Inevitable Comparisons

We used to be pretty much the only people our age that we knew with a baby – but we were just on the forefront of the wave. Everyone is pregnant. There are babies everywhere. I’m excited and happy for them all, partly because it’s such an amazing life event, partly because seeing friends with their new babies brings back the wonderful memories of our baby’s birth and first few weeks.

I think that choosing not to have children is a very noble choice and one that more people should make, given the population crisis and the disastrous impact on the environment of adding each new person. But now that I’ve had a child, I feel that people who choose not to are missing a kind of life joy that can never be replaced by the advantages of a childless life (more money, more pets, more toys, more time, more sleep). I feel fortunate that I am a parent. She brings us such happiness.

I wish that kind of simple, beatific joy was my only reaction to parenthood and to other people becoming parents. Instead, for some neurotic reason, I feel compelled to compare. All of us are trying to do everything right. But “everything right” is poorly defined, and the path so far has been fraught with compromises. I can’t help noticing what choices other people make and wondering if their babies will turn out “better” than ours.

The first compromise came before she was even born, when I cracked and asked for an epidural. I was so determined to do things naturally and not expose her to medication, but it was just too hard. When I hear about other mothers my age who had their babies naturally, I feel a sense of awe – natural childbirth is so much harder and more painful than I thought it would be, I can’t imagine how women did it throughout history – and I feel like they are indeed, a bit better than I am.

Then there’s breastfeeding. Only 15% of American women manage to breast-feed exclusively through the first six months, and I was going to be one of them. Instead, just shy of the five-month point, on a morning when she was crying with hunger and my milk supply was too low to satisfy her, we gave her rice cereal. Milk is still her only source of nutrition most days – but I’m not in the 15%. Other women I know have held out.

Then there’s playtime and social stimulation – is she getting the right kinds and enough? Am I spending enough time with her? Is she hitting the developmental milestones ahead of her peers? Am I reading to her enough? Is she getting exposed to enough different people? Is our apartment a safe enough environment, free from PFOA and lead paint and E. coli and bisphenol-A and all the other hazards? I just recently switched to using glass bottles (should've been using them all along, instead of plastic), and I’ve been trying to cut back on my meat and whole milk consumption to avoid dioxins (should’ve done that earlier; other mothers we know are vegan or vegetarian so their babies were healthier from the get-go).

It’s exhausting. I want the best for her, but I can see how impossible that is – for one thing, we can’t afford all organic clothing, food, and furniture. So I just have to hope that good genes and a strong set of kidneys will help her deal with all the toxins in her environment, and that by the time all our babies are 15 years old, the decisions we made when they were infants will be a wash.