Teaching Through Trauma: Sexual Violence and Sex Positive Parenting

You may recall that over the summer I caused a bit of a stir with my article, "Sex Positive Parenting, or, We Don't Touch Our Vulvas At The Table." In that post I talked about sex positivity and not shaming children for exploring their bodies, and how honesty empowers and protects children.

I've done a lot of talking about this in the months since. I've spoken at conferences, gone on the radio, interviewed on podcasts... it's been a wild ride.

But part of what I've been doing has been very quiet. And that's what I'd like to talk about now.

Since that article came out, people have been writing to me to ask advice on how to talk to their children about sex, with massive caveats.

Parents who were victims of childhood sexual assault.
Parents with children who were born from rape.
Parents with adopted children who came from a foster system that permitted gross sexual misconduct.

I had advocated honesty, total honesty, about sex and biology. I talked about explaining IVF and cesarean sections to children.

So what about these questions? What do you tell a child, honestly, when the honest truth is both horrible, and unacceptable?

I spent a lot of time thinking about this.

I always told those parents at least one thing, "Whenever you are ready to talk to your child about this, make sure you know that it is not their fault. Make sure you let them know that, no matter what happened to them, or to you, they are not to blame, and they are not diminished by having this as part of their personal history."

I recognized as I wrote these words, in endless variations, over and over again, how little they could do to heal the gaping wounds their parents have.

But as more and more parents wrote me, I felt more and more the need to discuss being sex positive with children in the context of a world filled with sexual violence.

You see, in addition to talking about sex positive parenting, I'm a member of the RAINN Speakers Bureau. I talk to groups of teenagers about rape culture and sexual violence. I talk a great deal about consent and power dynamics and the reality of rape versus the popular mythology.

And I always explain, when talking about sex positivity, that this is a way to protect children from rape culture. That when you empower children with the correct names for their organs, and an understanding of what is and is not appropriate, you can protect them from becoming victims. And more importantly, you can stop them from becoming predators.

This is little comfort to children who are already, in some way, victims.

So when speaking to a child about human biology, about how a sperm must meet an egg, and how that sperm usually comes out of a penis when it is inside of a vagina, is that the time to talk about rape?

As much as I, as a parent and a human being want to say no, it's not the time, I can't. I think that it is the time.

I think sooner is generally better, within reason. I wouldn't attempt to explain rape to two year old, but when a child is able to intellectualize human reproduction, I think it's not too soon to come clean with the facts.

And the facts are this- reproduction is beautiful. It is intimate and loving, it is a way to show that you care, and that you don't want to hurt somebody. Just like a hug, or a pat on the head. But sometimes, people do violent things that look like nice things. You can hug somebody too tight and hurt them. You can hit, instead of patting. These are things nobody should do, and that all of us must learn not to do. But sometimes, people do these things. And sex and rape are like that. Rape is not sex, it is turning sex into a violent act. The way a slap and a pat on the cheek are not the same, however closely they may seem to resemble each other in their mechanics.

These are comparisons a child can understand. And so long as the explanation of what rape is, and how it is related to the reproductive process, blame and shame for the child can be minimized or eliminated.

The problem is, rape is shameful. Not for the victim, but for the rapist. It is a shameful, awful thing to do to another human being, and yet people do. And because of the profound shame and discomfort regarding sex we share in our culture, the shame and blame is often misplaced onto the victim. This happens not because it is shameful to have been raped, but because as a culture we are all so afraid of sex that we cannot distinguish between an act of affection and an act of violence.

Telling a child that they are the product of a rape is never going to be easy. It should never be easy, because talking about sexual violence shouldn't be easy. But we still need to do it.

We desperately need to do it. Especially with children.

I've heard the advice, especially among adoptive parents, to associate the rape with the birth mom. To make it about her, not about the child. I understand this impulse, but to me it reeks of victim blaming. We should never associate a crime with the victim, always the perpetrator.

I have a confession. Until I began working on writing this post, months ago, I had not talked to my five year old daughters about rape. Not explicitly. I had done it obliquely, in terms I thought they would understand. I explained rape culture in terms of "hurting" rather than "sexual violence," because explaining to my children what rape is was something that I thought could wait.

I don't think it can anymore. Not as I've forced myself to sit down and read letter after letter from parents who can't wait. Who don't have the luxuries that I do.

And so, I told my daughters about rape. The five year olds, not the two year old. We read "Where Did I Come From?" and I paused after we finished the page that describes sex.

"You know," I said, "Sometimes people do that to hurt each other."

SI looked at me like I was insane. "They do. Sometimes, one person will want to do that, and the other doesn't, and it hurts them. The book says it feels good, and it does, when both people want to. The way hugging feels good. But it doesn't feel good if your sister chases you and pinches you, right?"

"I don't like that when RH does that," DD agreed.

"Yeah. So sometimes, people try to do that to other people who don't want to. And that's not okay. That's not the same thing as sex, it's something else entirely."

And we moved on.

I didn't use the word "rape." As I've discussed before, it's a hard word to use. I've gotten better at writing it down, the more and more and more I practice at it, but it's so much easier to write "rape culture" than it is to write "rape." And it is infinitely more simple to write than to say.

I did not use the word "rape," and I did not say that it had happened to me. Although I know if I'd let the conversation linger, the question would have come up, and I honestly don't know if I could have answered it.

I really, truly, genuinely don't know.

But this is important. It is vital that our children know what rape is, and that it is fundamentally different from consensual sex acts.

I can't recommend my script, because it is still full of holes. I still have no idea how I will one day tell my children that I was raped, twice no less. But it's something I've known since before I became a parent that I must do.

I, and all parents who have survived sexual violence, need to be the face of survival for our children. Not because we choose this, but because we are and always will be their role models. Because what we say and do is what they believe is the right way to say and do anything. And if we maintain a silence about being assaulted, we teach them that what is right and proper is to be silent. But it is not easy. It is never easy.

And if I cannot tell them this without the constant weight of my own misplaced shame, what would I tell them if they were born because of rape?

I know I would tell them that it wasn't their fault. I know I would tell them that I love them, and that nothing that anybody did to me before they were born has anything to do with who they are now.

And I know I would try to have those conversations now, while they would simply inform the facts of their existence, rather than complicate their already difficult adolescence when they must somehow correlate the facts of their burgeoning sexual identities with an understanding of the nature of the act that created them.

This is not easy. This is not simple. This is not fun. There is no solution to how to teach your children something traumatic. Ever.

There is no easy way to explain death. To explain that yes, someday mommy and daddy will die. Yes, someday they will die.

There is also no easy way to explain that human beings are capable of profound suffering, and worse, inflicting it upon each other.

The one question a parent asked me that truly haunts me is this, "There was a line in your blog about how only your daughters have the decision to have sex, but obviously that is not true in the case of rape. I know someday I will have to explain that women are supposed to have the right, but they don’t always. Any thoughts from you in this case?"

My thoughts are these- rape is not sex. The act may look similar, but it is not the same.

There are many ways for a baby to come into the world. They all begin the same way- sperm meets egg. But that can happen in so many ways.

Sex. IVF. Intrauterine insemination. Rape.

None of these are the same.

It is not your doing if your were born thanks to IVF. It is not your doing if you were born as the result of rape. You do not carry the weight of that act. You are loved. You are so loved. And when you are old enough, you will know the difference between what is affection and what is abuse, and in that way you are more than anything that came before you. You are empowered and precious.

This is what I would say, my thoughts.

To those parents whose children came from sexual assault, I would say I have no idea how difficult this conversation will be. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it will be. But remember, the fault always lies with the person committing the crime. Not you. Never you. And not your child.

We can be honest, even if it hurts. We must be honest when it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

Because children are not obtuse. They see us struggling with our honesty, and it teaches them something important. It teaches then that no matter how hard honesty is, it is essential.

When we are uncomfortable, or in pain, and continue on- it teaches them about bravery.

They are watching us all the time, and they are always learning.

Let them learn the unspoken. Let them learn how utterly horrifying rape is by watching us struggle to even say the word. Let them learn how important it is not to use reproduction as a weapon by seeing how repulsed we are by it. Let them learn how much we love them by holding them and loving them through our own pain and trauma.

Let them learn bravery by watching ours.

I will keep trying. I will keep trying to do better.

And keep sending me letters. I will read them. I always read them. And if I think I can help, if I think there is anything I can do to lesson your burden, I will.

I hope someday, that is a lesson I can pass along, too.

Your New Best Resource

This is a sponsored post, brought to you by MomAssembly. All opinions are my own.

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I went through the classes for the course, "Coping with Postpartum Depression," nodding along so hard I almost gave myself whiplash. These courses are cleverly designed as a conversation between a woman with PPD, and a therapist.

Can I just say how brilliant this is? If only I'd had this resource when I was suffering through PPD after RH was born. Not only would it have made me feel so much less broken, so much more human, to see another person experiencing so much of what I was experiencing, but to put it in the context of therapy is perfect. It shows that therapy helps, that it's not frightening or embarrassing or invasive. It's both a class and also tacit permission to go out and get the help you need, a support structure, if you will.

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The Truth About Sex After Kids

People like to joke that once you have kids, you stop having sex.

Obviously this isn't true, or there would be no such thing as younger siblings or vasectomy parties. (Yes, I contemplated throwing my husband a party to commemorate his vasectomy. I am certain this is actually a thing people do, and I'm not just a lunatic. There are menses parties, for god's sake!) I sometimes think this is a myth created by people who just don't want to imagine that their parents actually had sex for pleasure on a regular basis.

Movies like "Date Night" perpetuate this myth, with such hilarious scenes as the mouthguard incident, or the look of shock on Tina Fey's face when her friend says she's getting divorced in part because she and her husband were only having sex two or three times a week. And yeah, I laughed my ass off, because I'd recently had twins and my husband and I were living in shifts in order to take care of two sets of dirty diapers and whatnot 24 hours a day, and yeah, we weren't having sex every night. But judging all of parenthood by the first six weeks is like judging all baseball teams by the Cubs, or judging all of "Up" by the first ten minutes.

So I'm going to set the record straight.

Sex is a minefield at first. First off, there's the awkwardness factor of attempting to move in concert with another person in such a way that both of you can avoid making strange and humiliating noises (and not just with your mouths) and trying to look sexy while you do it. Then there's the goodie-bag of body issues most of us go into sexual relationships with, making things just that much harder by necessitating a completely dark or poorly lit sex environment. On top of that, there's shame based indoctrination, that tells men they're never big enough and they don't "last long enough," and tells women they should be capable of half a dozen orgasms pretty much all on their own with no help, or that they're not really supposed to like sex to begin with, depending on their cultural backgrounds.

Basically, until you get comfortable with your partner, sex is kind of... awful.

That's not to say it doesn't still feel great. Because let's be honest, most of the time it does. But parts of it are embarrassing and confusing and involve lots of talks about what it all means, and whether you're having enough of it, and you avoid the conversations that might actually make it better.

After kids? Forget all of that. Sex is completely different. Why?

Because you have completely lost all sense of shame or embarrassment towards your body and what it does. The fears you used to have about whether or not he'll stop liking you if he notices your fat stomach are replaced by the knowledge that this person has watched you screaming in pain while you carried multiple human beings around inside of you, with random parts swelling up and growing hair no human should grow and with that wild hormonal glint in your eyes that threatens actual physical violence, and you know what? They still love you!

So fuck it!

Once the realization that your partner loves your body and what it does, regardless of what you think of it, really hits?

The sex is incomparably better. You can simply ask for what you like. You can explore your fetishes and kinks and preferences, even the ones that previously embarrassed you, because nothing embarrasses you anymore. Not when you've both sat staring at each other at the crack of dawn, covered in the same infant's vomit and feces. Not when you've had more conversations than you care to count about the kids' diarrhea and whether or not the shits you're both experiencing indicate a virus, something psychosomatic, or yet another side effect of prolonged fatigue. Not when you've been responsible for popping each others' back pimples, harping on each other to get to the gym, and sitting on the couch after the children are FINALLY asleep, each eating your own entire pint of Ben and Jerry's. Once you hit that point, the sex is epic.

And that makes people feel icky. To know that their birth heralded in a new and exciting era in boning for their parents is beyond uncomfortable.

So stop making it about them already, and make it about you.

All that said, there are still some deep truths when it comes to the levels of exhaustion a couple with children experiences come the end of the day. There is nothing quite like going to bed utterly exhausted and already covered in four people's fluids to make you NOT want to be covered in another variety.

There are levels of bone weary tired that only appear when a kid woke you up at three in the morning the night before because they had a hangnail, and then another woke you up at dawn because you promised they could have scrambled eggs for breakfast. SCRAMBLED EGGS. It's not like you need an extra hour to prepare them, for God's sake! Followed by a whole day of wrangling into carseats, evacuating from car seats, pushing around loaded strollers while doling out snacks and keeping tabs on space cadet kids who forget to follow you in the middle of a park because they thought they heard a dog somewhere.

That kind of exhaustion comes only with having children or providing instructions to astronauts in a busted space ship for what to do to keep their air breathable until they can make their descent back through Earth's atmosphere.

So when it comes to post child sex, there are really two varieties, and for your reading pleasure I will sum them up to you with the following entirely theoretical definitely not real certainly not from me and M conversations:


"Hey, remember that thing you did the other night that made me see God while I was orgasming? Can you do that again, only this time can I be blindfolded and can you use some ice?"
"Sure! Only you have to promise that tomorrow you'll do that other thing. Twice. And I want you to wear that thing we got on Valentine's Day while you do it the second time."
"Do we have to wait until tomorrow? Can we do it now?"
"Yes please!"


"I'm so horny. But I'm soooooooo tiiiiiiiired."
"If you decide you're more horny than tired, I can rally."
"You can rally? Okay... these pajama pants have a hole in the crotch. How about I just lie here and you make this happen through the hole in my pants, and we call it a night?"
"I'm not doing that."
"Probably for the best. That would make the laundry extra gross."
"snooooore"



So the truth is that it's inconsistent. Like almost everything in life. But it's not the sad, exhausted, infrequent joke it's made out to be.

Which is why vasectomy parties should totally be a thing.

Go get your freak on, people with kids. You have more than earned it.

Sex Positive Parenting, or We Don't Touch Our Vulvas At The Table

It happened yet again. As I was sitting at the table for dinner with my children, I noticed my daughter's hand fishing around under her skirt.

"We don't play with our vulvas at the table. Go wash your hands and finish your food," I scolded. She nodded, ran off to wash her hands, and resumed picking at her dinner instead.

Small children, they touch themselves. A lot. It's fascinating to them. And when you're a small child, you have no sense of shame or disgust or fear of your body. Your body is what it is. It does what it does. And everything that it does is kind of amazing, because you're not old enough for lower back pain. It's not sexual, it's just... fact.

The first time I caught one of my kids playing with their genitals, I said absolutely nothing. I was momentarily paralyzed with indecision. One thing I knew for a fact I did not want to do was to shout, "No!" or "Stop!" What good could that possibly do? Sure, I would be spared the awkwardness of catching my child playing with her genitals on the living room floor, but what kind of lesson is that? To fear or ignore your own vagina?

I thought about it almost constantly for two days, and of course she gave me a second chance to react.

"Sweetie, we don't play with our vulvas in the living room," I said. Which sounded ridiculous and strange, but nonetheless true. Why is everything with little kids "we" statements? "It's okay to touch your vulva, but people are private, and it's a private thing. The only places where you should touch your vulva are in the bathroom or in your bedroom. If you want to play with your vulva, please go to the bedroom."

And she smiled and did, without question, because compartmentalizing where you do certain activities makes sense to little kids.

"We don't eat in the bathroom, and we don't touch our vulvas in the living room," became the new mantra. And yes, eventually it became, "We don't touch our vulvas at the table."

I'm what some people call "sex positive." That doesn't mean I talk with my four year olds about how great sex is and how good it feels. It means I don't pretend it's something other than it is.

As parents, we lie all the time. About the Easter Bunny or Santa or the Tooth Fairy, about how long ten minutes is, about whether or not we remembered they wanted to have grilled cheese for dinner again, we lie a lot. But one thing I never lie about is sex.

I don't want them to grow up ashamed of their bodies or confused about what they do. I don't tell them about cabbage patches or storks, I make an effort, always, to be honest about human reproduction. Every aspect of it.

I've had talks with lots of other moms about having "the talk." I don't think my kids and I will ever have that particular talk, because they already know. And we talk about it often- kids are obsessive creatures. We read "Where Did I Come From?" and "What Makes A Baby" which together cover every aspect of the subject. We can talk about IVF and c-sections, because both of those are part of the story of their births, and we can talk about the fact that yes, mommy and daddy still have sex regardless. And when they're older, we'll start talking about contraception.

Because lying to your kids about sex helps nobody. Telling them that sex is "only between mommies and daddies" is a lie that leads to confused, hormone charged teenagers. Telling them that sex is "only something that happens when two people love each other very much" is a lie that causes hormone charged teenagers to confuse "love" with "lust," or "obsession." It leads to leaps of logic like, "If I have sex with them, we must be in love." Or worse- "If I love them, I have to have sex with them." And how many teenage tragedies are based on that misconception?

The truth is that human beings, almost universally, like sex. It feels good. And it's supposed to feel good. If it didn't, the human race would die out. The truth is that sex isn't special and magical just because it's sex. The truth is that you can have spectacular sex with strangers who's names you don't even know. The truth is that just because you can, that doesn't necessarily mean you should.

And that's what sex positive parenting really is. Not telling my kids lies about sex to keep them from behaviors I don't think are healthy. It's telling them the truth, the whole truth, and letting it sink in so they can make their own good choices.

It's telling them that sex is good, but that it's dangerous if you're not careful. It's teaching them to require their partners to use condoms, to buy their own condoms if they're planning on having sex. It's teaching them that while sex feels good, they can feel good on their own too. (Just not at the table.) That while sex combined with love is often the best sex- transcendent sex- that grows the bond of love and builds a closeness that is almost impossible to find otherwise, sex isn't always like that- even with people you love. That sex can lead to pregnancy, even with protection, so engaging in it is a commitment to deal with any consequences.

It's telling them they're not wrong, or sinful, or bad, if they have sexual feelings. Or even if they have sex. It's teaching them that sex happens, whether people always make good choices or not. And it's giving them the tools to ensure that when they're ready, they're smart and cautious and conscientious.

There's a lot of black and white comparisons when it comes to sex education. Some people think that once kids hit puberty, if they don't have a strong fear of sex they'll have as much as they can, as often as they can. There's a lot of abstinence-only sex education, based on telling kids, "SEX IS SCARY! DON'T DO IT!" and it's about the least successful program anyone has ever invented. In states with abstinence-only sex ed, teen pregnancy rates only go up and up and up.

Telling children the truth about sex isn't giving permission for them to have it- and this is the most important part- because nobody has the right to deny them permission for sex but themselves.

And that's the thing I try to keep in mind when I say things like, "We don't touch our vulvas at the table." Sex is something that ONLY happens when both people WANT it to happen. And that means that the only people in the entire world with any kind of say over whether or not my daughters have sex is them.

I don't get to tell my daughters they have to have sex, but I also don't get to tell them they can't. They're in charge. Your body, your decision.

I never want to be responsible for setting the precedent that another person gets to tell them what to do with their bodies, and especially with their sexuality. I don't want to be the gateway for a manipulative, potentially abusive boyfriend.

So I teach boundaries. Appropriate places. Hygiene. I teach my children that nobody is allowed to touch their bodies without permission. When we get in tickle fights and they say, "Stop!" I stop.

And when we talk about pregnant friends, we talk about uteruses and sperm and eggs.

And most of the time, it's not uncomfortable. Most of the time, I'm verifying information and the conversation lasts fifteen seconds.

And someday the conversation is going to be a lot uglier. Someday, we'll have to actually talk about rape, and explicit and enthusiastic consent, and contraception. Someday we'll have to talk about healthy masturbation and pornography and realistic expectations of sex and sex partners and body image and a lack of shame for their bodies. And those conversations are not going to be as brief or straightforward.

But I'm ready. Whenever that day comes, I'm prepared. Because the groundwork is there.

"We don't touch our vulvas at the table." It's absurd, but it's got all the important pieces. It's a micro-lesson in safety and consent and social propriety. I don't think I'll be able to say, "We don't lose our virginity in the back seat of a car after a Prom party," with a straight face, but I will be able to say, "We don't have sex without thinking long and hard about it first, and we certainly don't do it without being careful, and being safe, and being totally confident in the maturity of our partner and our ability to handle the repercussions if we get a disease or get pregnant."

Because it's true. We don't.

But I like that when that time comes, I'm part of the "we." Because if I can tell my girls, "we" have to be careful, they'll know that no matter what happens, I'm still in their corner. I've still got their backs. Even if "we" make bad choices, I'll still be there to help make things right again.

Oblivious

I love this little girl.

I have dwelled long enough. It's time to put this blog to therapeutic purposes and tell you a story.

It's the story of how when I looked in the mirror on Tuesday morning and found three, yes, three brand new grey hairs growing out of my temple, I knew exactly where they came from.

There are moments in parenting that make you want to simultaneously throw up, curl into a ball and cry, and drink until you pass out. There are always going to be those moments. And the thing that makes them so awful is they're always such a surprise when they happen.

Once upon a time, I had a wonderful pyrex mixing bowl. It was a thing of wonder and beauty, even if my husband did nearly concuss me with it. I also had a marvelous pizza stone. And they were both dirty.

I did what any reasonable adult would do. I washed them.

First, I washed the pyrex mixing bowl. And I set it in the drying rack on the counter. Then I washed the pizza stone.

Of course, this was in the build-up to making a family meal, which meant RH was toddling around me like a noisy shadow, tugging and my skirt and demanding juice, asking for apple slices as I prepared to boil water, the usual.

As I set the pizza stone into the drying rack, RH walked around me, to paw at the drying rack. I rolled the vacuum cleaner into her way, so she couldn't pull down the rack filled with heavy stone and glass objects. Seemed like a no-brainer.

And then I grabbed the pyrex mixing bowl, for mixing purposes.

As I lifted it, the weight distribution on the rack shifted, and the heavy pizza stone started to fall forward. Right over RH's little head.

I reacted instinctively. I threw my hands in between my twenty one month old child and the falling piece of heavy stone.

My hands, still holding the gigantic glass bowl.

The glass shattered into a million pieces, shards as long as my forearm and as sharp as any knife in the kitchen exploded from my hands onto the floor. Tiny slivers rained down.

This all happened one foot over my toddler's head.

Unfortunately, she wasn't wearing protective
headgear

I screamed. Of course I screamed. And RH, her hair full of glass fragments, with glimmering pieces of broken glass shimmering all over her clothes, froze.

She didn't cry. It was like she'd been turned to a pillar of salt.

As quickly as I could, I set down the chunks of razor sharp glass still in my hands, and moved the pizza stone into the sink. Then I did what you have to do when your one and a half year old daughter is both covered in and completely surrounded by broken glass.

I stepped into it to rescue her.

I spent most of the night cleaning up broken glass. Picking it out of her hair, out of the bottom of my feet, off of the vacuum cleaner. I had a beer and I called my mother, because apparently that's how I deal with trauma now. I'm still not satisfied the glass is completely gone. There was so much of it.

But RH? Not a scratch. Not a single scratch on her.

And I keep reliving it.

I couldn't have been more terrified and certain that something terrible was about to happen to her if she's beed surrounded by snakes or crocodiles or tarantulas.

And as soon as I put her to bed that night, satisfied that she wouldn't roll over and slice her scalp open with a hidden bit of glass, I realized how badly hurt I could have been, with my arms and wrists right there, next to the explosion of glass.

And I had a Bailey's on ice to help me get to sleep.

First of all, let me say I know, drinking is a terrible way to deal with stress. And it's one I don't generally resort to. But I couldn't get my hands to stop shaking. I couldn't get my heart to start racing. I needed to do something to force my body to act like it wasn't in fight or flight mode, and I happen to know I'm a more competent parent on a glass of Bailey's than I am on a xanax.

But to be perfectly honest, nearly killing my kid with a giant glass explosion seriously fucked me up.

I know, she wasn't "nearly killed." But she also was. The enormous, sharp, heavy chunks of glass all around her could have easily killed her, and just as easily mutilated her for life.

Not a damn scratch on her, though.

Every time I think about it I feel sick. I blame myself, because I should have been so much more careful. I blame myself because I hesitated for a moment before I put my shoeless feet into a mound of glass shards. I blame myself, because who else is there to blame?

She's okay. She's totally unharmed. She'll never remember it, she won't know it happened. That's how toddlers work.

Me? I'm growing a nice streak of grey at my temple because I'm responsible for giving my youngest child a broken glass shower.

And that, right there, is what parenting is like some days. You worry and worry and blame yourself and second guess yourself because you're responsible for the life and happiness of another human being in a way that only comes with children. And after all that worry and self-blame and fear and agony... the kid is fine. The kid is happy. The kid is oblivious.

The kid loves you, even though they have no idea what you've just gone through in the simple hope that they will remain happy and healthy and safe. Because they already trusted implicitly that it was the most important thing to you. And they were right.

She's a quirky little thing.

That's parenthood, some days. Some weeks.

Picking glass out of your toddler's hair while she drinks a cup of juice and laughs at being shaken upside down to knock the glass of her shirt.

Picking glass out of your feet and ankles and being relieved that it's your skin that got scuffed up. Committing to memory every adorable and heartwarming thing your kid does because you never know what you'll have to remember if next time you aren't so lucky.

Some days, that's it.

Not today, thank God. But some days.

And those other days, there are always extra hugs to enjoy, smiles to ignore, or fights to end. Because life is messy, and it doesn't stop just because one day last week you traumatized yourself.

You just have to learn to be a little oblivious to your own trauma, too.

Advice

When I started this blog, nearly four years ago, I thought I would dispense advice about parenting. I figured, I'm a rational, even keeled lady. I knew I would never be the sort of person who had Pinterest-Perfect birthday parties or hosted tablescaped dinner parties. (I've actually surprised myself quite a bit in that respect.)

I was completely wrong.

I know nothing about parenting. And every time another thing goes wrong, I'm more and more certain that I know nothing about parenting.

I know plenty about being a parent, sure. But when it comes to advice?

I only have one thing to offer.

Purple oatmeal.

No matter how exhausted you are, how sick you are, how disrupted your routine, how much chaos in your life...

No matter what, you can make purple oatmeal. And you know what? It's a lifesaver.

Nobody tells you when you're pregnant that there will be days where you've got one kid with diarrhea and one with an ear infection, where you've probably broken your foot tripping over a tiny wooden chair while carrying a thirty pound toddler, and you've got to figure out whether or not it's worth it to get yourself to a doctor without a sitter.

Nobody tells you that there will be days when you just couldn't drag yourself out of bed early enough to make scrambled eggs and pancakes, as requested, and you've only got ten minutes for the kids to eat before you have to bring them to school.

Nobody tells you that you need a back pocket full of tricks that will only work for only one child, and only a couple of times, because sometimes that's all you need.

Instead, you get advice.

"Take help when people offer it."
"Let the floor go unswept- they're only babies for a short while."
"Enjoy every minute."
"Nap when they nap. Sleep when they sleep."
"Take time for you."
"Cherish it."
"Don't forget to laugh."
"Spare the rod, spoil the child."

It comes from every corner, from everywhere. "Parenting advice." And nine times out of ten, it's just added to the heap of clutter in your head making you feel guilty, or ineffective, or insufficient to the needs of your family.

But no matter what else happens, you can make purple oatmeal.

Boil 3.25 cups of water. Add two cups of quick oats. Stir occasionally for about six minutes. Add 1.5 tablespoons of brown sugar. Add 2.5 cups of frozen blueberries.

As the blueberries thaw (and they will in less than thirty seconds) they cool the oatmeal. The moment it's done, the kids can eat it. You don't have to wait for it to cool. You don't have to worry they won't like it. You don't have to worry about a thing. Just make purple oatmeal, put it in bowls, and give the kids their spoons.

And no matter what else is happening, at least they're all eating, and they're happy.

This is the sum total of my advice as a parent.

This is all I've got.

Next time a friend tells me with joy and fear and excitement that they're going to have a baby, I won't tell them how they'll be overwhelmed with every feeling a human can feel more often than they can possibly imagine.

I won't tell them to remember the precious moments, or to learn to take quick cold showers, I won't lecture them about a "heart outside your body," or the ever present fear that comes with the love, or how all encompassing, life changing, and life affirming that love can be.

"Make sure there's always room in the freezer for blueberries," I'll say.

"You're going to be just fine."

Dear Less-Than-Perfect Mom

Dear Mom,

I've seen you around. I've seen you screaming at your kids in public, I've seen you ignoring them at the playground, I've seen you unshowered and wearing last night's pajama pants at preschool drop-off. I've seen you begging your children, bribing them, threatening them. I've seen you shouting back and forth with your husband, with your mom, with the police officer at the crosswalk.

I've seen you running around with your kids, getting dirty and occasionally swearing audibly when you bang a knee. I've seen you sharing a milkshake with a manic four year old. I've seen you wiping your kids' boogers with your bare palm, and then smearing them on the back of your jeans. I've seen you carry your toddler flopped over the crook of your arm while chasing a runaway ball.

I've also seen you gritting your teeth while your kid screamed at you for making him practice piano, or soccer, or basket weaving, or whatever it was. I've seen you close your eyes and breathe slowly after finding a gallon of milk dumped into your trunk. I've seen you crying into the sink while you desperately scrub crayon off your best designer purse. I've seen you pacing in front of the house.

I've seen you at the hospital waiting room. I've seen you at the pharmacy counter. I've seen you looking tired, and frightened.

I've seen a lot of you, actually.

I see you every single day.

I don't know if you planned to be a parent or not. If you always knew from your earliest years that you wanted to bring children into the world, to tend to them, or if motherhood was thrust upon you unexpectedly. I don't know if it meets your expectations, or if you spent your first days as a mom terrified that you would never feel what you imagined "motherly love" would feel like for your child. I don't know if you struggled with infertility, or with pregnancy loss, or with a traumatic birth. I don't know if you created your child with your body, or created your family by welcoming your child into it.

But I know a lot about you.

I know that you didn't get everything that you wanted. I know that you got a wealth of things you never knew you wanted until they were there in front of you. I know that you don't believe that you're doing your best, that you think you can do better. I know you are doing better than you think.

I know that when you look at your child, your children, you see yourself. And I know that you don't, that you see a stranger who can't understand why the small details of childhood that were so important to you are a bother to this small person who resembles you.

I know that you want to throw a lamp at your teenager's head sometimes. I know you want to toss your three year old out the window once in a while.

I know that some nights, once it's finally quiet, you curl up in bed and cry. I know that sometimes, you don't, even though you wanted to.

I know that some days are so hard that all you want is for them to end, and then at bedtime your children hug you and kiss you and tell you how much they love you and want to be like you, and you wish the day could last forever.

But it never does. The day always ends, and the next day brings new challenges. Fevers, heartbreak, art projects, new friends, new pets, new fights. And every day you do what you need to do.

You take care of things, because that's your job. You go to work, or you fill up the crock pot, or you climb into the garden, or strap the baby to your back and pull out the vacuum cleaner.

You drop everything you're doing to moderate an argument over who's turn it is to use a specifically colored marker, or to kiss a boo-boo, or to have a conversation about what kind of lipstick Pinocchio's mommy wears.

I know that you have tickle fights in blanket forts, and that you have the words to at least eight different picture books memorized. I've heard that you dance like a wildwoman when it's just you and them. That you have no shame about farting or belching in their presence, that you make up goofy songs about peas and potatoes and cheese.

I know that an hour past bedtime, you drop what you're doing and trim the fingernail that your three year old insists is keeping her up. I know that you stop cleaning dishes because your kids insist you need to join their tea party. I know you fed your kids PBandJ for four days straight when you had the flu. I know that you eat leftover crusts over the sink while your kids watch Super Why.

I know you didn't expect most of this. I know you didn't anticipate loving somebody so intensely, or loathing your post-baby body so much, or being so tired, or being the mom you've turned out to be.

You thought you had it figured out. Or you were blind and terrified. You hired the perfect nanny. Or you quit your job and learned to assemble flat packed baby furniture. You get confused by the conflict of feeling like nothing has changed since you were free and unfettered by children, and looking back on the choices you made as though an impostor was wearing your skin.

You're not a perfect mom. No matter how you try, no matter what you do. You will never be a perfect mom.

And maybe that haunts you. Or maybe you've made peace with it. Or maybe it was never a problem to begin with.

No matter how much you do, there is always more. No matter how little you do, when the day is over your children are still loved. They still smile at you, believing you have magical powers to fix almost anything. No matter what happened at work, or at school, or in play group, you have still done everything in your power to ensure that the next morning will dawn and your children will be as happy, healthy, and wise as could possibly be hoped.

There's an old Yiddish saying, "There is one perfect child in the world, and every mother has it."

Unfortunately, there are no perfect parents. Your kids will grow up determined to be different than you. They will grow up certain that they won't make their kids take piano lessons, or they'll be more lenient, or more strict, or have more kids, or have fewer, or have none at all.

No matter how far from perfect you are, you are better than you think.

Someday your kids will be running around like crazy people at synagogue and concuss themselves on a hand rail, and somebody will still walk up to you and tell you what a beautiful family you have. You'll be at the park and your kids will be covered in mud and jam up to the elbows, smearing your car with that sugary cement, and a pregnant lady will stop and smile at you wistfully.


No matter how many doubts you might have, you never need doubt this one thing:
You are not perfect.

And that's good. Because really, neither is your child. And that means nobody can care for them the way you can, with the wealth of your understanding and your experience. Nobody knows what your child's squall means, or what their jokes mean, or why they are crying, better than you do.

And since no mother is perfect, chances are you are caught in a two billion way tie for Best Mom in the World.

Congratulations, Best Mom in the World. You're not perfect.

You're as good as anybody can get.

With love,
Lea

Katie Couric, You're Not Helping

Yesterday, a woman that I admire and respect was on Katie Couric's talk show. It was kind of surreal to see a real person in the place that the green, black, and white button I usually picture in my head, but Honest Mom was... well... honest. She really impressed me.

Not so Katie Couric.

You see, the conversation was about moms who use drugs or alcohol to be better parents.

And that's where I started getting upset.

Yes, it's important to be a good mom. To be a great mom. But as I've always said, the most important thing that you can do to be a good parent is to be a happy and healthy human being.

Over and over and over again, Katie squeezed in occasional remarks about how "weird" it was that moms drink together, or how hazardous antidepressants can be to natural brain chemistry. Not once did she discuss what it is like to be a human being under constant pressure.

You see, our culture has utterly fetishized motherhood. I've written about it before, here, but it's much deeper than that. In the last decade or so, motherhood has been elevated to heights in our social consciousness that are frankly unreasonable.

Seventy five years ago, child abuse (as we know it today) was incredibly common. It was standard practice- if you were bad, your parents would hit you. And slowly, that has changed.

But when child abuse (as we know it today) was so mundane, the expectations on mothers were entirely different. The mother was part of the economic unit- and that meant work. It meant laundry and dishes and food preparation in a way that we simply don't understand it now, culturally. It meant actually knowing what to do with lye, it meant knowing how to can produce, it meant putting the laundry on the line and taking it down every day, no matter how much snow was on the ground. It meant walking to the market and carrying your food home without a fancy stroller with baskets or cupholders.

And when you have to do all of that, and one of your many children is hampering your progress, stopping you from doing what you need to do, you react as you would if anyone was threatening your domestic peace. Sometimes that meant yelling. Sometimes hitting. But things still needed to be done.

Now, we live in a very different world. It's full of electric dishwashers and clothes dryers and bread machines and two cars in every garage.

And now, we're "enlightened" about child rearing. And we've idealized our grandmothers- fetishized their accomplishments.

And here's the thing, they weren't bad parents. They sometimes hit their children, they left their children home alone- seven year olds in charge of infants- because they had to if they needed to leave the house. They didn't put babies in car seats. Their cars didn't have seat belts at all. they sometimes drank. They sometimes yelled. And they were not bad parents because of this.

There have always been drunks who have kids. There have always been mentally ill people who have kids. And that made them what they'd always been- people. Perhaps flawed, but still. People.

Now, we as mothers have these expectations. We're expected to look like we've never popped out a baby. We're expected to be full time moms- even if we work outside the home, we're expected to be constantly thinking about our kids. We're expected to have jobs- even unpaid, volunteer or temporary jobs- if we ARE full-time stay-at-home moms. We're expected to have Etsy shops, or make all our holiday cards by hand, or constantly be baking, or sewing, or something. We're expected to ensure that our kids are always well groomed, always well behaved. And we're expected to be super-wives as well. Always with dinner ready for our husbands, or to be super-cool about guys-weekend. We're supposed to have our homes decorated appropriately, with different shams for our throw pillows so that they can rotated seasonally to match the shifting and carefully arranged holiday or season specific decorations.

AND we're supposed to have hobbies. Like running, or salsa dancing, or scrap-booking. Hobbies that take time and energy, and give us something to show for it when we're all done.

And then, after all of those expectations, we're told that if we need to relax, we have to do it on our time. That if we're going to have a drink or two, it has to be out of the house, at a restaurant or something, with our friends.

Which means that if we want to relax with a drink, we need to a) pay three times what the alcohol is worth, and b) get a sitter.

In short, we are expected to treat our homes as though we are merely guests in them, as though they are places where we are not entitled to relax and enjoy ourselves. If we need to relax for ten minutes in our own homes, we're supposed to grab a book and read a chapter and a half, and laugh about how long it's been since we took a nice long bath by ourselves.

Because the worst part of the whole thing might be that it's a running joke that moms just want to sit down for five minutes once in a while.

The truth is that having kids isn't like any other endeavor on this planet. The fact is, when you are home with kids you cannot do anything without having your kids around. And you know what? It's exhausting. And it's frustrating.

And sometimes, although we are NEVER supposed to admit it, we just don't feel like we like our kids very much. Love, always, but like?

It's okay for a married person to have a day where they're just sort of pissed off at their spouse. It's expected. Cohabitation is hard. But cohabitation with children is harder.

They need you to do everything for them. Put their cereal in their bowls, clean all their spills, explain to them over and over again why you wear a bra, let them "help" with every chore that interests them.

You spend every waking second interacting with them at their pace. And kids? They set a manic pace. It's constant running from A to B to W and there's no stopping.

Seventy five years ago, if your kids bugged you incessantly while you were trying to make sure that the family was taken care of, you'd probably hit or yell at your kid. It's what people did. Now, when your kids won't let you fulfill all of your constant, varied, and unreasonable expectations, you don't hit them. You don't yell. Instead, you refer to your child-rearing technique of choice, have a conversation about it, breathe deep and remember to communicate with them on their level because they're just children who don't understand the world.

And so, instead of brushing them off and going going going, you slow down and you have yet another emotionally taxing conversation with no logic to it and no sense of direction. And yes, it's amazing. And it keeps you young. And it keeps you laughing because you can't imagine a world where the most logical explanation about why something like a fork isn't scary is, "It doesn't have legs." And so yes, being a mom (or a dad) is incredible.

But it is hard. It is frustrating. And sometimes, you need to do something to change the way you're looking at things.

Sometimes, you need to have a drink. And you know why? Because you've been working 24/7 since the moment your kid was born, and you will never get to stop, and you need to do something that reminds you that you are still in possession of your own being. That you're not a slave, that this is your home. YOUR HOME. That you can do the things that help you relax, AND be a parent at the same time.

Katie talked to women who used Adderall, meth, Prozac, and alcohol. And she very carefully divided them into two categories. Women who legitimately have some sort of problem that permits them some tools, and women who are at risk of having a problem.

If a woman had a job caring for a house full of somebody else's kids, and then went home to their own home, and had a few drinks with some other nannies? No big deal. Because they're not the mom. We, as a society, have elevated the importance of motherhood so high that as soon as you're a mom, you don't get to do the things that help you relax anymore. (There's some great discussion about it in this TED talk.)

Is it so traumatic to a child if a mommy waits until dinner time, when all that's left is bath and bed, and has a drink? Is it so horrible if that mom took a few puffs of marijuana? Is it so bad if she pops a Xanax? No. Because what she's doing is finding a way to let her stress go. To remain a happy, healthy person.

The fact that she's a mom is irrelevant. There have been moms since the dawn of humanity  And none of them have ever been perfect, because all of them are human. But now, now that we've put motherhood on this outrageous pedestal, we all believe we have to be perfect. And we judge each other. And we shame ourselves.

And that is a hell of a lot worse than getting a bit silly when you've been up to your elbows in somebody else's feces all day. Being a little silly can even help you relate to them when you're too wrapped up in your adult responsibilities to remember what is really important in the mind of a child. And they appreciate it. They enjoy playing with you. And sometimes, relaxing involves a little help.

And that's okay, for other people. It's okay if a guy needs a little "liquid courage" when he's introducing himself to people at a company party. It's okay if an adult woman has a beer or two when their friends are celebrating a birthday. It's okay when old friends on vacation sit by the pool drinking margaritas all day for a week.

So long as they don't have kids. So long as their kids aren't there. The minute a child is in sight, somebody must have a problem. Somebody must be making bad choices.

Is it a good thing when the only responsible adults in a child's life are so drunk, or so high, or so sedated, that they can't usher their family to safety if the house burned down? No. That's bad. That's not what most of Katie's guests were doing, though. Even the "drunk" mommy, she realized she'd had too much to drink before driving her kids home, and never drank again.

Is that the lesson to give our kids? That if you make a mistake, and you realize that you've made a mistake, you never get a second chance?  Or do you teach your kids that they can relax, they can socialize with friends, and they can still make good choices?

I remember my parents' parties from when I was a kid. I remember a kiddie pool in the back yard, filled with ice and turned into a cooler for bottles of beer. I remember a dozen Passover seders, my parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents getting sillier as their drank their fourth glasses of wine. I remember my mother, at a backyard party of some friends, having a drink and then breaking her wrist on a pogo stick.

These aren't bad memories. These are memories of responsible adults who behaved responsibly with liquor. My mom wasn't a drunk who went pogoing into traffic. My dad's friend in the gorilla costume wasn't some pedaphile, leering at kids while chugging beer from a kiddie pool. My grandmother wasn't suddenly angry or abusive. They were all adults, acting like adults. Not like they were suddenly the wardens of my innocence, keeping all exposure to the potential hazards of foreign substances at bay.

I don't want to teach my children that their lives have to end when they have kids. That the things they used to do to relax will be forever off limits. Because there are always choices that you can make.

Me? I choose to get a little loose at the end of the day, instead of running a bath and putting myself in a position where I can't see or hear what's going on in the house. Available mommy with a martini shaker is a lot more useful than other-end-of-the-house underwater mommy.

Happy mommy who maybe got a bit silly and LOVES watching Care Bears is a lot more involved and engaged than the mom who just doesn't have the energy to explain for the tenth time in a day why the dirty silverware doesn't get put into the clean drawers.

And is it really so bad if, even once or twice a week, a parent wants to just sit down and not do all that stuff- the cooking and cleaning and crafting and working and phone-tree-ing and school-play-costuming and piano-practice enforcement and yoga and laundry and baking and tweezing and PINNING and just have a freakin' drink?

Why on earth should somebody have to justify themselves to anybody for that?

And Katie Couric, who undoubtedly means well, all she did was point out how very, very, very careful us mommies have to be. Because if we're not careful, we'll be terrible mommies. If we're not legitimately in need of antidepressants or what-have-you, we're walking a slippery slope.

Katie Couric, like so many other talking heads these days, is telling us that now that we're mothers, we have to abandon all our flaws as people. All our pre-parenthood coping mechanisms. From now on, it's not our home. It's their home. We're just maids and cooks inside of these houses, and any freedom must be bought.

Katie, let's have a conversation about motherhood. Let's have a conversation about why women are only referred to as "wives, daughters, and mothers," instead of as "hardworking Americans" or "brave citizens." Let's talk about how mothers are just people, like any other person, and how conversations like this- conversations that make the standard use of anti-depressants or the occasional drink a big freakin' deal because the person in question is a mom- let's talk about how those conversations are hurting us as a culture.

Katie, let's have a conversation about how failing to teach children what responsible use looks like might be the cause of American problems like binge drinking in college, of cataclysmic declines into drug use in teenagers. We might talk about how those sorts of problems only exist in the periphery in countries where alcohol and drugs aren't put on a pedestal until kids don't even know how to comprehend them.

Let's have that conversation. That would be something new.

This? This is just more fuel to the fire.

An Aside on Unintentional Shaming

Zen baby

I'd like to talk, if I may, about something very important.

Not shaming other parents.

You see, parenting is hard.  Very, very hard.  And we have a tendency to take it very personally.

After all, whatever you're doing- you've probably been pretty sure that you're doing it wrong at some point.  And that's normal.  We all go into parenting completely blind- we all go in with this sense of heightened importance, we all go in with this crazy idea that we are somehow going to be perfect parents.

We'll do everything that our parents did right.  We won't do anything that our parents did wrong.  We will feed our kids properly, we will train our kids properly, we will love our kids properly.

And that- that right there- is where the shit starts to hit the fan.

You see, from the moment we first see our babies, from the very first second, everything you do, you do to show them that you love them.

If course that ends.  You start doing things because they need to be done, because you need a few moments to yourself, or because you just forgot and acted like a jerk because you are still a human being.

But you get started based on love.

You feed the baby, with breast or bottle, because somewhere inside of you... you know you love it and you want it to thrive.

You hold the baby, because although you've never met before, you love it and want to show it that you care.

Or you don't hold the baby, because you're afraid that it will sense that you don't know what the hell you're doing, and you don't want it to know that you went into parenting totally blind.

Every parent starts making choices for their child the moment they come into the world.

And we take those choices personally.  Because, based on their failures or successes, they seem to equal the total of our love.

"If I make all the best choices, my child will know that I really, really love her."

"If I make wrong choices, it must mean that I don't love my child enough to make the right ones."

These are the nagging voices in the backs of our own minds.  These aren't the reality- we're not being judged.

Until, suddenly, we are.

Somewhere, some mom says to herself that she is making the right choice, and it is her duty to tell other mothers who are doing it wrong that they are doing it wrong.  Not because she actually knows, but because if they're doing it right, then SHE must be doing it wrong, and she can't live with that kind of doubt.

And if everyone does it right, it's quantifiable.  It's simplified.  There's a right way and a wrong way, and she's doing it the right way.

But what is right for one mother is simply not right for all mothers.  What is right for one baby simply isn't right for all babies.

I saw this picture posted on facebook today.  It's allegedly the nutritional content of breast milk.

Now, I nurse RH.  Almost exclusively.  She gets an occasional bottle of formula, and I feel the need to justify that.  Not because there is anyone policing breastfeeding mothers to tell them whether or not they're doing it right, not because the occasional bottle of formula is in any way hurting my child, but because other mothers might click their tongues at me for leaving my baby at home at two months old with her grandparents and the instruction to give her a bottle if I'm not back in time to feed her.

And I get back, and yeah, I feel guilty if she had a bottle.

I feel guilty if she cried, and I didn't comfort her.

I feel guilty, and nobody did that to me but myself.

But I project.  If I feel guilty, then I must be being judged.  By other mothers.

And, if I am not careful, I judge those other mothers to protect myself.  Those attachment parents who would never leave their babies with a sitter to go to a movie, or the store.  If I am not careful, I tell myself that this is they who are the bad parents, because they don't take any time for themselves to stay sane.

*I* need time to myself to stay sane, who knows about anybody else?

*I* breastfeed my baby, but not entirely exclusively, because sometimes she's hungry and I'm not there, and I just don't have time to pump all the time.

So maybe I don't go around and shame other moms for making different choices, and instead I publicly pat myself on the back for my own choices.  "Good job, me!" I say outloud, where everyone can hear.  "You made the right choice."

And that... that is the unintentional shaming.

That picture of the breast milk nutritional contents...

When I publicly declare that I did the right thing, and I did a good job, I am also saying that you, a real person, made the wrong choice if you did something different.

Yes, it's less malicious.  But no less hurtful.

My mother only nursed her children for a number of weeks.  Her letdowns were so painful that she was unable to function through them.  She was a wonderful mother, and I do not think I was in any way harmed by being a formula baby.

I have a friend, a La Leche Leaguer, who's daughter was "failure to thrive" until she started supplementing breast milk.  Her breast milk genuinely wasn't providing everything her baby needed.

I have many friends with babies and children.  Some nursed their children, some didn't, some still do.

All of their kids are, frankly, great.

But things like that picture... those things can genuinely hurt.

We, human beings, live in a constant state of doubt.  I think it's one of the things that separates us from other animals.

We doubt, and we wonder.

And that is why we have religion.  And science.  And literature.  And art.  Because we must express our doubt somehow, and we must answer those questions.

And most of the great questions left to us have no right or wrong answer.

And for those great questions, questions like, "Am I a good person?  Am I a good parent?" a muddled, shades-of-grey answer just doesn't cut it.  We want to hear a resounding, "yes."

We want to stop doubting, and know that we love our children enough.  That we are doing the things that they need.

There are women who cannot breastfeed their children.  That doesn't make them bad parents.  There are women who choose not to breastfeed.  That doesn't make them bad parents.

What matters is that we care.  We want to protect our children.  We want them to thrive, both in love and in health.

The bad parents are the ones who don't feed their children at all, because they do not care if their child lives or dies.  That is bad parenting.

And sometimes?  That isn't the parent's fault either.  Sometimes, a parent needs almost as much help as a baby.

And shaming those parents by strutting around and saying, "look at me, I'm doing everything right." that isn't helping anybody but yourself.

Am I proud of breastfeeding my baby?  Yes.  Very.  Not because I think formula is bad, or that bottle feeding is wrong.  I am proud because it was really effing hard to get good at it, and I did it anyway.  I feel more like a breastfeeding survivor than a lactivist.  Showing off my chubby baby is like rolling up my sleeve and showing the scars on my arm and saying, "You see that?  That really hurt, and that was a hard time in my life, but things are better now.  Things get easier."  Except that instead of talking about depression, I'm talking about parenthood.

So to all the parents who have ever felt judged by my pats on my own back, I am sorry.  I am not here to judge you for your choices, for the realities of your lives.

And to all the parents out there, insecure about their roles and their decisions and looking for some validation...

You're not going to find it from other moms.  You're not going to find it through judging other moms.  You're not even going to find it by announcing that you don't need it because you know you're awesome.

Me and M and our children

You'll find it by looking at your kids.

Look at them.

Listen to them.

Watch them.

Are they happy?  Do they know you love them?  Do they trust you to do what you can to ensure their safety and their health?

Then you are an awesome parent.

The validation of your success is that you have succeeded.  And nobody can give that to you but yourself.

Good job, moms and dads.  You have loved your children, and you couldn't stop if you tried.

You are successful parents.

Let that be the final word on the matter.

 

The Second Rule of Parenting Is...

I feel like this a lot

Did you know that there's an entry in the indexes of What to Expect The First Year on "Coping with motherhood?"


I am halfway through week two of the rest of my life.

That is to say, I'm figuring out how to make my life work all over again now that I've essentially jumped back into the SAHM gig after a year of nearly full time studenthood/only one parent at a time/pregnancy/lots and lots of awesome people helping me.

It's been an educational week and a half.

I've learned that my big girls are capable of so much more than I knew.  For example, today during RH's post-breakfast nap, I took a shower while the big girls drank strawberry milk and watched Sleeping Beauty.  It was a short shower that didn't include shaving my legs, but it was my first in six days.

For real.

Why haven't I showered in six days?

Two kids and a baby is fucking HARD.

I keep messing with their schedules to try to improve my quality of life.

RH started sleeping for six hour long stretches at night.  So I started trying to keep her up until midnight- so that she slept until M's alarm went off for work in the morning.

As I'm sure you can guess, that was an unmitigated disaster.  Sleeping from 10p to 4a and then again for another agonizingly short hour is better than not sleeping at all, as I can definitely attest.  So I decided to stop messing with the baby and start screwing around with the big girls instead.

Big girls

Do you remember all of our naptime drama?  Well, I eliminated naptime.  I ended it.  I was keeping it up to make my life easier, and it had stopped working.  Without naptime, bedtime comes two and a half hours sooner.  And if my kids are DEAD ASLEEP at 8pm?  I can actually sort of eat, bathe the baby, and get HER to sleep by 10pm.

Which is sort of great, except that it still doesn't give me enough rest to function.  If the baby is asleep at 10, then I'm not asleep until 11:30, and from 11:30 until 6 just doesn't give me enough energy to keep my eyes open.

Oh, how I long for the days when I could drink endless cups of coffee without being hospitalized.

I'll spare you all the permutations of our schedule that I experimented with.  Suffice to say, the girls are waking up just as M leaves for work at 7:15, RH is sleeping for eight hour stretches that start at 10, and I am still exhausted.

So what does a mommy who can't keep up do?

She reinstates naptime.

Today, I am experimenting with naptime again, for the first time in two weeks.  Because I still NEED my kids to take a nap.

For the first time, and possibly for the last, all three of my children are sleeping in the middle of the day.  Not so that I can sleep, but so that I can pay attention to something else.  To the laundry, to the dishes, to food, to blogging...

SI helping push RH's stroller

I'm starting with blogging today.  If it works, tomorrow I'll update my resume.  And maybe start dinner.

The thing is, when my big girls go to bed at six, we don't get to do a lot of things.  I don't have the time to give them a bath, I don't have the time to sit down and have dinner as a family, and if RH isn't going to nurse herself to sleep until 9pm, why should I put the kids down so early?  Because they're effing exhausted, that's why.

So today, I'm trying to make our schedule a little better again.  Today, I've made my big girls lie down for an hour at least- and SI passed out in less than ninety seconds.

After naptime, we'll go to the yard to play as usual.  But this time, when we come upstairs, we won't just run through baths/snacks/bedtime/feeding the baby until I'm literally weak and delirious from hunger and thirst, and ready to pass out with RH still awake at 8pm.  No, tonight, we'll head upstairs, make dinner, eat it as a family, and then my girls will get baths while I feed RH.  And then I'll read them their bedtime story and sing them lullabyes while I nurse RH .  And then, RH will have her bath, nurse to sleep, and M and I will go to sleep.

If all goes well, my big girls will be in bed at eight instead of six thirty, asleep by ten instead of by eight, and at ten o'clock- when RH passes out and M and I can go to bed- I won't feel like the parenting train has once again plastered me all over the tracks.

I love my kids, but I will never be that parent that lives to spend all my time with them.  I need time away.  I need time to be selfish and self involved and to just enjoy the quiet.  I need a few moments to myself, every day, where I don't have to actually be involved.

I don't think it makes me a bad parent.  I think it goes back to my second rule of parenting: "Whatever makes you a happier, saner person IS good parenting."

(Oh, how naive I was when I wrote that old post...)

I am happier when I have a few minutes a day to miss my kids.  To feel bad about snapping, or to clean up after breakfast.

I love them, but I am so grateful they're asleep right now

I am saner when I can turn my brain off in the relative quiet and not answer a million questions about why we don't want to wake up the baby.

I'm not a bad mom.  I just need to have an hour or so during the day to put my house in order and a few minutes in the shower so that I don't feel like a bad mom.

I have not been happy and sane.  I have been exhausted, filthy, undernourished, and depressed.

Here's to the return of naptime.

Please, please let this make my life work again.