Motherhood

The Parenting Olympics

Over the last 15 months, I’ve discovered a secret about parenting… nay… THE secret of parenting. Lean in close, so I can whisper it into your eyes: parenting is a competition, and it’s every soccer mom and super dad for themselves. I say we stop with the pseudo-compliments and just get right to it, Roman style, via a series of carefully curated events. Events that will weed out the willing from the weak, the powerful from the pathetic, the ingenuitive from the incapable. I present to you, The Parenting Olympics.

For our first event, please grab your stroller and line up at the starting line. A $1200 stroller does not a good parent make, but rather how you manage a stroller, one-handed (because you are obviously holding your child), while navigating through the crammed sale racks at your local discount retailer at Christmas time, 1 hour past your toddler’s nap time, while your blood sugar dips dangerously low, now THAT is worthy of praise. So line up, give your kid their least favorite sippy cup so they are agitated, and get from Housewares to Hosiery without knocking the faux fur sweater vest from the otherwise naked, severely emaciated mannequin. Extra points if you come out on the other side with both baby shoes and the paci.

racksHo ho ho. Now go go go.

Next up we have the Grab and Haul. As we all know, taking the babe out for even the simplest of errands requires no less than 16 things when it’s all said and done. So for our next event, we will give each toddler 30 seconds to collect as many things as they deem necessary for a jaunt out for milk, then you will have to pick them up, locate your car keys, wallet and phone, grab the diaper bag and the reusable grocery bag, exit the house, and get them into the car without forgetting anything, or letting anything hit the ground. Now, go get your milk, come home and bring everything back inside PLUS the box that showed up on your doorstep. Extra points if you don’t strain a muscle in your shoulder, or let the door slam on tiny fingers silently investigating the hinge. Extra extra points if you remember to put the milk in the fridge.

Naomi Watts And Son Out For A Walk In Los AngelesBinky? Check. Snuggly blanket? Yep. Snacks? You betcha. Flask? Don’t mind if I do.

Our third event is all about speed and dexterity. It’s a triathlon that will test your patience, persistence and ingenuity. On paper it’s a seemingly simple set of tasks, but in practice it can drive even the most patient of people to drivel and maybe even drink. For round three I will ask you to remove the laundry (you know, the load you washed last week?) from your dryer, fold it, put it away, and load the dishwasher. This all must be done while the child is awake, and free to roam. Because we aren’t famous rich people, the laundry folding station must be your couch, and because we aren’t famous rich people, and we rent, your kitchen can’t have a baby gate or effective child-proofing locks on your cabinetry. Points are docked for every time you raise your voice in frustration as the child knocks over a stack of folded clothes or rips a handful of folded clothes out of their drawer and spreads them willy-freaking-nilly around the house. Double points are docked for every time your child removes a dirty knife from the dishwasher and chases your cat.

pet-sematary-remake-1This is exactly what it looks like in our house when Baby 1.0 gets the dirty scalpel out of our dishwasher.

The fourth and final event of our series is a combination of our three previous events. It’s truly a measure of an Olympic Gold Medal Parent. For this event, I will ask that you take your child out for an outing that requires driving at least 15 minutes away from your house. The outing must be timed where, upon its termination, the child will need to go down for a nap in precisely 20 minutes, leaving you a generous 5 minutes of wiggle room. When the timer hits zero, you must extract your child from the outing of your choosing (read: the most fun your child has ever had, and whole-heartedly believes they will ever have again), navigate your way to the car, buckle them into their car seat while they do their best impersonation of a rodeo king/queen, exit the parking garage that was obviously built exclusively for smart cars without hitting anything, then make it home WITHOUT letting the exhausted child fall asleep. You will be disqualified for disobeying traffic laws, cussing out loud at the trash truck who is blocking THE WHOLE STREET, or getting into an accident. Extra points will be given if you turn this into a “teachable moment” by choosing to sing the ABC’s in a volume appropriate for a Death Metal concert, but a tone that would charm a little baby lamb.

Screen-Shot-2014-03-13-at-9.56.28-PM I have no words. Except I’d mop this chick in the Grab and Haul.

So there you have it. The Parenting Olympics. Got any ideas for next years events? I’d love to hear ’em!

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Image credits:

Cover: http://slimber.com/gallery/images2/21/216558/the-olympic-rings.jpg

Racks: http://www.buffalonews.com/storyimage/BN/20130127/LIFE02/130129435/EP/1/1/EP-130129435.jpg&maxW=960

Naomi Watts: http://cdn04.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/watts-hands/naomi-watts-has-her-hands-full-03.jpg

Pet Sematary: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_yzXc2oxZKh4/TU–WgrVIdI/AAAAAAAAAPY/038-Fq4TF4A/pet-sematary-remake-1.jpg

Car singing: http://rixbury.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-13-at-9.56.28-PM.png

Colic – Less Fun Than A John Tesh Concert, More Fun Than A Lobotomy

Pretty soon after bringing little Baby 1.0 home from the hospital, it was clear she was what these days is tastefully called, a “spirited child.” She was incredibly alert, with a light in her eyes that conveyed an intensity we weren’t expecting. An intensity that, unfortunately, was expressed by shrill crying for seemingly no reason, for several hours a day, every single day, for three months. After ruling out there was a physical cause for this crying, it was determined she had colic, which is essentially a catch-all term to describe cruel and unusual punishment of caregivers through the art of inconsolable, unrelenting crying spells.

Before having her, we had been lulled into a false sense of security by other people’s newborns who spent most of their days sleeping, and who, when they cried, sounded like kittens mewwing. Baby 1.0 barely slept, comparatively, and spent many of her awake hours announcing her displeasure with us in a volume that would put a flock of 747s to shame. So we did what any set of new parents would do: We totally panicked.

This kitten is totally panicking, but in a really quiet, cute way.

This panic turned into a game show called “What If?” where we made up reasons for why she was crying, then used the internet to support our reasoning. It went a little like this: What if the reason she is crying is because she is hungry, even though I just fed her for 45 minutes? Internet survey says you have clearly overfed her, and she is crying because she has horrible stomach pains. Or she is still hungry, in which case you should feed her again, because a baby should never be denied the breast. Unless of course she is full, in which case by offering her another meal where she will only eat for a few minutes, you will be giving her too much foremilk which will make her gassy, and will destroy your foremilk/hindmilk ratio. So you should not feed her. But if you deny her request for food, you will damage the fragile mother/daughter bond irreparably. But if you give in, and feed her again, she will never get on a good schedule, and everybody knows a happy baby is a baby on a good schedule!

This is nothing but lies. Lies, I tell you!

We played this awful game everyday, for every round of crying that started up, and never got anywhere. In hindsight, this seems like grounds for admitting both my husband and I into an institution, but extreme sleep deprivation, coupled with living with an unpredictable tornado siren in our house drove us absolutely mad. And in our defense, at least playing the “google and panic game,” made us feel like we were doing something. Because otherwise, after trying the antacids and gas drops per our pediatrician’s recommendations, our only option was to wait it out, which felt about as helpful as telling someone dying of dehydration to try drinking their tears.

So we continued googling, and changing things here and there. I cut certain things out of my diet, we swaddled and shushed our way through most summer sunsets well into the night. My bedtime routine looked like a combination of Tae Bo and somebody being electrocuted, as I swayed, jiggled and bounced Baby 1.0 until she would finally peter out hours later. Then, I would carefully, oh so carefully, creep over to her bassinet, and then slowly, oh so slowly, lay her down on her back. Half the time she would wake up immediately, and the cycle would start over. The other half of the time, I would make it into bed myself, lay my weary head on my pillow, whisper “see you in 10 minutes to my husband,” and then she would wake up and we would start the whole cycle over again. It was hell.

Billy Blanks. Putting babies to sleep and toning your thighs since 1976.

And her crying wasn’t just at night. It would start-up at unpredictable times, or if I did something she didn’t approve of. Like, for example, put her in her car seat or stroller to leave the house (gasp!). So I didn’t. I locked myself up in our apartment, sat down on my couch, and nursed her for hours on end because it was the only way to keep her quiet. But in the process, it absolutely destroyed me. Mentally I was a wreck, living in fear of upsetting her, scared it was something I was doing that was causing this, afraid I was already a failure of a mother, depressed without knowing to call it that. Physically, I was in so much pain I would cry every time she latched on. We finally broke down and got a lactation consultant who at least helped the physical aspects of our problematic relationship. And I connected with a fellow colic sufferer who could at least offer a shoulder to cry on via a series of very thoughtful emails (thoughtful on her behalf, as my emails pretty just consisted of “but whyyyyyyy?”).

Those three months were the longest three months of my life. I came out on the other side with some buff buns, and a new appreciation for the saying “It takes a village.” I am so thankful for the friend who opened up and shared with me how hard it was for her too, and I can only hope that I can repay the favor by reaching out and making a difference in the same way. I guess my only piece of advice would be if you are struggling, say something. It doesn’t have to be so hard.

IMG_1135

 

The First Trimester, A.K.A. When I Became A 30-Year-Old Toddler

Remember when you were a little kid, and on one very special summer day, your parents would take you to the amusement park? You would get there early, and survey the scene like a conquistador on the shores of a far away land. The possibilities were endless. Sun-baked, and sugar-filled hours would fly by as you spun, twisted, dipped, and flipped your way through the park. And then suddenly, somewhere between the Gravitron and the Tilt-A-Whirl, it would hit you: Sheer exhaustion, coupled with cotton-candy induced nausea, and a fountain of tears as your parents spurred you toward the car for the long drive home. This was my first trimester in a nutshell, but rather than lasting one day, this was how I spent three glorious months.

On what would be the equivalent to the first ride of the day at the amusement park, it became clear I was something of a Joey Chestnut of morning sickness, except for every hotdog he would consume, I would produce an equal amount of morning barf. Most often, my walk to work would trigger my tummy troubles, where I would then deposit my breakfast in what I came to think of as a very hungry porcelain baby bird. “Here ya go, Buddy! I’ll be back in an hour or so!” The worst part wasn’t having to stick my head in a public toilet, but instead having to pull my head out of the public toilet, wipe my red, blotchy face off, and go interact with the public without tipping my hand that I just reverse ate an Eggo waffle with peanut butter. For the rest of the morning I’d be spending equal amounts of energy trying not to gag, and working to keep a 3 foot distance from anybody who may be able to detect the Eggo I’d just leggo’d.

Hot-Dog-Eating-Joey-Chestnut

This is Joey Chestnut, by the way. A competitive eater of many things, including hotdogs. Photo from http://www.worldofpctures.com/joey-chestnut/

The body-crushing, brain-melting, fall-asleep-while-standing tired didn’t wait long to settle in either. I punctuated conversations with horrible, drawn out, tonsil-exposing yawns. Yawns that inexplicably, were always accompanied by a single tear, as if opening my mouth wide enough to swallow a grapefruit was putting too much pressure on my eyes. In a confusing twist, sleep didn’t seem to help this hybrid monster of tired. I would wake up in the morning like the Swamp Man stumbling out of the murk, bug-eyed with a gaping mouth, garbling words incoherently. It was all I could do to get through the day before coming home to collapse on the couch, begging my husband for a bowl of cereal and 4 glasses of water. If there really is such thing as a sleep bank, building a baby threw me into the red faster than a freshman coed with daddy’s credit card.

And then there were the tears. Soon after getting pregnant, crying seemed to become part of my daily routine. While it would be gracious to assume the exhaustion and nausea were to blame, in reality I think they were second-tier contributors to a much larger problem: Being pregnant turned me into a 30-year-old toddler. Patience and understanding were replaced with frustration and confusion. Simple transgressions, like say, leaving 1/16th of an inch of milk in the carton and knowingly putting it back in the fridge, would send me into a tearful rage. Because why? This river of emotion didn’t take much to well over when I encountered touching stories, or kind words either. Songs took on a new meaning, and the card isle at CVS became a no-no zone. Even reading the words “To My Beloved Great-Aunt…” in some swirly, silver font could do it.

But with each passing week, we got closer and closer to the second trimester, and to be fair, it wasn’t all bad. We got to hear the babies heartbeat for the first time, which fell somewhere on the spectrum between unicorns singing, and successfully teleporting. We got to see the baby on an ultrasound, and while we couldn’t confirm it wasn’t actually a turtle, it did give us a sense of how real this all was. I also started to get an itty bitty baby belly, which prompted me to take my first ever (and possibly my only ever) selfie. And even more importantly, reaching the second trimester milestone meant: 1). Our risk of having a miscarriage dropped significantly, and 2). Pretty soon, we could post it on Facebook…

photo 2

It’s an itty bitty baby bump selfie!

Well That Happened Quicker Than I Thought…

I imagine finding out I was pregnant was similar to how Dorothy felt when she first woke up in Oz. Overnight, I had been magically transported from the familiar territory of “Just Me, Myself and I,” to a new, unknown land called “Us,” where something was living inside my abdomen. This realization froze me to the toilet, pee-stick in hand. The moment had no Hallmark warm and fuzzy. There were no tears, or squeals of joy. Silently something shifted, and it was immediately understood I was now the keeper of a tiny ball o’ cells, for which I was responsible. In the seconds following the discovery of two pink lines, my brain actually completed about 3,587 different thoughts about what this meant, all culminating in “And somehow the baby has to come out...”

But before I could really get ahead of myself, I needed to tell my lovely husband. While I was taking the only test that would actually change my life, he was busy putting the finishing touches on a lecture he was giving to 300 undergrads in a few short hours. This was a first for him, and to say he was nervous would be an understatement. Knowing this, I thought about not telling him until after he finished, but fun fact about me, I am incapable of keeping secrets. Undecided if I would spare him the extra stress or spill the beans, I washed my hands and headed upstairs. I (we?) walked into the kitchen with what I thought was a neutral look on my face, but in actuality was probably a wide-eyed look of panic and excitement, similar to what a raccoon looks like in a live-trap: “Yay! Achieved peanut butter! But now stuck?!...” He looked up at me, dropped his shoulders in disbelief, and said four words I’ll never forget: “Shut the fuck up.” While it wasn’t exactly the reaction I was looking for, it was also totally acceptable, even though I had actually not said anything. It was shocking news, and people say funny things under duress. He stood up, gave me a hug, and I suggested we pretend this didn’t happen. He then went to work, and I went to get a hair cut. It was as if nothing had changed, but everything had changed all at the same time.

That night we processed it a little more, and were both over the moon thinking about all the possibilities. What would it look like? When could we take it for casual walks around the neighborhood? Could it hear my thoughts? It was more exciting than I could have possibly imagined, and I forced my excitement on people who I felt should be equally as exuberant. Like my sister, who was going through the final stages of an unexpected illness with their beloved family dog. I called her, and she was crying telling me about the grim prognosis they had just received. In what may have been my most dismal show of humanity yet, I hit her with a one-two punch that went a little like: “That totally sucks. You should put him to sleep. But guess what?! I’m pregnant!” If saying rude, horrible, untimely things to people you love was an Olympic sport, I had just completed a 4 minute mile. She tearfully said “Congrats,” but probably thought “You will ruin that child if you can’t learn to control your impulses, you insensitive little Twit.”

Breaking the news to other family members was also somewhat of a mixed bag. Some were decidedly more enthusiastic from the get-go, while others said things like, “Is this really the way you are telling me you are pregnant?” But eventually, everybody caught baby fever and shared in our joy. And by “joy” I mean frequent, unexplainable, bouts of crying and ragehate directed at things like the toaster oven, and the latch on the screen door.  Other than my new-found abhorrence of inanimate objects around the house, in the days following the positive test, nothing really felt that different. “See!” I thought to myself, “This is a cake walk! Oooh cake… I should get some cake. I deserve a cake. Wait, why don’t we have any cake? Oh my God, why hasn’t somebody baked me a freaking cake? Hello?! I’m BUILDING A BABY OVER HERE!! I’m going to freak out if I don’t get a cake in 3…2…OOOH! We have CHEESE! I will eat all the cheese.”