The Magical Myths of Mommy-hood

This weekend, I saw the Johnson’s Mother’s Day commercial, “You’re Doing OK.” If you haven’t seen it yet, do give it a view (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yotq4zr0dRc).  The message is sweet and sentimental, but also straight up (“there was that strained carrot incident”).

It made me smile and think back, over six years ago now (was it really that long ago?), to when I decided to try to become a mom. I knew it would be hard to do it on my own.  I had thought through the logistics, the finances, the physical and emotional challenges.

Because I was choosing to be a single mom, I thought that meant I had to prove to everyone that I could handle it all on my own.  No help from the studio audience for me!  Why would you need to hold the baby while I’m eating?  I can do both!  Why would I take you up on your offer to do my laundry?  I can get up and down the basement stairs after my C-section…if I sit on my bum and drag the laundry up behind me (or in front of me…depending on how you look at it)!

I look back on that time and wonder who exactly I was trying to prove something to.  Certainly not to my friends or family, who knew if anybody could make it work, I could.  No, I had created my own Myth of Mommy-hood.  I told this myth to myself over and over until it became necessary and real and valid.  And then I went out to eat dinner while still on maternity leave with my good friend from work. She offered to hold the baby while I ate.  I valiantly declined.  She looked me in the eye, told me to shut up, and took the baby (who simply adored her) from my arms. I began to eat with two hands: how refreshing to cut a piece of meat with a fork AND knife simultaneously!  The spell was broken! The myth had fallen by the wayside.

This got me thinking about some of those other Mommy Myths that have been passed down through the generations. Myths that have been clung to, told and retold. Myths of epic proportion.  Myths that need to go down…

Mommy Myth #1: You will not remember the pain
To put it bluntly, this pure and utter b.s. Luckily, or not, I wound up having to have a C-section, so I did not have to go through the entire, full throttle birthing process, although I was in labor for about 12 hours. But if you think for one minute that I don’t remember how sore my throat was from the breathing tube (yes, the localized anesthesia didn’t work and I had to be knocked out), the thrill of the catheter, and every time I forgot to get out of bed without twisting at the waist (and the blinding pain resulting from said movement), you are c-ra-zy.

Perhaps this myth would be more feasible if it were renamed “you will not CARE about the pain.” Of course you care about the pain at the time, but in retrospect, withstanding that pain seems a decent enough trade off for the freshly minted person you get at the end. I remember the pain, but I didn’t hold it against my little man.  And it didn’t stop me, or most other women, from considering another one.

Mommy Myth #2: You will instantaneously and magically fall in love with your child
I cannot tell you how many times I heard this when I was pregnant: that magical moment when they hand you your child, your eyes meet, your minds meld, and if anyone so much as moves a hair on their head, you will immediately rip out the heart (and eat it will some fava beans, and a nice chianti).

No myth caused me more angst than this one (except maybe #3). Perhaps it does work this way for some moms. It did not work this way for me. As far as I know, I did not have postpartum, yet the magical moment eluded me.

Firstly, I was unconscious when he came into the light, so I did not even get to see him until I was back in my room. I woke up with a sore throat, and having never had any kind of surgery, I was quite discombobulated by this, as I was sure all the action had happened further south.  They brought him into my room, but I wasn’t quite fully functional yet and was afraid my arms would not hold him.  My best friend brought him to my side.  He was adorable, squeaky clean, and perfect in every way. He looked at me with his little old man face and it was clear that he was mine. There was most definitely a maternal connection.  But no shaft of light from the heavens.  No Hallelujah choir. No jolt of lightening. What was wrong with me? I was already a horrible mother before I’d even had a chance to get started!

After a few days, I took him home, my best friend went back to Texas, and I was left alone with the boy and my inferior thoughts.  I most assuredly adored this wee person I grew, but I waited for that amazing wave of something…mythical…  It did not come. I began to panic.  Perhaps I would never bond properly with my baby.  I did not share my fear and guilt with anyone, lest they realize what a truly terrible mother I was. After a week or two, my friend from work (the same one who shattered my personal myth), came over to visit.  We were sitting on the couch talking, when suddenly I burst into tears, weeping uncontrollably about my inability to “connect.” She hugged me and rubbed my shoulder.  “What took you so long?  It took me less than a week to freak out with my kids.” She assured me that there was nothing wrong with me and that very few women were blessed with an actual light beam from on high. And of course, she was right.  One would be hard pressed to look at my son and me today and think we had not “bonded.”

Mommy Myth #3: There is something fundamentally wrong with you as a mother if you cannot or will not breastfeed your child
My angst over a lack of angels singing in the in the recovery room was doubled down by the fact that I was not able to breastfeed.  I believe there was a combination of reasons for this, medical and physical, but the fact was, I could not make it work and I was utterly distraught. I was sure I was destroying my child’s life through this shortcoming of mine. I actually had one nurse tell me I was “ruining” him by giving him a pacifier. Really?  He’s hot off the presses and I’ve already ruined him? Damn, talk about a heavy cross to bear.

I pumped.  I took meds. The results were unimpressive. It was my attending doctor who helped dispel this one.  An older woman than I by a generation, she assured me that while we knew breast milk was the best if possible, her entire generation was bottle fed, and they seemed to have turned out ok. God bless her wisdom.

Mommy Myth #4: You must sacrifice yourself and your needs at all times for your child
Here, again, we have absolute and total b.s. Of course there are times when you put your child’s needs and wants above your own—I mean, did you REALLY want to read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish for the 46^th time…today? No, you did not.  But sometimes, you do it anyway. Sometimes you give your child the last drink of water, even though you are really thirsty.  Sometimes you don’t buy something for yourself so you can get something special for him or her. Sometimes the sacrifice is real and deep. But let’s face it, women are trained by our society to put other people’s needs ahead of their own, and there are those that take great pride in the fact that they never, ever do for themselves because they are too busy taking care of everyone else.

I personally believe in two basic guiding principles here.  The first is the old adage: ‘if Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.’ That doesn’t mean that Momma gets everything she wants all the time and to hell with everyone else.  But it does mean that Momma needs to have a life that is somewhat happy and fulfilled so that she can reflect those qualities to her children and teach them how to find these things in their own lives.

The second is from your basic flight attendant instructions prior to takeoff: ‘in the unlikely event of a loss in cabin pressure, please secure your own mask before assisting your child.’ If you do not take care of yourself, you cannot take care of someone else.  Plain and simple. What good is it to run yourself into the ground for your child when you will eventually break down, and then who will take care of them?  Keeping a happy healthy you gives you the ability to take raise happy and healthy them.

 

Mommy Myth #5: You must treasure and adore every single moment with your child
A few months ago I read a great blog post about this very topic that puts it more eloquently than I ever could.  Some friends were passing it around on FB and it is a great read. It’s by Glennon Melton, titled “Don’t Carpe Diem.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glennon-melton/dont-carpe-diem_b_1206346.html).

It is about being a mom and how other (usually older) moms will come up to you, at random, and tell you how much they loved every moment of motherhood and how you should enjoy every single minute, too.  She is usually telling you this in the middle of a the grocery store or your local Target, at a time when your children have driven you so close to the edge that you have contemplated, even for a brief, fleeting moment: A.) strangling them within an inch of their life or B.) simply walking away and pretending they do not belong to you. You know that moment I’m talking about.  If you don’t…you will. Of course, you do NOT do either of these things, because you are a responsible adult in charge of their well-being.  But having someone tell you you should be savoring this very moment really makes you want to turn around and commit choice A upon her.  But you don’t do that either, because she means well, and that would only get you arrested, and then who would look after the children? (although the woman would probably assure you, as you were choking her, that you would someday look back fondly on this very moment. Making you want to squeeze even harder…).

There are many moments of motherhood I have not enjoyed.  Being vomited on. Discovering the six-foot scratch my son etched in his bedroom furniture.  Mysterious medical maladies that come and go with no known cause or cure. I do not treasure them. I do not cherish them. And like Glennon, I do not think it makes me a bad mom to admit that I do not hold them near and dear to my heart.  There are many, many other memories that I do, but not these.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard other Mommy Myths; these are just the ones that came to mind at the close of this lovely spring on which we celebrate all things maternal.

In truth, I find motherhood, like most things, is a dichotomy. Amazing. Exasperating. Inspiring. Infuriating. Frightening. Awesome.

An old ad campaign for the U.S. military (Army, I think) had the tag line “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” I think that sums it up pretty well, don’t you?

Happy Mother’s Day, ya’ll!

“Rush”-ing to judgment

There have been so many things out there to write about lately that I’ve gotten writers block in reverse—a sort of constipation of the brain where everything wants to come out at the same time, but instead it all gets compacted in my head and nothing comes out…until the continuing saga of Rush Limbaugh’s verbal attach on Georgetown Law School’s Sandra Fluke.  And suddenly, like mental Dulcolax, my brain gave way and a rant on Rush’s big ole pile of poop came steaming out.

Now, I have to admit, I don’t really pay much attention to Rush.  Many adjectives come to mind to describe his show and the things he says on it, and not one of them is complimentary. I gave up being offended by him long ago and wrote him off to that distant corner of my world with all the other crazy people. He strikes me as the kind of person who merely exists to stir the pot—someone who just says things to say them, whether he believes them or not, and then basks in his astonishment that someone could be offended by his “soothsaying,” and then immediately dismisses anything contradictory that you could possibly say about him or his comments.

But this one, this really gets under my skin.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am somewhat of an “armchair feminist.”  Generally speaking, I don’t believe that men are out to get us or that they are evil, and I don’t want to turn men into women, or whatever other bologna Rush and those like him believe feminists are up to. However, in this instance, I DO believe that the effort to control female reproduction is tied to a fundamental belief by some that men should not only be allowed to, but entitled to, control women and their bodies.  It’s great how men who can control their own fertility by purchasing a condom at any grocery store, convenience store or gas station get to call women “sluts” and “prostitutes” because we want access to the same reproductive rights.

Some have tried to say that this argument is not about contraception at all but about religious freedom and the right of religious based medical facilities to not have their spiritual beliefs overrun by being mandated to provide birth control or allow insurance to cover it. But Rush goes against this very premise when he calls Ms. Fluke a slut for support the right to availability of birth control. His direct quote was:

“What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute… She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.”

(http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/rush-limbaugh-calls-law-student-a-slut-wanting-contraception-covered-health-insurance-religious-institutions-article-1.1031283#ixzz1oDOPv3vq)

Sooo, it’s not about the right to have access to birth control IF you support denying said access based on religious principles, but if you support it’s availability THEN it’s clearly solely due to your desire to prostitute yourself?  Okay.

His statement doesn’t even make sense. “She’s having so much sex (as a prostitute) she can’t afford the contraception.” If you are making money as a prostitute, wouldn’t you have money for contraception? Does she want to be paid in contraceptives to have sex? What does that even mean?!

He goes on to insult Ms. Fluke further by insinuating that she has brought shame to her family through her testimony:

“Can you imagine if you’re her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be?” he said. “Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi and testifies she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope.” (nice pot shot at Nancy, here, btw)

Quite frankly, I would be incredibly proud of my child for standing up for what he/she believes to be right, particularly in such a public way.  What a good job I would have done as a parent, to have taught my child to have the courage of his or her convictions!

Additionally, Rush dismisses Ms. Fluke’s claim that birth control can be used for other medical purposes besides contraception, thus making affordable birth control in some cases, a medical necessity. Nope. All those girls are just out there procreating at every possible moment.

As a woman who’s been on birth control since she was 18 years old due to a medically diagnosed hormone imbalance, I am in a unique position to clearly point out how little Rush knows of what he speaks. Not only were birth control pills used to regulate my otherwise nonexistent cycle, my OB/GYN recently informed me that at 40, she wanted to keep me on the pill for a few more years because she was concerned that my low estrogen levels during my youth had hindered my bone density which develops (with the help of estrogen) during a woman’s 20s and 30s.

I can also speak to the expense of the pill, since when I moved back to the East Coast, I did not have health insurance and had to pay out of pocket for my annual exam (required to get the prescription for the pill) as well as the pill itself, which at that time had no generic equivalent and cost over $25 per month. Needless to say that due to the expense, I did not rush off to the OB/GYN or the pharmacy.  I was well overdue for my annual by the time I was able to afford to visit the doctor.

Over the past few days, Rush has issued not one, but two “apologies” on this topic. I use the word apologies in quotes, because even when he is apologizing (whether heartfelt or not), he cannot help but take a pot shot:

“I descended to [the left’s] level when I used those two words to describe Sandra Fluke,” Limbaugh said.

(because clearly his poor word choice is the liberals’ fault)

“…those two words were inappropriate… They distracted from the point that I was actually trying to make… My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir.”

(in an attempt to be humorous? ‘You are a slut and a prostitute whose parents should be ashamed of you and your slutty ways.’  Wow, you’re right, that is frickin’ hysterical!!)

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/limbaugh-not-think-sandra-fluke-slut-prostitute-181711551.html

He claims that his apology has nothing to do with the advertisers who have left, as he “reject[s} millions of dollars of advertising a year, much to the chagrin of my ad sales team” and will be able to easily replace the lost revenue. I hope he’s started calling around, as I think he’s down about 10 companies as of this writing.

In His brilliant way, I’m sure Rush would simply dismiss me as some bitter little femi-nazi who just needs to “get some” (because if you’re not a prostitute, you are obviously a shrew who is not “getting any”).  Of course, once I do, I’ll need some more birth control.  And then I’ll be a slut. And it all comes full circle once again.

Unicorns, Bad Guys and Princesses, oh my!

The other day, my son started a random conversation over breakfast.

“Mom,” he said, “ I don’t like girly things.” He gestured with his hand for emphasis as he clarified: “I like girls, but I don’t like girly things”

I tried to remain calm as sirens began to go off in my head. Part of me wanted to react immediately and I fought the urge to step up on my soapbox and launch into a speech on how there weren’t ‘girl things’ and ‘boy things’ and how you could do or like or be whatever you wanted. Instead, my curiosity piqued, I took a breath and sought further clarification. Sometimes what you think kids are talking about is not what they actually are talking about.  “Like what?”

“Like unicorns.”

“Unicorns?”

“Yeah, you know they have that horn that’s pointy on top of their heads and it could stab me. I don’t like them”

Ok, let’s face it, it’s difficult to dispute that kind of logic. “And princesses. I don’t like princesses.”

This one was news to me, as I had it on good authority that, despite the fact that he had not seen any of the Disney movies to date, he knew every Disney princess by name and had, in fact, pointed them all out to me in the princess collection in the toy section at Target, having been schooled by the older girls in his mostly female pre-K class last year. “Why don’t you like princesses?”

“Because they wear dresses.”

Attempt to insert adult logic: “Well, Mommy wears dresses, does that mean you don’t like me?”

“No, I LOVE you. But they wear dresses ALL the time. There is one princess movie I’d like to see, and that’s The Princess and the Frog.”

Before I had a chance to pursue this line of questioning further, he pressed on: “I do like one girly thing, that’s horses, because I’d like to ride a horse.”

Now, I generally don’t think of horses as particularly girly, but again, in his class last year, some of the girls were into ‘ponies’ so apparently the whole equine line has been tinted pink.

Not to be one sided, he continued by providing ‘equal time’ to his own gender’s stereotypes. “There’s also some boy things I don’t like. I also don’t like bad guy boyish things.”

“No, I don’t like bad guy things either,’ I concurred.  In his current year at pre-K the tides had taken a decided turn, with a younger and almost all male class that tended to conform to the “typical” boy interests in guns, fighting ‘bad guys,’ wrestling, tackling, etc.

And then, just as it had begin, the conversation was over, and he’d moved on to finishing his breakfast and then heading into the living room to watch Martha Speaks on PBS while I got ready for work. I sat for a moment both amused and appalled at the inner workings of my child’s mind.  Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t upset with him in any way.  But it was somewhat startling how he had already so clearly begun to designate ‘girly’ things and ‘boyish’ things. I did take some comfort in the fact that he had chosen in his mind to allow himself to both embrace something he identified as feminine (horses) and reject something he’d identified as masculine (playing bad guys). It is fascinating. Having a kid is like observing a lifetime science experiment.

I’ve been fighting an uphill battle with society (and myself) against gender stereotypes since I got pregnant. When I first found out I was having a baby, I just assumed it was going to be a girl. As a single mother, I would raise her to be a smart, competent, kick-ass girl who would have strength and confidence and be full of ‘girl power.’ So finding out my feminist-in-training-to-be was a boy initially threw me off my game.  Of course I would love him with all of my heart, but was I really meant to have a boy? I knew so much about being a girl, how would I approach raising a boy?  Eventually it occurred to me that the idea was to raise a human being: a confident, caring, compassionate, upstanding member of society. Duh.  One of many lessons learned (learn-ING).

I was determined not to raise a stereotypical boy, or at least not surround my boy with stereotypical things, and at my baby shower requested guests refrain from gifts involving blue, cars, and sports. It’s not that I don’t like blue or cars or sports.  It’s that I didn’t want everything the child owned from birth to involve one or more of those things.  And that’s pretty much all that’s out there. It’s truly amazing how important it is to some people to know the gender of a child simply by looking at it. If a baby’s not in pink or blue, these people get downright cross—as if you were trying to trick them.  As if the infant in your arms was to suffer some irreparable harm if a total stranger could not readily identify whether the child possessed a penis or vagina by the onsie it wore.

Realizing that my request basically prevented anyone from purchasing newborn boy clothes from most mainstream stores, I set out to purchase the 5 items in existence in the apparently ‘universally neutral’ baby colors available: green and yellow. Shopping for boy clothes can be so utterly depressing.  There, in one part of the store, taking up nearly ¾ of the available space, are the girl clothes, in all manner of hue. In the other part, a few aisles wide, lie the boy clothes. Blue, generally navy and baby.  Red. White.  Perhaps some brown.  On a lucky day, there may be some dark green, dark orange, or brighter blue.  It will probably have a race car, basketball, or dump truck on it.  Or words like “All-Star” or “Team Captain” emblazoned across it. Or a big number, like a sports jersey. Ugh.

I thought it was bad when he was a baby, until I started looking for underwear when he was potty training. If you do not want a licensed character (which I did NOT), you have exactly two choices: pink or blue.  In extraordinary cases, a lone package of white may be found. By the time they’re ready to hit the bathroom, your little one’s booty better be color-coded, my friend.

In his daycare pictures one year, the boys held a football while the girls held a flower.  There weren’t any ‘neutral’ choices, like a book or a pumpkin.  Boy: football; girl: flower. Period. Beginning leveled reader books? Princesses or Spider Man. And try to find purple ANYTHING (my favorite color, and one of my son’s as well) for boys.  Until the last year or so, it was impossible (thanks, Old Navy, for sporting a plethora of purple this Fall!).

I work hard to fight against this stifling gender conformity and let my son have as many choices as possible.  When he chooses to play with dump trucks and train sets, that’s just fine.  And when he wants to paint his toenails, like he did last summer, that’s AOK with me, too. Mommy uses power tools.  Uncle is a gourmet cook. My son dons his green and blue apron to help make cookies (a gift from another Uncle). Happily, these are part of his everyday life, and not seen as ‘exceptions’ to gender-specific ‘rules.’

I have to admit that while contemplating my choices on one underwear-buying occasion early on, I nearly bought a package containing cotton briefs with pink flowers just for spite at the whole ‘system.’ I knew my son wouldn’t care—he was just excited to be wearing ‘big boy’ underwear instead of diapers (he’s still excited about that; in fact, he recently stuck his hand through the front of his newest underwear and said, ‘Look, Mom, it’s got a pocket!’ (lol!)). What stopped me was the thought of him being in pre-K and possibly being picked on by other boys (and/or girls) in his class.

And that is where I currently find myself negotiating the choppy waters

How do you balance the desire to instill in your child the courage to be his or her own self, and to embrace the things they like and to be who they are, with the real-life fear existing in our world today where bullies take our children’s lives, or make them feel so bad that they believe that taking their own life is their only option? These types of cases used to be extreme.  Now they seem to be the ‘norm’ and are occurring at younger and younger ages, all across the country.

To me, this is one of the great struggles of parenthood. Where the balance lies, I’m not quite sure.  Right now, I’m trying to roll with it.  And tell him every day, many times a day, that I love him.  Even if he makes me mad.  Even if I don’t like his choices. Always.  No matter what. Because Mommy’s love is like that.