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…

The House of Yes

Claire’s balloon comes floating by her high chair. Tiny, sticky fingers reach up, grab the string and start inching it downward. George and I both see what’s coming. Should we intervene? Too late. The balloon is smashed into the tray a few times and released, replete with remnants of yogurt, sardines and rice. “Bye, Bye” Claire says and waves, as it ascends to where it came from. How about that? She has found a way of making a mess on the ceiling without throwing anything. I didn’t think that was possible. It’s pretty ingenuous, really.

The beautiful irony of the whole thing is that Claire does not paint the ceiling with sweet potato by design. She doesn’t even know she’s doing so. It’s just the innocent by-product of exploring her world. How could I possibly say no? Is it really so bad when she pulls the cat’s tail? Or takes all of the clothes out of every single drawer in the bedroom for the hundredth time that day? She doesn’t know any better, and she’s having such a great time!

I’m finding that my job as mother is becoming more and more about weighing the damage of her actions against the fun she’s having. I’ve decided that if she’s not killing herself or another sentient being or if Spray and Wash or some other heavy solvent will take out the damage, I’m down for whatever she has in mind. This philosophy does not come without a few daily cringes though. Living with the amount of chaos a toddler can generate is a learned skill. I’ve found that it’s best just to surrender to Claire’s way of seeing the world.

I’m not so sure she’s too far from the truth, either. Ask any Zen master and I’m sure he or she will tell you that order is transient anyhow. Besides, Claire will be “civilized” soon enough. For example, I’ve already begun teaching her how to put the clothes back in the drawers…Hmm? So Claire is teaching me about the meaning of life; I’m teaching her…household chores? Makes you wonder who’s raising whom, doesn’t it?

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.

Baby's Oral Fixation

“What are you eating?” is universal parent shorthand for “You have something in your mouth that’s surely not food stuff, and I will now have to risk being bitten by you and/or pissing you off when I pry open your mouth in order to figure out what it is and to make sure it won't kill you”.

When Claire surreptitiously eats in the proximity of the highchair, I can be relatively sure that the question mark in the mouth is food related. However, a question mark still remains about the age and freshness of the piece of food resurrected from the floor. Greater concern and urgency occurs when I see her mouthing something near the change jar or litter box.
 

Certain gustatory attractions make sense to me. When Claire reaches for the chalk for the fifth time, my mouth waters right along with her. I also know that if I actually let her try chalk a few times, she’ll figure out that it looks tastier than it really is. In a few years, she will also learn that Smarties are supposed to be candy, but they look and taste a lot like chalk. These disappointments are early lessons in the principle that things aren’t always what they seem.

Other things hold an edible appeal to Claire that I struggle to understand. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to convince her that the taste of Kleenex is not on par with her favorite food, banana.

Soda bottle caps clearly belong in the “if it can fit through a toilet paper roll, a baby can choke on it” category. I’m willing to risk it by applying the following rationalization: With a close eye on her, I can avoid both the choking and the tantrum that will ensue if I make her stop sucking on it.

Unlike non-toxic chalk or closely supervised cap chewing, sometimes Claire tries to eat things that require her swift removal from the source. The other day, I moved her away from the most intriguing mulch in her Aunt Daphne’s yard. I had hoped grass would prove as interesting; however, she continued to return to the forbidden place of her original oral fascination. After we repeated the grass/mulch dance a few times, I said to George’s cousin Mini, “I can’t wait for this oral fixation phase to be over”. Mini has a seven year old and related, “Yes, but then it will be on to the next phase. There’s always something…”

The way she trailed off at the end made “the next phase” seem too ominous to ask her to detail what it might be. So my mind jumped ahead a few years to Claire asking for keys to drive the car (now, she just chews on them). Suddenly, the present risk of Claire cracking a tooth on a set of metal keys didn’t seem so bad.

Mom's Sick: Walking Pneumonia/Running Child

Consider me of the walking wounded with walking pneumonia. 

Close-up of Pneumonia. Isn't it pretty?

If I had logged all of the hours I’ve cared for Claire and was compensated with sick days, I surely would be kicking back with a few reruns of LA Law right about now. But everyone knows that motherhood doesn’t stop when you do.

Instead of long stretches of horizontal recovery, life has gone on as usual -- with added challenges, such as: how to pick up a 20 plus pound baby without fainting, how to convince a toddler that dirty Kleenex is not a delicacy, how to read Goodnight Moon for the fifth time in a row without punctuating every two words with a cough. Then, there’s dealing with a generalized lack of resources when Claire: cries, screams loud enough to rattle my aching brain, or reaches for the outlet for the thousandth time. 

However, much of being sick with a child came as no surprise to me. What was a surprise to me were the many upsides of balancing care of a one year old with care of oneself. I found Claire to be helpful in many ways:

1)    She doesn’t care that I am beginning to smell, because I haven’t showered in three days.

2)    Or that she is beginning to resemble an orphan with long, dirty fingernails and ratty, tangled hair, now that her bath time routine has been reduced by 50% or so.

3)    She’s fine with staying in her pajamas all day or roaming around solely in a diaper.

4)    Likewise with her mother’s daily attire and toilette, or lack there of.

5)    She is happy to eat the same frozen vegetable for five meals in a row.

6)    She doesn’t know that I skip most of the words in Goodnight Moon anyway to save a few tubercular breaths.

7)    She’s oblivious to time, so she doesn’t realize we haven’t been out of the apartment for three days.

8)    She finds all kinds of things to entertain herself around the apartment anyway, since everything inside is still new and fascinating too.

9)    She actually enjoys that the apartment is a mess, because there are more things on the floor for her to explore.

10) Most importantly, when she takes a nap twice a day and goes to sleep at 7:30, mama goes nighty-night right alongside her.

But the best part is that Claire clearly still loves me, even though I’m not doing my best job caring for her. I can’t say that of any of the many other bosses I’ve had in my life (yes, Claire is my new boss). The next best thing is that dads like George can be great at picking up the slack.

Of course, not contracting pneumonia in the first place would be most advisable. But for the inevitable times when I am sick, I’ve decided that I’ll take my family over paid sick days any day.

Photo Source: Yale Rosen, Flickr

Breaking a Military Taboo: Public Breastfeeding in Uniform

Breasts are trending again. This time, the controversy comes not because the bare breasts are attached to babies, but because they are attached to babies and military uniforms. Apparently, several people were so offended by the photos posted on a Washington State blog for breastfeeding military moms  that they compared the images to public urination and defecation in uniform. Thankfully, the military had a more measured reproach. Air National Guard Spokesperson Captain Keith Kosik responded to the photos by saying that the military had no problem with female soldiers breastfeeding. He stated, however, that the breastfeeding going on in these particular photos violates “regulations to use the uniform to promote a civilian cause”. On the surface, I don’t have a beef with the military’s stance on this one. Soldiers do strip themselves of their identity and replace it with a uniform when they join the armed services. That’s why it’s called a “uniform”, right?

But then I started wondering why breastfeeding is considered a “cause” in the first place. Comparing breastfeeding to a cause is like saying that breathing is a belief. And in case you find this comparison strident, I can guarantee you that, if you pulled the offending babies in the photos off the breast for a moment, they would protest loudly enough to assure you that they agree with me. So let’s try it out: “the breathing going on in these particular photos violates regulations against using the uniform to promote a civilian cause.” It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, though, breastfeeding isn’t considered something essential in this country. It has been reduced to a belief; and the military isn’t to blame for this fact. After all, the women in the photos were promoting breastfeeding in the Mom2Mom blog. I doubt they intended to create such a stir, though. What I think they were trying to say is “hey, look how unexceptional breastfeeding is” or, in other words, “relax, it’s just a boob”. It’s ironic that women have begun calling attention to themselves precisely because they want to be able to do something without calling attention to themselves. The phrase “Don’t Tread on Me” comes to mind. If I’m not mistaken, a whole revolution started because of this principle.