Parenthood in the Time of the Internet

There are a few aspects of parenthood that I consider particularly difficult to deal with.

I suppose first on the list would be the usual things: not getting to pee alone, not sleeping, not being able to explain to a tiny irrational monkey that I cannot, in fact, read her mind.

One aspect that I have found difficult is the fact that I have to deal with the opinions of other parents, and that many parents in my generation are absolutely insane.

It doesn't help, perhaps, that I don't have many parent friends in real life and therefore find myself turning to the Internet. The Internet has blessed me with many amazing friends throughout my adulthood, but it's also exposed me to the thoughts of people I may not give the time of day if I knew them in person.

I think that most parents of my generation are affected by the clamor of uncited opinions that are brazenly presented as fact. While it's true that the Internet has given us an unprecedented exposure to information, it's also given us equal access to the thoughts and feelings of millions of people. The problem with every belief presented on equal footing with fact is that it's really easy to internalize those beliefs and assume they accurately reflect how parenting is or should be. This leads otherwise (mostly) logical people--myself included--to submit to the narrative presented by the loudest and craziest among us.

The ultimate result, then, is that parents nowadays have become absolutely obsessive about things that don't actually matter all that much and have created a complete blind spot over things that could actually matter.

We are a generation obsessed with breastfeeding to the point that we talk of formula as if it's a last resort instead of the valid, healthy alternative that it is; a generation that grew up watching TV but that is convinced that TV and screens are all that's standing between our children and an Ivy League future; a generation that obsessively feeds our children organic, non-GMO food despite a complete dearth of evidence that it's any better than conventional food; a generation that has somehow conveyed the message to expectant moms that anything other than an unmedicated vaginal birth can't be counted as "really" giving birth; a generation that doesn't let children play outside and manages to subconsciously project a fear of the world on them; a generation that assumes we must be constantly playing and engaging with our children and loving every minute of it.

Conversely, we don't think twice of posting our children's faces and potentially embarrassing stories all over the internet for the world to see. We go on and on about how should teach our children that looks don't matter, but then dress our children in tiny adult clothes, taking a billion photos and giving them for free to companies as unpaid "brand enthusiasts." We are shocked by the fact that our children still deal with body image and food issues while still presenting food as having some sort of moral value (with words like "clean," "whole," and "poison.").  We think that our children playing happily by themselves is a sign that we are not engaging them with enough crafts instead of a healthy sign of independence. Some of us prefer the advice of celebrities over educated, experience physicians.

There isn't a whole lot of evidence yet about the effects of the internet, since we are among the first to have to parent children with it. But the fact that we play so fast and easy with our children's presence on social media suggests that we aren't doing a good job of separating ourselves from them. In our race to be perfect parents, to outdo the outdoers, and to out-Pinterest our high school classmates, I think we too often forget that our children are their own people who one day will craft their own identities more or less independent of us.

In short, our children aren't art projects. They aren't medals or trophies for us to show off. They also aren't delicate, fragile pets that need to be coddled at every turn. Human beings have survived and thrived through much harder times, and our sons and daughters will be just fine with un-organic avocados and the occasional (read: more than occasional) fish stick. They can and should survive (and thrive) on their own, without our continual involvement.

I guess my hope for myself and for my fellow parents is that despite the perpetual cascade of opinions we can all just let go a little bit--let go of the need to control every part of our kids' lives, to have the "perfect" birth and "perfect" child and the "perfect" life for all to see, to need to be anything other than enough for our children.  That's all they ask of us, and while it is a very important duty, we don't need to take it so goddamn seriously all the time.

Accepting the Rain

Our July 4th weekend was complicated.

The Fourth of July is a pretty important holiday to both my and Rob's families, so we decided to travel to Maine this year. I planned on taking Amelia swimming, enjoying time on my dad's boat, and checking out the festivities in Rob's oceanside hometown. If I'm being honest, I got my hopes up a little bit.

One thing no one told me about parenthood was that a lot of the fun stuff is delayed by at least 6 months, and in some cases even longer. I had visions of sharing holidays and new traditions with Amelia, but have found up to know that most of my holidays have been spent hidden away in a room begging her to sleep and seething with rage at the joyous noise my family was making without me just a few rooms away. The noise I used to participate in, the noise that has defined my holidays for my entire life.

Amelia is in a period of serious--and I mean serious--stranger anxiety right now. I've never seen anything like it. From the second we arrived at my dad's house I saw my image of a "perfect holiday" shatter into a thousand pieces. Amelia in a group of new people is a completely different person than the Amelia that is with just Rob and me. I watched my funny, goofy,  curious, sweet baby shut down into a shy, closed off one within seconds.  I saw her crack a smile in the company of others maybe once--the rest of the time she spent frantically trying to get to me and clinging to my neck.

One night I was nursing for what felt like forever, praying to gods I don't believe in that she'd fall asleep and give me even an hour to enjoy the late-night remnants of my family's celebration. I thought a thought I've had many, many times since she was born: one day I will get time to myself. One day this will not be so hard.

I was struck in that moment by a quote from one of my favorite authors, Tom Robbins. I couldn't remember it exactly, but I knew it had something to do with the rain as a metaphor for acceptance; acceptance of nature and acceptance of things that we couldn't change. It hit me that neither my nor Amelia's life can't be measured in what will happen one day: this is our life, all of it--right here, right now. I thought about how I needed to learn not to simply grin and bear the "rain" we may go through now--stranger anxiety, clinginess, teething, what have you--but to accept it, and to accept my daughter for who she is and for the path her life will follow.

This doesn't mean I enjoy the difficult times necessarily, just that they shouldn't be seen as a means to an end. The future is not guaranteed to us and the present--with all its difficulties--is all we truly have in this life.

This isn't a new concept, certainly, and it's something I've struggled with a lot throughout my life. I've been a generally negative person for as long as I can remember and I'm sure that won't change overnight. Never has the desire to change been so strong, however, as when I had a child and wanted to be the best person possible for her.

When we came home I did some research and after a surprising amount of work (I'm from the Google generation and we expect to be able to find everything) I finally found it. It's a bit different than I imagined it that one night, alone with my daughter thinking of how I failed her that day and trying to think of ways to do better the next day, but I still found it in its true form to be beautiful and poignant.

"The sky was still blue, the sun still beaming when they locked me up. But during my incarceration it had begun to rain. The legendary Seattle rain. It was a thing gray rain; hard and fast and cold. In it, we had to walk four blocks from the Public Safety Building to the Zillers' Jeep--we were at its mercy. As was my custom in such elements I hunkered against the rain, drew my head into my collar, turned my eyes to the street, tensed my footsteps and proceeded in misery. But my hosts, I soon notice,d reacted in quite another way. They strolled calmly and smoothly, their bodies perfectly relaxed. They did not hunch away from the rain but rather glided through it. They directed their faces to it and did not flinch as it drummed their cheeks. They almost reveled in it. Somehow, I found this significant. The Zillers accepted the rain. They were not at odds with it, they did not deny it or combat it; they accepted it and went with it in harmony and ease. I tried it myself. I relaxed my neck and shoulders and turned my gaze into the wet. I let it do to me what it would. Of course, it was not trying to do anything to me. What a silly notion. It was simply falling as rain should, and I a man, another phenomenon of nature, was sharing the space in which it fell."

The quote is from this book, if anyone is interested. I'm a huge fan of everything by Tom Robbins but this book was a lovely one.

What I Want to Remember

Amelia is 11 months old next week.

It's a cliche, I know, but I have no idea where that time went or where it continues to go. I feel like I'm constantly doing double takes wondering if it's really this close to a year since I had her.

When you have a new baby so many moments take on significance. The first time they respond to their name, the first smile, the first tooth, the first giggle and the first full-on laugh, the first time they noticeably recognize you. If you're anything like me you frantically write down dates in animal-themed books so you have them somewhere, as though one day you'll have a party on April 25th every year to mark the anniversary of her 7th tooth coming in.

Amelia first tried solids--pears--at around 4.5 months. I had my mom record the event on her iPhone. At the time I asked my mother what my first food was, and she could really only guess since it was close to 30 years ago. That she couldn't remember something that was currently so central to my own life surprised me--would I really one day have to look up that her first food was pears, eaten at almost exactly 4.5 months in our dining room in Vermont? Would I forget the look on her face when she ate something aside from breastmilk for the first time? How could these things ever lose the deep, bone-crushing significance they seemed to have now?

But I realized that moments that seemed significant at the time to my mother were quickly buried by more and increasingly significant moments--riding a bike, interacting with my sisters, going to school--not to mention what I've done as an adult, and not to mention all the other significant moments in the lives of my two sisters.

Bottom line, there will come more moments, greater in number and in significance, and I imagine the little things that I recall so vividly now will fade into turtle- and owl-covered pages in her baby book.

But that doesn't mean I'm okay with forgetting them yet. As excited as I am for the future and for Amelia to grow and change, I can't help but find myself wanting to hang on to them in whatever way I can. To that end, here are some of those things that I want to remember about Amelia's first 11 months.

1. How her fist jiggles at the end of a very big stretch.

2. The high-pitched squeal she would make at the end of a scream as a newborn.

3. The drudgery and soul-crushing frustration of the "colic days."

4. How illuminating it felt when the colic days ended.

5. How her eyes scrunch up when she smiles.

6. Her ability to mimic our sounds ("hi," rolling her tongue, growling).

7. How she points at Rob (with her whole hand open) every time he comes home.

8. Watching her master clapping.

9. Her fondness for baths and water in general.

10. Watching Rob become a dad and grow more and more excited with each milestone.

11. Her 7th tooth came in on April 25th.

12. Her first food was pears. Eaten at 4.5 months in a dining room in Vermont. And she fucking loved them.

To Be Better

Having a kid makes you do some weird shit.

Like sometimes you wipe bodily fluids with your bare hand. That's one of the biggest cliches in the honest mom blogosphere but it's true. I mean you spend a relatively large percentage of your day cleaning another person's butthole. Most people's lives pre-baby have very little cleaning of buttholes, and given the incredibly abrupt transition between one and the other, it's pretty amazing how little thought you give it.

There are other, deeper things though. Deeper even than buttholes.

(Sorry.)

There are times you feel like you could explode with all the love you have for this tiny miracle of life and a second later you're walking to the mailbox and wondering if you could just keep walking into the forest and disappear.

And other times you come to fundamentally questioning who you are and what you've done. Every stupid or cruel or obnoxious thing you've said or done, no matter how distant in time or place, comes sharply into focus as though it happened just moments ago.  You become aware of how much trash you are responsible for putting into landfills, how much water you waste waiting for the shower to reach the right temperature or flushing bugs down the toilet, how little you have done to make a world with so much darkness into something better and brighter.

You look at your tiny miracle and realize that even if you do everything "right" you are constantly fucking it up.

I've always struggled with the pulse of failure beating in my brain, reminding me of all the stupid shit I said or did. I've dealt with imposter syndrome in just about every area of my life. But never has it been so strong or so fierce as when I realized that I am responsible for molding this human into someone who is better than I am.

Who agreed to let me do that? Who gave us permission to conceive and raise a child? When is her real mom coming to pick her up?

On the other hand, I suppose there's beauty in imperfection. Amelia doesn't know the difference since I'm the only mother she will ever have, and there's no rule that you need to have finished growing yourself before you grow a person.

All any of us can do is our best. I just hope I can make my best...better for her.

Things "Good" Parents Do That I Don't

Despite the fact that there are as many opinions of parenting as there are parents, and despite the fact that we are aware of all of them in this age of information, there is a single narrative of "good" parenting that is often held as the golden standard among parents of this generation. This "good" parent is 100% parent, all the time. The mother likely had an unmedicated birth or strived for one at the very least. Her children don't watch television, favoring instead Pinterest-worthy crafts made from fingerpaint and mason jars.  The toys in her immaculate house are BPA and pthalate-free or all made of wood.

I imagine while most of us project this bogeymom on every parent we meet, very few of us actually achieve it. I personally don't think this is a bad thing. My favorite people are the ones who embrace their imperfection and I hope my child grows up to be like that too.

To that end, here are some things that the "good" parent does that I don't:

1. Avoid screen time. Since I was in high school, I've always needed some sound going on in the background while I go about my day and most often this takes the form of a TV show I've seen a million times. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding screen time until the age of 2, but I'd say I gave up on even pretending I was following that by the time Amelia was a few weeks old. I figure if having the TV on gives me even a modicum of my sanity back it can only make me a better parent than TV-less Caitlin would be.

2. Give in to "mute buttons." Here's a really obnoxious truth about parenting for you: literally every object or method that actually gives you more than 5 seconds of peace is, according to some expert somewhere, irreparably harming your child. Pacifiers disrupt breastfeeding and cause nipple confusion. Exersaucers destroy your baby's hips and give her hip dysplasia. Bumbo seats force babies into unnatural positions and they'll never learn how to sit correctly. Cell phones will scramble their brains and give them ADD. Every blog post that demonizes these things gives at least a few alternatives but none of them work like the actual thing does. My baby could have every toy in front of her and she will still dive for my phone every damn time she sees it. Can you blame her? She's essentially the closest thing to a prehistoric human I will ever have in my house and that small, shiny square has ever-changing lights and sounds. If it makes her happy to look at her own face on the reverse camera, and if I can get a few minutes to fold laundry, so be it.

3. Read to my baby every day. Another not-realistic recommendation from the good old AAP is that you should read to your child from birth. Have you ever read to a 2-month-old? There's like an 80% chance they will stare at the wall the whole time. Have you ever read to a 9-month-old? If they're like mine, they'll grab the book from your hands, turn it around in their hands, throw it, and crawl away to something more interesting like ripping all the clothes out of the dresser. I'm sure this recommendation is extreme so that you'll actually try and fall somewhere in the middle, and while I will sometimes try to get through "Goodnight Moon" in the time it takes my daughter to realize I'm reading and crawl to me to rip it out of my hands, it definitely does not happen every night.

4. Talk to my baby all day. There's some statistic about how babies who hear more words will be smarter and more communicative and so on and so forth. Lots of parents will tell you, "just narrate your day, it's easy!" At least for me, though, this is much easier said than done. When I've tried, the conversation sounds something like this: "Wow, so you shit yourself I guess huh? What's that, is that the fireplace? Look, the dog. Do you want to breastfeed? My nose itches. Stop poking out the dog's eyes." As you can tell, it gets old and extremely unrewarding, so sometimes we just sit quietly and make funny noises.

5. Plan elaborate parties. Amelia's first birthday is coming up and I have planned absolutely nothing. I think elaborate birthday parties for babies are insane, honestly. Since her birthday falls near the Fourth of July, we will probably have some sheet cake and booze with family members and a few gifts. No theme, no cute favors, no $200 platters of food. Somehow I survived my childhood having slumber parties and a shindig at McDonald's once, I figure Amelia will too.

A Moment in Time

One really weird thing about having a baby is that while this is probably the most challenging, significant part of my life so far, Amelia won't remember a second of it.

Obviously there are important things happening for her here--science agrees that much of how she will interact with the world is figured out at this point. That's why I spend time helping her sleep, snuggling her, feeding her good food. If she didn't remember it and it didn't matter, I could feed her whiskey to help her sleep or ask Cypress to babysit.

Not that I would but...you know. I could.

This weekend I was laying on the couch with Amelia heavy and asleep on my chest (the only way she will currently nap). I could tell you that I always spend those moments marveling at the beauty of parenthood and magical unicorns and so forth, and while that does happen, most times I just scroll through social media on my phone and wait for her to wake up.

Not a lot of people tell you that about parenthood so here it is - there's a lot of waiting and moments "in between."

Anyway my phone started to die and I'd already slept for a few minutes, so I stared up at our skylight and started to think about how Amelia won't remember anything from this time. If she talks about herself as a baby, it'll only be through the lens of the memories I share with her. It's strange that this time can be simultaneously so unimportant in terms of her own memories and yet so significant to the development of her brain, her personality and her ability to relate to others.

As I looked down at her and thought of who she'll be in 5, 10, 20, 50 years, I realized that in some small way these experiences will stick with her. Maybe one day she'll smell something that reminds her of me--perhaps my infrequently-applied deodorant, or Tide detergent, or Burt's Bees chapstick--and feel a little nostalgic drop in her stomach that she can't quite identify but that is oddly peaceful to her.

That made my own stomach drop a bit, thinking of how vital I am to her survival now and how one day I will be only a piece of her life. I read the other day that the goal of parenthood is to make yourself obsolete, and my greatest wish for Amelia is that she feel confident enough to let go of me and Rob and move forward. But it doesn't mean it isn't a little sad to think that one day in the (hopefully) distant future I'll be nothing more than a series of memories to her.

Interesting how new life can make you think about death, isn't it?

Some Lists

Here are some lists about Amelia's life lately.

Nicknames
1. Goon
2. Goon-la-loon
3. Bitsy
4. Bits
5. Bootsie
6. Mealie-bot
7. Botskidoo

Favorite Toys:
1. Captain Calamari
2. Anything that isn't a toy
3. The remote control
4. Mom's phone
5. Stacking cups
6. Bath toys
7. The fireplace
8. The dog's paws, nose and eyebrows
9. The dog
10. The diaper wipe box

Sounds:
1. Rolling her tongue
2. Sharp inhales when she cries
3. Babbling (bababa, rarara. Sometimes it sounds like she's saying rob-rob-rob-rob)
4. Growling at dad

Skills:
1. Pulling herself up on anything and everything
2. (Almost) standing without help
3. Sleeping on her belly
4. Crawling like a champ
5. Growling at dad

Favorite Foods:
1. Anything that is food

Favorite TV Shows:
1. Sesame Street
2. Hockey games

Teeth:
1. Bottom
2. Bottom
3. Top
4. Top

Favorite Songs:
1. Anything by Meghan Trainor (I know, I know)
2. Alkaline Trio's latest album

Least Favorite Things Ever:
1. The carseat
2. Napping alone
3. Loud ripping or snapping sounds
4. The dog barking like, right in her ear

I Don't Mind

I don’t mind.

I don’t mind that you woke up for the fourth, fifth, sixth time tonight for no obvious reason. I don’t mind that it’s 4:35am.

I don’t mind that when I come into your room that you’re awake. Not wide awake, but definitely more awake than, you know, asleep.

I don’t mind bringing you downstairs to do the one thing that has always soothed you even in the deepest throes of colic: dancing to music. I picked Alkaline Trio this time.

I don’t mind having to turn off the computer screen and the nightlight while we dance because if I don’t you’ll stare at them and stay awake.

I don’t mind having to constantly readjust so that one hand is always holding your head as we dance. I know it helps you fall asleep and more importantly, I know you like it.

I don’t mind that you fight me again with increasingly quieter squawks. I know you want to experience the world around you instead of sleeping, and I hope you retain that curiosity as you get older.

I don’t mind that my feet are getting cold pacing the floor as you resist the sleep you so desperately need. I don’t mind that my arms ache from holding and swaying you.

I definitely don’t mind the way your body and head slowly get heavier against me as you drift off to sleep. One day I’ll remember this moment and I’ll miss it when you are grown. I don’t know what that feels like from experience, but the seed of that future loss was sown the day you were born and I am constantly aware of its presence. Sleep seems so important now, but I know it won’t some day.

I don’t mind walking you back upstairs and laying you down, taking extra, excruciating care to make sure I don’t wake you up.

Honestly I do mind a little bit when your eyes immediately snap open and you start to scream again the second you hit the bed.

But it's okay. Alkaline Trio has a lot of songs.

Motherhood Lately

Amelia is about 9 days away from turning 8 months old.

And where the hell that time went, I have absolutely no idea.

When she was first born, and really until she was about 4 1/2 months old, time could not have gone slower. As I've written about previously, she was very colicky, and with the specter of postpartum depression hanging over my head and the anxiety of being thrown into motherhood...let's just say it was a tough fourth trimester.

Everyone told me that it'd get easier, that it'd get better, that I'd forget the absolute drudgery of that time. I'm not far enough away from it to forget it (some days I think it's actually worse in my memory than it was in reality), but I can finally report that it did, in fact, get better.

At 7 1/2 months old, Amelia is bright, aware, engaging, communicative. She reaches both for me and for Rob, eats whatever we shovel into her mouth, doesn't (always) scream when I leave the room, is back to sleeping through the night in her own bed (knock on wood), is working toward crawling and walking simultaneously. She is still fussier than a lot of babies, but generally only when she's tired, lonely, hungry, or wakes up from a nap too early. If there is such a thing as an introverted baby, she is one; when we go somewhere new or when someone new comes to us, her fussiness ramps up a bit and she requires a fair amount of "recharge" time. Sometimes I worry that she is this way because in her first months we didn't go many places or meet new people, but either way it is how she is and we are learning to adapt to meet her needs. A lot of our day is still spent pulling her back from the brink of misery (for all involved) but it's about a thousand times less unpleasant than it was in her first few months.

I suppose that along with her evening out, we have gotten a lot better too. We are more used to her ups and her downs, we know what works and what doesn't, and we learn more about each other every second of every day. Before she was born I always thought there'd be a point at which we felt like we had the basics down and had a good flow; I've realized, though, that this point doesn't really exist at least in the way that I had expected. It might be that my baby is uniquely difficult, but it seems that she never has one habit for too long and as soon as we get accustomed to her she flips the tables on us.  The most recent example is that she was napping only in the carrier for months, and now putting her into the carrier launches a massive screaming fit. At the current moment I can only get her to nap in our bed with me there, and it takes a lot of fighting and nursing to make that happen. Another example is that she was almost 100% weaned onto formula for several weeks only to give up and refuse bottles in favor of breastfeeding again. It's taken awhile for my milk supply to respond to "unweaning" but I think we're in a good place. At this point I might just nurse forever for how well it works toward getting her to sleep.

This is one thing I would convey to expecting mothers from my experience: plan away if it helps you, but be ready for near-constant change. Don't internalize it, because it probably isn't your fault. Babies are terrible.

Aside from all that (or maybe partially because of it) motherhood is as amazing and beautiful. I don't know why I feel the need to clarify to the world that I love my kid--it should be a given--but I share a lot of the tough stuff so there's some positive for you too.

Happy week, friends!

In Which I Compare Parenthood to Fictionalized Serial Murder

You know that scene at the end of Se7en where (spoiler alert, if you just time traveled here from 1995) Morgan Freeman opens the package to find Gwyneth Paltrow's head, and he realizes that Kevin Spacey has totally used him and Brad Pitt to complete his murderous tableau, and that in his words, "John Doe has the upper hand"?

I had a realization the other day that that, for me, in a nutshell, is what it's like to have a baby.

WHAT'S IN THE FUCKING BOX? It's my sanity.

I've written before about how prior to Amelia's arrival I had read and saved dozens of blog posts that ranged in topics from sleep to Montessori activities to raising an "independent" child. They were all centered around one key idea, that by performing the correct steps in the correct sequence, you could in turn determine the child and person that your progeny would become. 

This concept appealed to me, since as an anxious person the ultimate goal of worrying and obsessing is to control a situation that is fundamentally uncontrollable. 

I realized in short order that not only are babies not blank slates, they also don't read or adhere to parenting advice. Or at least mine doesn't. The little rebel.

Though Amelia slept through the night by 5-6 weeks, we have since "regressed" to full-time cosleeping. It's literally the only way she will sleep. Not only does she need to be in our bed, but it means I can't leave the bed (even when she's asleep) without her screaming. And it's real screaming, not just angry baby noises. Despite the fact that when she was a newborn I made something of an effort to not hold her constantly, she is currently at least somewhat unhappy unless she is in my arms all the time. 

I'm revealing my own naivete, perhaps, when I admit that I thought if I had a good sleeper by 3 months or so then that was it. My work was done barring the occasional episode of teething or developmental leaps.

Going back to my metaphor, finally coming to and accepting the realization that parenting advice is really more of a guideline assuming you have a certain type of kid was a bit like Morgan Freeman opening the box and realizing that he never had the control he thought he did. 

I know that a lot of my parental desires boil down to wanting Amelia to be independent. That isn't because I want to be left alone or that I don't want her thinking she can depend on me; rather, I know from personal experience how hard it is to go through life requiring validation, constantly feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, never feeling truly comfortable being yourself. I don't want that for her. 

Perhaps appropriately given my own mental state, I don't want her to be like me.

But that's not what parenting is about, is it? Once you get past the obvious initial stage, it isn't about creating a person from scratch. It's growing a person, shaping a person. And that's exactly what she is--a person, albeit a small one.  Who she is is largely beyond my control, and while it is my job to guide her during her formative years, it is also to love her no matter who she is or who she becomes. Not only that, but who she is at 7 months is unlikely to be who she is at 7 or 17 or 70. 

If she's like me, maybe she'll feel fortunate that she has a mother who can understand her anxiety beyond tired platitudes like "just stop worrying." If she ends up being more independent like her dad, maybe she'll cherish the fact that she when she feels vulnerable she has a mom who is well-versed in the ways of fear.  Either way all I can do is what works best for the both of us and try to let go of the illusion of control.

And that, I guess, is why parenting is like finding a bloody head in a box in the best way possible.

What Parenthood Looks Like

I find that when it comes to motherhood, there are two general narratives you find online.

The first is of the mother that has everything together (or at least appears to), who has the Pinterest-worthy nursery and birthday parties, who speaks glowingly about every single phase of a child's life as being truly magical.  This mother inexplicably has white walls and light-colored carpets, always has the laundry done and makes her own baby food.  Even when this mom "keeps it simple" the result could still feasibly be its own magazine cover. She also probably cloth diapers and talks about how much easier it is (convinced this is a lie).

The second is an opposing vision: this mother loves her children as well, but neglects her significant other. She wears crusty, stained yoga pants, her hair hasn't seen shampoo in weeks. This mother defines her parenting style by the absence, rather than the presence, of overachievement. As proud of the other mother is of her parties and her nursery, this mom is just as proud of the fact that her children ate cereal for dinner while she drank her wine.

At this point I will say that I am not suggesting that either of these parents loves their child more or less than the other; indeed, though you find plenty of examples of both these narratives on the internet, I don't think either tell the entire picture.

The plunge into parenthood is fraught with as much guilt and insecurity as it is with joy and amazement. that much any parent will tell you.  With mothers in particular (in a biased, heternormative sense as that is my experience) I think many find it easier to express the push and pull in extremes, such as the extreme examples above.  This doesn't leave a lot of room for the grey areas into which most people fall. If there's one thing I've learned about parenting over the last 5.5 months, it's that you'll often find yourself immersed (submerged? drowning?) in nuance and grey areas.

All that said, I thought I'd share with you what parenting, and more specifically motherhood, look like for me--equal parts overachievement and "just getting by."

• No matter in which direction I look, there is at least one baby-related item in my periphery. 
• Spending an additional .50 on the "nice" baby food jars to compensate for the guilt of not making my own healthy baby food.
• Trying the Ferber method, then trying full-time cosleeping. Mixed results with both.
• Making sure the plastic toys I buy are BPA and phthalate free despite the fact that I can't tell you with any certainty exactly what BPA or phthalates are.
• Breastfeeding exclusively except for the odd bottle of formula to get a break.
• Babywearing, not for its supposed benefits but because it's the only way my baby naps that still allows me to get work done.
• I could not care less about the decor or cake for Amelia's first birthday.
• In a fit of exhaustion I might've told Amelia I'd sell her to the circus. 

So there you go. Parenthood. At least my kid should develop a good sense of humor out of all this.

The 5 People You Meet on Mom Forums

Here's a secret about me: one of my guilty pleasures is internet drama. When I come across a controversial article the first place I go is the comments. I'm a regular reader of the Scary Mommy Confessional. As a result of this guilty pleasure it is not surprising that I often find myself reading forums on BabyCenter.

For those of you who have not sunk into the depths of the Internet Mamarati, BabyCenter is what people warn you about when tell you not to Google anything. Sometimes I'm convinced that BabyCenter hires people to post ridiculous threads that get clicks because they are so fucking out there. I just can't (or don't want to) believe that people like this exist.

But they do, in some form, and below I've shared the five types of moms I've come across on mom forums.

HAVING IT ALL

1. The Overachieving Crunchy Mom: Many of the regulars on mom forums create a "signature" for themselves that appears every time they post. The Overachieving Crunchy Mom's signature is chock full of all her crunchy achievements with near-unintelligible acronyms. This mother practices EBF (extended breastfeeding) and CD (cloth diapering), doesn't vaccinate or try CIO (cry it out) and plans to "unschool" their darling LO (little one).  Because it isn't enough to just feel strongly about these things, this mom makes sure that all other posters know all the ins, outs, and questionable science behind all of it.

Example Posts: 

"Have you tried squirting breastmilk on your LO's cut/broken bone/eye? We've been EBFing our 4yo and breastmilk in her ear canal cured her multiple ear infections!"

"You took your baby to get shots at 2 months old? EDUCATE YOURSELF WITH THIS SERIES OF BLOG POSTS I FOUND, SHEEP."

*~*~*~*~*

2. The Sanctimommy: Mom forums are positively rife with this type of mom. This chick replies to every post, welcome or not, with passive-aggressive assurances of how much better of a mom she is and how what you're doing is not only wrong, but will most likely ruin your child for life. Every decision, no matter how tiny or seemingly insignificant, has massive, irreversible effects to this mother.

Example Posts:

"How could you leave your CHILD to cry for an hour? My child has never even cried for 20 seconds let alone an hour! It's called being a loving parent."

"I guess whatever works for your family, but I could never do that personally."

*~*~*~*~*

3. The Humblebragger Mom: Another frequent poster. This mom will reply to every anxiety-laden question by confirming another mom's fears with her own experiences. Worried about the fact that your child isn't rolling yet? This mom's baby has been rolling since she was 4 weeks old. Concerned about your baby's babbling skills? This mom's kid was speaking in full sentences as a fetus. But no worries y'all, babies develop at a different pace and I'm sure he will soon!

Example Posts:

"My husband and I have had sex 78 times a week starting when my baby was 2 weeks old!"

"My child has slept through the night since she was 3 days old! SO BLESSED."

*~*~*~*~*

4. The "Bumper" Mom: When a mom's post doesn't get a response quickly enough, this mom will comment with "bump" to return it to the top of the page..over and over and over again.

Example Post:

*Bump*

*Bump*

*Bump*

*~*~*~*~*

5. The TMI Mom: Motherhood tears down a lot of walls, particularly in the realm of bodily functions. For this mom, this manifests itself in sharing graphic photos of feces, vaginal discharge, and wounds.

Example Posts:

"I found red strings in my LO's poop today. GRAPHIC PHOTO."

"Does this cervical mucus mean I've ovulated?"

*~*~*~*~*

Want to hear a funny story? Some of these are based on actual conversations/replies on BabyCenter forums.  Motherhood is a whole other world, y'all. Don't Google.

Some Positivity

Both on Facebook and here, I tend to write a lot about the dirty side of parenting. This is both because I am generally a negative person and because I'm in what is by all accounts a pretty difficult stage of parenthood with a baby who is decidedly on the fussy end of the temperament spectrum.

A few friends, both parents and non-parents, have told me that they appreciate my thoughts on how parenting can suck. The rosy, unicorn-magic picture of motherhood tends to get a lot more play, and frankly that picture gets old, especially when you don't feel the magic as a mom or worry you won't when you have kids. Motherhood is isolating enough without feeling like you're the only one who is missing something that everyone else seems to have figured out.

That said, there's something to be said for some positivity among the "realness," and that's what I wanted to write here.

Motherhood has been the deepest, most real thing I've ever done. The love I feel for Amelia is mind-blowingly, soul-crushingly huge. I'm amazed by every bit of her, from her little turned-up nose to her long toes, to her grey and brown eyes, to the tiny red birthmark near her left elbow, to the veins in her forehead that come together to form a heart. The love and terror and joy and pain I feel with her is deeper, stranger and more foreign to me than anything I've ever felt before.

Even when Amelia screams, even when liking her feels difficult and exhausting, I never lose sight for a second how lucky we are to have her with us, healthy and increasingly happy. Lucky that my pregnancy was not only easy to come by but completely uneventful. Lucky that we get to experience the intensity of our love for her. Parenthood isn't for everyone, certainly, but we are so, so happy that she joined our family.

Amelia made us into parents, added light and love and noise to our home, added a leg to our journey that is unlike any that came before it. With every fiber, tendon, nerve, bone, cell in my body I love her and want to give everything I am to her.

So there you go. Some real positivity among the dirty, messy reality of parenting. I hope you are all having a lovely weekend.

An Anxious Mom's Tips for the First Three Months

Amelia turned 5 months old this week which is absolutely insane to me. Where did those five months even go?

Since I kept both myself and Amelia alive (with lots of help, obviously) for five months, I figured that I can finally consider myself qualified to give other anxious moms some advice for getting through the first three months of life with a baby.

1. Get yourself some (real) mom friends. One of the most invaluable resources I had during the first few months was regular contact with several friends whose babies were of the same age as Amelia. But if you're anything like me, you need to find friends that you can vent to and who won't judge you for thinking that having a baby kind of sucks sometimes. Friends you can text in the middle of the night because they're awake too. I can't overstate how helpful it is to have someone outside of your situation that could understand the unique mixture of love, frustration, guilt, terror and dislike that come with having a baby.

2. Don't stress too much about habits. Before I had a baby I read a lot about getting babies to sleep, and while some of it was helpful most of it lulled me into a false sense of control over everything. The fact is, based on my experience and the experience of other parents I know, your child is born with certain sleeping habits. There are certain things you can do to help encourage some habits over others, but really the baby is going to call the shots. I swore up and down that I'd never cosleep, but in the middle of the night when I didn't want to sit in a chair for a 20-minute feed only to have Amelia's eyes spring open the second I put her down, suddenly I didn't really care about habits I might be creating. Survive day to day and don't stress too much about habits you may be creating down the line. You'll have plenty of time for consistency later.

3.  Live second by second, day by day. I tend to get really anxious when I feel trapped. I know "trapped" is a crappy word to use when talking about your flesh and blood that you created, but knowing that I am a mother forever and that my life has been permanently changed always overwhelms me if I think about it too long. For someone like me who gets far too caught up in the future, I found in the first months that it helped to focus only on what was right in front of me.

4. Pick a mantra. Many people who know me know that I have a secret love for cheesy-ass country music. When Amelia was in the throes of colic, I remembered a stupid country song called "You're Gonna Miss This," and I'd often repeat the chorus to myself: "you're gonna miss this/you're gonna want this back/you're gonna wish these days/hadn't gone by so fast." Maudlin and cliched and ridiculous, but I found that saying it to myself helped keep the whole thing in perspective--this time was temporary and short-lived, and she'd be older before I knew it.

5. Be clear about your needs. I still struggle with this. I often expected Rob to anticipate my needs without actually conveying them, which meant that I was almost always left feeling resentful and put-upon (it helps that I sometimes love being a martyr. Wife of the year). When I started feeling more comfortable telling him "I need a nap, can you watch the baby?" I found that he was more than willing to help.  This goes for people outside of your relationship as well--other moms are often incredibly enthusiastic to lend a hand if you ask for it.

6. Sleep when the baby sleeps, but do other things too. I hated hearing "sleep when the baby sleeps," because while it is great advice, I found that watching the laundry and dog hair pile up caused me more stress than sleep deprivation. I started carving out time to fold laundry, do dishes, vacuum. It was surprisingly relaxing to do something that didn't need me, that didn't scream at me, that didn't make me feel completely inadequate.

7. Go easy on yourself. Take care of yourself and keep yourself healthy, both physically and mentally. If this means giving up breastfeeding, go for it. If it means putting your darling child in daycare once they are old enough, do it. Mom guilt is impossible to escape, but try to give yourself permission to be a person too. You are no less of a parent for doing so.

So there you have it, some of the things that kept me sane for months 1-3. If you have any to add please feel free to do so in the comments!

Musings on Having a Fussy Baby

I thought when Amelia was born that who she was as a day-old baby was generally who she'd be for awhile.  By that rubric, she was the perfect newborn. She slept and ate like a champ and rarely cried. I wrote in her baby book that she "only cried when she was hungry" and Rob and I congratulated on each other on winning the baby lottery.

Then she turned 3 weeks old and it all fell the hell apart.

Colic hit her like a steam engine. She'd spend the day sleeping for the most part, but come 4:30 and she'd scream blood-curdling shrieks until at least 10:00pm. We'd dance, we'd sing, we'd try every device and liquid on the market to calm her.  At the appointment where we discovered her milk protein allergy, the pediatrician told me that it very well could be the source of her misery and that avoiding dairy could solve our problem completely. I cut dairy out completely and her stomach began to regulate, but the screaming continued.

And continued...and continued...and continued...

I loved (and love) my child with every stupid fiber of my being but I was finding it really hard to like her some days. With that came incredible guilt--guilt for not constantly enjoying the magic of having a baby, for thinking far too often about our life before her.

The colic eventually faded, but she was still incredibly fussy. She gave up the daytime sleeping and the majority of my day was spent trying to pull her back from the edge of crank. It was demoralizing, both because the screaming rang in my head as a constant reminder of my failure and because I hated that she hated life so much.

When you have a fussy baby you hear plenty of advice and lots of "it gets betters." While they were well-intentioned, it eventually got wearing since none of the traditional fussy baby advice worked for us:

Have you tried the swing? Amelia has tolerated her swing long enough to fall asleep exactly one time. Every other time she is impressed for approximately five minutes and then is ready for whatever is next, mother.

How about a pacifier? I've never heard of a kids who didn't like pacifiers until I had one. At this point I can only get her to take the pacifier when she's in the Ergo and her hands are pinned below her, as she brings her hands up to her face a lot and pops the pacifier out.

Take her for a ride in the car! I have also never heard of a baby who hated the car, but I have one. She tends to run warm which is part of the problem since carseats hold heat, but other than that I have no idea why a trip longer than five minutes makes her scream as though she's being torn limb from limb.

Put her in the carseat on top of the drier! Turns out this trick must have worked a lot better in the 1980s when driers vibrated a lot more. Our drier doesn't get warm on top nor does it vibrate enough for her to notice that anything's different.

The only thing that worked consistently was if I carried her around, dancing, with music. Remove any one of those factors and the screaming continued.

I remember reading a post written for new mothers that wished them the peace of a "mute button," something that would calm their child for even a few minutes. It seemed that my daughter had nary a one, or at least one that was easy and allowed me to do something aside from stare at her. She was thankfully a breeze come nighttime, if that counts as a mute button, but our days were incredibly long.

Along with the frustration of not being able to calm your baby comes a fear that something isn't right, either something physical or something...deeper. I'm not super proud of this but in the darkest, most frustrated moments I was worried that something was fundamentally wrong with my kid. That maybe she was the one child for whom it never would "get better" and that she was born just hating life and hating me. Before I had a kid, I remember assuring friends with similar fears that everything was surely fine. I remember wondering how they could ever actually worry about something so illogical.  Turns out when you are at the end of your rope, staring at a child in your arms that has been screaming non-stop for hours on end, your mind goes into some pretty weird places.

Luckily at around 4 months, the smiles became more frequent. We got a few laughs. We started to have days where both of those things outnumbered the screams, days where the hours of colic seemed a distant memory or another person's kid that someone told us about. I'm still not confident in my abilities as a mother by any stretch of the imagination but I figure we are learning together. I might not know how totally how to be a mom yet but Amelia sure as hell doesn't know how to be a person.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you are reading this and you have a colicky or fussy baby (I find many mothers are loathe to say the word "colic" for some reason. My hairdresser told me that her son was VERY close to having colic, which as my mom pointed out is like being "a little bit pregnant.") I won't tell you that "it gets better" even though it most assuredly does. When people told me things like "wait until 4 months/6 months/1 year, then it's totally different," they might as well have told me "it's really hard until they graduate college" for how far away it felt. All I can tell you is to take every day second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. Know you aren't alone, reach out when you  need to, and pick a safe vice (mine was Liz Lovely cookies heated in the oven).

I found that it also helped to find another parent with a similarly-aged child you can vent to, Someone you can text in the middle of the night, someone who won't judge you for saying things like "why does my husband WALK SO DAMN LOUD" and "THIS KID WON'T SHUT THE HELL UP," who doesn't return your vents with admonishments or humblebragging about how magical they find the experience. These parents will be invaluable. I don't know that I would've made it through months 1-4 without them.

Above all, remember that though babies are kind of dicks sometimes, your baby is not defective. There's a reason nature made them cute, and in the case of biological children, there's a reason they often look like the person you may have actually chosen to spend your life with.   

(Really) Real Talk: Breastfeeding

One of the funniest parts about transitioning from pregnancy to baby for me was when I became the person that dispenses the advice and platitudes that every pregnant lady hates.

"Have sex! Enjoy your alone time! You have no idea what's about to happen to you! Enjoy your sleep because THINGS ARE GONNA CHANGE!"

I had positively loathed this well-intentioned advice, especially in the last few months of my pregnancy. How can I enjoy my time any more than I do now? I already enjoy sleep and obviously things are gonna change, that's the point, right?

Several friends either became pregnant just before Amelia was born or announced their pregnancies soon after. I follow a few of them on Pinterest so I was able to witness the evolution of their pregnancy through their repins: "30 Montessori activities to do with newborns"; "All about your natural labor"; "Newborn sleep techniques that work!" I had also pinned and read all of these posts during my pregnancy, and once Amelia came they gathered internet-dust as I clung to whatever worked for us in the moment.  Though the sight of these pins filled me with eye-rolls and "oh right good luck with thats," I'm not a total asshole and left the poor pregnant ladies alone just as many moms (mercifully) left me alone.

Of course there's no way to know what sleep deprivation is like until you're going through it. Of course you can't conceive of the love and strong dislike and fear and guilt until your child is here and you're responsible for keeping it alive. I've learned, though, that it's part of the joy of both pregnancy and childbirth to be totally blindsided by all of it.

But some of these pins gave me pause--specifically those about breastfeeding.

There are a million pinnable posts that give tips on breastfeeding. I surveyed a few, having four months of breastfeeding under my belt. I found that while the information was valuable--how to latch properly, the importance of lanolin, beware ye of mastitis, use a pillow--almost all of it focused on the physical difficulties of breastfeeding. The posts I found that did touch on emotional troubles were by women who first had physical problems with breastfeeding, some of whom had eventually switched to formula. I had a difficult time finding an objective post about how emotionally difficult breastfeeding is, even when everything goes right.

Personally, I knew in an abstract way that breastfeeding could be physically difficult. Like a lot of other pregnant ladies my eyes would glaze over at discussion of latching and I never took a class, deciding that I'd figure it out as I went and would switch to formula if I couldn't make enough milk or ran into other issues. Turns out breastfeeding has been (mostly) a breeze for us.  I spent the first weeks with my toes curled and eyes tightly shut for the first few seconds of a latch, but after that the baby (and my nipples) got the hang of it and we were golden. I had no idea, however, of how emotionally difficult breastfeeding would be for me.

Make sure to get every precious ounce of my soul, darling!

If you're a human in our society today you probably know how ruthless the breastfeeding debate is among mothers. I'm pretty sure some moms would make a case for how breastmilk could unlock a cure for cancer or mend broken bones if they could get away with it.  Interestingly science doesn't really back up many of the claims that lactivists do make, but people continue to see breastfeeding as a measure by which your entire approach to parenting can be judged. I saw OBs in New Mexico, Maine, and Vermont during my pregnancy and it was assumed by all of them that I would breastfeed without question. My doctor in Santa Fe, at one of my first appointments, examined my breasts and said, "and you're planning on breastfeeding." It was a statement, not a question. I personally wanted to breastfeed and was ultimately able to, so these assumptions didn't make me all that uncomfortable. After I gave birth to Amelia, the nurses in the hospital were also incredibly pushy about breastfeeding. They would come in at least every hour, usually just as we were planning on taking a nap, grab Amelia and my nipple and maneuver us into a good breastfeeding pose. Again, I wanted to breastfeed and after having my vagina probed and beaten to hell the overly familiar physical contact didn't bother me, but I couldn't help thinking about how uncomfortable it would be if we'd made the decision not to breastfeed at all, or if I was unable to for some reason.

My point in giving my back story is to highlight how entrenched in our consciousness the "breast is best" mantra is.  Because of the message's ubiquity among medical staff and mommy bloggers alike, part of me wonders if the posts I mentioned above avoid the emotional difficulties because (1) no one wants to admit that they aren't always blown away by the magic of nursing and (2) they don't want to dissuade women from doing it before they've even tried.  While I can understand the hesitance to admit either of these things, I also think it's extremely important that we discuss and normalize the difficulties of life with a baby, or we risk isolating women even further during what is perhaps the most vulnerable time of their lives.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to give an honest depiction of how hard breastfeeding can be even when you have no physical problems. Below is a list of some of the most difficult emotional roadblocks I've encountered with nursing:

1. Loss of independence. Before Amelia was born, I had no idea how much time I would spend physically attached to her solely so she could eat.  Newborn babies need to eat every 1-2 hours, and because feeds can last anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes, you could end up on the couch for most of the day. I had always assumed I would pump milk so that Rob could feed her too, but with her feeding schedule and the fact that pumping totally sucks, it just never happened and feeding her was (and continues to be) 100% my responsibility. Unless I want to feed in public (which aside from nipple-flashing concerns also just sucks) or find time to pump ahead of time, we can't leave the house for longer than 2-3 hours even now that she's older. I'll often go 3 or 4 days without ever leaving the house if Rob is working.

2. Pumping sucks. Haha, see what I did there? Maybe it's just me, but pumping is in every way just the worst. Part of it is that when my child isn't eating, I don't really want to be hooked up to a machine simulating it. The other part is that a pump isn't nearly as efficient at extracting breastmilk, and despite having a pretty decent supply, I can usually only get 2-3 ounces from one breast after 15 minutes of trying. Because it is so terrible, I tend to procrastinate doing it and end up never getting a break.

3. Loss of self. When your body spends so much of the day devoted to a completely separate person--especially after doing just that for 9 solid months--it's really difficult to feel like a person instead of a dairy cow. A few times when Rob would say, "I think she's hungry," I'd sing the ice cream truck song as I walked down the stairs with my boobs out.

4. Breastfeeding culture. Second only to pumping, breastfeeding culture on the internet is just the worst. There are plenty of women who genuinely want to encourage and support others (and ladies, you are amazing), but unfortunately the ones whose voices are loudest seem to be on a mission to make other women feel as insecure as I imagine they do.  When you admit to having trouble breastfeeding, instead of supportive words they are the first to tell you how magical an experience it's been for them and how maybe you just aren't trying hard enough. Aside from the constant humblebrag, there are a lot of these women who treat formula feeding as failure or capitulation instead of a valid alternative. Unfortunately I think all of this leads to women feeling even more isolated, because they feel like they're the only ones who are having a difficult time or finding themselves feeling resentful about breastfeeding.

5. Loss of equality. I've always considered my marriage to be extremely egalitarian. But the problem with breastfeeding (and hating pumping) is that no matter how many goats you slaughter during the harvest moon your significant other, if they are male, will never be able to lactate. And as a result, if you choose to nurse, you will always be the primary parent. This is kind of a no-brainer, but it's not something I ever considered until I was sitting in the rocking chair facing my sleeping husband and wanting to scream in his face until he woke up and shared in my misery.

Obviously despite these challenges I have continued to breastfeed, and will for at least the foreseeable future. For me there are a lot of positives: it's completely free (minus all the extra cookies I eat), Amelia has responded well to it, it's helped me lose weight and breastmilk is like some magic sleep potion (maybe formula is too, I'm not sure).  I feel really fortunate that we were able to breastfeed with little to no physical problems, but I can feel grateful and still be aware of how isolating breastfeeding can be.

The bottom line is that breastfeeding is hard. It is hard physically and it can definitely be hard emotionally. In the maelstrom of emotions and fears that come with pregnancy and childbirth, it's easy for new moms to lose sight of this decision until they're forced to make it. There are plenty of posts about the positive emotional aspects of breastfeeding, but I think it's just as important to share some of the harsher realities as well.

Ultimately, moms, do what you need to do to nourish your child and just as importantly, nourish yourselves. Whether that leads you to breastfeeding or formula, know that the fact that you care at all means that you're doing a badass job.

Split Personalities

After some deliberation I decided to create a separate blog from my primary one. I found that I was censoring myself for fear of alienating the community I've created over there. I also want to have some separation between my former blog-self and the mom shit I'm going through.

I'm hoping that I can keep both up. I probably can't. But worth a try, eh?