Raw Drip

It’s been a while since I’ve written a list-oriented entry and with an impending cross-country move I need to keep things, shall we say, concise for the next few weeks.  So, I’ve decided to write about my top 5 mommy truths - life-lessons big and small that the experience of parenting has taught me, thus far.  To start off this week, counting down from #5…

Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t fall head-over-heels in love with your new baby.

Like many expectant women out there I spent endless hours watching Tivo’d episodes of “A Baby Story” on TLC.  This show follows a real-life couple as they bring a new baby into the world.  Each show climaxes with the joyous birth of the baby and is wrapped neatly by a follow-up visit with the new family at home where we learn that things are lovely and amazing.  Frequently, teary-eyed parents will look into the camera, holding baby in their arms, and attest to the instantaneous, deeply meaningful bond or spiritual love connection they established with baby from day one.

So during my ninth month of pregnancy with Adam, this was my dream, wish and expectation.  I’m going to be so in love with this baby… 

For me the love affair didn’t take hold with a sudden surge of maternal instinct or a feeling of heart-bursting happiness.  When Adam was born, I’d been waiting for him all my life but when he suddenly arrived it was a total shock to my system.  I actually resented him for the first few months.  I didn’t like someone needing me so completely. It scared me to death.  What if I screwed up?  Caring for a baby is a biggie.  I mean, my husband’s going to be p-i-s-s-e-d if I accidentally hurt or kill his kid.  Almost worse than being scared of the baby, I hated that everyone expected me to be thrilled and happy to sacrifice my life so completely to this unreasonable, demanding stranger.   

I’m not a mental health professional so I don’t know if what I went through was normal or typical.  I do know that I never wanted to harm Adam and I didn’t think about killing myself so it wasn’t post-partum depression in a child-drowning Texas mom or Brooke Sheilds celebrity-tell-all sort of way.  I just spent a few months being disappointed in myself for not being the mom that I thought everyone (including myself) always expected me to be.  I felt tremendously guilty for not being flooded with feelings of love for my baby; all I felt for him was obligation. 

Thankfully, our relationship did change and eventually we bonded with one another in a deep, flooded-with-feelings-of-love way.  In fact, the bonding continues each day.  And when Adam, now a kid, throws his arms around my neck and says “I wuv you mommy” as he kisses my cheek, there’s nothing, NOTHING, better in this world; it is the highest high you can acheive minus a good class 3 narcotic.  But getting here with Adam wasn’t easy. The person I needed to work with most was me.  Letting go of some guilt, making peace with the inevitable mistakes I’m going to make and most importantly, giving myself permission to stop worrying about absolutely everything was a hard bargain to strike with my perfectionist self.  This is the path no one ever told me I might have to take and it was really hard and it was really lonely and it was, surprisingly, worthwhile. 

But I will never, ever lie to a new mom and tell her that her mothering instincts will immediately kick in and that she’ll be flooded with all-consuming love for her new baby.  It’s great when love comes that easily, but maybe for some of us it’s a little more about the journey and little less about the destination.

Absent-minded, apathetic, distracted, diverted, heedless, oblivious, preoccupied, removed, scatterbrained, and unconscious.  These are just a few of the synonyms I find for “unobservant”.  Sadly, many of these synonyms describe my husband who is, quite possibly, the world’s most unobservant man. 

If I walked into a room stark naked wearing a rainbow clown ‘fro he MIGHT notice something different about me; probably not.  More than likely he’d be too distracted by my nakedness to consider the ‘fro.  Then again, after 20 years together, maybe I give myself (and my nakedness) too much credit.

I guess I just don’t get Dick’s unobservant behavior.  It seems obvious to me that having the ability to observe and react to changes in one’s environment should speak to a man’s primal need to be the protector of his family.  Shouldn’t his instincts guide him to be a keen observer of his surroundings?  Wouldn’t this ability help him to understand the scope of potential dangers and formulate preventative measures?  And yet Dick, like so many other men I know, seems to completely lack peripheral vision when it comes to his household.  He moves through life with a singular focus on food, sex, sleep and some other stuff that occasionally drifts into his field of vision.  Things like cleanliness and order go unnoticed and unacknowledged.  Could this ignorance be a side-effect of our modern world?  Could all the controls and conveniences of our surroundings - air conditioning, heating, appliances, and security devices - have stripped the modern man of sensitivity to his environment?

Every day life provides Dick with abundant opportunities to demonstrate his keen observation skills but he stubbornly adheres to his tradition of not noticing.  For me, a pile of molding, filthy dishes in the sink triggers the thought, “Gee. That looks gross.  I think I should wash those before spontaneous generation occurs.” The thought then triggers my brain to perform the required steps to mitigate the disgusting, sci-fi movie consequences of inaction.  Not so with Dick. Molding dishes in the sink may register in his brain as disgusting, but they don’t fire the synapses that generate movement out of his chair and over to the sink.

When I observe an over-flowing trash receptacle in the kitchen, I think to myself, “Yuck. That’s going to smell up the kitchen if I don’t get it outside…” followed promptly by action.  When I point out to Dick that the trash can is over-flowing and needs to be emptied, my observation is often met with surprise, ”Is it, really?  I’ll take care of it in about 20 minutes…”

Now, before you start thinking that he’s just lazy (and there’s certainly an element of that), I’d like to point out that the man really CANNOT find anything.  Most days I’m just pleased when he’s able to locate me and the children in the adjoining rooms of our home.  Statements like, “We must be out of ______ “, or “I can’t find ______, anywhere” are a daily occurrence in our household.  And God forbid he need to look for things in refrigerators, boxes, or cabinets! These storage mechanisms leave him completely befuddled.  After years of Dick telling me with certainty that an item we had a mere 24 hours ago no longer exists, I’ve had to ‘fess up to all those little storage secrets we women try to conceal from men.  Like the fact that most cabinets are 3 dimensional and it’s that tricky 3^rd dimension, depth, that allows for items to be stacked behind one another.   Rather than admit to his ignorance, Dick accuses me of trying to hide things from him.

I’m no psychologist, but I do know that turning Dick into an observant man is probably a lost cause by now.  At 36, he’s mastered the art of not noticing and I doubt a rainbow ‘fro, a swift kick, or a vigorous mental workout of “Where’s Waldo?” is going to retrieve him from his blissfully ignorant state. 

I’ve decided to shift my efforts to Adam.  I don’t care if it kills me, that boy is going to now how to find things by himself.  So as soon as he starts NOT noticing every little change in his environment (I’m guessing age 5, maybe?) I’ll start hiding his stuff from him.  My conspiracy to confuse will sharpen his mental faculties and keep him on his toes.  It’ll be good for him.  One day, he may even thank me for it - assuming he notices.

Thank goodness I’m out of the baby phase these days now that Adam and Tabitha are walking, talking, and generally acting like little people (When did they become people, again?).  While I miss the baby days, looking at one of the newest crop of baby care devices reminds me how quickly my kids are growing.  Back in the old days (3 1/2 years ago), if you had to pee while out with your baby you needed to hold the baby on your lap and do the one-hand, quick-wipe while balancing him precariously on bent knee. 

But no more!  The Babykeeper Basic is described as an “infant carrier seat that hangs from the stall wall in most public restrooms”.  Now your baby can just hang out while you do your business.  No more balancing acts and no more jockeying for the single handicap stall that has an infant seat built into the wall.

I find this invention to be simultaneously amusing, bizarre, and brilliant, but I don’t get the “Basic” part of the product description.  What would an ”Advanced” version do?  Maybe the basic model gives you the comfort of knowing your baby isn’t going to have to balance on your lap or sit on a filthy restroom floor, but it’s only safe for midget babies? Hm.  I bet if your baby weighs more than 5 pounds, you’ve got to pay to upgrade to the advanced version.  Sneaky inventors!

But an advanced version of this product might be a worthwhile investment.  I mean, wouldn’t it be cool if it could hold a 40-pound kid in place so a parent could urinate in peace - without advice or enthusiastic offers of assistance from ”helpful” children in the midst of potty-training?  Just think of all the potential uses.  If it could safely hold 38-pound Tabitha, I might decide to leave her hanging all the time (the back of the master bedroom closet door, for instance) - just for a breather from all the chattering.  It’s an awfully tempting proposition.  The Babykeeper could be the best invention ever! 

Intrigued by the possibilities, I decided to read the product FAQs to get a little more information on what features comprise the “basic” and ”advanced” models. 

But I encounter disappointment; there is no “advanced” model.  The company claims that the basic model is capable of holding a toddler.  I’m sure it holds an average-sized kid, but Dick and I only make gigantic children.  What about parents of freakishly large kids?  What are we supposed to do?

While the FAQs didn’t really help me figure out what makes the Babykeeper so basic, I did learn that there are no parents willing to face the shame and ridicule of others by asking the all important, most frequently un-asked question, “How likely am I to leave the restroom with my purse, but without my baby?” 

Because, let’s face it - you know some sleep-deprived mommy out there has done this already…