Quotes for the day

I didn't like Anne Enright's novel The Gathering. But after reading her motherhood memoir, I feel like I have to read it again. Because she is obviously a genius.

***

"She is only two.
Though sometimes, I am two too.
And when she has done every single, possible thing to provoke, thwart, whine, refuse, baulk, delay, complicate and annoy, I wonder how the human race survived.
'I'll swing for you,' I heard myself saying once. Which is Irish for 'I will kill you and take the consequences.'
She is two. She is only two."

***

"The middle-class pregnant live on filtered water and grilled wild salmon and too much chocolate ice cream. And still, there is an overwhelming sense that no matter how properly we reproduce, we are all DOING SOMETHING WRONG! and no one knows what it is. All babies are perfect. They are given to us so that we can wreck them in some tiny but catastrophic way."

***

"None of this is true for the second baby, by the way. You put a second baby into the cot and the second baby turns on to its side and goes to sleep. Then you go to sleep. It is just as you suspected--it was all your fault in the first place."

***

"Sometimes, it is a lonely business. No, always. It is always a lonely business."

***

Forgetting
"The baby is crawling and I have forgotten the girl who could not crawl. She keeps replacing herself."


From Making Babies by Anne Enright

Year 1

Dear Alice,

You're a year old. Actually, you're a year, two weeks, and one day old. The Perfect Mom in my head would have written this on the actual day of your birth, but the Actual Mom spent that day with you at the zoo and the evening in the kitchen agonizing over a ladybug-shaped birthday cake. Frankly, I've spent a lot of the past year negotiating the distance between Actual Mom and Perfect Mom. Some days it's been greater than others.

I was never a huge fan of kids before you came along, and in some ways I'm still not. But from the time you were born I've always thought you were a bit of an old soul. At the very least, I didn't expect for you to have such a defined personality so early. Already you are smart, funny, and fiercely independent. You want to do everything yourself--hold your spoon, brush your teeth, put on your socks, comb your hair. Since you lack the fine motor skills to actually do most of that yet, things sometimes get interesting. You're both amazingly persistent and easily frustrated. Your dad says you have my temperament in that respect. Sorry.

Before you were born I used to worry that I'd have an ugly baby and wouldn't like her. Luckily for me, of course, I didn't have to find out, because you are gorgeous, and I'm saying that objectively. Everyone thinks so, even the ones who assume you're a boy because your jacket is green or your t-shirt has a hot dog on it. Your dad and I can't figure out where we got this Aryan baby, because we both have green eyes (the Mendel square said 75% chance of green) and you were born with such dark hair. But you're blond and blue-eyed and still look ridiculously like your dad. Every once in awhile someone who doesn't know him says you look a lot like me, but I don't see it. You do occasionally remind me of old baby pictures of myself, though, so maybe there's a resemblance buried in there somewhere.

When you were an infant I used to joke that you had a good sense of humor for an X-month old. But you totally do. You're generally a happy, smiley baby, and you laugh at the usual stuff like being tickled, and also bizarre things like when your dad kills bugs with the fly swatter. You also think it's hilarious when I tell you no, and you openly defy me to do things like splash in Jack's bowl or stand in the bathtub, looking over your shoulder to make sure I'm watching and smiling and laughing when I tell you no. You have more of a temper than I expected in someone so tiny, and you are grossly offended when I presume to do things like change your diaper or put your pajamas on. I recently discovered existentialism and have decided that it fits you well, since you seem to be all about personal freedom at all costs.

Your pediatrician says you have a lot of words for a 12-month-old. Given your parents, I can't say that I'm surprised. Right now we can say with reasonable certainty that you are saying hi, bye, mommy, daddy, Jack, duck, sock, and uh-oh. I'm pretty sure you're also at least attempting to say book and balloon. The other day when we came home from daycare I swear to god you said "Hi, Jack," which would be your first sentence and absolute proof that you are a genius. Your favorite food is cheese, which is ironic, considering that I had to give it up for 6 months because of your supposed intolerance. That better figure into your valedictorian speech somewhere, along with my Herculanean attempts at breastfeeding and the aforementioned ladybug cake drama.

You like books. I can't even express how happy that makes me. You "read" them while you're having your diaper changed, or at your little table, or in the middle of the kitchen floor. You hold them upside down and sometimes when we're reading your bedtime story you'll throw it on the floor just to hear what it sounds like. You like to turn the pages yourself, so I have all of the regulars memorized--Goodnight Moon, Snuggle Puppy, On the Night You Were Born--and the phrases run through my head all day long. Right now we are reading something called Bedtime Kiss for Little Fish and I'm hoping that I can get "Night is dark, baby shark" to catch on, maybe as a greeting or pickup line.

Now that you've been in the world for a whole year, I'm doing that thing that I did after London, where I say, "A year ago today, I was..." But it's also hard for me to remember much about those early weeks. I suppose that's nature's way of ensuring that people will have more than one child. The first few weeks of your life were very, very rough for me, but already the details of exactly why are beginning to elude me. I do know that I consider, and my always consider, not being able to successfully breastfeed you as one of the worst failures of my life, and, because this is how I am, the fact that I fed you breast milk for almost ten months as no particular achievement. And I still remember your little bunny face, fists on either side, looking up at me during those failed attempts.

Being your mom has been the most exciting, frustrating, humbling, tedious, and important thing that I have ever done. I worry on a daily basis that I'm doing it wrong, although time, Zoloft, and a quirky therapist have helped make that manageable. Apparently perfectionism and parenting are not always a good combination. The funny thing is that so many of the things I obsessed and lost sleep and cried hysterically about are things that I've since discovered we were way ahead on--friends have one-and-a-half and two-year-olds who are still using pacifiers and bottles and waking three times in the night. As of today--knock on fake wood--you are sleeping almost 12 hours a night, have been using a cup exclusively since 10 months, and (at least at home) gave up your pacifier at 6 months. Each of those was an epic struggle for me and, in more than one case, ultimately no sweat for you.

You have changed not only my entire life, but also me as a person. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I don't recognize myself, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I missed things like exercise and reading the newspaper and going out for a drink after work. But I also have an intense physical need to be around you as much as possible, even when you're driving me crazy and someone like Toni Morrison is speaking downtown. Lately you're still asleep when I leave for work and it's so hard to walk out the door without having seen your cheerful or even crabby face. I am tyrannical when it comes to our bedtime routine, and I hate sharing you with your grandparents or even your dad sometimes.

You're my favorite person. I want to be your best friend forever. As much as I laugh at your dad for panicking about your future boyfriends I'm already dreading the first time you say "I hate you" and think for even five minutes that you mean it.

You are waking up from a hard-won nap now, and I can't wait to see your disheveled curls and kiss your saucy face. As one of our favorite books says, There has never been anyone like you ever in the world, and I feel so lucky that you landed here, with me.

Happy birthday + 2 weeks, bunny.

Love,

Your mommy

Quote for the day

Aleksandar Hemon is a Chicago-based novelist. I've read and liked some of his stuff in the past, so when I saw he had a piece in the New Yorker's annual fiction issue, I was eager to read it. It turned out to not be fiction, and I should not have read it at my desk--it's an account of how his 9-month-old daughter was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor and died a few months later. It is absolutely devastating to read, probably in part because I have a baby the same age, but I don't think anyone could help but be affected by the raw anguish. The whole essay has haunted me for days, but the honesty of this passage in particular stuck with me. Whenever I hear someone on a talk show talking about how their cancer experience or loss of a loved one strengthened them or that something good came out of it, I always wonder if they really mean it or if it's just something they need to say to get them through the ordeal. This seems more real to me...

One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling—that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel’s suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone. And Isabel most certainly not earn ascension to a better place, as there was no place better for her than at home with her family. Without Isabel, Teri and I were left with oceans of love we could no longer dispense; we found ourselves with an excess of time that we used to devote to her; we had to live in a void that could be filled only be Isabel. Her indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies, whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.

From The Aquarium by Aleksandar Hemon

***

After I posted this, because I am a masochist, I re-read this essay, again at my desk. And I realized that Isabel died at Children's on the night of 10/31/10, very likely while I was walking the floor of our room in the Infectious Diseases ward while my baby cried with an unexplained fever. I don't even know how to process this, except to say that I am so thankful, and even more heartbroken for Hemon.

Better parenting through Zoloft

I wasn't going to be that mom.

The sad mom. The angry mom. The anxious, crying, frustrated mom.

Sure, those first four weeks were rough. So rough that it's hard for me to remember them now: the tenuously good days that fell into increasing dread as night approached. Sitting on the couch sobbing at 2 a.m. during yet another unsuccessful breastfeeding session. Eating nothing but meat, water, and a covert loaf of zucchini bread because the pediatrician told me to give up basically everything else. The night I handed the baby off and walked the neighborhood at midnight because I didn't think it was safe for me to stay in the house another minute.

But then things started to get better. After that awful week at Children's she started sleeping through the night. Our days fell into a rhythm. The physical therapy was a minor setback but I managed to keep it in perspective. She even started napping.

Maybe if she'd been born at another time of year, things would have been different. By the time we started to emerge from the cocoon, it was already winter. I went back to work in December, just in time for the stress of the holidays. In January we started trying undo all of the bad sleep habits we'd unwittingly taught her--first rocking, then swaddling, then the pacifier. She started daycare and immediately caught a cold. In February my mom had surgery and what had been advertised as a couple of weeks of hospitalization and rehab turned into several months. M. Defarge's boss continued to dangle a promised promotion over his head in exchange for extra, unpaid responsibilities.

For some reason it was the sleeping thing that broke me, though. I don't know if it became a symbol, or just something to fixate on. In the midst of all the other stuff, the most important thing in the world became three good naps and a full night's sleep. And as the books and the doctors reminded me, sleep begets sleep--so good naps are a key to sleeping through the night, and a good night's sleep yields good naps--a vicious sleep circle that my days revolved around. Making it to 5 a.m. was a triumph, and a half hour nap was a personal failure. An unsuccessful nap attempt could ruin the best of days.

Who knew that sleep had to be taught, or that imparting this lesson was so fraught with potential missteps? That correcting one bad habit could unwittingly lead to another one? To get her to sleep unswaddled we had to put her down with the pacifier. To get her to go back to sleep without the pacifier we started picking her up. To get her to go back to bed we started feeding her. Now when she wakes up at 1 or 2 or 4 a.m., she lunges toward the table where we set her bottles.

Throughout January and February and March and April I kept telling myself, once we figure out this sleeping thing, everything else will fall into place. Once I figure out the magic key to soothing her back to sleep, I will teach it to M. Defarge and allow him to get up at night with her. Once I accomplish the elusive put-to-bed-awake trick, I can leave the house in the evening and let someone else put her to be occasionally. Once I unlock the secret to timing her naps, and get her on a schedule, and ...

In late April I saw a blurb on the public library website for a memoir called It Sucked and Then I Cried, a popular blogger's account of her postpartum depression and eventual hospitalization. I read it and felt the camaraderie of a fellow war veteran and wrote a review on Goodreads about how I wished I'd read it during those first four weeks, back when I too was depressed. And then I got up at 2 a.m. and fed my baby and lay awake for the rest of the night berating myself for failing as a parent. I put her down for a nap and sat on the couch sobbing while she screamed.

The weekend before Easter I met my parents out for lunch to pick up the Easter dress I was too disorganized to purchase and my walker-bound mom was able to get. The weather was awful and the baby had a cold. By the time I got to the restaurant I was in tears apologizing to her for taking her out on such a horrible day. I could barely speak to my parents. I could hardly sit still.

The next week I was supposed to have a routine appointment with my ob/gyn. My mom talked me into rescheduling it. He and his wife had a baby the week before I did. He came into the room all smiles, expecting to swap stories, I guess. But he's great. I told him what was going on, and he said, ok, let's fix this. I left with a prescription for Zoloft and the number of a therapist.

That was about three weeks ago. I wish I could say the Zoloft was a miracle cure, but I suppose it never works like that. I think it's starting to kick in; we had a bad nap day a couple of weeks ago and I went for a walk instead of dissolving into a puddle on the floor. On the other hand, a couple of nights ago I randomly decided I would make her go back to sleep without feeding her, and the 32-year-old vs. 8-month-old battle of wills ended with me sleep-deprived and defeated and her with a bottle in her mouth while I revisited all my failings as a parent.

When I was reading the aforementioned memoir I kept dog-earing pages because I knew exactly what she was talking about. I even made photocopies of some of the pages before I returned the book to the library. This was one of them:

And I know that what I'm about to say is completely obvious, and it will be the least profound thing I have ever written. But to those who have suffered the unmerciful pangs of an angry biological clock, who have felt weak in the knees at the sight of a newborn baby, who daydream like I did about what your own kids will look like, what the biological clock isn't telling you is that the job of motherhood is nothing like what you think it will be.

In my Goodreads review I wrote about wishing I'd known about this book when I was going through that first horrible patch, just so that I wouldn't have felt so alone. I don't know if it's an evolutionary memory defect designed to ensure the perpetuation of the species, or if it's just people trying to be nice and not scare new mothers, but this really is the stuff that no one talks about. When I was on maternity leave a coworker who has two grown children sent me some paperwork with a note attached that said "Enjoy every minute!" Now that I'm (slightly more) rational, something tells me she didn't enjoy every minute of her children's newborn lives, but at the time all I could think about was what I was doing wrong, because I wasn't.

In the end, I think it amounts to this: I didn't expect to love her so much.

Not that I didn't expect to love her. But I remember reading that book on equally shared parenting and not wanting to breastfeed so that M. Defarge would have to take on more responsibility and not pass the buck to me. And then I found myself not wanting to let him put her to bed or get up in the middle of the night when she cried. I have to bite my lips and clench my fists while my mother-in-law is holding her. I still have a hard time imagining doing things like going out to dinner or a movie, even though I know it's not only possible but would be good for me.

In the past 8 months I've become a person I don't always recognize when I look in the mirror. I think that part is irreversible, and I don't know that I'd change it if I could. We'll see if the Zoloft and the rest help make me someone I can live with.

To do:

1. Bookstore world tour.
2. Complete a post that involves more than just a hyperlink.
   

Points for trying?

I started this post in April but never got around to finishing it. I liked the simile (metaphor?) too much to delete it, though.

This year, it seems like before one month is half over, I'm pinning all my hopes on the next one. As in, "In March (or April, or May) things will get better." If February was like being held down and kicked repeatedly in the head and March was like being tethered to a stake--allowed some freedom, but yanked into reality if I strayed too far--April has been more like house arrest. I'm not physically restrained, but I can't really go anywhere, either. What will May bring?

One more for the to-do list

After not having written anything but my name in a month and a half, I don't know what makes me think that anything will magically change. But the "writing assignments" on this blog make me want to try. Or at least purchase their publication to see what other people came up with. (And this article makes me want to be friends with the founder, despite the fact that he can't spell "populace.")