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Nobody tells you about these days. I mean, really tells you. You find out you’re
“expecting” and everybody showers you with onsies and knitted booties and baby
wipe warmers and diaper cakes. They
offer eloquent advice about “living in the moment” and “not sweating the small
stuff” and “napping when the baby naps”. They even give you a copy of the
sacred bible for pregnant women, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” to
guide you through. You are certain that between that, its sequel, “What to
Expect in the First Year”, and your state of the art changing table, you’ll
have it down to a science in no time.
But you didn’t really need a peanut
gallery to illustrate this fantasy you have about motherhood. Before you ever saw
those 2 pink lines on that stick, you’d already developed your own idealistic theories
about how everybody else had been screwing up this thing we call parenting for centuries,
and how you were going to revolutionize the field. You’d say things to
your single friends, twisting your hair and sipping your martini, like “I would
NEVER talk to my children like that. What is wrong with that woman?” You’d secretly scrutinize
the overwhelmed mother of 3 at the checkout line as she fumbled for her bank card while
frantically stuffing a Binky in her infant’s mouth, completely oblivious to her
5 year old taking change from the March of Dimes jar or her 3 year old peeling a
wad of gum from the handle of the shopping cart with his teeth. You’d roll your
eyes and think to yourself, “Pull it together, lady!”
Your
cronies simply drizzled the icing on your sugar-sweet mom cake. They
became your allies in cementing the illusion that you can have it all… your dream career,
your flawless marriage, your perfectly mannered & immaculately manicured 2.5 children, your size 2
waistline, your picket fenced yard and the chocolate lab who adores you for it.
What people forgot to tell you were the details. Those tiny details, like how
your birth experience will
undoubtedly look nothing like your birth plan. You can go ahead and pack all the massage oils and fake candles and Enya and raspberry leaf
tea you want in your hospital bag but if that baby is kicking your cervix on
the day of delivery, chances are good you’ll end up with fluorescent lights and
a scalpel in your scrapbook. Or what about the fact that beginning breastfeeding will not resemble
the image on the lactation consultant’s brochure? In fact, it will look more like a game
of Twister with a 7lb person attached to you, juggling your position
with his position, his lingual skills, your milk supply, your cracked areola, a Boppy pillow, a bra, your pride and, of course, your modesty blanket so that
nobody else is offended by your baby and his means of survival.
None of
those baby shower attendees disclosed that no matter how much Chanel you drench
yourself in, you are inevitably going to smell like spit up for at least 6
months postpartum. Or the other details… like despite the fact that you
religiously perform and chart your Kegel exercise routine, a sneeze will
forever become synonymous with a sense of shear panic and leg crossing from about
3 months gestation on. Even laughing will
become an activity you prefer to do only in the presence of those who will love
you anyway. You can basically cross jumping jacks right off the list. They also
fail to add that you can go all Atkins and sit-ups and pull-ups and crunch your
obliques till you drop, but skin does not vanish and stretch marks will be the
permanent reminder of your own personal battlefield we call the labor and
delivery room. They don’t mention that if not for everyone else and their
opinions of your pouch, you’d probably tear up and smile when you saw it in the
mirror.
Your
esteemed mentors omit the fact that exactly 4 months after delivery the lush,
flowing mane you’ve acquired during pregnancy will fall out with a vengeance,
until you can see more of your scalp than you can the shower floor. They forget
to note that miniature bowel movements will soon become a primary topic of your conversations
and you’ll find yourself discussing them with people you’ve only just met.
It’s not
really until you are in the trenches of early motherhood that you discover for
the first time your ability to physically feel the hurts of another person and
realize that you would actually be willing to take on their pain yourself in order to
relieve them. You find yourself waking multiple times in the night just to hear the rhythm of their heart or the ebb & flow of their fragile lungs. And you ask yourself, “Why? Why wouldn’t the parents before me tell
me about this? Why wouldn’t they explain to me that I would become so deeply
connected to this tiny person from the day of conception that I would literally
lay down my life for them? Why didn’t my own mother tell me about this?!”
This
early period of time also contains the moments where you discover that all the
things you never thought about or cared about have become your most vital
issues. Issues like nutrition and
vaccines and cloth diapers and education and God and discipline and sexual
predators. Issues that will keep you up at night, gnawing fingernails, pigeon pecking
inquiries into Google for someone to tell you THE answer, only to discover that
there are hundreds - no, thousands of answers and only you can choose the
one that suits your family. But it doesn’t end here. Once you’ve made your
decision on any of these issues, you will inevitably encounter the storm troopers who
remind you frequently that your child will probably die or will at the very
least suffer a long life of prostitution as a result of your verdict. And that
is also the moment you have the Great Epiphany… that this job doesn’t actually
end when they turn 18, like everyone once said… this job is eternal.
It’s not
until you’ve reached the throes of late toddler-hood that you become acquainted
with the ceiling of your patience-o-meter. You also discover that you actually
possess a wee demon in your voice box you didn’t know existed. You realize
that you had better learn to tame the beast quickly, because the buttons are
getting bigger every day, and they are being pushed more frequently. You begin
to reflect on the martini sipping days of judging those other angry and
fumbling mothers. You look in the proverbial mirror and suddenly you relate
more with them than you do with your former self. And then you actually look in
the mirror… and then you wish you had that martini.
The big
one they kept to themselves is the secret that witnessing a tiny, high pitched voice
read her first sentence aloud will make every other definitive chapter of your
life fade into a fog of background noise. Suddenly your sports trophies, first
kiss, first car, college thesis, even careers become insignificant in
comparison to the magnitude of this milestone. And then, there's that moment where she instinctively races over to help another child in need, without even a nudging on your part. In that fleeting frame, you don't care if she ever learns anything else in her life, because you know that this act is far more valuable to the future of our society than any academic achievement could boast.
Every
psychologist will tell you that your own early years were your most “formative”. Nobody ever tells you that these bubble
blowing, reprimanding, chicken dancing, laundry folding, potty training, soul
searching, jelly spreading, seed planting, book devouring, sibling pinching, nail
biting, music making, milk spilling, nose picking, knee scraping, booboo kissing,
finger painting, knees bent and hands
clasped days would be the ones that would change every aspect of who you
are and who you thought you’d be forever.
You
know, it really isn’t fair, that the generations of parents before us fail to emphasize
the true, deep impact of what bringing a new life in this world will have on
our minds, our bodies, our entire souls… that it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising
to find out that even our fingerprints had been altered by this journey. Why
wouldn’t they impart this vital information as ceremoniously as they
bequeath the family recipe books upon us?
Well, the
responsibility now lies with you- you who have navigated this heavily trodden
path of parenthood. You, who have been irrepressibly transformed by your very own Lilliputian. The next time you
encounter that fresh, rosy cheeked, doe-eyed, barely bumped lady in waiting and
she asks you for the truth about what she can expect now that she’s expecting…
Don’t
ruin the surprise. She couldn’t possibly believe it if you told her anyway…