Becoming a good mom, one hour at a time
The gummy grin that I love so much is now less gummy: Edith got her first tooth this week.
Her bottom right tooth popped through after a night of her waking every hour. She had been drooling, chewing and putting everything in her mouth for months but had ramped up the teething routine a few weeks ago. Now we know why!
I’m considering an early New Year’s resolution: to not read any more parenting articles online.
I just finished this one, about what babies need, and I’m pissed. While it’s probably mostly right, it also makes me feel judged. I’m so sick of hearing how stopping breastfeeding before the kid is a year old will make her ill, how sleeping in another room will cause her to become malnourished, or how doing any number of things wrong will “undermine their trust of others, their health and social wellbeing, and lead to self-centered morality which can do much destruction to the world.”
This article isn’t the only one of its kind. As a mom, I feel as if I am constantly bombarded with messages saying I am not doing enough, or what I am doing is wrong.
The last month was an eventful one for our family. We traveled to New York and then to the Bahamas, marking Peeper’s first plane rides and her first passport stamp. She also went swimming for the first time, took her first subway ride and met some dinosaurs.
The last week has been a hard one. I’m not sure exactly why, which made me feel even worse whenever I sagged onto the edge of the bed crying.
Surely my low mood stems from the confluence of many factors. We returned from a wonderful vacation full of vitamin D and family and friends who helped with Edie. I have been racing against a deadline for a writing assignment. It’s been a struggle to arrange interviews around Eric’s work and Edie’s naps. And Edie’s sleeping schedule is still confused after our switch in time zones, which means I’m up with her more often. Two nights ago, for example, I wadded up a bath towel and used it as a pillow on the floor of the nursery as she babbled and played with her feet at 3am.
“After all, what’s better than love?”
“Waaah!”
Edith waited for the perfect timing to yell during our friends’ wedding ceremony. She, apparently, can think of several things better than love: milk, naps, milk, boobs, milk. At least she didn’t pipe up when the officiant asked if anyone objected to the marriage.
Our good friends James and Laura got married two weeks ago in New York, and we were lucky enough to be able to join them for the celebration.
We recently returned from an epic vacation. We first flew to New York for a friend’s wedding then hopped down to Cat Island, The Bahamas for my brother’s wedding. We took Edie to the Museum of Natural History, into the pool for her first time, into the ocean for a few tearful moments and across her first international border.
But the memories we’ll most cherish are the ones made spending time with family.
The day started inauspiciously. I couldn’t get back to sleep after Peeper’s 3am feeding, my head was pounding and I spent a good chunk of the morning hovering over the toilet and trying not to throw up. (No, I’m not pregnant.) It was as if the universe was telling me, “Good luck flying with an infant today!”
Eric peeked his head into the bathroom. “Should I look into rescheduling?” he asked.
I shook my head. We were getting to New York, no matter how many barf bags I had to use.
The last month has been the least drama-filled so far, and I’m so glad for it! We don’t have a whole lot of sob stories about baby weight loss and mastitis, so yay us! High fives all around.
(I guess it says a lot if you count a month in which your dog tries to scratch off his entire face to be a calm one.)
Edie turns four months old tomorrow. She continues to become more alert, interactive and fun.
Nursing, balancing on one leg, bopping and petting my dog with the other foot: I definitely did not expect this when I was expecting.
Our dog, Finn, has been sick. After holding him in a bear hug to prevent him from scratching and biting himself all night, we took him to the vet. The catch is he gets anxious and aggressive at the vet to the point that he needs to be fully sedated in order for anyone to treat him.
The doctor thought he has a food allergy (probably to beef or chicken, which she said is more common than allergies to corn and wheat—who knew?) mixed with canine anxiety. A course of steroids, antibiotics and sedatives later, I picked up our pup.
He was locked in a kennel when I stepped into the back of the office. The moment he saw me, he wagged his whole body and scratched to be let out. I couldn’t get the damn door open and grew frantic trying to unlock it. Finally the vet tech helped me. I fell to my knees, holding and petting a whimpering Finn. “It’s ok,” I told him and tried—then failed—to not cry.
Finn clumsily stumbled up the steps to our apartment. At home, the sedative wore off, and he was back to what bothered him. His face was so scraped from incessant scratching that it looked as if he had gotten into a dog fight. A patch at the base of his tail the size of a deck of cards had been gnawed raw. He had hairless patches on his paws and legs from compulsive licking.
Thankfully my mom was in town helping with Edie. I couldn’t comfort my dog while taking the best care of Edie at the same time. My heart felt as if it were being squeezed in a corset every time Finn whimpered or cried. He lay on his bed, panting with his head lowered, the rest of the day.
Finn is our first child. Plenty of people roll their eyes when we animal owners refer to our pets as children, but for me it rings true.
We adopted Finn, then called Aaron, from a non-profit in California that rescued dogs on the euthanasia list at surrounding shelters. Eric had knee surgery a few weeks after that, so I was in charge of caring for a puppy who gnawed through library books and pulled baked goods off the counter. Caring for my first dog was frustrating but immeasurably rewarding. Finn slobbered and nuzzled his way into our hearts.
We had some challenges once Edie came. I no longer snuggled and pet him whenever he asked. For a few weeks, Finn would sneak a scrap of paper from the coffee table and eat it in front of me, just out of reach, when I nursed Edie. Or he snatched muffins from my bedside table and left only crumbs, not even the paper wrapping, to show for his crime.
Since then the whole family has adjusted. He lies half-on my lap while I nurse Edie now, and she’s paying attention to him. Finn jumps a little when Edith grabs a fistful of his fur, but he always sniffs her in her carseat whenever we return home. He licks her face and ears when she does tummy time.
As I type this, Finn is out at the park with Eric. He has been more of himself in the last 24 hours. I’m still hand-feeding him water (ask me about the difficulty of this sometime) but last night he ate for the first time in two days. He’s sleeping again and his face doesn’t have the drawn, harrowed look it did before.
Finn now doesn’t need to be stroked and held every minute of the day. But the episode left me feeling as torn up as his face looked. I felt I needed to give all my attention to both my baby and my dog at the same time. Doing both—like nursing, bopping and petting all at once—could last only so long.
I don’t have some lesson I’ve drawn for this. The next time it happens—and it surely will—we’ll be in the same impossibility of doing everything for everyone. And it feels like shit.
Until then, though, I’m excited to get back to our usual family dynamic, once Finn is feeling up to it. Edie misses her Finn kisses.
“Trick or treat!” My brother, sisters and I stood at a neighbor’s doorstep. My breath puffed tiny clouds as I eagerly awaited my treat. Would this bowl contain Butterfingers—perfect for trading with my brother—or Milky Ways? Or would it be a dud, filled with Smarties and Good & Plenty.
“And what are you?” the woman, silhouetted against the open door, asked.
“I’m a cheerleader!” I was frustrated at having to answer the same well-meaning question house after house. I had told my mom exactly what I wanted to dress as. A trip to St. Vincent de Paul netted a paneled skirt and Churchill High School cheer top. But I was bundled under a puffy coat, and sweatpants kept my legs warm. My mom had insisted I dress warmly, and no one could tell what my costume was.
I hauled my pillowcase to house after house, pulling in candy that my parents would dole out to our lunches, one piece a day, for weeks to come. I envied the other kids in their clearcut outfits and their plastic jack-o-lantern tubs. “Think of how much more candy you can carry in a pillowcase,” my mom would say, cheering us up.
We made or cobbled together our own costumes every year. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, and sometimes I felt my cheeks burn at our makeshift outfits—especially when no one could tell what I was among the store-bought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and mermaid Ariels.
Ironically, for Edith’s first Halloween, I felt guilty buying a costume. Granted, it was from Value Village, but I felt as if I were cheating a little by throwing on a zip-up romper and calling her a ladybug.
I think I judged myself a little for not crafting her something fabulous to wear. After all, I designed and created all the Halloween costumes in the October issue of Parents a few years back; couldn’t I do a fraction of that for my own baby?
As fall progressed, though, I didn’t find the time—or rather I filled the spare moments I had with things like picking up the house, playing with my dog or watching The Walking Dead. (For shame!)
On Halloween, a few hours before we were meant to arrive at a friend’s party, I found myself pawing through my craft bin for my glue gun. While Edie napped I made a last-minute effort to dress us up as a family and we went to the party as a trio of pirates. Granted, the extent of the crafting was gluing a plastic heart to a shirt and sewing in Christmas garland for intestines (Eric didn’t want to be a regular pirate; he wanted to be a dead pirate); most of the pirate-ness came from props. I was happy to do something creative with my hands, though. It had been months since I pieced together from unlikely materials; it had been a while since I made something.
We had a wonderful time. We ate too much candy and squealed every time a trick-or-treater rang the doorbell. Edie didn’t even protest over her skull and crossbones headscarf.
I’d call Halloween 2013 a success. It will be fun to see what Edith wants to be in the years to come. Maybe she’ll carry home candy in an orange pumpkin-shaped bucket or in a pillowcase. I’ll have to wait and see.
I hope to make her costumes in the future—but not because that’s what a good mother does; plenty of great moms score adorable outfits from the store. I want to make them because I enjoy it. It’s good for her to witness me losing myself in a project. When she sees me gaining the satisfaction of sewing scraps into a gorgeous outfit or gluing sequins just so, she will learn how satisfying pursuing a passion can be.