"When you're a boy..."

Have you heard of the Canadian couple that is raising their child gender-neutral? I’d imagine that if you found yourself in the elevator or the grocery store and innocently asked them, “boy or a girl?” you’d get an earful. It’s an easy story to joke about though. Mostly, it just seems like work to me. Parenting is a full enough experience without adding the extra complication of hiding a child’s identity.

On the other hand, I probably work equally hard to out Claire as a girl. I try to avoid the colors brown or blue altogether. We mainly have pink clothes anyway, but there is an occasional red or yellow mixed in there. If she wears one of these colors, I’m sure to signify her sisterhood with an accent of pink somewhere.

I didn’t expect to be this way. I didn’t expect to care. But there isn’t a day that goes by without someone referring to Claire in the masculine. Even when she’s screaming pink, people still think she’s a boy. Once when donning a dress, she got a “he” from someone! Maybe it’s because I’m privy to her private parts on a daily basis, but she just doesn’t look like a boy to me. It’s frustrating. George doesn’t like it either. When someone asks, “What’s his name?” George replies, “She’s named Claire” – with a distinct emphasis on the she bit.

I like boys just fine, and Claire doesn’t need to be girlie girl either. Toddlers and Tiaras isn’t in her future, and I’m sure Santa will put a toy truck or the like in her stocking this year. It’s just that I don’t want people to call her Bob, because that’s not her name. And I don’t want people to call her a boy, because she isn’t one. Unlike the Canadian couple, I am hoping that her true nature will become more outwardly apparent as she gets older. I’m really not a huge fan of pink anyway.

One half year.

Happy (half) Birthday, Claire! What a difference six months makes! What if you more than doubled your weight and grew a foot or so in a half-year’s time? It might be hard adjusting to your new body. You might just buckle under the weight of it all, literally and metaphorically.

Claire, on the other hand, has done it all with aplomb. Six months ago, she seemed trapped in a body not of her control. Her flailing arms scared her. Her hands clenched in perpetual fists. Her newborn frog legs curled into the fetal position, a muscle memory of the womb.

Now, her new physical form is taking her places it never has before. She grabs her toes and bangs on a piano, even tries to pull my lips off my face and eat computer wires.

I am in awe of my daughter. It’s a joy to see the world open up to her in new ways. What’s more amazing is that babies are in this constant state of change and motion. And they are naïve to the challenge of it all. They do not know what they do not know. It’s just what babies do. I find this notion inspiring. I think it’s high time I start acting like a baby.

Photo Source: Stu Baker, Flickr

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

The same woman does all of the voice-overs for every musical toy on planet earth. Her voice is cheery and chipper, and probably of much better quality than the tinny toy speakers make it sound. She sings of incessant happiness and eternal sunshine. If by chance it did rain, I’m sure she’d be happy too – especially when she’s with you. Often times, she’s backed up by steel drums, in Caribbean-style arrangements of popular children’s songs. It’s as if life’s a perpetual vacation. If I weren’t breastfeeding or didn’t find the stridency so weary, I’d have the urge to join in with a margarita or two. Not really the vibe I want for my child. Right now, Claire doesn’t understand the words anyway. When she does, we’ll be sure to counter with Grimms’ Fairy Tales and some Billie Holiday.

The Doctor is In

Claire and I have been enjoying our developmental movement class. Each week, my daughter enjoys hanging out with other babies while listening to the ukulele. I like that Claire is the star of the class on her tummy – thus indulging a baser impulse in me to live through my child for the first time.

This weekly delight was sullied a bit, though, when the group leader asked why we’d all taken his class. Most of the moms talked about spending more time on tummies or rolling over. I launched into my background as a special education teacher. How I’ve seen everything from reading disorders to writing difficulties go hand in hand with delays in gross motor skills. I said I was taking the class because I wanted to make sure that I was supporting Claire’s development in this area.

The other moms were interested in what I had to say. Not Dr. Movement. Perhaps my answer was too intense for him or I took up too much time. Perhaps I stepped on his toes a bit. He started by letting me know that delays in gross motor skills don’t necessarily translate into academic struggles. Then he warned me that my deficit model philosophy as a special educator could cause me to look for problems in my daughter instead of celebrating her strengths.

His lecture rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t like to be lectured. I don’t like to be lectured in front of people. I don’t like to pay someone to lecture me. And, most importantly, he couldn’t have been more off base. I think Claire is just perfect, thank you very much. I am not worried about a deficit in her. I am certain the problem lies within me. Wait, so there’s the skewed philosophy…children are born perfect and their parents mess them up. I will be no different as a parent.

This belief of mine was surely born of the therapist-ridden culture of NYC. Everyone I know is either messed up by their parents, thrives in spite of them or has had years on the couch to get back to status quo. Unbeknownst to him, Dr. Movement helped me realized that I had been either resigning myself to this fate for Claire or working myself into a frenzy trying to fight it. Well, that seemed a humorless perspective to me, and I started thinking it was precisely this vibe that made Dr. Movement give me a good talking to.

In the end, I am thankful to him. My perspective is a problem, just not the one he thought. Claire deserves a mom who feels confident in her ability to parent her. She needs a mom who can just let her be. So, as she works on her mini-pushups in class, I’m going to work on an attitude adjustment.

Awakenings

Weekend brunches with strangers are rife with idle chitchat and searches for commonality. So I wasn’t surprised when a father at a get-together recently asked me if my baby sleeps through the night. This question is the infant equivalent to “what do you do?” It’s too early to compete about who walked or talked first, so sleep is the barometer of parental success. No one agrees about what constitutes “sleeping through the night”, though. So when I say, “she sleeps five hours or so”, I feel pretty good about my answer. Evidently this number was not good enough, because the man launches into advice about upping it.

The story goes that he and his wife slowly reduced the amount of milk they fed their sons at night. Then they substituted water to trick tiny, little bellies into feeling full. And finally… Nighttime feedings eliminated altogether! “Oh really”, I manage to say noncommittally. What I’m really thinking is that this story reminds me of the frog slowly boiled in water that has insidiously risen in temperature. With the conversation ended to his satisfaction, the man walks away with a plate of prosciutto and melon. I turn to George and say, “Well that sounds like a teenage eating disorder in the making”, as I stab a hunk of smoked salmon onto my plate.

I hadn’t thought about this encounter, until everything went to pieces. The Demas family has been going through what’s called “The Four Month Sleep Regression”. When Claire woke up at 12:30, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30AM to eat and was up for good at 6:30AM, this man’s advice started sounding seductive. Coincidentally, a friend of mine had just sent a link to a website proffering help for sleep deprived families. When I go to click on it, there it is in all its glory -- a two-part series on eliminating nighttime feedings. So, huh, here I thought this guy was a kook. Come to find out that this theory has professional support. I read on and stumble upon words to horrify a desperate mother looking for answers: “If you don’t address nighttime wakings, your child may have SLEEP ISSUES FOREVER” (“ever, ever, ever” reverberates in my head). I perk up and start taking this idea more seriously. But as I read on, I’m looking for some science to back up this dire warning. That cannot be found. So I google “eliminating nighttime feeding” and find kellymom.com. Kelly’s mom flat out says don’t believe the hype. Scare tactics are usually designed to sell product of some kind or another, and the product in this case is sleep advice that is more appropriate for sleep-deprived parents than babies burning the midnight oil. In essence, parents are the ones with deep pockets; babies have no pockets at all.

I think she’s right. It’s easy to be swayed by slick websites and offers of professional help when you are near insanity, with a child glued to your boob and have come close to dissolving your marriage in the middle of the night on several occasions. You are willing to consider depriving your child of food. And the business of baby sleep is counting on this fact. Kelly’s mom didn’t have a solution to offer, but she provided evidenced-based information that explained the developmental reasons for this grueling sleep schedule. I still felt insane with a child glued to my boob, but I breathed a sigh of relief that our new not so normal nighttime routine was normal. (My marriage never really was in jeopardy, in case you were worried.)

But I’m no perfect parent, so who am I to judge this parenting technique? I must admit, though, that I wish eliminating feedings would go the way of leeches and thalidomide. So if you’re a parent reading this post and have successfully undertaken eliminating feedings or are consider doing so, I do apologize. Quite possibly, you are judgmental of me for not finding an answer to my baby’s sleep “problem”. Quite possibly, you will have the last laugh. If I write a post a few years down the road about my child’s continued sleep issues, please feel free to comment, “I told you so”.

Adventures in Retail

“Well, that was just great!” George says with a spring in his step. He’s not talking about mind-blowing sex or dinner at a five-star restaurant. The bags he’s carrying are not filled with loot from the Apple store or Bergdorf’s. What he then describes as “like a trip to Europe” is a Demas family outing to the grocery store.

We stroll the aisles of D’Agastino’s like grand avenues. We compare the fat and sugar content of novelty ice cream bars, while Claire enjoys the repeating patterns of tubs and boxes. If we are feeling racy, we venture into the chocolate aisle or buy bubble gum. There’s never a serious purchase. We save the more industrious trips for Trader Joe’s.

If you’re thinking, “wow, they don’t get out much”, it’s not entirely true. We take Claire all kinds of places. Unlike the grocery store, though, these trips require an action plan of varying complexity. A simple trip to the park means packing and lugging the diaper bag, loading her into the car, finding parking. Then there are the intangibles. What if hunger strikes in the middle of a traffic jam? Will the clouds let loose while we roam the ramble in Central Park? What if she starts screaming in the middle of the Cloisters with no quick getaway? How do we handle an explosive poop on the duvet cover of a prestigious Broadway producer? (Yes, that happened.) Then the rare trip without Claire requires pumping and babysitter coordination. Plus, I just miss her when we’re out. I miss things she does too, like her very first laugh. I’ll never get that back.

So now it may seem I’m complaining about a complicated yet boring life. Actually, I’m in George’s camp. I couldn’t dream of a better time with my two favorite people. Well, one thing would make it better -- D’Agastino’s with my two favorite people on a full night’s sleep.

On Repeat

It’s 3:30AM, post-nighttime feeding. My weary head hits the pillow. Instead of sleep comes a melody similar to “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round”:

Ella is the girl with red pajamas, red pajamas, red pajamas
Ella is the girl with red pajamas
She wears them all day long!

Claire is tickled by this CD. This particular song is on perpetual repeat in my head. George sings a variation that substitutes Uber-hip names like “Brooklyn” or “Anvil” for “Ella”. Then there’s the mobile she loves that plays Classical music. Even Mozart and Bach are now on George's shit list.

I couldn’t be happier that Claire likes music. It’s one of the great joys about being little. I remember spending the summer with a friend in Colorado as a kid. We played the soundtrack from “Annie” over and over again. “Tomorrow” could not have come sooner for her family. I’d like to replay that scenario one day with Claire -- with one difference. I hope I join in and sing along with her for the thousandth time.