Among the things I said I’d never do as a new mom was chop off all of my hair. After weeks of wrestling with a rat’s nest – no, infestation – on the nape of my neck, I have just mailed off ten inches of hair to make wigs for kids with cancer. I feel lighter, freer, more adventurous, and more than a little chagrined.
Before I got pregnant, my husband and I made a pact that we would be different from our new-parent friends who jumped at every noise made by their sleeping babies. When hosting us for dinner (a feat of proportions we did not – could not – fully appreciate at the time), the slightest peep from the baby monitor would send them bounding out of their chairs, leaping headlong across the living room floor, and sprinting down the stairs. They would then enter the room of their sleeping angel and ever-so-gently bounce her back to sleep in her Australian baby hammock before she ever really woke up. Alone at the table, my husband and I would exchange knowing glances and whisper about how we would never be like them.
Well, guess what? I can reach my potentially-awakening baby in .03 nanoseconds, while adrenaline jets through my veins and my heart pounds at fetal-heartbeat speed. At .06 nanoseconds, as I am sliding a boob in her mouth, I am practicing the art of forcing deep breaths and the appearance of calm (it’s a sham, because my baby knows my secret – more than anyone else, she can feel my heart thumping as she nurses while snuggled next to me).
My husband, meanwhile, has developed supersonic hearing. “That was her,” he’ll say, having heard something imperceptible to the naked ear issue forth from the monitor. I have stopped second-guessing him. Better a false alarm, I figure, than the alternative.
And just what is that alternative, and why does it loom large enough to propel a pre-parenthood scoffer like me to action? It’s this simple: I am a full-time mom, happily on call 24-7. And when she’s sleeping, it’s my time. Yes, sometimes my time is spent doing chores, but when I’m really lucky, it’s spent writing or reading. When I’m really, really lucky, it’s spent hanging out with my better half. It’s easier to soothe a baby back to sleep when she has not yet entered the realm of “I am really frustrated because no one is coming to help me!” I love the stealth missions that have her back to sleep within five minutes or less.
Yes, it’s all about timing, which is what neither my husband nor I understood before we were parents. When I get up from the dinner table in a flurry, I laugh to myself, knowing that I’m eating my words.
Another confession: Once upon a time, I admired friends who could converse with a baby fussing on their laps. Babies make noise sometimes, I reasoned. Wasn’t it wonderful that these parents weren’t so uptight that they had to quell every last peep?
Ha! HA! Who was I kidding? There is now nothing more unnatural to me than sitting idly by while my child is in obvious discomfort, trying to carry on a normal conversation. I simply don’t do it. I have found myself strangely unable to care about whether my fellow conversant can handle the minor interruptions of me attending to my child – or even major ones, as in, “I am so sorry, but I don’t think I can continue to have this conversation right now.” My favorite conversations these days take place in the company of other mothers and babies who are doing the same dance. We joke that we must have started at least 5003 conversations, and not yet finished a single one. But there will be time for that. These moments with our children – tiny developing human beings who learn from our actions whether their needs have validity and whether they can trust us – are fleeting and precious and irreplaceable.
On a much deeper level, I’d always imagined I’d be a mother and a career woman at the same time. Heck, I subscribed to Working Mother magazine for three years before I got pregnant, just to stock my arsenal of ideas. I did original research in college about balancing work and family. After college, I idealized the friends and acquaintances who managed to pull off advanced degrees and grueling work schedules, all with children under two, all with a head-spinning schedule of pumping and freezing and reheating breastmilk. At the same time, I found it strangely unsettling that many of my married-with-kids friends were stay-at-home moms. I assumed that they chose to stay home because their husbands were well-compensated and they could afford the luxury. Might be a good gig, I thought, but it’s not for me.
The notion that I would want to be a full-time mom for more than 8 months – the time I had carefully planned to take “off” before returning to my regimen of pre-med post-bacc courses – was utterly foreign to me. And yet, here I am, on the eve of my daughter’s first birthday, feeling like full-time motherhood is the most amazing, inspiring, challenging profession I could imagine. And even more astonishing is the fact that I’m not in a hurry to leap off the mommy track any time soon.
With the notable exceptions of getting married and having a baby, almost everything I have ever done in my young life has prepared me for a brilliant career. Yet, here I am, stuck in a paradox of wanting to have that brilliant career but wanting even more to be a mother – on my own terms.
I think it was the breastfeeding that did it. I gave myself over to nursing my baby, and a transformation ensued. In the early months, there were days where she was attached to one of my boobs for more hours than not. While the requests to nurse come less frequently now, the revolution was permanent. My baby taught me how to be a mother, how to be myself as a mother. From her, I have learned to be open to the possibility of being transformed, to letting go of control.
Being a full-time mother is no luxury, as I once assumed, rather it is a privilege. It is also tremendously rewarding, hard work. It is work that someone is going to do, whether that someone is a nanny or a day care provider or…me. My earlier fantasies of being half of a high-octane dual-career couple, a Superwoman juggling a stellar career and adorable babies, have lost their sheen. I realized within a few weeks of motherhood that I am simply not capable of separating from my baby, knowing that she might need me and not yet be able to truly comprehend my unavailability, no matter how temporary. As nursing moves from the focal point of our interactions to a touchstone of our bond, I still believe that my toddler benefits immeasurably from having me around. As she explores her world, she is learning that there is a consistent someone ready to support and love her when she’s smiling, when she’s crying, and everything in between. She is learning to love with perfect (or nearly perfect) trust and minimal fear.
I, meanwhile, have tackled domesticity along with full-time parenting. Well, sort of. After months of agonizing attempts, I am beginning to master the art of cooking a balanced meal for dinner most nights, and I alternate between feeling damn good about it and feeling outraged that something like planning, shopping and cooking (not to mention planting, picking, processing, and packaging) food is so incredibly undervalued. Sometimes, I play hooky. Right now, I should be cooking for the dinner party we’re hosting tomorrow night. But I’m writing instead.
The Voices Out There (real or imagined) think it’s ridiculous that I spend my days with a toddler. Sometimes they’re so loud that I can barely hear my own heart beating. Is it because I went to Harvard? Is it because I live in New York? Is it because this is 2006? I don’t know, but I do know that my goals – at least my short-term goals – have changed. At this moment I don’t want the brilliant career (first in law and politics, then in medicine) that I had once envisioned. I want something even more elusive. I want a career that will allow me to do meaningful, interesting part-time work from home while my daughter and other future children are young and tender. I feel certain that I will find this career, or it will find me. Life is mysterious and wonderful and sometimes hard as hell. But right now, I love my life, and I wouldn’t trade places with anyone – except, maybe, my daughter.
