Playing Her Like a Fish

Two thoughts about parenting.

First, I think since my daughter's birth I have frequently had the sense, in a pervasive but generally subconscious way, of being superhumanly patient with another person's rudeness. That's a blunt way to put it. What I mean is, despite knowing on a conscious level that a baby is just a wild and helpless, uncivilized little being, not responsible for its behavior, not in control of its feelings, and having expected that from the time before I became a mother, and being fine with it - on an unconscious level there is a feeling of forbearance as I continue patiently, calmly, cleaning up after and reassuring this little person who is screaming bloody murder in my face.

When she's pitching a tantrum or hitting me because she's frustrated and exhausted, my instinctive response is to give as good as I get. I'd like to defend myself and wallop her right back, but instead I talk to her in a soothing, gentle voice, helping her calm down, reminding her that we don't hit. When she's overtired, I put up with her shrieking at me and basically taking out her unhappiness on me, even though I did nothing to deserve it. As she throws her dish of vegetables on the floor and yells, "No Mama! NO broccoli!" I instantly tamp down the flicker of anger that flares up and respond in a measured, thoughtful way. As she whines and clings to my knee because she's bored, I would like to kick her loose, but instead I ignore her and continue wiping the kitchen countertop to show her that that's not a good way to get my attention.

I'd never put up with an adult treating me the way she does. Having spent very little time around babies before I had one, for many years I've been accustomed to civility and reasonableness. With a kid, I have to set aside those expectations and rise above it. I am getting good at it. I wonder sometimes if this daily repression of my true feelings is going to have any long-term consequences. Is it going to just make me a much more patient and nice person, willing to turn the other cheek when adults treat me badly too, just because I've had so much practice? Or am I going to erupt in craziness one day because I'm so fed up with responding to ill manners with graciousness?

Which is not to say that she's such a monster. 90% of the time, she is adorable and sweet and so good-hearted. She hugs and kisses me all the time. I love listening to her pretend to read out loud to her stuffed animals. Her giggle is my favorite sound in the world. It's just when she's overtired or hungry that she turns into a brat. Because she is so wonderful most of the time, it gives me strength to get through the difficult moments and to try to have sympathy for her feelings.

My second thought about parenting is that I often get a vision of myself playing a big, powerful fish on a line. When I'm trying to get things accomplished or to get her clean/fed/dressed/whatever, I have to be subtle about it. I watch for my opportunity as she flings herself around, then quickly reel in some line, then let her fight a bit more, then when there's a chance reel in a bit more. Like when I'm putting her to bed and she's resisting. You can't just march her through the steps. You have to give her a five-minute warning, then subtly get her down the hall to the bathroom, then into the bathroom (and close the door behind you or she'll run back out), then calmly put toothpaste on her brush as she hurls herself on the floor whining, wait for her initial fight to die down before you hand her the brush or she just flings it aside, give it to her at the right moment, etc. Walk her through the steps of toothbrushing, diaper change, bedtime story, and transfer into the crib. It takes some skill. She's strong enough now to resist, and it's not always possible to force her to do something, so we have to be smart about it.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sequence of events that has to transpire before we can get out the door and to a particular destination, but then I just shorten the focus to what's happening right now, and to the next step that I need her to take, and it becomes a simple decision: is she, at this moment, actively struggling while I wait for my chance, or is she resting and I can reel in some line?

These are not the kinds of thoughts I expected to have about parenting. Back when I was pregnant, I thought it would be all starry-eyed discoveries like "she can chew on her own toes!" and relating cute things my kid had said or done. Now I look at people I know who are less patient or less gentle than I am and wonder how they will manage when they have kids. It's both a bigger and a more interesting challenge than I expected.

Because It's There

My husband bought a large jar of Nutella to make sandwiches with, and put it in the cupboard. It turned out to have a really short half-life. I guess I've forgotten how good Nutella is, it's been so long since I had any. It is amazing. It's this creamy, rich, chocolatey, very smooth and velvety delicious wonderfulness that is like licking the best ice cream in the world. But better. I found myself completely unable to resist sneaking out to the kitchen in spare moments to eat it directly out of the jar. Who needs sandwiches? My preferred method is a spoon.

At last, thank goodness, the temptation was gone. The jar was empty.

Tonight my husband wanted to make a sandwich and was looking for it. I tried to play it off at first. "What jar?" Finally I fessed up. "You're looking for the Nutella? It's right here." - patting my stomach. He was mildly horrified that I had actually eaten all of it. "But the jar was almost full!" Yes indeed. And now my stomach is. Honestly, I made it last for most of a week. It was pretty good restraint, considering how yummy I find that stuff to be.

"Oh well," he said, and pushed aside some stuff in the cupboard and hauled out a second, secret jar that I hadn't known about. Aaah! Now that he's opened it, I've got to deal with the roaring temptation all over again! I want to chuck that stuff out the window. Or put it in the lunchroom at work. It's like crack to me. As long as that opened jar exists, I will be conscious of it and wanting it - because it's there.

At least I do have a plan for coping. Last spring, I gave up sugar for Lent. It was really difficult - turns out sugar, or its equivalent, is in almost everything. Some of my favorite foods that I had to forgo included peanut butter, jelly, yogurt, popcorn with seasoning, tea with honey, pancakes made from a mix, a lot of cereals, and of course anything of the cookie/cake/dessert persuasion. I craved those things like you wouldn't believe. At midnight on Easter, I was watching the clock in the car as we drove home from a party, and at 12:01 am I was ripping into a blueberry pie and eating it with my bare hands. I vowed that I would never be so foolish as to give up sugar again.

Anyway, my new plan is not to try to give up sugar, but rather to pay for it as I go. I have a routine involving crunches and other ab exercises, that takes about 7 minutes to do. My plan is that I have to do that routine at least once a day, and again every time I eat a serving of something dessertlike. I don't get away with it if I'm too busy one day or if I forget - it just gets added to my tab and I have to do it at some point.

Good idea, right? The first day I put it into effect, it worked. I was sitting in my chair thinking about getting a slice of banana bread to eat after dinner, and then I thought about all the extra crunches I'd have to do, and decided not to eat the banana bread. Yay!

The only problem is that due to a few nights of abandon I've now racked up a rather high tab. I owe (the universe? myself?) 11 exercise routines. Doing the routine more than twice a day is really difficult, I find - my muscles get so tired and shaky I can barely get through it. In order to catch up to where I'm supposed to be, I'll need to both avoid sweets and do extra crunches. Urgh. I must be kidding myself to think that I could ever get through natural childbirth, with willpower this weak.

Again with the Childbirth Stuff

What is it with celebrities? I'm convinced that they are able to defy the physical laws that govern the rest of us. I always figured that yes, they have the financial means to do whatever they like, and access to ridiculous luxuries that the common folk don't, and they live in some sort of exalted atmosphere where they all know each other and only date one another. But, I figured some things would still apply. Celebrity mothers who want to have their own babies still have to go through childbirth like the rest of us, for example.

But no. It seems that even there, the rules don't apply. I was reading an article about Gisele Bundchen's home birth (home birth, and especially natural birth, is very popular among celebs), and she said, "It wasn't painful - not even a little bit." That astonishes me. Childbirth pain seems to be a bit different in intensity for different people, ranging from "pretty bad but I could handle it" to "extreme torture and I wanted to die." But natural unmedicated birth not even a little painful? How is that possible?


And what's up with her modeling six weeks after the birth and apparently, being back in model-shape? How in the world could she get her flat belly back in that time? I'm 2.5 years post-partum and my belly skin still sags. My midwife told me not to do any kind of exercises (except Kegels) or housework for the first six weeks, to give my body time to recover and to avoid tearing the stomach muscles, which are all stretched out after delivery. Of course, models are used to just not eating for a few weeks at a time, which probably helps, but if you're breast-feeding, which she is, you have to eat. So how did Gisele do it?

And she's not the only one. I've seen pictures of Nicole Kidman two weeks after delivery, apparently wearing skinny jeans, and other celebrity moms like Jessica Alba who looked toned and completely flat while their babies were still only a few months old. I know they have access to personal trainers and special diets, but still! It seems miraculous. I have to assume that the same superior genetics that give them better than average looks also help them recover their prepregnant appearance so quickly.

Even the basic rules of biology don't seem to apply to them. I recently read that the "pregnant man" (Thomas Beatie) is expecting again. This will be the couple's third child in three years. That's a feat - bearing a child takes so much in the way of resources, it's impressive that he is able to do it back-to-back like that. My child will be three years old soon and I'm still not capable of getting pregnant again (sigh - the period I wrote about before wasn't for real after all). And he was conceiving and carrying to term in a body that had been confused for years by hormone infusions. It's surprising to me that after all those hormones (he has a beard, for goodness sakes!), his body still knew how to grow a child.

To top it off, his wife is breastfeeding each child. She was able to induce lactation with a combination of hormones and breast-pump stimulation, even though she didn't give birth. Lots of women who did go through pregnancy and give birth to their own children then find they can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. And here this woman who was not even pregnant is doing it like it's no big deal. I feel like less of a woman than either of them.

Birth

My midwife who delivered my baby a couple years ago just had her own first child. I knew she was due right around now and was checking her web site every few days, hoping for good news. She just posted the pictures of her beautiful daughter and a brief birth story. She had her baby at home, a water birth in her bathtub, with her husband to help her. I am so happy for her that everything went well and that she had the "right" kind of labor and delivery that she wanted.

I feel like the stakes were higher for her than for other people - she's assisted thousands of women with their childbirths (and is a staunch proponent of letting things happen naturally and avoiding unnecessary interventions), so I think people kind of had their eye on her - thinking, "so when it's her turn to be in labor, is she really going to decline pain meds?" Not that she pressured me in any way when I was in labor. At prenatal visits, I announced my intention to try for a natural birth, and she said she'd do everything she could to help me achieve that. After 20 hours of labor when I asked for an epidural, she didn't try to talk me out of it, just said "OK!" and turned to the nurse and relayed the request. Afterwards she said, "I'm usually anti-epidural, but I think in your case it was helpful."

All the same, since she's assisted so many births and studied the process for so many years, I think people expected her to really make her own childbirth an example, do it the way she felt was best for everyone. And she lived up to that. I can't imagine that having a 10-pound baby with no pain relief in your bathtub could be anything short of excruciatingly painful, but she did it, and didn't sound too phased by it in her birth announcement. I'm relieved, not just that the baby is healthy and she's fine and everything is going well, but that she has nothing to kick herself about now. She will know forever that when it was her turn, she did it "the right way."

It does make me feel - even though I'm not in a position where I need to be an example for anyone; I'm accountable to no one but myself - that if I ever have another baby, I should really try to do it on my own. In other words, at home without drugs. A lot of women who have epidurals the first time around seem to be able to manage without them the second time. Maybe because labor is typically faster, maybe because they have the simple confidence that they can do it. Obviously I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about not having done it naturally, my first time, and I would like to be able to manage better the second time. I can't explain why this is important to me. I don't really believe that the epidural was harmful to my baby, and I really was in agony when I requested it, and since the option exists it seems silly to decline it. Like climbing Everest without oxygen, when you could just as well take some and lose a lot fewer brain cells getting up to the summit and back. It's that purist, black-and-white, right-and-wrong mentality that I usually like to avoid.

All the same. There is something so warm and wholesome and family-oriented about the idea of having that experience. Of proving to my husband how strong I am. Of doing something together that will become a part of our family history - having those first moments belong to us, rather than to a hospital room.

Grasping Nettles

When I was a kid, I read a story called Grasp the Nettle Firmly, by Enid Blyton (1940s English author, par for the course - I read almost nothing but English children's books throughout my childhood). It was a kind of prissy, moralistic story (par for Enid Blyton, much as I love her descriptions of quaint WWII-era England) about how a boy named George gets in trouble by running away from his problems. He's washing his hands in the loo and the soap squirts out of his hands and flies out the window, and instead of immediately fessing up to the headmaster, he quietly mooches back to his seat and doesn't say anything. The next boy to use the toilet runs back and says, "The soap was gone! George was the last to use it, he must have taken it!" and everyone blames him. This is part of a sequence of incidents, each leading to the next; because George's hands aren't clean he can't eat his lunch, so the headmaster decides he's ill, so he gets sent home, etc. Everything just keeps escalating.

In the end he realizes that all the misunderstandings could have been averted if he had just faced the first one head-on and accepted responsibility. An old plowman tells him that if you grasp a nettle tentatively, it will sting you, but "grasp the nettle firmly and it can do you no harm." (I'm not sure that's true. It seems to me that the nettle's stinging hairs would puncture your skin no matter how firmly you took hold of it - you might avoid injury if you grasped it at a certain angle, or slid your hand onto the nettle brushing the hairs back as you went.)

Anyway, I was thinking about this story recently because I've had occasion to apply its lesson. At work, I had to get a bunch of participants conferenced in for a big meeting by phone, and I screwed it up. It was awkward, because everyone who was there had to sit around waiting while I got the folks on the phone, and it took some time. Even as it was happening, I knew my boss was going to take me aside later and have one of those talks with me, like she does every time I mess something up. I hate sitting around in dread, not knowing when she's going to call me in for it. My instinct was to just hide in the bathroom the rest of the day. But after the meeting, not giving myself time to even think about it, I went right to her office and proactively apologized for wasting people's time. I explained what I'll do to avoid the problem in future and explained why I had made the mistake in the first place (thought our phone system could do something it couldn't). I could tell she appreciated my forthrightness. I noticed that she had written on her to-do list my name and "find out why not prepared for mtg." I saw her cross it off the list as I turned to leave the office, and felt a rush of relief at having gotten it over with. Whew!

I've also been feeling upset and worried recently about a situation with some of our neighbors. The utility company cut a bunch of branches from one of their trees and left the branches in a pile on their lawn. We also had some big branches down after a recent storm, too big to get rid of easily. After the work crew drove away, I figured they would be back soon with a truck to pick up the pile, so I dragged my branches across the street and added them to the heap. I thought the pile of branches would get picked up within the hour. Instead, it just sat there all afternoon, and all the next day. I started feeling intensely guilty for dumping my branches on the neighbor's lawn. I finally went over to talk to them about it - they weren't home, so I left a note in their door explaining what I had done.

Later, the neighbor came over to talk to me. He was sort of nice on the surface, but veiled-threat underneath, said some things about how he didn't know me, and how it's not right to "throw trash on other people's property." I was very apologetic and said (about four times) that I would remove my branches, but each time he told me not to, and ended with "if you take those branches back, I'm calling the police to arrest you for trespassing." It seemed like it might have been a joke, except that he wasn't smiling.

The trash pick-up day came and went, and no one picked up the branches. After a week of stewing about it, I finally called the county to see if I could schedule a pickup, and was told that it's the homeowner's responsibility. I felt really stuck - wanted to fix the problem, but he had blocked my ability to do so by telling me not to take the branches back. I felt dread and guilt every time I looked out the window at that pile of branches, to the point that I wished we could move away.

I finally grasped the nettle today. I baked a loaf of banana bread and took it over to the neighbors. The wife answered the door and was perfectly nice to me. I apologized again about the branches and said that we would remove them. Then I got my husband to help me saw them up into small pieces, tied them in bundles, and put them on our lawn. They should be regulation-size now so the trash guys will take them. (I hope I don't get arrested.)

Once I was finally able to fix the issue, I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I know I'm silly to let such a little thing throw me. I just can't handle confrontation. The whole time the banana bread was baking I was trembling with nervousness and didn't want to go over there - afraid of getting yelled at. I just told myself, "Take your medicine!" and went through the motions, wrapping the warm loaf in tin foil, getting my daughter's coat on, carrying her out the door with me, until the whole incident was over and I could relax.

Hoping now that I won't need to grasp any more nettles for a little while.