A Community of Moms Trying to Keep From Losing Their Mindfulness
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.
You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a Nordstrom in Charlotte when I am ten months postpartum. When I am forty-three years old. Or ever, for that matter.
Some explanation is required.
By the end of our Thanksgiving meal, life as a mother, as someone who is (can it only be?) eight-and-a-half months postpartum, and as a still relative newcomer to my new home — it was all beginning to seem manageable, pleasurable even.
And then Ellen turned to Mike. “You and I should have monthly Iron Chef-like competitions,” she said.
Ca-thunk. That was the sound of my perennially left-out, insecure thirteen-year-old self dropping like an air conditioner out of a New York apartment window into my stomach.
It’s true that Mike’s turkey was a piece of edible art. And Ellen is the only person I imagine has the culinary talent to turn green bean casserole into something approaching gourmet and without a hint of canned soup in sight.
But there was a time, not so long ago, when I considered myself a pretty awesome cook as well. In fact, it was Thanksgiving just fifteen years ago (eegads, fifteen years — can I still say “just”?) when I tested the waters of my fantasy escape-the-law-firm job of opening a catering business by cooking a kick-ass meal in a tiny apartment with a kitchen that measured approximately one foot by three feet.
Granted, I’m not much of a foodie these days and pretend that it’s just that I really like the taste of unadorned food, not that I’m too lazy to cook a proper meal with seasoning and sauces and stuff. Nonetheless, I’m more than a little bit sensitive about the cooking thing, for reasons I can’t begin to articulate.
All I know is that when Ellen summarily eliminated me from the Iron Chef competition it made me really sad to think that no one knows I can cook — and that maybe I no longer can.
Continue reading ‘I Can Cook! And Lots of Other Things You’d Never Know I Can Do’
Next to my side of the bed there is a large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards. On the other side of that large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards there is room to open the drawers on the left side of my dresser. In between there is space for my discarded shoes and socks to breathe without having to tussle with Mike’s.
What is not on my side of the bed any longer is the co-sleeper.
For those unfamiliar with this piece of modern baby-raising apparatus, the co-sleeper is a not particularly attractive crib-like thing that attaches to the side of the bed. The idea is to more or less sleep with your baby while theoretically eliminating the risk of inadvertently crushing her. (Couldn’t one still throw a sleep-heavy, errant arm on top of the innocent sleeping child? I wonder. Best, I suppose, not to contemplate the possibility, as I’m not a limbs-flinging sort of sleeper anyhow.)
Given my love of the middle road, the co-sleeper is the perfect invention, a detente in the polarized sleeping-with-baby debate, a way to hush Lily back to sleep in the middle of the night without ever having to leave the cocoon of my down duvet wrapped around me in the hours since kicking Mike out of bed for snoring.
Just as Lily has grown up with the scent and sound of me sleeping a foot away, I have come to love the feel of her within arm’s reach. I have become certain that there is nothing better upon awakening than propping up on an elbow to watch my angel sleep. Except, perhaps, that moment when her eyes pop open and she greets me with a big, sunny morning grin.
Only now the co-sleeper is gone, the victim of increasing baby mass and the fact that I have been dying to get to those dresser drawers for eight months now and just can’t wait any longer.
And in that once longed-for space is a big empty hole. Sort of like the one in my heart.
Continue reading ‘The Co-Sleeper Is Gone … And Time Marches On’
It is more than likely that I will spend pretty much the rest of my life debating whether Lily is such a patient, generous soul because I was in yoga practicing vasisthasana right up to the day before she was born or because, as the second child, she is doomed to my “been there, done that” approach to parenthood.
This is not, all joking aside, to say that I in any way fail to appreciate what a special human being she is. Or that I love her any less than I love Jake. Or, for that matter, that, when I’m being honest with myself, I give her any less attention than I gave Jake during his infancy.
It’s just that, now that I’m doing it for the second time, I’m a whole lot smarter about choosing what kind of attention I give her.
I mean, really, could six-month-old Jake truly not stand to be left alone to entertain himself for just a few minutes? Probably, but I would have pulled my hair out before continuing to wash it had he screamed the way Lily has on occasion when I have taken a shower that did not fall during her nap time. To my credit, I carefully open the shower door every few minutes to show her we are in the same room. Though I’m pretty sure the message is lost the second I close the door again.
So, too, Mike asked me the other day how we knew Jake needed his bottles warmed. Did I ever offer him the room temp bottle I so handily pull out of the diaper bag for Lily now that she is far too interested in new surroundings to nurse anywhere other than in a hermetically sealed room? I am embarrassed for myself, but I have a strong suspicion that all those times we plopped a cold bottle in a cup of hot coffee at rest stops and counted ourselves clever for this less than adequate bottle warming solution may not have been strictly necessary.
The other night, however, I gained some much needed reassurance that I am not squelching the needs of my second born simply because I’m too lazy to expend all the needless energy I wasted on my first.
On this night, I found myself queasily reduced to a little sleep training. And, I discovered, I was far more sympathetic to Lily’s cries than I ever was to Jake’s.
Continue reading ‘Not Everything Is Easier the Second Time Around’
On Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be invited to the dedication of a lovely meditation space in downtown Asheville, the WriteMind Institute. And even more lucky to have a mother-in-law in town and an infant feeding schedule that allowed me to attend.
It felt pretty darned great to take a shower, put on real clothes, and actually pick Jake up from daycare, from which I have officially been banished until the end of flu season, still a week hence. I made an exception on Friday, feeling somehow loose and free by dint of my very ability to walk out of the house for two hours without my baby.
This is not something first-time mothers should try, by the way. I don’t think Jake was ever more than fifty feet from me until that time we were visiting Mike’s mother when he was four months old, and three adults physically pushed me out of the house to take a walk without him. He was crying when I got back, which pretty much convinced me I couldn’t leave him again for another four or five months at least.
But now I’m sane and balanced and the mother of an inevitably neglected second child (have I mentioned that I’m a second child?) so off I traipsed to the petri dish of Jake’s daycare and off he and I sped downtown for an outing that brought back guiltily pleasurable memories of what it was like to have only one child. Manageable is the word I think I’m looking for.
The meditation space was absolutely beautiful, with a peaceful pull that reminded me of how long it’s been since I’ve practiced any form of yoga. (That would be 24 days, since the day before Lily was born.) The head of the WriteMind Institute, Jonathon Flaum, gathered us around to talk about the space and how welcome we all were there. He invited us to sit in silence for five glorious minutes — during which Mike and Jake wandered the street outside, far enough away so that our silence would not be broken by a small child yelling “NOOOOO!” as is frequently Jake’s wont these days.
And then Jonathon talked about refuge. He told some beautiful stories, and what it boiled down to was this: Refuge as he defined it is a place where no one asks anything of you other than that you be yourself.
This idea traveled straight to my heart, already steeped in the easiest five minutes of meditation I’d ever experienced and the warm energy of a room full of people who shared the love and excitement of this new space. A place where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.
And in that moment, I felt as if I knew myself, in a clear and simple way that I hadn’t for a very, very long time. In one telescoped moment, I remembered how long it took me to find that self and how I had lost her in that first year of motherhood, and I experienced a pleasurable jolt of wisdom in recognizing that the birth of my second child — far from tossing me back down the rabbit hole of lost mindfulness I had expected — has brought me more strongly to that self.
A self I can be in places of refuge. Where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.
A couple of weeks ago, Mike handed me a book that had come free to his workplace.
“I doubt it’ll be very good,” he said, “but it’s a memoir about going to Columbia Law School. I thought you might be interested.”
Maybe it’s the buddha-like peace that has descended on me as I prepare to give birth. (Hardly an accurate description of my demeanor, but apparently the impression I give off in yoga class, where, I am told, women vie to practice next to me for my “beautiful energy.” Frankly, I think this has more to do with the public-ness of a pregnant belly than anything I am or am not doing, and it makes me feel a little crowded. So I guess buddha-like peace does not account for my reaction.) Or maybe it’s the passage of time, both since I graduated from Columbia and since I taught law school. Or maybe it’s just where I am in my life at this moment.
Whatever the reason, I did not take the book and throw it back at him.
In fact, I read it. Not with great enjoyment, certainly not with fond nostalgia, if anything with more than a touch of jealousy that a division of Simon & Schuster would publish something with nothing new to say, said in an occasionally amusing but mostly unoriginal way. (I realize one could say the same thing of my YogaMamaMe essays, should they ever be published, and this is no doubt a large part of what contributes to the jealousy.)
What I did find as I read was an ability to read more. And to smile when I recognized certain professors. And to sometimes nod without feeling a clenching sensation around my heart and a desire to run in the general direction of “west” so as to put a bit more distance between myself and that part of my life.
Because, I am realizing with a certain amount of awe, I no longer feel the need for that distance. I seem to have picked up perspective somewhere along the line instead.
Continue reading ‘A Brief Return to a Past Life, or How (Really) Did I Get Here?’
Like Kate Winslet, I, too, used to practice my Oscar acceptance speech in front of the mirror when I was eight years old.
But I don’t any longer. Instead, last night I propped my swollen ankles up on a few pillows, threw an old baby blue blanket over my wriggling belly, and polished off the organic truffles I bought at EarthFare on Thursday while watching Kate Winslet, all glamorous and beautiful, give a real, live, it’s-actually-happened Oscar acceptance speech.
And, the thing is, I don’t really wish I could trade places.
Continue reading ‘When the Glamour Is Gone: How a Pregnant Mother of a Toddler Watches the Oscars’
I finished my taxes yesterday as Jake napped on the couch and the last hour of Waitress unwound on TiVo.
I say this not to brag but to point out that I am now ready to give birth.
I have repeated it many times over the past several weeks: “No, I’m not ready. I haven’t done my taxes yet.” (To put into context what might appear to be a distressing obsession with finishing my taxes nearly two months ahead of time, contemplate my due date of March 8 and count forward from there to April 15. Then think about doing taxes while you have a five-week-old in the house.)
I have said this half-jokingly, but with a deadly half-seriousness. Really, how can there be a woman who’s ever given birth who still has the lack of tact to ask a near stranger who apparently can be insulted at will by dint of her prominent belly, “Boy, you must be ready to have that baby!”
I don’t pretend to know what it is about a pregnancy that makes your personal life public — “Is it a boy or a girl?” ask people who will never, ever see this baby, whatever its sex; “Are you ready?” as if they will personally run down to Charlotte to do a Trader Joe’s run for me if I say I’m not; and, the new evolution from the strangers touching your belly without asking to the query whether it, um, would bother me if someone I’ve never met before does so. Like it’s so much less personally invasive if they ask first.
Since, as I say, I don’t begin to know why people do these things to a very pregnant woman who would really, really feel much happier if someone just occasionally said, “You look great!” instead of “You look HUGE!” this is not the subject I mean to tackle here. Just a much-needed tangent.
Rather, the fact that I really did not feel ready to give birth until finishing my taxes — and several work projects — seems to me to open up a realm of inquiry interestingly at odds with my failure thus far to pack a bag for the hospital or wash the infant clothes that have been put away for the past two years.
On the one hand, I figure this lack of preparation makes me an experienced mother and, therefore, someone who understands how little control I have. No planning months in advance for a baby that will come when it comes no matter how many miles I walk or Evening Primrose supplements I down, no desire to complain about the discomforts that naturally accompany having a baby head smushed in your pelvis for several weeks straight, no need to control when this child will make its appearance.
On the other hand, I have to admit that refusing to have a baby until my taxes are done smacks of a certain amount of falsely pretending to be in control. As if the baby will graciously wait so I don’t have to apply for an extension from the IRS between rounds of breastfeeding.
Continue reading ‘My Taxes Are Done, So I Guess I’m Ready to Have a Baby Now’
Jake has just discovered the concept of righteous indignation.
As in, “How dare you comb my hair for me!” Only expressed in howls of unhappiness perfectly calibrated to get on my last nerve.
Or, “Don’t you dare fill up that bathtub! Don’t even mention the word ‘tub’ to me! And certainly don’t ask me why I am so upset about the prospect of taking a bath!” Which he says, not in so many words, but by frantically running away from me crying, “No bath! No bath!” even as I try to coax him into a pair of Dora the Explorer swim diapers. (Frankly, I find them no less embarrassing for him — bright pink flowers and all — than the gender-specific Spiderman swim diapers modeled by a boy in the picture on the packaging that I plainly was supposed to purchase instead.)
Then there’s the one that precipitated my final breakdown last night: “What do you mean you’re trying to cook dinner and can’t pick me up?” Very expeditiously communicated by standing at the front door wailing, “DAAAAADY! DAAAAAADY!”
It was at this point that I crumpled into a corner of the bathroom and decided that I have never, ever been capable of making any other human being happy and that I was plainly, sadly wrong when I thought my son was my salvation and that by saturating him with my love I could make up for all the crippled emotions I have picked up over a lifetime that have somehow convinced me I am incapable of making anyone else happy.
Finding Jake staring up at me in shock did not shake me out of it, though one might expect such dramatic effect if I were writing a novel. Since I am writing about true life, however, what it did was make me feel even worse for inflicting this traumatic moment on my child.
Especially when he quietly said, “I’m happy, Mommy.”
I swept him into my arms, leaving the garlic un-minced, and held him to me on the couch. “You are a wonderful person,” I assured him. “You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not your job to make me happy. You make me very, very, very happy.” And other words designed to reassure me as much as him.
Which they kind of did. Until an hour or so later when he started wailing about the fact that I put aloe cream on his weather-reddened cheeks while getting him ready for bed and I walked out on him and told him we could read books when he was done with his tantrum while trying not to have another one myself.
Continue reading ‘Can I Make My Child (or Anyone Else for that Matter) Happy?’
