From Here to Autonomy

In the wake of horror, why do we blame each other?

My heart goes out to everyone on the East Coast who has lost power, property, and in a few cases, loved ones, due to Hurricane Sandy. I sit here in mostly Sunny California (OK, it rained last night during Halloween, but it doesn't blip on the inconvenience scale) and truly feel for everyone in the Tri-State area.

But I feel a deeper sadness for a horrific tragedy that occurred just a few days before. One so painful that I can't even read an entire story about it or link to it--the tragic slaying of two children by their nanny. One that leaves me in tears when I even read a headline about it.

Today I did something foolish. I ventured to a follow-up story that showed pictures of the two slain children, and comments from readers. As soon as I saw these pictures the tears flowed again. Even before I became a mother I grieved for senseless loss of young life, whether due to illness or to the inane perversions that crept into a troubled adult's mind. I've never been able to resolve these instances. I don't get closure; I simply put them someplace in my mind where they can't be seen quite so often. I try, anyway.

I read some comments from equally horrified readers who, like me, grieved. I also read comments that made me sick; sick because they cruelly attempted to intellectualize what happened. Perhaps, some said, if this presumably wealthy family hadn't been so cheap and saddled a foreign, presumably low-paid woman with three children to care for, this would not have happened.

I can't believe what some of us will do to try to make sense of tragedy. Some have to find someone to blame--some sane reason to explain the inexplicable so that, perhaps, the rest of us can avoid such horror. No one deserves something like THIS to happen, these commenters argue, but perhaps if they had just realized what they were doing, they suggest, their children would be alive.

I cannot stomach such cruelty, and not because I am also a working parent who relies on outside childcare like this family. You don't even need to be a parent to understand that there is no "should haves" in this situation. It's simply horrific. I haven't blogged for months--been a little busy with the new little one. But reading this story, and then looking down at mydaughter sleeping on my lap, I had to start typing.

Scenes from Maternity Leave, Installment #1: Nesting

Some people have a rodent problem; at my house it's the catalogues that seem to enter through the walls and procreate. They showed up in trickles and then seemed to arrive at a steadier rate the closer we got to the arrival of my second daughter. Now, a week into her life, it seems they are being drop-shipped in bulk. Or perhaps I'm just noticing them more.

I try to resist earmarking every page of the LL Bean catalog. It's a funny thing--the hormonal shifts that accompany the post-natal period. All of a sudden I could see myself in a chamois cloth shirt … in multiple colors, even Butter and Baltic Blue. I could see myself in a different shade of comfort fleece every day of the week.

It seems a bit early to buy flannel sheets for the baby's bed, especially given she hasn't yet transitioned to even a crib. Still, it also seems reasonable to stockpile on bedding now, while it's available. You just never know when there will be a shortage of linens. I play out how the green ticker-tape pattern on the pillows would look against pale green fitted sheets.

I call out to H-band: "Where will they put their mittens?"

He's used to these outbursts and knows I'm talking about our girls. "It's the beginning of September. Do we need to think about it now?"

"If we don't think about it now, winter will come, and we'll start losing things." I play this out in my mind as well. It will start with a lost mitten, then eventually we'll find hats and scarves in the back of the closet underneath the vacuum cleaner.

I instruct H-band: "See page 41 in the Pottery Barn catalog. There's a shelf unit for the mud room with little bins." We don't officially have a mud room, but that hardly matters. I'm confident we'd transition a space into one.

I notice that the shelf needs to be mounted to the wall, and I'm reminded of something. "The artwork! You need to put it up today, while Liv's at the Nanny share. Today … now!"

I suppose that, technically, I could put up the new pink and green panels I purchased off of Gilt Groupe back when I was only six months along. They sat in our dining room the past three months gathering dust. Then, the weekend before Vi was born I felt this coming urgency. Not quite the head coming out of my uterus kind of urgency, but not dissimilar.

"Uh huh." H-band says. I don't know if he will actually mount the artwork, but at least I can move that item to the "Delegated" list in my brain.

I know there's more retail research to be done, but my mind can't stay engaged on any task for long these days. I've learned to prioritize and apportion time in chunks of activities to do in-between feedings. To plan more elaborately is more than I can handle until I get more consistent sleep. I end this particular exercise by opening up EverNote and listing the items I've discovered today, naming the file, "To be revisited".

I dare not get more specific than that; I know that these retail urges come on and then often disintegrate. I still bristle when I look at some of the utmost urgent clothing purchases I made with my first daughter, when I was at the peak of my engorgement and convinced that my boobs were going to stay that way indefinitely. What I had defined as casual chic for the nouveau Mama became Weekend Muumuu wear that I turned to on those days when I wanted no one to recognize me in public. I had also harbored fantasies of packing up everything in our urban abode and relocating to a farmhouse; the waffle tees and lug-soled shoes had seemed mission critical. Now, they were novelty items; good to have for my next barn dance.

This time I get similar twinges. I've started a recipe file, for when I start to bake and jar my own jams while I catch up on the front page of All Things Digital. I've managed to stay on top of my headlines, but have not yet made anything. How can I, I rationalize, while I'm still working my way through the food from friends and neighbors? In truth, this amounts to a bowl of bolognese. It just FEELS like there's more in the fridge.

But there's still time. Once I pick up a latte at Starbucks I can refocus. And after I see what the baby's crying about ...

Concerns of a Mom returning to work

This is the last weekend of my maternity leave, which I've anticipated for a long time. I've been planning the timing of things in my head and practicing on the breast pump--which for all its necessary function also is a bit dehumanizing. Even as I rely on them, I'm a bit repulsed by the pump, the plastic milk storage bags, these poor facsimiles of maternal role replacement. I know, I know, many women have done this before me; broken the seal of the little bubble of constancy created around them and their child. It has to be done sometime, but I still find myself recoiling from the inevitable pop.

I remember asking a woman in my office who had recently returned from maternity leave how she felt to be back. She was glad to be working again but confessed that she cried dropping her son off at daycare. A friend of mine who returned to work three months ago said she cried every day for two weeks very morning, after dropping off her daughter with a shared nanny. I'm lucky: My husband will be staying at home with my daughter--no emotional drop-offs; no wondering if she's clean or scared. I don't imagine myself crying, but rather digging in to work like I've done for the past 17 years. Work has a way of helping me temporarily forget things. But I worry: what if I don't temporarily forget? What if I find it too easy to forget?

I must confess, I miss being focused on things for longer than three minutes, with no distractions.

My child has not been away from me for 3.5 months. There was one day when Daddy took her out thinking he would come home sooner, but, amazed that she took a bottle in her sleep, he stayed out a whopping six hours. Aside from that anomalous day we've been apart no longer than three hours. Never has a relatively short eight hour work day seemed like such a hurdle.

We've tried to get her to take a bottle (asleep or awake) for two months, and we have had no luck aside from the aforementioned "dream feed". Sometimes she screams during our attempts; most times she plays with the nipple of the bottle, thinking we're offering her a new toy, happy to chew on it for a few seconds but ultimately rejecting it. We've offered the bottle with Mommy out of sight, with Mommy in the room, with Mommy subbing it in for the breast during a nursing, with experienced Grandmas and Aunts helming the effort, with Daddy begging her to consider, with bottles that look like boobs, with bottles that look like pacifiers, and with bottles that look like bottles, but nada.

We're now resorting to what friends tell us is the final, most effective method: Mommy goes back to work and makes the baby take a bottle or starve. This option is more than unsettling.

The babe also doesn't like to sleep in her crib. The past three months has elapsed over a long series of hand-offs between me and my husband; and if you are the one she falls asleep on, you must transition her to the nearest bed-like surface. Sometimes this can be a crib, or co-sleeper, or reclined baby swing or couch. The transition is done with the grace and precision of an experienced tai chi practitioner, as the babe cannot feel any slackening, dropping, or fidgeting or she will wake up.

This on-demand service will be impossible to continue when I go back to work, including the days when I'm working from home. In other words, unless we get this kid trained to fall asleep on her own, in her own bed, my husband will be the sole set of arms for eight-hour stretches of time. I've been praying for him and reminding him that, in retrospect, these times pass by all too quickly.

There were short stretches during my leave when I took a work call, sat in on an important meeting, responded to email, jotted down some thoughts I had about something business-related. All of these moments were all-encompassing. I know myself, and while I often multitask, I cannot integrate mothering with working. Both must be done exclusively during the times I've designated for them.

This, in itself, is a mixed blessing because it forces me to keep these realms separate, but it also forces them to compete. The work side can no longer sneak in minutes, that turn into hours, pursuing unscheduled ideas and entering spontaneous discussions. All of my spontaneity will be paradoxically planned; hemmed into my work day. The Mom side has to acknowledge the future I'm building at its short-term expense. I'll miss some milestones of my daughter's development and catch her at the crankier end of the day.

And I'll abandon someone I once left before, years ago, with whom I'd become reacquainted over the past three months. She knows how to sit in a room without looking at the clock. She forgets appointments. She sometimes forgets to bring her cell phone with her when she's out. She calls her friends in the middle of the day and apologizes if she catches them working. She finds joy in crazy things like changing diapers. She's not hankering to go places. She gets weepy from looking at babies, particularly ones she has to leave.   

Am I a Bad Mother?

Am I a bad mother if:

• I'm typing this while an infant is feeding on my right boob?
• I forgot to ask you to wash your hands before holding the baby?
• I stick a finger in her mouth to suck when she's tantruming and there's no Purell in sight?
• I pee while I'm wearing her?
• I eat while I'm wearing her, and you can find granola crumbs and errant drops of the frozen yogurt in the folds of her neck?
• I have a three wet-fart rule? No change of diaper until I hear at least three.
• I file nails badly? My baby has scissorhands and wakes up from naps looking like she was in a cat fight.
• I drink a glass of wine and nurse less than two hours afterward?
• I'd rather go back to my old size than keep the pounds on my hips recommended to nurse optimally?
• I can't remember the words to a lullabye to save my life?
• I sing Bob Marley instead?
• I sing the same verse from Three Little Birds over and over?
• I hum Tori Amos' "Putting the Damage On" as backup?
• I request that you let me put on a bra, and maybe some mascara, next time you decide to shoot pics of me with the baby and post them on Facebook?
• I haven't planned where we'll live in five years so that we can be in a good school district?
• I let her watch Burn Notice when I saw that staring at the TV calmed her down?
• I let her have all the immunizations recommended by her pediatrician without an interrogation?
• I use disposable diapers?
• I pray that she doesn't inherit my hair?
• I still use my picture in my Facebook profile and not hers?

The Practical New Mother

I struggle to remember what for years I've heard during the safety instructions on flights--something about securing your air mask before attending to your child's...

I try to remember this as I clean hummus that has lodged in the fold of my daughter's neck. Sure, I could have waited for her to have fallen asleep, but after two aborted attempts and her long bout of hiccups I hedged my bets and, holding the baby with one arm, started to pull immediately edible items from the refrigerator and cupboards: hummus, crackers, yogurt, and a block of cheese.

I find a knife and with the hand not holding the baby, slice off a chunk of white cheddar. It's too large for the delicate wheat craker I've managed to liberate from its package--it crumbles while I attempt to nibble, and half of it falls to the floor. I negotiate with myself: Pick it up now or "remember" it later. There are many things that I've opted to "remember" around my house. Things that H-band later finds and tries to question me about. He knows by now that if the item fell during a particularly challenging period with the baby he's going to get a look from me. A look that says, "Don't." He's learning to pick his battles, and I'm learning to pick mine.

I find a cocktail sauce spoon--the only clean utensil in the drawer, and start to eat hummus directly from the tub in which it was bought. I feel a little guilty. Years ago when I moved to New York City after college, I used to eat my leftovers right out of the Tupperware. I had two roommates from Beverly Hills (with whom I was connected through a friend of a mutual friend) who used to watch me do this and question why I didn't spoon my leftovers on a plate. I told them, why dirty another dish? They looked at me funny--Midwestern girl...never learned to eat leftovers properly. I rationalized that I was simply being practical, efficient. Like I'm rationalizing now.

I finish my lunch standing up and put away anything that I can wrap/clean/close with one hand. The crackers remain out of their package. H-band will question me about this as well, and I will tell him I left them out so that he wouldn't have to open a container. I'm saving him time. Again, practical and efficient.

When you learn your child isn't the most beautiful in the world

She was when we left for New Mommy Pilates class--the most beautiful baby in the world. The stork bite marks and baby acne were temporary. Hopefully we've prevented future scratches on her by filing her nails while she nursed. When she smiles, she smiles more brightly than any other human. No one has as beautiful a smile as she.

It's Day Two of our 10-day Post-Natal Pilates series, meant to help Mommy from continuing to piss herself 20 minutes after drinking a glass of water, and to help put her back in her skinny jeans (or, at least her fat jeans). When people ask her why she's going to Pilates she says it's to get out of the house and to have some quality time with her baby girl. But really, it's to fit back into her jeans.

That doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate quality time, but she knows full-well that most quality time with the baby occurs when she's half naked with a breast pump on one boob, her baby girl on the other, not when she's laying with a yoga ball between her knees, tucking in her tummy and praying that she won't wet herself.

Liv isn't too excited about class today she prefers to keep sleeping; she screams when Mommy puts her into her carrier and locks her into the car seat. She screams when Mommy gets off the highway and finds herself stuck in traffic due to an accident ahead. She screams the whole time that Mommy lugs her 500-lb portable car seat into the Pilates studio, apologizing profusely when the seat accidentally dings a wall and hits a cactus.

Mommy is particularly proud of herself, because she's brought Liv to class early, as was requested, so she could nurse her screaming, hungry baby right before. The thinking makes sense: feed baby now and let her sleep for the next hour. One other woman is going to be in the class, though she hasn't yet showed. Mommy feels quite proud of herself for managing to get her baby to calm down and nurse peacefully.

As class is about to start, the other mom arrives, also lugging a "portable" car seat. She looks fairly calm; "she hides it well," Mommy thinks. She sets up next to the bouncy chair where Liv lies calm, peaceful, and beautiful.

She places her little boy, clad in a midnight blue velour jumper, into the bouncy chair, where the class baby sitter could play with him. I'm not sure if this is a proper word to use to describe this baby, who is Asian, perhaps Phillippino, like his mother, but darker, like gooey caramel, and his face as smooth as if his caramel skin was stretched taught over the most perfect, round apple. He is stunning.

Mommy figures he must be older than Liv.

"When was your Little Guy born?" I ask.

She tells me. After digging around for more specifics I glean that he's five hours older than Liv. Hah, he's had plenty of time to round himself out. Liv is still a newborn for God's sake.

As we start our stretches, the Little Guy coos and Liv sleeps.

"He's beautiful," the instructor says to the other woman, and not in that way that everyone is supposed to say it to new parents. She says it with a tinge of disbelief, as in "How in the world could a baby turn out to be THAT beautiful?" I smile and wait for a reciprocal comment about my sleeping beauty, but there isn't one.

"You must just look at your baby all the time," the instructor says to the other woman.

"I do," She and I both reply.

Near the end of the session, Little Guy has graduated from cooing to crying, and his mother has to stop to attend to him. I feel proud now to see Liv still conked out in her bouncy chair, nonethewiser.

I can't help but notice the Little Guy's cries--not exactly lusty, but more like little "wah's", almost polite.

"Liv will sleep though anything," I say.

"Uh oh," the Babysitter says ominously,"She's waking up."

I'm doing leg lifts and secretly mouthing to myself--"Please-let-me-get-to-my-left-side-please-let-me-get-to-my-left-side." I start picking up the pace, prompting the instructor to remind me to slow down.

"Didn't you nurse right before class?" I'm asked. I nod my head yes.
 
Then, it erupts. The babysitter provides 1.5 seconds of warning.

"Here she goes," she says.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

I know that cry. It says, "You thought that 10 minutes of nursing would cut it? You silly, silly woman. I hate you Mommy! I hate you!"

"She's got lungs," I say, somehow needing to explain why my child could be a military weapon.
 
"Let's stop here," the instructor says. I get up and go to Liv.

"And you'll want to change that diaper," the babysitter says, "she just made a big one." For a second I think she's talking about me.

"She's quite the pooper," I say, inexpicably acknowledging that my child has a digestive system.

While the instuctor and the babysitter leave the room, I opt for the triage process for when she's screaming that I've honed over the past six weeks: Left boob, diaper change, right boob.

The other woman and I nurse our little ones, sharing notes on feeding and sleeping. She neatly packs her boobs in and places the Little Guy, now cooing, into his carrier.

"Maybe I'll see you next time," she says on her way out.

I smile back, not realizing that Liv has unlatched and milk is spewing out onto her face. I've forgotten my burp cloth in the diaper bag across the room and elect to collect milk in one hand, attempting to drop it into Liv's mouth and missing.

The instructor comes back to find I'm still there and leaves me to finish up. "Just close the door on your way out," she says. I nod and wave with my elbow. She doesn't know what I know is about to happen, looking down at Liv writhing. She will not be soothed today with extra boobage. She's tense, and my nipple is just a finger in the dyke.

She stays attached to me for 20 minutes and I start to get nervous--will the instructor come back to teach another session and find me here, milk stained and helpless? I apologize to Liv and pack her screaming into the baby carrier, realizing I've forgotten the "diaper" portion of my process.

"F&*$ it," I say to myself and shuffle back to my car.

Liv screams most of the way back home. I try to make up for it by offering up more boobs. She'll nurse for a while, then fall asleep. And then H-band will come home and ask me what smells and ask me why I didn't change Liv's diaper. And I'll say I forgot and please don't lecture me. And he'll change his cooing daughter and remind me that she screams because she's wet.

But for now I'll look at her, and she'll take a break from nursing, look at me, and smile. It's the most beautiful smile in the world. From the most beautiful baby in the world.