Motherhood: A Glimpse of the Untold Truth

           

              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…