I don’t suppose I blame the other parents for laughing at me, even though I resented it deeply at the time.
Shouldn’t the sight of a woman holding a screaming infant to her shoulder as a two-and-a-half-year-old clings to her leg crying, “Mommy! MOOOOOOOMMMMMMYYYYY!” invoke sympathy — nay, even empathy, considering the limited reasons any adult would be hanging out at a playground — rather than snickers with a strong undercurrent of, “Better her than me”? And when the beleaguered mother erupts, “I can’t carry you!!! DO YOU HEAR THE BABY CRYING???” you’d think the other adults in the vicinity would have the manners to pretend there is something more interesting to look at in the other direction.
My sister-in-law Maureen valiantly tried to convince Jake that she was just as good at carrying him as his mother, despite having just suffered through a prolonged session of pushing him on a swing (she admitted to finding it as mentally stimulating as I do) while Lily and I rested comfortably on a nearby bench. But her kindness and patience were paid back by Jake sobbing, “MOMMY!!!!” in her ear as he sadly reached for my unresponsive arms.
This display, I am rather amazed to say, has not been a staple of the past two months that Lily has been in our lives. It is a recent phenomenon, triggered, I would guess, by the pre-playground morning, when Maureen navigated the stroller ramps of the Nature Center with Lily while I got to be the one carrying Jake, reminding him of just what it’s like to be Mommy’s little boy.
I mean “got to be” in the truest sense of the phrase. I have been starving for the chance to hold that pale, warm body against mine, to need only turn my head to kiss that firm round cheek, to wrap my arms tight around his ribcage and love, love, love on him. That his enthusiastic entry into the house at the end of the day generally sets Lily off into a frenzy of “Hold me! Save me!” neediness generally prevents the kind of contact with my son to which I had grown accustomed in our pre-Lily days.
So I complained relatively little about carrying him through the Nature Center (only on the uphills, really). I coddled him as we picked up picnic provisions in Greenlife on our way to the Nature Center and even let Maureen wear Lily in the sling without breaking out in a single panic sweat. Instead, I happily relished the sweetness of limping around toting thirty-five pounds of toddler perfectly capable of walking himself.
I should have known I’d pay for it.
But what mostly occurred to me as I tried to shake Jake off my leg in the playground and wished desperately that Lily would stop shrieking was that this scenario was exactly what I had expected with the new baby. That I had been lucky to escape it thus far.
And, too, that — horrifying as those few minutes may have been — it all became worth it when I finally got Lily in her car seat and pulled Jake to me in a full-body, clinging-to-each-other, drenched-with-love hug.
Mothering — and Freaking Out Over — Two
My time with Jake has increased in the days since the Nature Center and so, too, have his agonizing cries when I must forsake him for Lily.
On Saturday I found myself holding him instead of Lily as I rushed through the rain for the shelter of a friend’s house, staring stupidly as she ran ahead of me clutching my two-month-old to her. I certainly couldn’t ask her to lug the heavy one, and she couldn’t be expected to shrug off his protests the way his aunt did. But at the same time it was a bit out-of-body for me to allow a woman I had just met protect my crying infant from the elements. And only extreme and misplaced politeness can explain why I allowed her to disappear in the house still holding my crying baby while Jake abandoned my arms for the fascinating items on offer in someone else’s home.
Indeed, fifteen minutes later, when I had decided that Lily was hungry and I therefore might, um, ask for my baby back, Jake couldn’t have cared less that I was busy feeding her when he was free to run in circles through the kitchen and living room wearing nothing but a wet tee-shirt and his diaper. Even when we were back home and Jake had decided against a nap (never a wise decision for anyone concerned), he followed my instructions to play quietly by himself while Lily slept. Those instructions, however, meant nothing at all once I had to feed Lily again. Then it was time to beg me to ditch his hungry sister and go outside with him. it was that refusal that triggered another fit of abandoned crying because I was stupid enough to have sent Mike out for dog food, leaving me without someone else to whom I could direct Jake’s need for attention.
By Sunday we had firmly established that Jake would no longer blithely turn to Mike whenever I was holding Lily. Once again, I was only too happy to be the one with the toddler-carrying responsibilities as we sought refuge from a rainy day at home with endless episodes of Max & Ruby on t.v. by running through the halls of the Grove Park Inn. I was less thrilled when Jake blew my cover by pitching a fit as I fed Lily on an overstuffed leather chair in a corner with a lovely view. I’m willing to bet the elderly couple checking out the view a few feet away would have remained blissfully oblivious to the uncovered state of my breast if Jake hadn’t drawn their attention with his cries that we finish our game of imaginary baseball. (Yes, it is far, far more fun to watch a toddler pretend to throw an invisible baseball than it is to feed a baby for the sixth time that day, but we all have our sacrifices to make.)
Now, it seems, I get to be the regular recipient of eating-dinner-in-a-parent’s-lap honors. I even get to read him books in bed at night on occasion. And, with all this togetherness come the feeding tantrums. The sobs and fruitless attempts to wiggle his way back into my lap when I place him next to me so the baby can eat. The jumping up and down screaming when I refuse to cede the pillow under my knees for nursing comfort no matter how much he cries. The generally heartbreaking pronouncements that I am abandoning my firstborn for the baby.
I had been dreading this day since the moment a woman I met in breastfeeding clinic when Jake was three weeks old described her three-year-old daughter clinging to her and screaming as she tried to leave the house with the new baby. “It’s just awful,” she said with a sad smile and tears in her eyes.
And it is awful. But not as awful as I had imagined it would be. Better, in fact, than losing months of cuddle time with my boy. Better than never getting to put him to bed again or drop him off at school or share in the wonders of his life until Lily is two herself.
Even, dare I say it, well worth it.
The Scary Stuff in the Future Might Not Turn Out to Be that Scary
So many people I know are facing scary choices for their future and letting the fear choose for them. The dear friend who really ought to look for a new job — only how does she know the new one will be any better than what she’s got now? The one considering quitting his job to freelance — but wishing the stimulus plan provided a bit more than nine months of COBRA reimbursement. The parents thinking about a second child but hating the idea of giving up any time with the first. The ones facing decisions about whether to move, how to care for elderly parents, if it’s too late to go back to school for a different degree.
All of these decisions arguably hold the promise of an even more frightening future than my simple fear of having my child cry because I have to hold a baby instead of him.
And yet it doesn’t matter how they might hypothetically match up to each other. A fear is a fear. And, examined in whatever context our minds invent for us, it takes on a life of its own and tends to strangle our desire for change.
Sure, stories about a disappointed elder sibling didn’t exactly make me hesitate when it came time to have the second. After all, I’ve told many a second-time mother, an awful lot of people have been through the birth of a younger sibling and survived just fine. But I wonder whether that first week of postpartum anxiety might have been leavened had I not been so focused on my fear of hurting my son.
In the end, it doesn’t much matter what the fear is when it’s placed on the balance sheet of whether to make a big change in your life. When the real choice is between the status quo and actually making an effort to venture into the unknown, it doesn’t take much to choose the do nothing course.
Well, here’s the big secret: What you’re imagining might happen is probably a whole lot scarier than what is likely to really happen if you take the plunge.
In other words, in my mind’s eye, my son crying and hanging onto my leg begging me to pick him up as I tend to a younger sibling was crushing, heart rending, nearly impossible to take. In reality — well, it’s just about that bad. Except that it’s made not so bad at all by the moments just before and just after when I get to hold my boy and have him kiss me on the lips and say, “I love you, Mommy.”
My mind didn’t take that into account.
My mind doesn’t take an awful lot into account, especially when it claims to be doing just that. Instead, it chokes out the possibility that I just don’t know what to expect. And that I never can, even if I think I’m just preserving the status quo.
The future is unknowable. Period. That can be a scary concept. Until you stop and look around at your present and realize that there was probably a time when you looked ahead to this moment and were mighty frightened. “Of what?” you probably ask yourself now.
It turns out that most of the moments of our lives aren’t so very scary after all. It’s just the anticipation of them that scares us.
So next time I start to worry about the fallout from handling two kids at once during feeding time, I’m going to skip right over how I imagine those moments of pleading with Jake to let Lily sit in my lap instead of him. And I’m going to go right to the moment after she’s done, when she lies cooing and kicking in front of me and I turn to Jake, give him a hug, and tell his grinning face what a wonderful big brother he is.
Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I) — Facing the Future with Strength and Equanimity
If you’ve ever taken the time to look at someone in virabhadrasana I (Warrior I) (and one day I will have pictures on this website so you can do just that, I promise) you know just why I offer this pose for facing your future.
It is a pose of strength: an unbowed spine, arms reaching straight toward the sky as if to welcome what may come. One foot is firmly grounded in the future, while one roots you in the past. And your heart, of course, is open and ready to accept what the future may bring. Find your balance, sink into the pose, and breathe, and you find yourself in a place of equanimity.
This is, we know, what yoga is all about, whatever the pose. But as a proud warrior you can remind yourself that you have the strength to take on life’s big changes. And that you don’t have to turn around and pretend that if you look to the past nothing will really change.
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