The Dinosaur in my Kitchen

One of my memories from my mother’s photo album was of my Mum at about my age carrying my little brother in a back pack. I never thought this was weird but my mother tells me that she never actually owned a pram. The majority of mothers in New Zealand in the 1970s were told by their health experts to put the baby in a pram and leave it outside in the sun and fresh air for their morning nap. Oh, how times have changed. Here we have very little ozone layer so we have very harsh UV. My midwife even suggested that I not take my baby outside for photo-therapy when he had jaundice, because sunburn was a much higher risk.

When my boy was still in utero we had many care packages and hand-me-downs from family. I guess it helped that my husband was the first of his generation in his family, and that his family is quite young, because we have doting great-grandparents in the mix. My boy is so lucky. One of the things that we were gifted was a baby stroller. When my son was about 6 weeks old, my husband and I clipped him into the stroller and we wandered down to the local café or perhaps the library with my boy in what felt like his own personal SUV. The contraption was so large and he was so small that we had to put a cushion under his bum so he would fit properly into the restraint… in 20/20 hindsight he was probably far to young.

I remember with shame the night that my husband took the boy out for a walk in the stroller to calm his nerves (the boy would normally fall fast asleep in transit) and I welcomed, in from the cold, a frazzled Daddy and a howling baby. My darling son had started crying again about 10 minutes walk from home and was inconsolable, so Daddy had taken him out of the stroller to carry him. Struggling in vain to steer the stroller and carry and soothe the baby all at once, while hurrying desperately home to me, the boy had come unwrapped from his blankets and he had become quite chilly. I felt so sorry for both of them! If only we had known another way.

As a new mother I had never heard of “baby wearing”. When I first heard the term my son was about 5 weeks old. It seemed like really good sense but I had no idea how it was done. There seemed like a lot of things to learn, and gear to make or buy. My Mum was brought up in Fiji and she said that the women there just tie their baby up in a sulu (like a lava-lava from Samoa; the cloth sheet/skirt-like a sarong wrap that both men and women wear in Fiji). I had no idea how to do this. Wearing my boy in a cradled position in an unpadded sling was quite hard on my back and shoulders, and I was recovering from a C-section.

We decided to go to a baby store that specialised in carriers and cloth nappies, and ask the people there what they thought. My husband didn’t like the idea of getting a ring-sling because it didn’t look manly enough for him, so we decided that a meitai asian-style carrier was the way to go, because it was versatile and could be worn easily by different people.

After getting my carrier things got so much easier! I could do hands-free laundry, fix a snack, go to the library, carry my boy with the weight across my back rather than on one shoulder, and possibly most importantly, when my baby wouldn’t settle I could tie him to me and he would be snuggled up to me and asleep in minutes. I started to be able to go out for walks. I was getting fit again after my hell pregnancy, and at the same time I could get out of the house with my husband and we could just have quiet time, away from the TV and computers and house work that we seemed to be inextricable from.

When I think back to our “convenience” device, the stroller, that we found so useful for Christmas shopping in the mall, I think about what was wrong with that picture. I remember spending ages trying to lengthen and shorten straps, I remember parking and waiting with the baby while my husband went into a store that had isles too narrow to navigate with all the Christmas foot traffic, and I remember waiting and waiting for a gap big enough to push the stroller through to get through an electronics store… but these were only my inconveniences. I was continually popping around the front of the stroller to see if my little darling was asleep or awake, and if he was happy, or just annoyed by the seatbelt strapping.

I remember walking to a parenting class on a mild summer day and having to find a “park” in the yard of the health centre, amongst various other buggies, strollers and pram-alikes. Recently my husband and I went to a musical activity hour for babies, to which about 30 other parents showed up, and my husband commented smugly that we no longer have to find a park just to get in the door. Add to the convenience that travelling on the bus is made so much easier when you don’t have to muscle a little old lady out of the front seat so you can park a baby there.

When I am walking with my son I am stopped by smiling grandmothers who all say how “contented” he looks. He grins at them with security from the comfort of Mum’s chest. When it rains I wrap an extra-large, comfy jacket around the both of us and we can brave the elements together, keeping each other warm. Some mothers ask, “Where do I get a carrier like that?”… and I’ve been told that eventually people will ask, “Isn’t he getting a bit heavy for that?” Another mother I have spoken to said her answer to the nay-sayers was: “I will consider stopping carrying my baby when our combined weight gets back to my weight before he was born.” Now, I was overweight before my pregnancy and I was very sick during it so I have lost a LOT of weight. I keep getting fitter and healthier, so at this rate, assuming I stop carrying my boy when I reach my pre-pregnancy weight, I will still be carrying my son when he’s 4!

But what of my parking issues at home? What IS that dinosaur living in my kitchen? The stroller that seemed like such a good idea in the mall at Christmas time is now parked in my kitchen covered in unfolded laundry, like some disused piece of exercise equipment you bought off an infomercial when it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Getting the Guilts

“You can’t be a good mother if you’re not racked with guilt at least half the time…”

When I heard this I realised how far I had come both as a person and as a mother. In my journey to overcome depression I had to do a lot of remodeling inside my head. I had to identify the things that I was saying to myself and the things that others said to me and about me and critically analyse the worth of these thoughts to figure out if they were worthwhile. If it were not for the skills I had developed I might have taken this statement as truth.

The poor mother who blurted this out tries so hard for her little one. He has allergies and can be quite a handful, and she has all the love in the world for him. I think that where a lot of our infant/mother relationship stresses are caused by the fact that we are gentle with our little ones, but we often forget to be gentle with ourselves. If a mother is stressed, it can stress out her kids. Babies can’t tell what “there there, it’s okay…” means, but they know what the tone of voice means and it’s saying “oh no! this is really stressful!”… so is it any wonder that the baby keeps crying?

A group of women share a morning tea together. They are involved in what I think of as “The Baby Competition“. Each mother brags about how far her baby has progressed developmentally, or how much she has grown, or how cute his clothes are, or the new “trick” that she has learned. Each casts her critical eyes on the oblivious youngsters, sizing them up. The mothers’ internal monologue scream their insecurities “Why can’t my baby do that yet? Am I doing something wrong?” It is as though each baby’s stage of development is some sort of yard stick with which to verify parenting success… and why not use such a yard stick? It’s not like we are in a culture that deals with babies and small children all the time. Parents in modern Western society are, for the most part, dealing with alien life forms.

Modern parents are extremely vulnerable. They are burning with the desire to do the best that they can for their children, while being at an information deficit. Most of them didn’t know a fart from a fontanelle before they had their own little bundle of joy. As a result they will believe anything you tell them… anything a friend, family member, health professional, childcare expert, book, magazine or TV advertisement says. Before they know it they are up to their eyeballs in seas of information, mis-information, counter-information and lies… tilling the soil of stress with the seeds of guilt.

As parents we are profoundly affected by what we say to ourselves, and what others say to (or about) us. So how do we gain the confidence to know that the parenting decisions we make are the right ones? In my opinion that is the wrong question to be asking. If we focus so hard on being right to give us confidence we will drive ourselves nuts. There will always be fault to find in some of your decisions with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and the most we can ever hope for is learning the grace to try our best and weather the consequences. As childcare expert (and Attachment Parenting guru) Dr William Sears says: “Do the best you can with the resources you have – that’s all your child will ever expect of you.”

If we keep striving for (unattainable) perfection it stresses us out and distorts our priorities. Our children learn how to deal with stress from our example… and we don’t really want to be raising a generation of children who, as dinner hosts, are so busy fussing about the entrée being perfect, that they forget to help their guests feel at ease. So what are these “resources” that Sears speaks of? They are things like time, love, skills, things and information. With money stresses these days it is impossible for some parents to spend as much time with their children as they would like. Parents fear that they don’t know enough to stimulate a child academically and so they must relinquish time with their offspring to professional educators. Some parents get lost in the seas of information and expert opinions. Ultimately, I think the important thing is learning that it’s alright to be good enough rather than perfect.

The other day I received a flier from my local supermarket with 4 whole pages of baby care specials. This didn’t seem so odd to me before I had my child but now I realise just how many of these “necessities” are just merchandising traps. I don’t buy any of the things advertised by my local supermarket for my baby! We live in a commoditised world. Every labour saving contraption in the world exists to make our parenting lot easier, but I found that listening to my instincts sent me down another path. So many of these devices caused me more anxiety than joy!

I don’t use pacifiers, bottles, safety cups, disposable nappies, cots, strollers, highchairs, baby wipes, sterilising sprays, or even designer baby gear. My little man is just fine and dandy wearing a cotton singlet on warm days when everyone else’s bubba seems to be double wrapped in designer gear, trying to emulate the latest fashion for 14 year olds. But where do I get the confidence to present my baby to the world, at the ripe old age of 6 months, wearing comfortable clothes rather than disposable nappies and jaunty outfits? I know why.

By that, I mean that instead of taking all the advice of well meaning “experts”, I have done a little research of my own and I have made conscious decisions about how I parent, based on my own feelings, my understanding of my baby’s feelings and some well reasoned research. If I were to listen to the popular media (such as the ABC article I heard on the local news this evening) I would never rock or nurse my son to sleep, never let him sleep in my room and I would learn to let him cry until he gives up and goes to sleep, alone and scared, in his own room. The other day my husband commented: “Things have become so much easier since we started parenting your way rather than listening to what everyone else was telling us.. that was a nightmare!”… and yet he has also been known to ask - “Why do you read all these books that are just telling you to do what you are already doing?” My research has given me the confidence and information to be able to explain myself to those who wish to influence me.

When my health nurse asked me where my baby sleeps I quite proudly explained “in my bed!” and I regaled her with the efforts I have gone to, to make our co-sleeping safer (having a side rail on the bed, having a firm bed, using no pillows for the baby etc.). When the local child health organisation ran talks on “First Foods” for babies I noticed that they were sponsored by a baby food company and the local meat board, so I took the things that were said with a grain of salt (no pun intended) and did my own research on the topic, which confirmed my doubts about a lot of the messages I was given at the talk.

We have to learn to forgive ourselves. We can’t do everything right all the time and we shouldn’t even try. If we try to stop our children from falling they will be perpetually relying on us to stop them from hurting themselves. To quote the film Batman Begins: “And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” We can try our best to make their world a safe place to be, but the inevitable will happen and they will have minds of their own. I’m not blaming myself for my little one’s bangs and scrapes… I’ll just be here to kiss it better when he needs reassurance that it will all be alright, and I will revel in the joy that my young man is becoming an independent person.

Acronymity

I had a really horrible pregnancy. Little did I know that this would be my foray into the world of parenting that would leave me buried in letters!

First came the LMC or Lead Maternity Carer. In my case that was my midwife (if that was her profession) who admitted to me once that she “just didn’t get women because they [had] so many layers”. Then came the HEG or hyperemesis gravidarum.. which is just Latin for “throwing up too much while you’re pregnant” but it makes it sound spectacularly important. Seeing as it left me bed-ridden and unable to hold down any food or water, I guess it was important. Then came UTI or urinary tract infection.. in my case I had two kidney infections, probably because I couldn’t hold down enough liquids. After the worst of the vomiting subsided came the SPD which stood for symphysis pubis disorder which is a loosening of the joints in the pelvis meaning it hurt to stand up or walk.

So I endured the pregnancy in a very inactive way, not able to concentrate on much, so I had done practically no research about birth or motherhood. I was too sick to get to antenatal classes, even if they hadn’t been already full up when I went to enroll. I had no birth plan and my midwife wasn’t terribly supportive. The smell of human breath made me feel ill so I saw very few people during my pregnancy. I even had 2 of my email accounts go void because I couldn’t touch the computer. My husband was at his wits’ end and very lonely because I had become completely dependent. I was nagging and throwing up.. I was.. like a cat! - only less furry and not as much fun!

I was 38 weeks along when I found my next acronym - HELLP or “Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzyme levels and a Low Platelet count”. Try saying that 3 times fast. They were about to induce me and then it turned out that I had no platelets so if I had bled I wouldn’t have stopped. I got puffy and really sick and went into toxic shock, got the shakes and got carted off for a C-section under general anaesthetic.

My child was born but he wouldn’t latch on to my nipple to breastfeed. It soon became all about the struggle to breastfeed. In washed another pile of letters LC, IBCLC, BM, EBM, FF. Then I joined the LLL (La Leche League) to get some help and support with breastfeeding because I was pumping milk for 6 weeks before I could get Alexander to feed right. I turned to the internet… if there ever was a primordial soup from which life evolved, its parallel is found in this digital soup where acronyms evolve.

Soon I was translating different terms like DS, DD, DH, LO… letters tend to have very sharp corners so you have to be careful using them in every day conversation. They can be kind of hard to palate or use lots of in one mouthful - kind of like those nacho chips with the pointy edges that stab you in the roof of the mouth.

I soon found out that every parenting decision I made for my boy had a “movement” or an acronym. I wanted to sleep with my boy in my bed, or wear him around in a mae-tai carrier, breast feed, and be responsive to my baby’s attempts to communicate his needs to me. From my dawdling around the internet I realised there was a secret code I needed to be using. I was now a CD, BW, CS, EBF, AP SAHM.

LOL.