Creating A Momster

Cookie Monster’s Mommy. Image from Muppetwikia.com

I’m committing one of the cardinal sins of writing by basing this entire essay on a cliché, but here goes: Motherhood changes you. The thing is, clichés become clichés for a reason. And the truth is that the experience of becoming a mother, whether by nature or nurture, impacts a woman in fundamental and profound ways. It also affects a woman in superficial and trivial ways. It isn’t that you become an entirely different person the moment you hold your newborn baby in your arms, but I do believe the experience is a universally transformative one.

It is also a knife that cuts both ways. Because some of the changes you undergo when you become a mom are good ones; others, not so much. Never is this more apparent than when a new mother is in the company of an old more experienced mother. Us old seasoned mothers love nothing more than laughing at observing the ways our formerly childless friends transform from free and easy, up for anything, let’s-eat-at-8 women into sleep deprived, over-analytical, was-that-apple-you-gave-Billy-organic-locally-sourced-non-GMO-and-cruelty-free mothers. We love this because we’ve been there. And we too were mocked by the old bags wise women who came before us who rolled their eyes at our bath thermometers and bottle warmers. And they were mocked by their elders for using disposable diapers and seatbelts. It’s the circle of life.

Every new generation of mothers make changes that seem crazy to the ones who’ve gone before. But there are a few constant changes, if you will, in the experience of becoming Mom that persist regardless of the latest parenting trends.

Changes to Your Body

I will never forget when I went to see my OB/Gyn after the birth of my first child. I, with the wide-eyed innocence of a first-time mother, asked her when I could expect to lose that little pouch of fatty skin over my c-section scar. My doctor, herself the mother of four, looked at me with a perfect mixture of compassion and pity (and maybe a soupcon of amusement) and said, “Oh honey, that won’t ever away. That is yours to keep.” At the time, I thought she was wrong. I’d diet and exercise and eventually the only bodily evidence that I’d had another human being living inside my abdomen would be a tiny pink scar. Thirteen years later, I know she was right. That pouch ain’t ever going away, and no amount of yoga or gluten-free cake is going to change that. Be it a c-section pouch, disappearing waistline, saggy boobs, melasma, stretch marks, or all of the above, having a baby leaves an indelible impact on our bodies. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good trade. But still. Still.

Changes to Your Level of Paranoia

The moment you realize that you are the first line of defense for another life form, the world becomes a much scarier place. Sharp corners, uneven pavement, hot plates, treadless socks, top-heavy children – they all become ER visits waiting to happen. You’ve heard of people who see the as glass half-empty? Well, new mothers see the glass as half-full. Of poison. And sitting too close to the edge.

Changes to Your Relationship with Control

One of my favorite examples of new motherhood is when my dear friend came to visit me from St. Louis with her newborn son for the day. In addition to the arsenal of baby supplies she brought to my house, she also packed a tiny Tupperware full of her own dishwashing liquid. You see, she felt she had to use her own soap because she feared mine might contain – well, I really don’t know what she thought it might contain – but whatever it was, it was far too dangerous to wash her son’s bottles with. This happens to you with your first child. You love them so much that you want to do everything within your control to make sure they are safe. So the scope of “everything within your control” widens to epic proportions. You over think. You obsess. You try to manipulate everything that comes in contact with your little one to make sure it will result in the optimal combination of health and happiness. You, in short, become a control freak. I’ve seen even the most laid back, hippie chicks fall victim to this mindset. And they’re the worst because they don’t think they’re controlling, “but could you just please make sure Susie doesn’t have any gluten or red dye No.4 at the party –it makes her irritable. Oh, and we use a positive reinforcement parenting model so if she accidentally bites your kid try talking her through what she’s feeling.”

Changes to Your Clock

Sleeping late now means anything past 6:30am. And if your phone rings at 10pm, you immediately ask, “Who is calling so late?”

Changes to Your Sex Drive

As a mother of a newborn you already have one needy creature who is all over you all the time. Your excitement about another such creature is, generally speaking, low.

Changes to the Way You Talk

Even though you have a master’s degree in linguistics, you refer to yourself in third person. You say the word potty. You talk for your infant daughter. You rhyme everything. The words you cannot rhyme, you add “ie” to the end of. Your voice is so high that only bats and coyotes can hear you. You give nicknames to all food including, but not limited to: nanners, noodlies, chick-chick, wawa, and num num sketti.

Changes to What You Think Constitutes Interesting Conversation

You used to talk about campaign finance reform and the mounting national debt, but these days you are more likely to be found discussing the color, size, shape, and frequency of poops. Here is a reality check, new mommies: this is not interesting conversation to anyone, with the possible exception of your child’s pediatrician. The same goes for discussions of sleep schedules, attachment parenting, feeding habits, nipple shields, episiotomies, potty training, and/or boogars.

The good news is that most of these changes settle with time. Eventually, you loosen up, regain your normal speech patterns, and stay out past 11pm. And the best part is that in the end, you’re left with the kinds of changes you actually want: A heart that is infinitely bigger than it was before. Patience that you didn’t know you were capable of. An amount of love and joy that you never knew was possible.

And stretch marks. Those are yours to keep.

The Mommy Wars?

When I was recently asked to write an article for a magazine about mothers in the workplace, I immediately thought: No, I’m not going to write about that. Why, you ask? Well, for starters, I don’t really work. With the exception of this column and the odd freelance article, I haven’t held a paying job in 13 years. (Yes, I know that being a mother is work. More on that later.) The second reason, and the more important one, is that I am a big fat chicken and really don’t like to write about controversial topics – and I’ve always thought of working vs. stay-at-home mothers as a controversial topic.

But the truth is that it isn’t really. Not anymore. Like coconut water and Kimye, I think the so-called “Mommy Wars” have been hyped up by the media and have little to do with real people’s lives. Maybe there was once a rift between the two factions back in the 1980s when the workplace was just opening up to professional women, but we live in a different world today. Thankfully we have options as mothers, and while we may not have shattered the glass ceiling yet, we have certainly shattered the glass umbilical cord. (Um, wait. No, that’s not a thing. That’s gross. You know what I mean though, right?) We have shattered the theory that women must stay in the home and raise the children while the father goes off to work. In today’s world, the debate of whether to work or stay home is more likely to go on inside a woman’s own mind than play out in any kind of public forum.

Most, if not all, of the women I know feel no animosity toward other mothers because they work outside the home or because they don’t. Over the past 13 years, I’ve talked to hundreds of mothers and not a single one has ever said anything disparaging about a mom on the “other side” just because she is on the “other side.” We might disagree about sleep schedules, formula vs. breast milk, and the number of acceptable days in a row one can wear yoga pants– but these issues have nothing to do with employment status. In the end, I think we all want to feel fulfilled in our daily lives, and no one much cares if you find your bliss in the boardroom or in the playroom.

The decision to work or not for moms is often a financial one, but not always. Some mothers work because they have to, some because they want to, and many because of a complex equation of the two, the product of which is then multiplied to the power of Guilt. It can feel like a lose-lose-lose situation. If you stay home, you lose the opportunity to build your career; if you go to work, you miss out on special moments with your child; and if you don’t have a choice, you feel utterly trapped.

So maybe the whole Mommy Wars discussion should be less about working vs. stay at home mothers, and more about how our culture still hasn’t adequately responded to the reality that roughly 70% of women with children are working. Instead of a hyped up decades old argument, maybe we should start a frank discussion about the dismal maternity leave policies, lack of affordable childcare options, and the paucity of support for mothers in the workplace? Maybe we should talk about introducing public policies that aid women who make the difficult choice to put their working lives on hold to raise children? Maybe we should be discussing the insanity that a working mother makes 73 cents on a similarly qualified man’s dollar?

These are subjects I think all mothers, and a good number of other people, would agree are worthy of public debate. This pre-fab construct of pitting mothers against mothers diverts attention from the real and serious issues facing so many of us as we are busy, you know, proliferating the human race. So maybe what we need instead of the Mommy Wars is a Mommy Revolution?

(Oh, look! I guess it wasn’t so hard to write about a controversial subject after all.)

The Push/Pull of Parenting

Image from Photobucket.

My parenting time these days seems to be split equally between putting out fires and quietly fading into the background. Things go from one extreme to the other around here pretty quickly. It’s fire and ice. Spicy or mild. Extra crispy or original recipe. (Author’s note: I probably shouldn’t write when I’m hungry.)

The point is, when my kids need me – they need me.

Mom, I need you to wash my uniform!

Mom, I need you to take me to the mall!

Mom, I need you to sign this form!

But when they don’t need me, I am largely overlooked. I am not reviled; I am not adored. I am simply there. A permanent fixture, like a banister on a staircase or salt on a pretzel. Necessary, functional, but not something you want to focus on.

At 10 & 12, my kids are not really old enough to be embarrassed by me yet, but I can tell they are starting to create a distance in their minds. Upon any expression of my individuality, my 12 year-old gives me the jokey eye roll; my 10 year-old calls me “weird.” (Author’s note: Boy-howdy do I wear that label like a badge of honor – if you are not weird to a 10-year-old girl, you are without a doubt the most boring person who ever lived. Believe.) And most pre-teens I know would prefer for people to think they were zapped into this world, fully formed, the spawn of nothing and nobody, a blank canvas devoid of any outside influence, parental or otherwise. But kids this age still need things – things they can’t really get on their own. Having once been a pre-teen myself, I kind of remember this stage. I wanted my parents to be like genies, an external force there in an instant when I wanted something, and then zoop! back into their bottle until the next time. I’m starting to get that vibe from my kids.

But to my children’s great dissatisfaction, I do not exist to fulfill all of their wishes at a moment’s notice. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t – but whichever way the hammer falls, I do what I do for my kids in service of their impending adulthood. It is my one job as their mother: To create responsible human beings capable of living on their own.

So I guess it isn’t a surprise, when I look at it through that lens, that my practical significance in my kids’ lives is starting to diminish as they get older. This is what happens. I recently read a quote from Neil Gaiman’s Newberry Award acceptance speech for The Graveyard Book, a book that appears to be about childhood but is really about parenthood. He said,“[it is] the most fundamental and comical tragedy of parenthood: That if you do your job properly, if you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won’t need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.”

I agree with this sentiment down to my very bones. I mean, I don’t want my kids to ever “go away” permanently or anything. A phone call every now and then would be nice. (And it would it kill them to come visit once in a while?) But it is our job as parents to raise self-sufficient people. People who have lives of their own and jobs and families and friends and futures. People who hopefully like to spend time with their parents– but who don’t need us. Not really.

I know this is pretty obvious. We all head into parenting knowing what the end-game is. But when I used to think about the end-game when my kids were younger, I thought about it in 2 distinct stages: childhood and adulthood. I never really thought about what the process of getting from one to the other would look like. As I near the mid-point of this journey with my kids, I’m starting to learn what it feels like. For me, it’s a feeling of flickering importance. One minute, I am indispensable, the next I’m superfluous. I go from being the sun and the moon, to the wind in the trees, and back again, sometimes within the same hour. Sometimes within the same sentence. This schizophrenic push-pull is new, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

If I let myself think about too long, it makes me want to hold my kids tight and snuggle them into my bed and lock the doors and move to rural Alaska or 1902 or an episode of Little House on the Prairie -someplace or time when kids didn’t grow up so fast. But in other, more rational and less panicked-crazy-lady moments, I feel confident and comforted by the people I see them becoming – I know this is all as it should be, no matter how hard it is or how uncomfortable the process feels. (Author’s note: I guess they aren’t the only ones with the schizophrenic push-pull thing going on.)

I’d love to hear from others out there on how you feel about this – especially those of you with older kids. Despite the name of this blog, advice is always, always welcome here 🙂