fasten the diaper since he was like a month old, and lately I’ve been naming it, “streeeeeeettttttch!” I say it, he sometimes does it, I cry, “yay!” and we smooch. Easy peasy.

We do the same thing with push-ups (much, much more cheering) and eating from a spoon (lots o’ cheering). We cheer a lot, what can I say. The best part is that when I say, “yay!” he looks up to see what it is I was cheering. This is something I can use in the future. *evil laugh*

I hate the word “train” because it implies *I’M’* teaching him something when really I’m just noting a natural behavior and reinforcing it, and what’s wrong with that? When my husband notes that I put my clothes in the hamper instead of on the floor and beams at me, it’s the same principle at work, right?

People are animals, too!

{As long as I’m getting this off my chest, I call my son’s hands and feet “paws” and more than once have accidentally called the pediatrician “the vet” and his crib “his crate.” Bring on the judgment, but note that my animals are spoiled as all hell – within some pretty definite boundaries, but still live the happy life.}

I have becoming a blogging chicken (interesting mental picture, I admit), choosing not to blog rather than jump into the mommy wars by throwing together a stream-of-consciousness post because that’s all I have time for. I hate being a chicken, but it comes naturally to me, so I have to identify increasing chicken-ness and attack it before I end up a scaredy cat.

Chicken –> Scaredy Cat

So, let’s consider this the first of many posts about things I’ve avoided blogging about. In my Weddingbee days, those posts I published through a clenched jaw and while averting my eyes turned out to be the most affirming and with the most interesting discussions.

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I’m happy my kid is formula fed. I know, I know, I’m supposed to preface any statement about feeding my kid formula with a self-flogging disclaimer like, “Of course I wish I’d continued breastfeeding because clearly and obviously that would have been best and I will continue to undo any positive feelings I might have about formula by returning to my attempts and failures to make sure I don’t find joy in anything related to formula anymore, amen.”

I’m tired of that. Yes, I failed at breastfeeding. Yes, I wish I’d succeeded – mostly. And no, I don’t think that if you breastfeed something is wrong with you, nor do I care how you feed your kid, quite frankly.

I have made mistakes in my personal and professional lives before and after some mourning and flogging, have resolved to learn what I can from the experience and move on. And then I did.  So this is that, applied to parenting, which after all is just like life but squared, right?

{See, I’m already chickening out. Deep breaths.}

So, the learning part: I am too rigid in my wanting to follow a set of rules and not deviate, something that will not serve me well as a parent. One formula supplement via bottle does not a breastfeeding failure make, but somehow I didn’t grasp that.

Now, the moving on part: my kid gets excited at the sound of the bottle being shaken to mix the formula and it cracks me up. Though he doesn’t get to “taste” different foods and spices through breastmilk, he also doesn’t have to suffer through my husband’s and my admittedly stupid decision to eat a whole bag of bok choy for dinner one night. Two out of three Martins struggling through digestive issues was enough, thank you.

He has gained weight spectacularly via formula after being born tiny – 5 lbs, 13 oz . Dude beat his birth weight within a week and tripled it by four months. He’s still sub-50 percentile, so it’s not like he’s a sumo wrestler, but we’re comfortable that he’s growing and has made up for that little birth weight.  My body neither grows-to-full-size nor births babies well, evidently, but it’s fan-effing-tastic at hitting the “order” button to get some formula, let me tell you.

{Eek, this is hard. If your kid was born small and you’re breastfeeding and they’re still small, THAT’S OKAY TOO. IT’S ALL OKAY.}

I could go on but I’m giving myself hives. Do chickens get hives? Ha.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to…

… oh, right, Javi.

Why do I feel like I should get some sort of prize? (And by “I,” I really do mean “we,” I promise.)

The good mommies* always post pics of their babies, which I am unlikely to get to in the 5 minutes I have to type this. Granted, the good mommies also do this kind of post every month, so let’s just assume the bar in this household is much lower.

But, hoo, boy, FIVE MONTHS. YAY!

While talking to my baby this morning, I started out by saying that I had really enjoyed these last five months with him, but then had to correct myself. {I try not lie – even little white lies like, “It’ll just take me a second” when it’ll take a few minutes.}

“Okay, if I’m being honest, the first two months were ROUGH, and the third month was definitely better, but these last two months have been FUN, KID!”

So, let’s talk about where we are using the structure I used while pregnant: Body, Soul, then Baby, since this is my blog, right?

Body:

Four months post-baby, I am glimpsing my former body. My boobies are almost back to their former size (albeit a bit more floppy, yay), my booty looks like it will stay more bodacious but is fitting into my old pants, and though I’ve gained a mid-section pooch, I can smooth it out with a snug tank top under my shirt.

Physically, I’m struggling with pretty severe upper back and neck pain. Weekly chiropractor visits have helped but I spent last week with a locked up neck, and since I’m not giving up smooching my kid, it’s something that will take a while to fully abate.

But hey, all in all, not bad!

Soul:

I’m two months into med-ville now and my life is better. If I’m being honest again, I probably should have gone on meds years ago. These past two months have been the most purely happy of my life, lacking any of the angst and nervousness that tended to come along with happiness before.

I read Penelope’s blog and relate more than I like to admit, then wish people didn’t feel so bad about the idea of needing to take meds, including myself. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

I can also tell you that I know the meds are working because I debate going off of them.

Baby:

Man, my kid is the coolest! He has a personality that I totally love and a sense of humor that keeps us laughing. Who knew a little baby could have a sense of humor and be so much himself already? He’s intense and determined, has a long fuse and a quick explosion, seems to take everything in before responding, and (no surprise here) has a temper. Luckily, it takes a long time before the temper is activated, but like his parents, once on, the switch is hard to turn off.

He dances and tries to run, lifts his arms above his head to our cheers, laughs and pumps his legs like he’s riding a bicycle, and understands cause and effect to some extent. He’ll call out and wait to see if we respond and make this funny little meowing sound when he wants one of us to look over at him.

He’d much rather stand than sit, sit than lay down, lay down than recline. As of this morning, he can pull himself into a sitting position on his bouncy chair, a development that has thrown our Baby Routine into a tizzy since we use that bouncy chair to get him showered. Oy. He’s so darned proud of himself when he’s finally sitting up that it’s hard to be too annoyed. Hello, baby abs!

Because he spends more time sitting up (with our support or in various baby furniture) than laying down or on his belly, he’s not yet rolling over. He still hates tummy time so we leave that particular item to our awesome daycare people and keep the fun stuff for ourselves.

Routines are really useful since they give him a clue as to what’s next, so our bedtime routine is very specific, sometimes to our detriment if we don’t have the next step prepped when it’s due. “Hey, wait,” he seems to shout. “You’re supposed to be handing me a bottle! Get with the program!”

Speaking of bottles, he can hold his own but hands off the duty about halfway through and almost always gets distracted before he finishes. We add an ounce or two of apple juice to his morning bottle to combat constipation.

I once saw an interview with a pregnant Amanda Peet where she said she and her husband would pray, “Please, just let us have a silly baby.” I didn’t do that before he was born, but if I had, my prayers for a cuddly guy would have  been answered. Just in the past two weeks, I’ve been promoted from Chopped Liver When Daddy’s Around to Oh, Hi, Mom, Let’s Snuggle! It is apparently a big honor to be the victim of Oh, I Wanna Eat Your Face in Babyland, in which case I am like the supreme leader or something. We spent a glorious first two days of the year in our pajamas playing various fun games (“Bounce like a little kangaroo!” and “Teach Mama to Fetch Toys” were some of the favorites) and (I’ll admit it) watching bad TV. (Only one episode! And only because he was tired but we were killing time until bedtime! And it was N3mbers, so that’s gotta count for something!) He’s definitely a man’s man – just how I’d like it to be – but we have a thing, he and I, our own special thing.

Parenthood is fun! Suddenly every little thing is exciting and worth doing, no matter how cheesy or goofy. After ruining Christmas Day by spending the day traveling, we decided to have a redo and put up a Charlie Brown tree (cut down from the back yard) complete with lights and ornaments, threw up a couple of strings of twinkly lights, and rewrapped a few presents for Javi to reopen while watching Christmas movies and drinking egg nog. ‘Twas a blast and produced my favorite picture of he and I, ever. (That one at the top of this post.) I started an adventure list for this year and someday and I’m so excited for each day that he grows and continues to become this cool little person.

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I’ll come back and add a bunch of pics to this post later. Cheers to 2012!

Every year of my adult life, I’ve spent a few hours at the end of each year looking back and forward, deciding where I needed to improve and choosing a theme.

This year, for the first time since being a grown-up, I didn’t have to. I have a child, a fantastic and wonderful son, so his growth will define my life for a while.

How cool is that?

So, my goal, if you will, for 2012 is to just live, and be, and experience. Perhaps this is the missing link to “believe” and “accept” and “find peace,” goals for previous years to which I’ve gotten close but not quite succeeded.

My husband and I agreed to a joint resolution: protect Javi time. Closer to my heart than his, he’s nonetheless agreed to try to tune out distractions and focus on the kid when we have kid time, even if we end up tagging each other out for breaks. It’s too easy to check Facebook and surf the web and read the news when “spending time” with Javi, and that’s unfair to him.

And last, if I can put one stretch goal out there, it’s to find a way to be more consistently healthy. Though I think I look okay, I’m in terrible cardiovascular health for someone my age and my bones creak like I’m 90, so perhaps this is the year to really do yoga or hit the gym or something.

But I’ll worry about that later. Today’s pajama day and my kid will wake up from his nap soon. Happy 2012!

My son slept terribly last night, the fallout from too much travel and change and fun. My husband brought him to me mid-morning and he napped for three hours, then again for two hours late in the afternoon.

Smart people just thought, “Uh, oh.”

Yup. At bedtime, the still overtired (but fresh off a long nap) kid spent almost an hour not staying asleep, either flopping around or whining or (the very, very worst) crying like someone just killed his puppy. It’s so sad.

Sadder yet is standing outside the door to his room crying because the only thing we can figure is that he needs to work himself down before he’ll sleep. I never figured I’d be such a softie, but here I am. Super soft. If I don’t comfort my sad, crying baby, how am I his mother?

I was reminded of those awful days when I was trying to breast feed and feeling like a failure because my son was crying out of frustration, and the biggest (most secret) reason I wanted to succeed was this: if I didn’t breast feed him, how would he know I was his mother?

It’s a ludicrous question now, but it felt perfectly valid when I was still adjusting to my new role as a mother. The answer: I’m his mother simply because I am. That’s all, and enough. Christians believe they are worthy of forgiveness simply because they are, and so goes this motherhood thing. I’m his mama not because I grew him in my body and got him out successfully*, but because I love him like only his mama can.

And so I remind myself — hours after he finally fell asleep but not long enough for me to shake the feeling that I failed him somehow — that nobody can love my kid like I do, and he can’t help but feel that even as he cries that sad cry and wonders why I can’t make it all better. I wish I could, but my role is as a guide and helper, not fixer. Well, not all the time.

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*I had a c-section, and despite the success of that procedure in producing a healthy, happy baby, I felt for a long time like I failed him for the first and seemingly most critical time by not being able to birth him myself. I went over each moment obsessively, trying to learn from the experience as though I could go back and make it all right. Did the downhill spiral begin when I went to the hospital (note my phrasing, as though I wasn’t directed to go straight there by the most anti-intervention practitioners I could choose) or when I went for the epidural like a starving person at a buffet? Now I know — or try to know — that it doesn’t matter. He’s here and healthy and won’t likely think to ask whether he was pushed out of my parts through the sheer force of my will or cut out of my body through the expertise of someone else’s until his pregnant wife makes him ask me. The circumstances, ultimately, matter far less than the desire. I wanted — deeply, fervently wanted — to do whatever was best for him.

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Eight hours after we woke up, we arrived. My kid was a champ on the flights, sleeping and eating and amusing himself and everyone else with nary a tear, but we were bushed. I’ll admit I wondered why we went through the drama of a cross-country trip when, after too much partying and too little of his regular routine, my son was awake every two hours through our first night. At 5:30 am local time, I stumbled out of our room into the living room to pour some coffee.

But when stepdad saw us on his way out the door to work and a smile took over his face — “Baby boy! How are youuuuuu?” he crooned — I understood. We function through the fatigue and stress because they love him, and he needs to know them.

That’s my uncle and my son watching some man show in their respective recliners.

If I had it together, this would be a Christmas-themed photo, but I do not, so here’s a photo of my kid eating yogurt. Note: “eating” may be overstating it a bit. He got a teeny bit in his mouth, a little more on his lips, and a whole lot on his outfit. Hilariously, that tiny bit was enough to cause a full fledged sugar high not long after. Fun times.

I am taking my four month old on a flight on Tuesday and am a trying valiantly not to freak out, but I haven’t packed a thing and my husband is only now paying enough attention to disagree with everything I’d planned to do. Do they teach that in Man Class somewhere?

In more fun news, I got my present early and am typing on it now: an iPad! So share: what apps do I need?

Do you remember that scene in “Knocked Up” when the sister remarks that the boyfriend is “playing fetch with my kids….”? As parents, we’re totally that boyfriend.

I keep joking that I’m going to write a series of posts titled, “Everything I Learned About Parenting I Learned From My Vet/ Dog Trainer/ Menagerie of Animals” but aside from my inability to choose an easily recitable title, I keep worrying I’ll offend someone.

There’s nothing like comparing kids to pets to suck all the air out of a room.

Except, well, I’m me, and my kid is mine, and this is our story.

Everything I Learned About Parenting I Learned From My Dog Trainer, Part I

If you recall, we shower with our kid, finding it much easier on the back to squeeze a kid with one arm and wash with another than lean over the tub and try to keep him from drowning. And as a former kid who hated getting water on my face, I wanted him to think going under the shower spray was fun.

Cue the dog training idea.

When you want a dog to find something fun he would naturally not like, you mold his behavior using positive reinforcement. Want him to go in a crate? Leave the door open and reward him for any activity he chooses to do that is in the direction of the crate – looking, sniffing, whatever.

Now, my infant obviously can’t choose to go under the shower spray, but I figured I’d try rewarding a happy response. He loves the sound, “Yay!” and playing the smoochy game. To make it easier for him to know what was coming, I added some sounds, “Chugga-chugga-chugga-WOO,” that last part when I moved us under the water. {No idea why I went with a train sound.} Then, when we popped back out after a second, I’d say, “Yay!” and give him a smoochy when he looked at me.

It worked! When I start the “Chugga…” he ducks his head a little bit and closes his eyes. When he hears, “Yay!” he looks up and smiles at me, then waits for his smoochy.

I’ll share more stories as time allows. And hey, as a former pregnant woman who always apologized for comparing my puppy experience with what I thought having a kid would be like, let me just say that *I* don’t find it to be an insulting comparison. At this age, my son is very much like a puppy – super fun and very exhausting all at once.

I guess I hadn’t mentioned this in quite this way, but having a kid is freaking awesome. Really.

Serendipity led me to chatting about parenthood with not one but two old online friends tonight and I realized I hadn’t done a report from this place, so here goes.

Some people have to freak out because it’s their process for growing up and accommodating change. I am one. And some people fear that they will never have the same joy as other people because the freaking out must mean they are not in the right place or on the right path or making the right choices.

But here I am, the mama of a fourth month old (awesome) kid and I’m loving my life. If I can do it, anyone can.

My perspective on work has changed, for the better, I think. Stupid meetings piss me off more because I could be playing with my kid, but I can do things that are worth it in the blink of an eye. I suddenly see everyone I encounter as someone’s child and somehow that helps with the empathy, even as I unleash my frustrated wrath upon them. And every single day (with a few exceptions), I walk away from my computer and meetings and all the stuff that comes with them and hang out with my son.

Let me tell you, that guy is pretty cool. He has a really funny sense of humor and is a fabulous conversationalist. Sometimes he gives you what you want (a coo, a smooch) and others he acts like he might and then makes a funny instead (usually a shriek – that’s his thing). He’s taken to “helping” us aim his bottle into his mouth and I’ve been thrilled to once again see that determined and excited face on my baby, the one thing I missed from breastfeeding. He’s an adorable sleeper and  I often can’t wait for him to go back to sleep, but then when he’s asleep I miss him. He’s outgrowing his clothes faster than we can organize them and we are very proud, which is the really neat byproduct of having a very tiny baby.

As for me, while I think I’m actually gaining weight rather than losing it, emotionally I’m doing far better than I think I ever have. Go, meds! I still feel like I should apologize for being happy and content because maybe it’s just because of the meds, but then I don’t care. Life is good. I’ve just about finished processing my whole birth experience, I think, because lately I’m feeling like, “Eh, it happened and it won’t ever be repeated [even if we have more kids, experiences are never exactly the same] and my son is fantastic so I’m over it.” Though I wish things had been different – really, I mostly wish I’d reacted differently – I’m grateful for the experience. My son got me through the longest night of my life (helped out by my mom and husband) and I am forever grateful.

My marriage is better than before. There’s something about having someone else who understands the love and frustration, who has seen you at your most desperate and offered to take over so you can rest, who has quirks and charms that suddenly seem complementary to yours rather than just annoying. His propensity for breaking into song – annoying when I’m telling a work story or trying to read a book – is a blast for my kid. While I’m the empathetic one, my husband is the parent who figured out that our whiny, frustrated kid just wanted to interact with us.  Those first eight weeks were ROUGH, but here we are on the other side, and lo and behold, we naturally functioned as a team, each relying on the other to get through.

And while I had a moment of sadness caused by a day care worker’s flippant comment (“Javi gets so sad and worked up when we walk by him and don’t talk with him!”), I came back around to where we began: having my son in day care isn’t a necessity, it’s in line with our values. He will learn that people care for him who aren’t related to him, that he’s not the center of the world, that kids can be fun and not so fun, that to get through life you have to self-soothe and spend some time just hanging out, and that he can adapt to almost anything. And we learn that we don’t have to be everything to him all the time – we can’t, actually – and get the chance, every day, to learn from the experts while being the super experts when it comes to this little guy who has graced our life.

(Note: not that day care is the only way to do this, clearly, but it’s working for us.)

So there you go. Life is good. And while I wish I’d known everything would work out before – when I was freaking out any one of the thousand times I did – it’s okay. I’m me and my kid loves me. And boy, do I love him.

{Again with the disclaimer: yup, still on meds. Same dose, no major side effects, kind of wanting to stay on them forever at this point. Perhaps that will change, but this experience has forced me to acknowledge that I likely should have addressed the tumultuousness of my emotions long ago.}