Mommy Musings

Here is a brief selection of some of my recent musings on new motherhood. Enjoy!

Murphy’s Law for the Morning Rush The operating of a baby’s bodily functions seem to have a direct correlation to how late his parents are running in the morning. It's as if the subtle rise of rush and anxiety in the morning is physically released into the air, hanging like an ether of dread, to ingested by said baby, and then immediately expelled in the most forceful and inconvenient matter possible. Not once has a blowout occurred while I’ve been casually lounging around the house. It is a scientific fact that 100% of baby blowouts occur as you are stepping foot out of the front door, arms leaden with bags and baby, with 3 minutes to get to work on time. And 85% of the time one or both parents will require a change of clothes as well. I don’t create the data, I just report on it. Of All the Things I Never Thought I’d Hear My Husband Ever Say to Me… “JUST SMUSH IT DOWN THE DRAIN!!” ranks as #1 on the list. For context, please read previous post. Rockin’ the Mom-Bod I recently did the closet-shuffle where I bagged up all of my maternity clothes to put into storage and simultaneously brought out my pre-baby wardrobe to see what fits and what I can start wearing again. I had dumped a bag of dresses on my bed that I was trying on one at a time and sorting into three neat piles: Fits Now, Will Maybe Fit Later, and Ha-Ha Will Never Fit Again. It was during this process that my housekeeper noticed the pile of dresses on the bed. “Madame give away?” she asked me. Oh, no, I explained. I’m just trying them on right now. She then frowned and said, “They are very small, madam. Maybe not fit. Madame bigger since baby.” She then turned to said baby who was sitting happily on my bed, chewing his fist as he likes to do and said to him in baby-talk: “Yes! Madam much, much bigger since baby! Baby make madam bigger!” She then happily walked out and left me to my piles of shattered delusions. I mean, she’s not wrong, but dang! Nothing like a little friendly body-shaming to snap you back into reality! Mom Shaming is a Real Thing and it Starts Before the Baby’s Even Born I mean wow, the way people think it’s acceptable to comment on everything from your body to your breastfeeding to your choices about childbirth and child rearing and sleep habits and nighttime routines and weaning and everything else. Sheesh! The worst part is I don’t even think people really realize they’re doing it at the time. We’ve just become so accustomed to inserting ourselves into the choices women make about their own bodies and their families it seems normal. I Am Afraid of Nothing and Everything All at Once I don’t know if it’s a normal mom-thing to randomly picture your baby in situations of great danger, only to then fantasize about how you would heroically rescue them from said danger? Or if this is the work of an overactive imagination. Or if I’m just an utter weirdo. But I have imagined swimming with my baby in a river, my baby being snatched by an alligator, and then me underwater-wrestling my baby from the gator’s jaws, blinding the alligator, snapping his jaws in half, and then emerging from the water with me and baby unscathed. What sort of sick sh*t is that?! I don’t know, but in my fantasy brain I’m like, “Oh yeah, I could totally destroy an alligator to rescue my baby….” Another scenario I have imagined is being in an Argo-style embassy hostage situation where I stick my baby inside my shirt, kangaroo-style, and then army crawl around the embassy, dodging bullets and kidnappers, to find ourselves both safely outside the building where we run to the safety of black SUVs, likely driven by Daniel Craig, Liam Neeson, and MI6. My baby and I are both heroes. We are interviewed for Nightline TV. But these bizarre fantasies also come from the same brain that mistook my husband coming up the stairs at 1:00 in the morning for Voldemort who had come to put the Avada Kedavra curse on the Boy Who Lived and just being frozen like a deer in headlights. (To be fair, he was shuffling up the stairs in a very creepy manner…) *Editor's note, totally normal walking up the stairs. Also I have avoided walking down the stairs at night because I’m afraid I’m going to see Teddy Perkins from Atlanta or Georgina from Get Out staring at me through the kitchen window. I have zero qualms about plucking a booger right out of my baby’s nose with my fingers, yet I also occasionally have to poke his back while he’s sleeping to make sure he’s still breathing. So….I don’t know. I guess maybe it's a maternal instinct to protect that manifests itself in weird ways. I wonder what Freud would make of my reptilian-mother-ID?