I am the comfortable marriage and bearable mortgage, not the idealistic dreamer of genteel, educated poverty. More hearth guardian Mrs. March, less fire in the belly Jo.

And yet Anne was a mother, a mother of, let’s see: Jem, Walter, Di and Nan, Shirley, Rilla, yes, six. Why can’t I be a mother like Anne? She never yelled, she probably composed odes to eyebrows and greeted each day as a grand adventure. She made her kids feel loved, and special, and unique, and different in a good way. Recited poetry at the dinner table instead of reminding of the “no singing at the table” rule.

Yesterday Callie was awful at Hobby Lobby and Costco and waiting during Parent-Teacher Conferences for Avery. She ran down the aisles, included Lucy in her crazy shenanigans. She said she wanted to do something fun. I just wanted some quiet. In the car she read books to Lucy and passed crackers to the baby. Lucy couldn’t see the pictures from the back seat and Callie told her kindly to use her imagination.

I thought: this is the Anne Mother Moment. My kids are not a dead loss. They are worth what I am doing here, they are worth watching, worth listening to, worth my attention, worth describing and remembering and liking. (Loving, always, that goes with the heart milk; liking is harder, except when it’s a free gift).

But I am not the Anne Mother. The minivan stops at our next stop and it’s back to fighting or whining or snotty nose crying and I am not the Anne Mother.

I am the Marilla Mother. And I guess the best thing about her is that she really didn’t want Anne, she wanted a hardy farmboy, but what she got was a fragile yet strong, slender and red-haired, day-dreamer, flavor the cake with liniment girl.

And she kept her.

Avery was wearing the clip-on earrings Nana brought from Florida this week, as she has every day since Nana’s visit. I mentioned she might want to think about the ear piercings, because the short pinch of pain in the beginning is worth saying goodbye to slow death by clip-on squeeze. It’s like the difference between tights and leggings, I said, except even better because regular earrings become even more unnoticable  once they’re healed.

She thought about it for awhile and I struggled between ensuring it was her choice and thinking we should seize the day before she got scared again. She chose the blue-green zirconium in the white gold post and gripped the arms of the chair tightly.

Tonight I asked her if she brought it up or I did. She remembers it being her idea, which is good, because as I stood there patting her hand, I was impressed that her eyes almost filled but she didn’t cry, she got quiet as she waited for the sting, and once it was over, I felt sick to my throat. While she was relieved and excited, I was filled with mother’s remorse.

I felt like a conspirator to the murder of my daughter’s childhood. It would’ve been easier if she hadn’t looked so grown up in that chair. I can’t even remember getting my ears pierced at eight. Compared to my period starting at thirteen and holding hands with Chris Hansen during a U2 laser light show at sixteen, getting my ears pierced was nothing on the child-to-woman continuum.

Except now I realize it probably was, that or the day I became aware of my underwear showing while doing a cartwheel. (I don’t remember that day, either, but having girl children of my own, maybe that’s first).

I’ll keep telling myself: it was time. She’s almost eleven. It was her choice, and now I don’t have to find a punching bag for Christmas.

As I described Molly’s birth to her, I felt this warm wave of good feeling and my heart stood up and twirled around as I re-lived those moments last September. When I got up off the hospital bed, after pushing an 8 pound 15 ounce baby into the world, snuggling her at my breast, downing two celebratory and hard-earned percocets, and walked, all by myself, to my recovery room one floor down.

I haven’t felt that victorious, relieved, goddess-like, I-can-do-anything, show me a mountain . . . ever. Before or since.

Which tells me two things: 1) I need a new goal, some big, hard, rewarding thing, and 2) I need to do something in support of natural birth in the world. (even if that starts with something as small as this blog post).

My cousin is getting really close, and I was trying to think how to express my best encouragement. When I was fretting over my inconsistent mental preparations, it helped when Andrea told me her epiphany that there wasn’t any one thing she had to do and do right, but rather, she just needed to experience, to allow, to surrender. It helped to know that when I thought I couldn’t do it anymore, I didn’t have to because it was almost over, and I was already doing it anyway. It helped to know that by the time the pain was something I’d sell my soul to avoid, it’s too late to find a black market buyer. (and it was almost over.)

It helps me now, to remember that night and think: If I can do that, I can do anything. If I can do that, anyone can do that. And the thing about not doing it, but allowing it? That also helps for if things go wrong. If something goes wrong and intervention is needed and you have to allow something else to happen, something that wasn’t in your birth plan, that’s okay, because it turns out that was the thing you had to allow, to experience, to submit to. It wasn’t something you failed to do right, it was the thing that was supposed to happen. You can do this. Or that, or whatever you have to.

Giving birth to my baby, naked, lying on my side and indignant that I had to hold my own knee up and out of the way, feeling every stretch and burn and push and fire and thrust and swell and release, that was ecstatic. That was living deliberately, that was building my cabin in the forest by a pond, that was a luxury of wild nights! wild nights!, and squeezing the marrow out.

That was (every expletive you can think of) amazing.

—

Molly’s birth story

What to read when you’re expecting

Thinking about natural birth after thinking I had miscarried

An old one that shows how far I’ve come

It was the kind of night where it is almost a relief to see the light out the window and give up trying to get anymore sleep, and a bigger relief to know that doctors and pharmacies and steroids will soon be available. I called my dad for a prescription, and decided that Lucy’s preschool feast would be getting instant mashed potatoes.

I drove Callie to school, grabbed potato flakes at the store (pharmacy not open yet), then ran home to boil over the easy directions (it was my first time), got Lucy into her carpool with an acceptable offering, drove Avery’s carpool to her school, and then, finally, stopped by home before my second pharmacy attempt to grab my forgotten phone and saw I had five calls and two messages from Tom.

He was worried I’d forget that Avery had to go to school and that when he left for work she’d leave too and Molly and Lucy would be home alone. This is how I usually feel about Tom when it comes to parenting logistics: touched that he is aware and concerned about the kids’ welfare, frustrated that he doesn’t remember that it is our week to drive carpool, so of course Avery won’t be leaving the house until I am home to take her there. And baffled that he didn’t just ask Avery if she knew what was going on. (she did) (I had warned her she might be in charge of her sisters for 5-10 minutes after daddy left and before I got home).

This morning my reaction was, “Oh honey, I got this.” I got this in my asleep. I got this with one hand eaten by a crocodile and the other doing a magic card trick.

Not that I never make mistakes. I’m* right about Molly having croup today, but Avery’s swimmer’s ear turned out to be twelve-year molars (two years early), wax and a $35 urgent care copay, and Molly’s cold six months ago was walking pneumonia.

And it’s not like I would ever want to try it alone. Tom changes a mean diaper, and I’m writing this now because Chrysanthemum is a saint of a friend who took my carpool/playdate shift (and because nursing and typing is more handy than skiing and doing your taxes).

I need a nap and/or an extra Mountain Dew, but when it comes to comfort for croup and mediocre mashed potatoes, I got this.

*Technically Tom is right; he stuck her head in the freezer first.

We sat and reminisced, and I explained to one of her daughters that I grew up by her grandma and grandpa. A random young father bringing a kid out of the play place, said, “Wait, your father-in-law is Art B. who teaches French? I teach Spanish three doors down from him.” As we crossed the parking lot it was almost eery as we made our ways to matching minivans. I said to Lucy (perenially my straggler), “Stay right by me.” A couple feet over came the echo, “Stay right be me.”

I feel like it should bother me that we’re so alike, that our lives are so alike. Yes, we played clarinet together twenty years ago (I am freaking old, dude), and we go to the same church and my sister was friends with one of her sisters and my friend Tracey had a crush on her older brother and there’s even a less-salubrious connection that we’ve never discussed (though I could be indignant on behalf of my side), and basically this girl could be me, or I could be her, or something, and shouldn’t that be a bother?

Instead it warms the cockles, tickles the funnies. I don’t want to be special, but I do want be different, I think. Most important, I want to believe I have the life I have, the kids, the husband with the respectable job, the being-a-mom-ness, the consumed-by-childhood-things, out of choice, purposefully, not that my demographics dictated it for me. I am probably wrong about that. And tonight it’s okay.

This morning Crysanthemum and I took our kids to Ikea for breakfast, a little quality time in the Smaland play place, and some organization-supply shopping.

My kids love eating in the Ikea cafeteria, sitting at the familiar little tables in front of retro Goofy cartoons. Plus it’s free this month. Molly wanders around a bit, and I keep a close eye on her because she tries to steal food from other kids’ plates and because although she walks well for an 11-month old, she’s still my baby. As she stood at one of the toys (the cylinders that you spin to line up the three images), a boy about three years old came up beside her and pushed her sqaure in the chest, knocking her back from the toy and into the metal legs of a chair and onto the ground. Molly was unhurt and she didn’t even cry, but I was up and out of my chair, picking her up, and asking the ladies at the next table,

“Is this your kid?”

They shook their heads and I looked up and around, scanning for the kid’s parent. No one stepped forward, so I said,

“This kid just pushed my baby down, whose kid is this?”

A mother came over from the other side of the room as we sat back down, asking,

“Well, what do you expect?”

That stumped me. My kids misbehave, they don’t always want to share or take turns. One of the worst parenting days I’ve had was the time several years ago in Cairo that I bragged that Avery wasn’t a biter and five minutes later she bit the boy whose biting had occasioned my boast.

But I don’t let them get away with pushing littler kids down. And probably this is sexist of me, but the fact that it was a bigger boy child pushing my baby girl child around somehow made it seem worse. Maybe I’ve just been lucky with my girls, maybe I don’t understand or fully empathize with how naturally physical and rough boys can be. But still, I expect you to not let your son push my baby girl down. That’s what I expect. I expect you to watch your child and correct him if he does things like that.

(I also love the idea of Free Range Kids — I want my kids to work it out on the playground and the playroom. I’m not a referee, I don’t like tattling; if there’s no blood, I don’t want to hear about it. But she’s my baby. Can I be a Free-Ranger-with-caveats-for-my-baby?)

The mom picked up her little boy and told him to say he was sorry. He ignored her for a few seconds and then muttered,

 ”Sorry.”

I said, in that overly-bright-encouraging voice, “Thanks for apologizing.”

The mom and the boy and what looked like the grandmother left several minutes later.

We finished breakfast and as I was putting our dirty dishes away a different woman approached me and said:

“Like your kids have never done anything to another kid. I hope you’re ashamed, you made a huge spectacle and really embarrassed that lady and her son has a disability and I hope you feel embarrassed of yourself.”

I got that fluttery feeling in my stomach, the guilty headache, the sinking sick feeling that I had really messed up. I took my kids to the bathroom and came back. I saw the second woman sitting back in her seat and I went over to her. I asked if she knew the woman, and she said,

“No, but why would that matter?”

I said, “I just wondered if you knew her so you could tell her that I was sorry.”

“Oh, but you made a terrible spectacle, you embarrassed her in front of everyone.”

I said, “I didn’t mean to make a scene, I just wanted to know where the boy’s parents were,” and she blew up at me. She said I did make a spectacle and everyone was staring and she knows the family from the agency and the kid has autism and she knows how hard it is for them when people like me make big spectacles. I tried to apologize again, and she said,

“I hope you’re not LDS, because if you are then that was even more embarrassing.”

I admitted I am LDS and that, again, I was sorry, I hadn’t realized so many people were watching, or that it was that big a deal. She wouldn’t stop berating me, and I finally left mid-sentence.

I wish I were a good enough person (or at least a good enough blogger) to figure out a neat way to draw out the moral or ending of this story. I still feel jittery inside about it. I wish I hadn’t made that mom feel bad, but I also wish her son hadn’t pushed my baby down, and while I know it was the right thing to walk away from the second lady, I wish I could make her admit that at least there were a number of things I didn’t do in my spectacle: I didn’t yell or swear or call the mother or the boy names. I thought I had handled it okay. (In retrospect not great, of course.)

But I hate that I made it harder for the other mother. The other day Lucy told me that her “eye muscle” makes it so that the cherry tomato under the fridge looks like it’s six inches to the left of where it really is. I’d forgotten I’d even explained to her and her sisters about her eye a few months ago. She’s totally fine with it. It’s just a trick she can do with her Duane Syndrome.

And that “disability” is freaking nothing compared to autism. I know that. I know how lucky we are, how easy we have it (knock on wood, it’s plenty hard even typical-ish, which makes me feel that much worse, augh.) 

Last week I started crying when I quietly responded to my girls in line at Thanksgiving Point that the reason that big boy talks and laughs too loud is because his brain works differently and that’s okay, and I made my grandma angry when I said that if there’s a way to fix things like my Aunt Coco’s Down Syndrome then of course we should fix them. (I think we agreed, or should have, that there is a gray area between obvious cosmetic surgery and chromosomal therapies, with fraught stops along the way for things like growth hormone for very short children and cochlear implants for deaf people.)

Is there a way to talk about this without sounding like an ass? I love how Amy talks about it.  

I think I’ve figured out the moral. Avery was with me when the second lady wouldn’t accept my apology on behalf of the other mother. She was instantly defensive, saying, that lady has a baby of her own, how would she feel if it was her baby who got pushed down?

But it wasn’t really about Molly or even the boy (who is probably young enough to quickly forget and forgive), and it most certainly shouldn’t be about the second lady, whose voice in my head I’m going to do my best to ignore even though she succeeded in making me feel bad and making me think again (and again) about how I act and the example I set for my own kids.

So –

Dear Mother of the Child who could be My Child Next Week,

I am sorry, more sorry than I can say. I am sorry I overreacted and drew attention to you in a public place. I know you’re doing your best and I’m sorry that I made it harder. Please forgive me.

Yours in motherhood-is-hard-solidarity,

Shannon

There is a prickling at the back of my mind, like a phantom limb that isn’t a phantom or a limb, but is a part of me, if I am away from my nursing baby too long. The unbreakable tie that tethers us is invisible in the hours we are separated. Yesterday I painted downstairs all day, coming up only to nurse the baby and eat a sandwich, both at arms length, careful of the wet paint on my shirt. By the end of the day I needed the smell of her smooth temple against my mouth and nose.

I also needed a bath. My nursing baby was covered in apple sauce, from the hairs on the back of her head to the sides of her thighs under her tray. She needed a bath, too.

I felt the tie that tethers us soften, lazily uncoiling, free as I lay in the water and she flopped from the left of my belly to the right, ever curious and reaching. I sat up to wash our hair and she sat in my lap, her side to my belly. She looked up at my breast, zeroed in on my nipple and reached her mouth up for a nurse.

I’ve been thinking, ever since, about breastfeeding in general, and public discomfort with it in particular. Nursing to me is motherhood distilled. It is the last time my baby is part of “me and my baby,” “my baby and I.” It signifies the time before she is apart and away, before she is someone who needs less from me, takes less from me, but then paradoxically requires more from me, more purposeful patience, more counting to ten before I explode over toddler-ish escapades. It’s something I do simply because I enjoy it, not because I feel I should or because it’s best for baby, but because I like it.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been experiencing my first-ever nursing aversion. I didn’t even know there was a word for what I was feeling, the temporary pain, the impatience, the counting down six more weeks until we hit a year, where I had assumed I would nurse till around eighteen months with my fourth baby, and that I would find it heartbreaking to stop this final time. I did some reading, and maybe it’s the weather or my hormones or the baby having a growth spurt or my needing to drink more water and get more sleep.

Last night I thought of all the maternal imagery Jesus uses. I love the types and symbols and metaphors of the scriptures. I love talking with my daughters about the women in the scriptures and imagining what barely-or-not-mentioned women were feeling and thinking. Possibly they are getting a very unorthodox perspective on stories like Queen Esther (poor Vashti, eh?) and the Parable of the Talents (sounds like food storage).

Jesus asks how many times would he have gathered us like a hen gathers her chickens and tell fathers to bring children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He asks how unlikely would it be for a woman to forget her sucking child and says He is even more constant.

Before He was crucified He said there would come a time when they would say “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck,” because baring and nursing and mothering make one vulnerable.

Moses, when fed up with the children of Israel for not appreciating manna, asks the Lord why he is responsible for them: “Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?”

And when Isaiah prophesies about the redemption of Israel, he says that “their kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers.”

I think one of the reasons I like nursing so much is because it’s one of the few mothering things I’m really good it, one of the few things that comes naturally to me, something I don’t have to overthink or remind myself ten times a day that swearing probably won’t make this situation of the sugar all over the floor any better.

I don’t know why we are so uncomfortable with imagery of the physical, maternal body. Jesus tells us to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. I bring Molly to my breast and she eats and drinks greedily. I wish I were as eager to accept the nourishment Jesus offers hourly as she accepts the milk that flows from my breast.

But some things are so ridiculous it seems they could only happen online. Today I’m thinking of obliviousness of argument, or unself-awareness to the point of un(self)consciousness.

On Facebook this morning a lady made pointed remarks about mothers who “ignore” their kids at the park in favor of texting. Now, I don’t have a pony in this race. I don’t text. It costs me twenty-five cents every time some uninitiated (or incorrigible) person texts me. Don’t do it unless what you have to say is worth a quarter. (Just email me, I get it on my phone, k? Love you!)

This lady said that obviously you are at the playground or waterpark to be with your kids, so get off your rump and play with them, implying that to do otherwise was a gross dereliction of motherhood, The Tooth Fairy, and Our Troops Overseas. (I may have inferred those last two.)

Later she backpedaled except not really, she just said that since she and her husband work outside the home they are careful to really “be” there when it is their time with their daughter. In fact, they “don’t even answer the phone during dinner . . . crazy I know!”

Really? You’re going to play some holier-than-thou card? When the obvious, the OBVIOUS response is: If I’m ignoring my kid when I take her (them, all four of them) to the park for the express purpose of having five minutes to read my book or check my blog stories while my kids run wild and free in the fresh summer air, then you are ignoring your kids all day at work.

I didn’t say that, of course. Such a comment would be stupid and rude and possibly an ad hominem attack if I knew what that meant, and I have no interest in fanning a mommy war and it’s not even really the content that bothers me but that someone could be So Incredibly Unaware of the easy rebuttal.

A couple days before Father’s Day, I read the CNN article A father’s day wish: Dads, wake the hell up, which at some point on Saturday had been shared on Facebook over 55,ooo times. It’s basically a rallying cry for fathers to spend more time with their kids, and to appreciate their stay-at-home wives more. The piece has humor and oomph because it’s written by a stay-at-home dad who isn’t afraid to call out the deadbeat dads. Deadbeat as in, wants to play golf on a Saturday morning instead of getting up with the kids at dawn.

I confess, it made me cheer a little inside, especially the parts about changing diapers, washing dishes (repeatedly), and giving Mom free time. I tweeted that my husband is fantastic, but I’d be willing to try out polygamy for the writer of that piece. (Not really. Okay, almost.)

Tom finally read it during our special dinner at my parent’s house Sunday night. He didn’t laugh at any of the funny parts, and the first thing he said afterwards was, hadn’t I told him about some research that shows parents are spending more time with their kids nowadays rather than less? I said, “You feel kinda defensive, huh?” He agreed.

“How that article made you feel, that’s how Mother’s Day is for mothers every year. Even if it’s superficially an inspirational piece about how self-sacrificing and wonderful some mother is, that only makes you feel guilty for whatever that mother does that you aren’t doing.”

Tom said he’d never felt guilty on Father’s Day before.

And let me be clear: he has nothing to feel guilty over. Tonight he showed Callie how to sew a button back on her shirt, read bedtime stories, and is even now (at 10:07 pm), still talking with the girls about how to handle hurt feelings and how to know if an impression is from God.

Earlier today I read a guest post at Feminist Mormon Housewives by another stay-at-home father. It’s another funny piece, funny in the gender-role-reversal, he-knows-what-it’s-like, preach-it-brother, sort of way. He takes some light (easy, and reasonable) shots at past hardline patriarchal nonsense and turns some prophetical parental advice to his purposes, and then, oh then, at the end is an emotional zinger I did not see coming. About how, when one parent is the money-earner, the other parent’s life (and self) unconsciously comes second in priority and importance.

The comments I’ve seen on both of these expose-type pieces have been over-the-top adulation and gratitude for highlighting the common plight of stay-at-home mothers and unsung parenting in general.

The only thing is, these posts work on the trope of traditional-gender-role-reversal, but if either of them had been written by women for women, by mothers for other mothers, the writers would’ve been tarred and feathered as mongers of the mommy wars, fanners of the flame killing feminism and, worst of all, sanctimommies.

Which means that a) men really are just as good at being stay-at-home parents as women, even up to and including trying to shame and guilt their co-genderists, b) sancti-fyification of one’s own experience is inevitable and is either 1) a valuable cognitive-processing tool or 2) will be the end of civilization as we know it, or c)”staying at home” is a a really, really odd role: awkward, isolating, un-externally-rewarding/validating, and impossible to inhabit joyfully without telling oneself one is serving a (much) higher good than wiping the baby’s bum one more time.

I have no idea what the solution is, and it’s also easy for me to see that these men had fine (not malicious) intent. Much easier, in fact, than when I come across a sanctimommy post. (Of which, of course, I have been guilty in the past. It’s just so tempting, after all.)

When it's too cold for swimsuits in the summer time

Lately I’ve been thinking how I really should have had only one child. If Avery was my only child, I’d be set. I’d have my graduate degree (in something) by now, and I’d be pursuing a fabulous career (in something). In Cairo we knew a couple with one child who was about Avery’s age now. At the time (up until Avery was three), I was happy with one child. The husband in this couple told me they’d decided to have one child because that way they wouldn’t have to change their lives. They could have all the good parts of being a parent: the wonder, the love, the perspective expansion, etc, without having to make any serious lifestyle changes. And he was right. With one kid, you don’t even have to choose between your daughter’s swim meet and your other daughter’s soccer game.

Also, each of my children are much pleasanter to interact with one-on-one. I’m lucky in that generally-speaking they all four play pretty well together, but generally speaking somehow glosses over the fights that break out when someone pops a Polly Pocket head off or someone breathes on someone else in the car. Even splitting them down the middle (I prefer taking the oldest and youngest, leaving Tom the middlestest) is a big improvement when you’re trying to get something done.

But then yesterday when Molly woke up from her nap her head had grown three inches. Tom (who notices nothing) even remarked on it as he changed from his work clothes, he even tried to call her his little toddler when she bear walked over to him. I told him we preferred the term baby until the child is at least four years old (this is one of those birth order things: Callie was a baby until 2, Lucy until 3). And then I thought, we could have another one. The minivan has one empty seat, after all. And Mama needs a small baby head to sniff.

Having your own children, creating a being with your own DNA, is maybe the most selfish, self-centered things you can do. Creating someone in your own image, someone who will take up space, eat food, burn fuel, read books from dead trees. It’s almost profoundly arrogant and selfish. I almost can’t get over it.  It’s also the most self-less too, of course, however parenting comes about, because suddenly you’re not the most important thing, even in your own life.

I’m glad I didn’t think of that when I made those decisions I never made. I probably would’ve still had my four children. They are at once three too many and seventeen too few. A horrible compromise, as if you could compromise and have nine-halves of a child, but probably the best number choice for me.

Just like I’m glad I never had to make the decision whether to marry Tom or not. I never thought about it, never once. We thought about Molly before getting pregnant with her. Three seemed good, it seemed like we should think about it before changing things. Until one day I woke up and I didn’t have to think about it, it just had to be.

Why do I think I only need to make better choices to fix my life? Why do I think it matters what I think about things? Why am I certain that if only I could think the right way, think about things carefully throughout the day, everything would be better? The five best decisions I ever made, I never made, they just had to be. David Brooks says (in The Social Animal) that to make good decisions you should flip a coin and then make your decision based on how you feel about the coin flip result.

I guess the only real problem left is, why am I so frustrated, why do I regret so many of my small day-to-day choices (to not exercise, to eat three brownies, to be mad at the kids, to snip at my husband)? How do I get them so wrong when I did so spectacularly well not-making those five most important decisions?

*I have long considered it one of the dichotomies of motherhood that I wish almost simultaneously for only one child and for just one more, but today’s Motherlode epiphanized the non-choice choice thing. The comments are fascinating.

The other day Tom asked me, half (or more) seriously, why I love the baby best — why I never get mad at her, why she always gets kisses and gaga-happy greetings, and how I can cheerfully drop everything to take care of her ficklest of whims.

Evolutionary biology, I said.

But I do have three other kids; the oldest is ten-going-on-teenager and all four of them are girls: emotional, hormonal, sweet, cutting, endearing, curious, determined females. I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to survive the next twenty years, especially because the memory of my own middle school experience is so fresh, but here is what I have learned:

When kids are most unlovable, they are most in need of love. When they are sour with sickness or stinky with kid sweat and suspicious-smelling mud, they are most in need of hugs. When they are frustrated and impatient, they are most in need of compassion and patience. When they feel most unworthy and insecure, they are most in need of praise and security. When they make choices impossible to understand, they are most in need of understanding.

And when they are angry or sad enough to shout that they hate me or wish I wasn’t their mother, that is when they are most in need of exactly me: with all of my impatience and insecurity and frustration, all of my love and forgiveness and here-take-the-last-bite-of-bread (but don’t touch the brownies), they are most in need of me.

___

This was originally a guest post on MamaBlogga for Mother’s Day. I intended to write something else for this space last week, but didn’t. I hope it is etiquette-ly soon enough for me to put it here. And etiquette or not, I realize this is quite pontificatory, not something I usually aspire to, especially in regards to motherhood, but the more I think about it, the more I know it’s true — and also, the more I recognize how utterly hard it is for me to act on said knowledge. Instead, whining makes me yell, screaming makes me want to stab someone (usually myself). I’ve been a mom for ten-plus years, and it ain’t getting any easier.

Admitting ignorance/need for divine help is the first step, right? Although this I do know: it’s worth it. (I think).

I know that, as a modern woman, I should not say things like “my children” in the context of having their father “take care” of them (it’s not “babysitting,” it’s called “parenting”), and “my house” and “my kitchen,” but the truth is I feel quite proprietary about my kids and my space, and I have certain (admittedly-relatively-low) standards concerning them.

The other truth is that, usually we work really well as a team, sometimes in very gender-determined ways. When Molly had a 104 degree fever last week, Tom gave her a blessing, and I gave her drugs and breastfeeding. He can’t wield the medicine dropper (too softhearted) and I don’t hold the priesthood. This could be frustrating,and sometimes it is, if I step back and consider the existential disparity, but in the moment, in the middle of the night, when the man who is my partner is doing something out of father-love and I am doing something out of mother-wisdom, it just feels right.*

Molly has had croup, strep, walking pneumonia, pink eye, and ear infections in her first eight months. Could be worse, I know, but still frustrating.

I have not responded to any comments for awhile, and I even have things to say about several of them, I just . . . have been flattened lately. Soon, I hope, and please know that I appreciate each one.

Avery reading to her sick sisters (the pestilence has struck Callie and Lucy also) is so precious, almost enough to overshadow the fact that five minutes later they were in my sickbed, kicking, licking, and, and . . . looking at each other.

*It is obvious, I hope, that him leaving my house like this does not feel right.

When Avery first rolled over (and off my bed), it was a happy milestone (any resulting brain damage appears minimal). I was thrilled when she slept through the night, when she smiled, when she laughed, when she crawled, when she walked. When Callie first rolled over (and off my bed), it was a great milestone (she is left-handed, but we’re okay with that). I was relieved when she slept through the night on her back, when she stopped binging and purging on breastmilk, when she got eight stitches along her hairline and survived summertime croup. When Lucy first rolled over (and off my bed) it was a joyous milestone (her voice is stuck in munchkin-helium land, but most of the time it’s cute). I was ecstatic when she potty-trained, when she went off to preschool, when she wrote her name and started seeing letters everywhere.

When Molly first rolled over, I finally figured out that babies (most babies, my babies) roll over right around four months, and she rolled over onto the rug. Sometimes milestones feel like a personal triumph of my genes passed on or my parenting paying off. Which is dumb, because the strongest gene-milestone connection I see is the prodigious talent my children have for eating, and while that’s convenient and laudable in a toddler, it’s a bit unfortunate in a metabolism-slowing thirty-three-year-old. As for the parenting styles — I mostly agree with those who say that the more kids you have the more parenting styles you can imagine being “right.” And also that kids are so different, and reach their milestones so variably that obviously it’s not anything you do.

Except my kids are almost eerie in their adherence to some trends. Late teethers, right-on-time rollers, sitters, crawlers, walkers, late talkers, early-ice-cream-adopters.

Every time Avery, Callie and Lucy did something new, it felt like a reward for showing up every day to the parenting gig.

Oh, how things have changed. Molly is right on with her sisters in most things. At seven months, she is grabbing spaghetti off the table and not making any discernable language-type sounds.

But she is standing. All the time, pulling herself up, falling over spectacularly because she is not really ready for this. She is a baby. Babies do not stand. I tell her over and over that it is not time yet, that she is a baby, my baby, my last baby, and listen, baby honey baby, it is not time for this yet. Maybe not for another five years or so. Because you are my baby.

She doesn’t listen. She just keeps standing.

But Mama was right, huh baby?

We’re not quite ready for this.

Good thinking on getting a wider stance for better stability, but you are still a baby, baby.

Uh-oh. Yesterday she was crying at this point, desperate for rescue. Yesterday she still needed her mother.

And she’s down. Today she can get down by herself.

Though maybe she was expecting some help?

And she’s off.

Come back, baby.

–I know this is way too similar to my last post (and thank you for your contributions to that list), but I was, uhm, inspired by a Facebook meme *, not to mention the pink eye, croup, girl-mones, and math I waded through today.

** The new “devil made me do it” excuse.

Your turn.

She’s got walking (rolling?) pneumonia, and her voice is hoarse with it even as she kicks her legs in perfect swimmer’s frog kick form and smiles her exaggerated clown smile, ducking her head down and to the side when the weight of reciprocating my manic “hey baby”s is too much.

Today she is six months old, and right in the middle of cheering on her latest trick I remembered that growing up is the last thing I want to encourage. It was when I watched this movie back closely last week that I realized her breathing sounded too deliberate, and her smiles too hard won. I’m so grateful for her usual healthiness. Let it come back soon.

My sister is terrified of having another baby. She has three kids, her new husband has three kids. Their youngest is four now. Being a stepmom is hard; being a wife is easy. None of that’s the problem, anyway, the problem is newborns. That’s not the problem. Newborns are delicious. Even better, they grow into babies in a couple months, and then they are the sweetest thing ever on earth. Ever.

But the experience of having a newborn — or a baby who sleeps in two-hour chunks (or less) is not sweet. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Not as hard as some terrible things I can’t even mention because then it would sound like I’m trivializing them, but let’s just say: living with and caring for a new baby is hard, hard, hard.

And it’s not made easier by the fact that they are the sweetest thing on earth ever. I mean, it is, of course it is, because you can sit and stare at their chins and smell their milk-sweet breath (which always strikes me as borderline-narcissistic how much I love the smell of my babies’ breastmilk-breath), and when they start to smile it’s a hit of the strongest narcotic each time they do it.

So then you feel guilty, or cheated, or ungrateful. How can you not be full of happiness and sunshine every second when you have this most wonderful being ever created here in your arms to love? This baby you wanted, you prayed for, you chose to conjure into your life.

At my six-week visit after Molly, I took a screening questionnaire for postpartum depression. I’d never been offered or sought one out before. With Avery, I went back to work part-time when she was a month old, leaving her with Tom, no guilt, no regret. With Callie, it was hard. We had just moved back to the States from Egypt, we didn’t know many people, we lived in a small two-bedroom apartment. But none of that was the problem. In fact all of that was fine, great. The problem was that she didn’t like to sleep on her back. At all. She would sleep on my chest, which might have been okay, except I could not sleep that way. By the time Lucy came two years later, we were settled, she slept fine, my mom came out when she was three weeks old and helped us make it through the end of the broken-sleep phase into the getting-enough-sleep-to-survive phase.

I often wondered, especially after Callie, and after the baby shower my new friends held for me after her birth because she was a few weeks early — where I couldn’t feel the normal baby shower happy-anticipation but instead felt bitter and cautionary-tale-like instead — I wondered if what I felt was normal, or if I needed some help, or if I should just be patient, and always just when I was about to ask for help, the baby started sleeping better and things slowly turned around. This entire last pregnancy, birth and fourth-trimester I have been more aware of my options and determined to figure things out, and I was glad that the midwives who were such good birth attendants were eager to address this part of it too.

Here’s the questionnaire in case you want to take it before I talk about it:

Mark each as 1 (Strongly Disagree), 2 (Disagree), 3 (Neither Agree nor Disagree), 4 (Agree), or 5 (Strongly Agree) during the past two weeks.

1. I had trouble sleeping even when my baby was sleeping.

2. I got anxious over even the littlest things that concerned my baby.

3. I felt my emotions were on a roller coaster.

4. I felt like I was losing my mind.

5. I was afraid I would never be my normal self again.

6. I felt like I was not the mother I wanted to be.

7. I have thought that death seemed like the only way out of this living nightmare.

I answered it honestly, except for the last question. Really, death is the only way out — ask Penelope Trunk, but that’s not even depression, that’s logic. (unless you’re Elizabeth Gilbert.)

My midwife came in and said, the nurse wants you to take the longer postpartum depression questionnaire, you’re borderline, but I wanted to ask you how you feel about it. I said I thought I was just doing normally, as well as could be expected, that I had better days and worse days, and that, most important, I knew it would get better, it always does. The baby grows up, sleeps longer, seasons change, la la la. She said, that’s what I thought, I thought you were okay, but if you want to take it, you can. I said, not for now.

Here’s what I answered (I always want to know the specifics):

1 -4, 2-2, 3-4, 4-4, 5-4, 6-5, 7-2

That was a score of 25 (where 7 would be the “healthiest” and 35 would be the most troubled). If I’d answered number seven as I wanted to, it would’ve been a 27-28. But even in that six week postpartum fog, I wasn’t totally sure that life was a “living nightmare.”

So I went home and did things I knew would help. I walked regularly with my friend, I tried to sleep when the baby slept (and was usually in bed by 10 for the night), I let myself drink Mountain Dew again because even though caffeine is not a long-term solution it cheers me up, I wrote about keeping a can of formula in the cupboard as a backup plan (it didn’t surprise me that we never used it after I wrote about it — having it was enough to make me feel not squeezed by the responsibility of being the sole provider). I let myself breakdown in front of my husband and kids, scaring the kids and making Tom think I was crazy, which served the purpose of convincing him I needed help around the house at least.

I got library books and a new iPod Touch so I could read and be online easily while holding and nursing the baby, I had my comfortable nursing chair positioned just so in front of my sunny window. I ate well, drank a lot of water, took my vitamins.

And still I felt something off. I don’t get the nothing or really sad; I get the deep seething rage. My mom told me she remembers the deep seething rage, which is hard to imagine, because she is very calm and affectionate. I do remember her yelling rarely, but I also remember that I deserved it when she did. I get anxiety and anger, and then guilt and self-loathing.

Several Fridays ago I was ready to quit by the time Tom got home from work, just quit it all. Tom suggested (without believing I’d really take him up on it, I think) that I take the baby and spend the weekend at my parents. They live an hour away. My dad said it was a great idea and of course they’d love to have me, when I called Saturday morning. Which was good, because I was already on my way.

I stopped at the mall on the way, saw a movie, nursed Molly on the comfortable mall couches, people-watched, and by dinner time I was ready to go home and face the four other people who like me to cook for them at regular intervals.

The next weekend I took Molly to the movies again. Anyone who thinks it’s sad to go to the movies by yourself has never been a mom.

When Molly was four months old I was back at the midwives for something else and I asked to take the depression questionnaire again. I think I’m doing better, I told them, I just want to make sure, and see for myself.

This time I scored 20, and I was surprised by the wording on some of the questions. I hadn’t looked at it since the six-week checkup, and in my mind, even though I knew I felt better overall, I expected to answer more similarly, because it was still me taking the quiz. I expected my honest answers to specific questions to be more “true” and less variable.

Had I ever really thought I was losing my mind or would never be my self again? And when I said I wasn’t the mother I wanted to be — I meant towards all my kids, not towards the baby, who I’ve been a terrific mother to (so far). I don’t swear at her, after all.

So I know several things. One, having a newborn in the house is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Two, it changes how I see myself and reality, it puts me in a place where I can’t think objectively or rationally, even when I think I’m stepping back and being philosophical and agreeing that things are getting better and are normal “enough,” I am actually not capable of seeing things clearly through that fog. Three, I’m going to back-down on the guilt and self-loathing over the yelling and swearing. Yes, I should stop, and yes, I will keep working on it, but it’s not all me doing that talking — some of it is the baby mean reds talking. And four, I don’t, at this time, need medication or therapy (of course I would benefit from therapy, everyone could, and if I do need medication in future, believe me I will get it).

Because I am getting better, the baby is growing up, she’s sleeping more, and in approximately three weeks the seasons are going to have to pay attention because I am planting my sugar snap peas on St. Patrick’s Day and I expect the weather to cooperate.

This could be 5 kb and her eyes would still be shiny.

She finds me, I find her. I find myself, the self I am because of her. At home, tucked in the corner of my room, upstairs, rocking in my nursing chair. The other kids come and go, to and fro, spilling strawberry milk powder on the floor, not finishing their long division. I can’t see them down below, but I know.

Last year it was them: same smell, same luscious soft skin and ducky, downy hair waving under my hushed breath. Same funny mouth crinkled and mum-mumming in sleep. I should get up, I should let her sleep in her crib, where she’ll sleep longer and dinner is waiting to get made and icy mud is crusting on the kitchen floor from tromping boots.

It will wait.

Out there I am Shannon, mommy to girlies, beijie or honey in that exasperated voice if I swore six times in the last ten minutes to Tom, concerned daughter, critical thinker, shopper of all sundries under the sun, cleaner, driver, bank depositor, mail place mail-er, errand runner, blogger, newspaper reader, online lurker.

Tomorrow I might wish to be more, want to be different, the blanket that warms us suffocating and stifling. Today that’s impossible — impossibly stupid and short-sighted and silly — other and outer-shell and not at all to do with who I am right here in this chair, this counting each inhale, this holding her in both arms.

At home, tucked in my corner, nested, snuggled in, I am what I am because of her and it is more than everything.

Yesterday I was rocking the wax wings. I ground wheat for bread, I was happy with something I’d written. I let Tom sleep in while I took Avery to school, I got Callie into her uniform on time. I made  a video of Molly nursing in one take and didn’t even mind Lucy’s “help.” Feeling pretty good. I’d volunteered for the first time the day before (I’m about a million hours behind for Callie’s charter school on volunteer hours). I had plans to distribute updated visiting teaching routes for church (only a couple months late). Oh, and I’d dyed my hair, showered, and actually had on lipstick from the video-making.

All before noon.

Came home from taking Callie to afternoon kindergarten and realized I’d left the oven on for the rising dough, instead of turning it off after it got just a little warm. Wheat grinding, wasted. Bread making, foiled. The video wouldn’t upload. Avery brought home a paper about parent-teacher conference and wrote “I hate myslef” on it before handing it to me. I got her to laugh by asking who “myslef” is, but now I’m watching to see if she’s going to start cutting herself, or if this is just more of the “you hate me” dramatics we get when I ask her to unload the dishwasher. She was 11 minutes late to dance class because her book was more interesting than her math.

All before dinner.

I cleaned up the kitchen while Callie did her homework and Lucy colored. Tom was at church meetings. I thought, seriously and hard, about making cookies, but decided I was just too tired. I nursed Molly to sleep, read books to Callie and Lucy. Avery came and snuggled in my bed. I told her I loved her and she said, me too, I mean I love you and Dad. I let her read as I drifted off to sleep under my soft eyemask.

This morning there’s no milk for breakfast. I think this is just the beginning of a not-so-great day. Then I see the leftover spaghetti in the fridge. Callie has been asking for spaghetti for breakfast for weeks.

Maybe we can do this.