First of all, congratulations. There’s nothing in the world like seeing that positive result on a pregnancy test. You remember that, don’t you? Some of you were scared shitless, some of you were angry, and many of you were probably whooping with joy and laughter. Some of us were dizzy with realization. That realization that you’re carrying a tiny person inside of you, a little piece of the one you love nestled into a tiny treasure that’s going to be your baby. It is monumentally profound. Or maybe some of you were terrified of the tiny parasite that was going to make life undeniably miserable for you for the next 18 years (most of us grow to love our parasite more than anything else).
Either case, life is about to change big time. Maybe you’re still pregnant (it really doesn’t last forever, I promise), or maybe you’ve just had your baby and you’re tired and sore and crying all the damn time over who the fuck knows what this time. I promise: it gets easier.
I have three children. At the time of this writing, their ages are seven, five, and four months. I have something you don’t, New Mom. It’s wisdom. I’ve been there, done that three times. Three. Tres. And while I can acknowledge that every child is different, every child will throw you for a loop somehow and every experience is unique (cause we’re all special fucking flowers, right?), I hope that you can get some use out of my wisdom when it comes to the hardest thing you will ever do: caring for an infant. A tiny, screaming, pooping, puking, kicking, flailing, gurgling human being who has no way to tell you what they need.
Except, they do. They’re master communicators, New Mom. You may not be able to decipher baby’s cries yet (and hey, some of us never know what the hell their cries mean, I never did), but you can rest assured that if you toss all of those overpriced parenting books aside, you’ll know exactly what your baby needs (hint: food is usually the answer)
If you’re anything like me, and most of us are because we like to be informed, then you raided the parenting bookshelf at your local book store with all the frenzied zealousness of Mel Gibson in Braveheart (“Freedom” was gone from the moment that pee stick turned positive, fyi). There’s books on everything. Books on feeding, books on every stage of life, books on sleeping, books on schedules, books on medical care, natural remedies, baby food recipes, breast feeding, infant massage, the list goes on and on. All of this is exciting. After all, you’re new to this mom thing and you want to get it right. These people got published into books, they know what they’re gabbing about. They have important names like “Dr Ferber,” “Dr Karps,” and “Dr Spock.” Look at the smiling babies on the book covers. You want your baby to be this happy, you must follow their advice, right?
Guess what: it’s all horse shit. Somewhere along the line, someone found a niche market for parents desperate to do things perfect. Because that’s what we want for our babies, perfection. And what better way for us to achieve this perfect parenting than an instruction manual written by doctors teaching us things we never knew? I’ll tell you what better way: trust your goddamn instinct. Sounds too easy to be true, doesn’t it. In the words of Seth Rogen, the ancient Egyptians inscribed “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” on the pyramid walls, right?
When I had my oldest child, my mother did the worst thing she could do to me: She gave me a book. And with it, expectations. It was called Babywise, and it was (basically) what schedules your baby should be on and how to successfully let them cry it out in their cribs so that mom and dad could get a full night’s sleep. It had many good points (mom and dad should be a happy, unified front – I can respect that), and it made leaving an infant alone in her crib to cry sound like the most natural thing in the world. My mother would ask me every time we got on the phone, “is she sleeping through the night yet?” All I heard was “are you a good mom yet?” I’m not harping on Cry It Out mothers, if it works for you then great. But it never worked for me. All I heard was “mommy I’m scared, mommy I need you, mommy please love me.”
I tried to follow the schedules. Baby girl should only eat every X hours, or else she’s using me as a pacifier and she’ll never be able to soothe herself EVER and she’s going to go off to college, still sucking my tit every time she wants to go to sleep. If she fell asleep before X hours then the whole schedule would be screwed up and she’d be up all night howling and I’d never sleep again, forever trying to soothe my teenager to sleep because I failed her as an infant. She’s crying but it’s not time to eat yet so something else must be wrong, because I’ve been watching every minute on the clock frantically, waiting for its permission to soothe her with the breast. Oh, the stress. My heart would pound. My mind would race. I was screwing my child up. She was screaming. I was doing this wrong. I was ruining everything and every day was a monumental failure. I wasn’t sleeping, because she was crying so much. She was so upset. But if I could just hold out and get her on the magical schedule, then she’d sleep and I’d get some rest finally and I could stop failing as a mother and finally get some me-time back. All will be right with the world if she’d just sleep on schedule.
You’ll experience this as well, New Mom. Every single thing you do for your baby will weigh more heavily on you than anything you’ve ever done. Simple things, like “she went to bed half an hour early and now I’m worried that she’ll wake up in the night hungry, should I wake her to feed her now or let her be?” Simple questions like this will drive you insane, weighing the pros and cons, trying to decide how much damage you’re going to do to your child and your beloved schedule with any move you make. You’ll even Google advice on this simple shit, trying to do things perfect. Every trial and tribulation you experience will feel so terribly permanent. And any deviation from your schedule is going to ultimately end in the apocalypse.
There’s that word again, schedule. Here’s where my wisdom comes in for you, New Mom. Drop that fucking schedule like a bad habit. And while you’re at it, destroy any book that says you should have one. You want advice on how to make things perfect for your baby? You don’t need a doctorate to do it, you know how to make things perfect as our mothers before us have known for thousands of years. You have a human baby either inside of you or in your arms right now. You can’t train them to do anything. It’s a baby, not a poodle. Infants cry for one reason only: they have a need. Not a want, a need. There’s a huge difference. You can’t spoil an infant by fulfilling their needs. They’re instinctual little creatures who tell you when they have a need. And that’s what makes them master communicators, they make it abundantly clear when they have any need at all. How to make things perfect? You have instincts telling you what to try. Listen to them, books be damned.
My oldest child needed to nurse because she was growing, clock be damned. She needed my comfort and my love because she was unsettled, crying schedule be damned. She was a part of me, listening to the very sounds of my lifeblood and breathing for nine months, of course she was disturbed when left alone in a crib. If I would have just ignored the damn clock and given her all of the love, food, and attention that I wanted, then parenting would have been a thousand times easier. I know this for a fact because with my middle child I ignored schedules and things were a breeze. My youngest? Also ignores schedules. I have only one time that’s important to him: I put him down for the night between 8 and 9. It took us four months to come up with this. Otherwise, he calls the shots. And being his parent has been truly joyous.
Let’s get one thing straight right now: that baby is going to dictate your life for the next year. Accept it. Embrace it. Be happy. Yes, life is going to be hard this way. I don’t know when my baby goes down for naps – when he’s tired, he rubs his eyes, fusses, and I put him to bed. Sometimes he sleeps two hours, sometimes he sleeps half an hour. Whatever. I put him down when he’s tired, I feed him when he wakes, life is easy and we’re all happy. Does it make going out and doing things tough? Sure. But that’s life with a baby, New Mom. Nothing is going to be easy for a long time. I’m sorry, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. Babies sleep while you’re out and about, and that’s okay. They sleep in the car, sometimes for a whopping ten minutes, ruining any chance at an actual nap with their little power nap. That’s okay, they’ll catch up. They’ll get screwed up and be cranky for a day sometimes. It’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day. Which brings me to a very important part of being a mom.
Bob Marley – he’s made being a parent so much easier for me. He has a song, “Every little thing gonna be alright.” I’ve realized something: everything truly is going to be alright. I promise you. If you mess up nap time? It’s okay, everything gonna be alright. You mess up a feeding? Don’t give them enough? Give them too little? Squirt them in the eye? Go for formula instead of breastmilk (don’t even get me started on that stupid mommy war), it’s okay. Everything gonna be alright. It truly is. You know why? Because tomorrow is a new day. No matter how crappy today is. No matter how off your baby is, no matter how little he sleeps or how little or how much he eats, it’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day and things will sort out. Remember those two phrases and you’ll be a lot less stressed on this mothering adventure. That’s more wisdom for you, New Mom. Everything gonna be alright, and tomorrow is a new day.
Because nothing you’re experiencing is permanent. And once you realize that, once you realize that your baby needing you close, your baby wanting to nurse around the clock, your baby waking early and smiling when he sees your face, once you realize that all of it is fleeting, you’ll feel differently. Once you truly understand and feel that all of this is rushing past you at light speed and it will never come back, then the bouts of endless screaming, the diaper explosions that destroy your clothes or furniture, and the sleeplessness will all seem so damn inconsequential. It’ll feel like a tiny hiccup in your day instead of the world crashing down around you.
And before you know it, your precious cooing infant will be a toddler, running and walking and laughing. Taking a nap at the same time every day, drinking water from a big kid sippy cup by himself, calling you mom. You’ll look back on the sleeplessness of infancy and wonder at how you thought it would never end. You’ll look back at those tear jerking sessions of breast feeding, feeling like you couldn’t give enough, and laugh at how healthy your child is. You’ll marvel at the frustration of never being able to put baby down to do dishes or fold laundry, because now you’d love to let the dishes stay dirty so that you could snuggle that wild child who wants nothing to do with you. Potty training? They don’t go off to kindergarten in diapers. You’ll be amazed at how much you thought you were ruining your tiny, perfect human and realize that they’re perfect despite your screw ups. Before you know it, they’re coming home from school telling you what boy they’ll marry. They’re pouring their own cereal and helping you do the dishes. They’re reading books and behaving while you sneak upstairs for a catnap. And you realize suddenly that you have me-time back.
The thing that you mourned the loss of so tragically when your every moment was suddenly dictated by that tiny, crying, pooping human. The thing that your entire life consisted of before this infant came screaming into your life. The thing that you realize with tear-jerking clarity that you took for granted all your carefree days: me-time. Time that was devoted solely to you and what you wanted to do. It comes back, New Mom. In tiny stages, it comes back. Whether we “sleep train” our babies or not, the me-time comes back in tiny steps until one day you sit back and realize you’ve spent the entire day doing exactly what you want to do. And most astoundingly of all, that thing that you want to do involves your awesome little parasites.
So books be damned. Schedules be damned. Everything gonna be alright. You do what works for you, whether it’s formula feed, co-sleep, baby wear, or cry it out. Whatever works for you, do it. You’re the mom. You’re the parent. You know what’s best. You’ll enjoy parenting so much more if you drop the expectations, ignore what others think, and do what’s right for you.
Have fun with those parasites.
-Mwah
Let It Show 