The Five W's of New Year's

New Year's Eve is pretty uncomplicated as a single person. Each year, many things about celebrating remain the same. You know the why and when of the holiday. You simply decide where to go, who to go with and what to wear. 

Being married with a kid, New Year's Eve is easy in one respect. Chances are you won't care what you're wearing. Beyond your sartorial choice, the holiday becomes much more strategic. The where to celebrate becomes contingent on a who: "Who will watch the baby, if we go out for New Year's Eve?" The why becomes fraught: "Why in the world would I want to drink when I  have to take care of a child bright and early in the morn?" And the when is worst of all..."Are you kidding me? Stay up til midnight when me daughter will be the first one in the Western Hemisphere to wake up on New Year's Day?!"

Last night, George and I threw caution to the wind (well, we didn't actually go anywhere) and made it to the countdown and beyond, in spite of this cautionary tale. We had a lovely bottle of champagne (popping the cork quietly to ensure our daughter's continued slumber). At the stroke of midnight, I got to kiss my husband on the lips, like most couples do around the world. "Let the morning be damned", I thought. 

And here's the kicker. Claire decided to SLEEP IN ON THE FIRST MORNING OF THE NEW YEAR!  When her cries intruded upon my dreamland, as they do every morning, I looked up and the clock said 7:40!! Unheard of…priceless…a gift from above!

If you don't have kids, the hour on the clock may not seem like such a great deal. The moms and dads among us will surely understand the majesty of the scenario. 

So, thanks, Claire. I begin this year with an extra spring in my step! Tomorrow morning….be damned!

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Soul Search

 

The Homage, Marc Chagall, 1972

I stare endlessly at my daughter and marvel. Her face is compelling, purely because she is mine. Sometimes, my purpose is to see how she’s grown and changed. More often, I simply wish to behold.

Lately, I’ve been looking for my father. I search for him in the shape of her eyes, the set of her mouth, the way she furrows her brow. No trace of my dad is evident there, at least not yet.

I don’t know which I fear more...that my daughter will never come to resemble him...or that I have lost the ability to recognize him altogether.

My dad died when I was eleven. I am now 45. Much of my life has been marked without him in it. I have come to identify more with his absence than his presence.

Sadly, this space only grows larger as I grow older. Tragically, I no longer miss my dad.

I long for him, though. I search for him, too. Lately, I’m searching for my father in my daughter’s face.

Tales from Tinseltown

  

Kristin Cavalierri can’t wait to have another one. Jesssica Simpson changes her daughter’s outfits ten times a day. Guiliana Rancic is “loving every minute” of motherhood.

 babylifestyles.com

In the land of tinsel, postpartum depression and colic have been eradicated like Polio. Babies latch onto the breast with the greatest of ease. The Hollywood script says that sleepless nights only happen in Seattle. Or so the story goes. You rarely hear differently.

I want to hear how celebs would mother without nannies, assistants, personal chefs and trainers – kind of like seeing stars without makeup. And without their publicists serving up half-truths to the media and public.

Richness and complexity are missing in this fabricated fable of family.  Motherhood stretches you in unimaginable ways. Yes, it's a unique and special love. Also, a terrifying shock to contemplate the weight of responsibility for a small, fragile creature. Helplessness takes hold when you can’t stop your child’s cries, no matter what you do. Deep, in your bones exhaustion is brought on by the one-two punch of sleep deprivation and a baby who's still on the move like the energizer bunny. Just the beginning of the story, too.

I might envy the luxury of a celebrity’s life in the moment. When it comes down to it, I don’t. I've learned about myself by embracing some of the challenges of motherhood.

I am grateful for different things, like sitting down on the couch at the end of the day after Claire’s asleep. Or going out for dinner with my husband and having a conversation about something other than Elmo.

I’ve gotten over my bad self too. When I toiled in the kitchen making Claire an apple/sweet potato tart and she immediately spit it out, I moved on to the next thing. No applause there.

I’m not trying to make myself out as a hero here. I’m trying to say I’m an ordinary mom, ready to wear my triumphs and my struggles on my sleeve.

It's unclear whether celebrity moms really don’t have the same struggles as the rest of us, or if they're just keeping them under wraps. Either way, they’re making regular moms look bad. I don’t like that very much.

This post is featured as one of the Top Twelve Funny Posts of 2012.

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"What is it, then, between us?"

- Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

A dark urn of walnut wood sits on the carpet surrounded by plastic, furry and felt toys. It’s a somber piece that looks strange alongside the jumble of bright, primary colors. Children’s toys scream out for attention. The urn, on the other hand, draws you in with its quiet energy, like a fetish.

It has drawn Claire in. She pulls off the top by its bulky knob, puts blocks inside. Closes it, again and again.

I had mixed feelings about letting her play with it. She’s rough, dinging it up. She has yet to learn its significance to me. The piece sat on a bookshelf to be contemplated; I thought it remained out of her reach. Or maybe that’s what I pretended to believe. Perhaps, I secretly wanted her to find it.

My grandfather made this urn. He died in 1996. I miss him, and Claire will never meet him. When she touches the wood, I like to believe that somewhere in its oils rests grandpa's DNA and that Claire is coming under his influence.

Grandpa and Me

She has his eyebrows. I wish for her his gentleness, his love of God, his good singing voice. He would have loved Claire so.

As I watch her, my mind drifts to my grandfather in his “wood shop” (really the garage). He would start with a block of rough wood and turn it on a lathe, until it took on a refined shape and burnished surface. The work required patience and concentration. Not unlike the work required of a good relationship too.

I am honored to be a witness to these two lives. I am sad that they will never come to know one another. The dark walnut urn becomes the hand that reaches across the divide of generations and connects the two.

Having a Child is Like Eating Oreos

 

Coloring time starts off sweet and yummy...

Claire walks to the easel and says, “chi-choo”, her delicious word for crayons. She hands the purple to me and says, “Lo” (translation: “Mommy, will you please draw Lloyd, our cat, for me?”) 

I’m so in love with her right now. I’m so happy to oblige.

But, after I’ve drawn Lloyd the cat a hundred times in a row, I’ve had way too many cookies. Just like Oreos, it’s possible to have too much.

Mother/Daughter Collaboration

George, on the other hand, is on a diet, a strict regime. He’ll text me near the end of a long rehearsal: “I’m hurrying home. Is she asleep yet?” He’s dying for his sugar fix of Claire. When I reply, “Great. Hurry back”, I’m happy father and daughter will be reunited once again, happier still that I will soon hand Claire off to her devoted daddy. 

Then, he can draw Lloyd the cat for her. I’m just jealous that she’ll be off to bed, before he’s had his fill.

Unlike me, he rarely seems to fill up on Claire -- something else to compound my ever-present terror about measuring up as a mom.  But George’s perspective comes with downsides too. The number of firsts he misses frequently frustrates him. He’s also surrendered himself to the fact that mama is number one right now.

When jealously gets the best of him, I’m quick to point out that there’s still plenty of time for Claire to hate her mother.

New York City Girl

The world seemed glorious when we left the hospital with Claire for the first time. Truly, the sun greeted us more warmly, the breeze more gently, the ground held our feet…"Wait, what’s up with all the litter on the street? Ridiculous amounts of trash…"

As a parent, both good and bad seem more magnified. As a long time New Yorker, I used to be able to tolerate the city’s many bad parts. Parenthood has literally made me want to run for the hills (or just complain more loudly about NYC being loud).

I often wonder why we are raising a daughter in an over-populated, polluted place, short on greenery and civility. Our lack of square footage makes it tough for our newly walking daughter to get up enough steam before having to turn around and run the other way. I regularly detect marijuana smoke coming from the apartment down the hall. Claire learned the sound of a car horn before the tweet of a bird, the color of a school bus before a bee. I won’t bore you with my litany of complaints about the subway.

But speaking of the subway, let’s not forget about New York City and serendipity...

Yesterday, Claire and I hustled our way up the subway steps, and Malang Jobateh, Kora player, happened into our world. Breaking from the rest of the restless masses, we stopped to listen to him play. I had the good fortune of hearing the music through the innocent ears of a baby. Claire was mesmerized, eyes wide open, fully present. She even jammed to the beat a bit! 

I have waited 45 years for an introduction to the musical instrument, the Kora. Claire has beaten me by 44. She has also listened to mandolins, accordions, violins, flutes, guitars, drums, harps, cellos, basses and saxophones. She has danced with the Hare Krishnas, protested with the Falun Gong and partied with Puerto Ricans. She has rocked out at a punk rock concert at the Hudson Piers, and watched men and women dance to traditional Polish music in Central Park.

In true NYC fashion, we have planned for none of these experiences. Each performance, each gathering has been a happening. We have been spontaneously invited to join in the merriment by those caught up in celebration.

“Only in New York” is an ecumenical phrase. It can refer equally to the numerous nuisances of New York, as well as its many nuances. The challenge is remaining open to the contradiction of it all. A great place to start is by being in the moment -- something babies do very well.


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Doctor's Orders: Take a Chill Pill

George was positive Claire was cross-eyed for a while. A trip to a specialist assured us she was the picture of health. Surely, our pediatrician referred us to the eye doctor more to allay parental fears than out of concern for Claire’s sight. Dr. Gillespie’s been in medicine long enough to know that a parent’s anxiety is best assuaged by keeping him or her busy.

At each well visit to the doctor’s office, we hear a non-stop string of: “She looks fine”, “I don’t see a problem there”, “Why don’t we check to be on the safe side”. Our doc remains upbeat, despite our endless paranoia about our daughter’s health.

I imagine that someday Dr. Gillespie will reach a breaking point and respond, “What are you crazy?” instead. That’s because, even as I’m relaying my question, I know I sound like a crazy person. I just can’t seem to help myself.

George and I can divide the quality of our obsessions into two distinct categories. George is preoccupied with Claire’s physical health. Why is the skin on her feet peeling? (Try a little olive oil). What are the bumps on the back of her neck? (It’s prickly heat). Are you sure she isn’t wheezing? (Her breathing sounds fine).

I have a desperate need for Claire to meet all of the appropriate milestones exactly, to the minute, on time. When Claire’s weight dips from the 85 percentile to the 50^th, I’m certain I’m starving her and bombard the good doctor with questions about diet and nutrition. She does her best to pull me down from the ledge.

The problem is I’m never completely satisfied with the answers or that everything’s really ok.

I don’t think we are the only parents who can’t stand the idea that our child might have vulnerabilities. Nor are we alone in our fear that our child’s vulnerabilities might just be out of our control. Worrying and the subsequent overcompensation brought on by said worrying are conditions of the human race. These states become compounded when you become a parent.

If I were to ask Dr. Gillespie about my own heart palpitations, I’m sure she would tell me that everything’s just fine…

Sickness and the Art of Suffering

The tables have turned.

I wrote a post recently about the first time I was sick with Claire. My month-long bout with walking pneumonia cannot compare to this weekend’s stretch of nursing a sick baby. I wish I could say that I rose to the occasion like Florence Nightingale. When Claire’s fever spiked at 103 degrees, I was sufficiently freaked out to endure things like hour-long breastfeeding sessions.

When her sickness diminished to garden variety inconsolability, the pendulum began to swing between concern for my baby’s cries to wanting to stop the sound of crying in my head.

I felt just as helpless and miserable as she did. Time was reduced to minute-to-minute increments. Victory was measured by distracting Claire longer than 60 seconds before crying returned. The golden ring was reaching nap time. Crestfallen, when nap time was taken up by screams instead of snores. I harbored no illusions about how she would sleep at night. During normal times, sleeping through the night is sketchy. Sickness blew that idea right out of the water. She wouldn’t sleep; she wouldn’t eat.

I began feeling like a failure. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make my baby feel better. But it got worse when my empathy for my baby started to wane. “Stop crying,” I implored, as if her cries were a personal attack on me not an expression on her pain. “Go to sleep,” I would plead, as if that simple entreaty would magically do the trick. Not only could I not help my baby, I was now more concerned about me than my child.

I started to worry that Claire would come to believe that she must be good in order to get my love. Now, a mountain of failure began to pile up with selfishness as the cherry on top of the garbage heap.

If I were to look at the bright side of this experience, I would say that I am thankful that Claire will get better. I do feel this way, for sure. But my generalized feeling of shell shock and sleep deprivation is trumping the “this too shall pass” sentiment right now. Claire’s sick and we all must suffer, it seems. Actually, maybe, the lesson is something different. Perhaps the lesson is that sometimes life is just a mess.

This idea is a bitter pill for me, not so easy to swallow.

Time Breastfeeding Article: Whose Body is It?

As a breastfeeding blogger, I have felt compelled to comment on the recent Time article about Attachment Parenting and breastfeeding toddlers, as well as the controversy surrounding it. It’s taken me awhile, though, because I’ve struggled to collect my thoughts on the matter. Personally, I found the images of women breastfeeding their three-year-olds to be both shocking and beautiful. I tend to like things that put me slightly off-balance. I am reminded that much of what we “should” and “shouldn’t” do is culturally constructed and shifting. I am reminded that if what a person does isn’t hurting anyone, then it’s really none of my business.

But, after reading the reactions to this article, evidently, most people do feel that extended breastfeeding is hurting people -- mother, child and society at large. I was stunned by the viciousness of the comments. People called these women perverse, unnatural and disgusting, among many other cruel judgments. The quality of the criticism smacked of that which is unjustly waged against the LGBT community all too often. I felt defensive. I wanted to get into the fray, defend these women. After all, I’ve done my research. Anthropologists put the age of weaning in societies throughout history and around the world at anywhere between age two and a half to seven. Who are these people to argue with this research? People’s comments were dismissive of this statistic too. Evidently, our society is better than the others. The story goes that we are a “civilized” country, while theirs are primitive. I realized that I really didn’t want to waste my time arguing about it (even though I kinda just did). I don’t want to fight about who’s right or wrong. No one is. The issue is about personal choice.

So I decided to get personal. What I’d really like to talk about is the relationship that Claire and I have to one another, and our relationship to breastfeeding. To put it simply, Claire loves to breastfeed. She comes to me around eight times a day (or more) with the words “mama, mama”. When Claire says “mama”, it means she wants to breastfeed. The milk and I are one and the same to her, inextricably bound. How could I possible take that away from her? Especially when she is an age at which she really wouldn’t understand why I was depriving her of me.

I have also noticed an interesting inverse relationship between breastfeeding and independence. Claire used to breastfeed every hour, even at night (much to my dismay). As she grows more independent, the number of times she breastfeeds decreases. As she grows up, she needs me less. There seems to be an uncanny correspondence between these two things with its own rhythm, which I don’t want to disturb. And I have good faith that Claire will let me know how much emotional attachment she needs from me and; therefore, how much breastfeeding she needs.

To sum it up, breastfeeding serves a purpose for Claire and me that’s greater than nutrition. Still, I don’t plan on breastfeeding until Claire is three or four, like the women in the article. I do support their choice though. For me, quite frankly, I find breastfeeding to be too challenging. My decision to stop has more to do with me than Claire. I carried her in my belly for nine months, and plan on breastfeeding until she is around two (the age recommended by the World Health Organization , by the way). I am ready to have my body back.

Plus, at two, I figure she will be old enough to understand why we are stopping. George’s friend Kristen has led the way for me on this decision. She shared with George that she and her daughter Nora had a conversation (at two) about how and why mama needed to stop. They cried together and that was the end of breastfeeding. I’m grateful that Kristen has blazed this trail for me. If she hadn’t, I might be feeling like a pervert or sicko right about now. Instead, I get to envision an experience similar to Nora and Kristen for Claire and me.

Pink Eye and Breast Milk: Panacea

George had some of my breast milk. He put it in his eye. Yes, you read that correctly. He was suffering from pink eye, so I googled “Homeopathic remedies and Conjunctivitis”. Breast milk was listed as a remedy, next to honey, salt and belladonna. We didn’t have any belladonna on hand; however, we were not lacking for breast milk.

So I did some more research, which gave new meaning to the word “nursing”. Evidently, moms have been treating pink eye with breast milk for centuries. Today, even doctors are recommending it. What’s more, breast milk is touted as a cure-all for all kinds of ailments, from ear infections to eczema to minor scraps and scratches. And get this; according to some provocative research out of Scandinavia, it may even cure cancer! These miraculous healing properties are due to the antibodies in breast milk that have been shown to kill bacteria and viruses.

Unfortunately, our own homespun experiment into the curative powers of my particular variety of breast milk didn’t last very long. George quickly abandoned this tactic for a trip to the dark side of Western medicine. Oh, well. I was a bit disappointed. I wasn’t surprised, though. Putting Drano in his eye would have been less complicated than his wife’s breast milk. I also realized that I’ve come as close as I ever will to having a super power! And that if breast milk can do all of those things, imagine what it’s doing for Claire? I may not be restoring George to health or saving Gotham City, but I’m content to stick with growing a healthy baby girl.