Mother’s Day

Parenthood kind of sneaks up on you.

I’m not talking an “oops” pregnancy or anything like that. No, Lexie was just as planned as anything else in my life (which is pretty much everything, pretty much down to the letter). What I mean as that after all this time floundering around as a new mother (yes, 10 months is still very, very new!), I’m finally having these moments where I stop and think, “Wow, I actually know what I’m doing.”

It’s not just those freeze-frame visuals that always make me feel so mom-like: all the late afternoons after work when I’d walk from the garage to the side door laden with Lexie and her diaper bag on one arm and my purse, lunch bag and coffee mug in the other; or like today, when we were strolling through the mall parking lot and Andy took one look at me pushing the stroller with Lexie inside, a diaper bag strapped over the handles and an iced coffee in the cupholder and said I looked like the epitome of the suburban mom.

It’s when a situation comes up and I actually know what to do.

A couple of weeks ago, for instance, we had the harrowing experience of moving Lexie from her infant bath in the kitchen sink to a bigger bath in the tub. Thrown out of sorts by the switch, Lexie reverted to her initial bath response: crying through the whole thing from the time her first diminutive toe hit the water.

After several of these, I was almost resigned to the idea that this was just how it was going to be until she got used to the new scenario. But before giving up, I decided to try something different.

Instead of rushing through the bath to get it over and done so she would settle down and we could all get on with our evening, I tried to make it a fun, playful experience. I slowed it all down, taking time between washing her toes and tummy and hair (the most challenging, of course) to play and laugh. Even more importantly, I brought in the big guns: Raffi, singing his wacky brand of children’s tunes through my laptop perched (where else?) on the toilet seat.

She loved it. Sure, we still have a few wails when it’s time to rinse the suds from her hair, but she almost always settles down again quickly.

I can’t tell you how proud of myself I was after that success. And I’m proud of all of us – me, Andy and Lexie – for all of the lessons learned and for all of the small victories over the past 10 months. That’s what I’m talking about when I say parenthood sneaks up on you. It’s like of a sudden, you just know what to do and you do it.

I think of all this, of course, partly because today is my very first Mother’s Day. It’s a surreal and amazing thing to think about. I’m not one who tends toward weepiness (well, maybe a bit more since I had Lexie), but I honestly spent the first half of the day close to tears on a number of occasions.

I just can’t believe how much I love motherhood.

I can’t believe how very, very much I adore my little girl.

And I can’t believe how staggeringly lucky I am.

It’s just about the sappiest thing I ever said, but it’s true.

The Pregnancy Paradox

Today after work I dragged Andy out for a brisk walk (well, as brisk as I get these days) in the balmy, day-before-the-first-day-of-spring weather (it was 37). As we moseyed along the perimeter of the park that’s a few blocks from our house, Andy admitted to me that some of the stories he’s been hearing lately from his co-workers are starting to make him nervous.

You see, Andy is fortunate enough to work with two guys who are both new dads. One has a three-month-old boy and the other, twin girls who are maybe 6 or 8 months old (yowsah). The thing about guys is that they talk about life with a new baby in a whole different way that women do. Women kind of subtly acknowledge the unimaginable kinds of hell that early babyhood can unleash on a household while in the same breath, extolling the virtues of parenthood to keep you from being scared right out of joining the club. Men, on the other hand, revel in frightening their pals with all the gory details, and if there’s two of them, you can pretty much bet that there’s some level of competition there, something along the lines of, “Oh, you think YOUR exploding diaper story is bad. Wait til you hear THIS!”

Today specifically, the story that rattled Andy was from his co-worker with the twins, who’d had just one of THOSE days at work and by 5 o’clock was ready to just explode in frustration. All he wanted to do was go home, take a load off and relax. But at about ten after five, his wife called and asked in a way that was more a demand than a question, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO BE HOME?” When he said he was heading out in a few minutes, she said, “Well, the minute you get here, these kids are all yours. I have had a HORRIBLE day.” He was about to tell her that his day had been pretty bad, too – but she’d already hung up the phone. Andy says his other colleague has received calls like that on a few occasions, too.

I, of course, sympathized with the wives. Why should the man’s (or whoever is at work and not at home with the baby) day get to end at 5 and the woman’s have to go on indefinitely? Andy wasn’t really arguing for either; the whole thing just made him a little uneasy about the challenges we’ll be facing in, well, somewhere around 15 weeks.

15 weeks sounds like a long time until you think about how fast time really goes. I’ve already been pregnant for 24 weeks and 5 days, and I’ve known about it (because that’s the time that really seems to count) for about 19 of those weeks. That’s already a month more than 15 weeks, and let me tell you, that time has FLOWN by.

And that brings me to what I like to call the Pregnancy Paradox. That, as I’ll explain, is the ironic reality that for a lot of us, surprisingly little of the 40 weeks of pregnancy are spent focusing on the actual baby-to-be.

See, for the first trimester, you’re pretty much just obsessed with the idea that you’re actually pregnant. Just about every day, even before you’re showing at all, it’s like, “Wow, I am PREGNANT. There is a child growing inside me, which must mean that I am a real ADULT. I can’t believe such a grown-up thing is happening to me.” (This is true even if you are 32 and should by all accounts have already been thinking of yourself as a real adult for some time.) Along with all that comes the all the worry about whether the pregnancy will stick, how your body will change, and what you need to eat/drink/do differently to take care of yourself.

In the second trimester, all of that stuff keeps going, but you add to that more concrete physical (but remember, not mental) preparation for the arrival of the baby – decorating the nursery; registering; signing up for classes; buying huge, tent-like maternity clothes, etc. And don’t forget all the time spent staring at your ever-expanding, kind-of-freaky-but-definitely-amazing belly in the mirror (or is that just me?).

As for the third trimester, well, ask me in 2 weeks and 1 day (WOW, scary), but I have to imagine that my “preparations” will evolve into even more self-involved hobbies like talking about how huge I feel and how uncomfortable I am and how I can’t sleep – all that fun stuff I’m fully expecting to feel during what one of my pregnant friends ominously refers to as “the whale stage.”

The point (yep, I’m finally here! did you stay for the ride?) is that the Pregnancy Paradox is actually a really, really good thing. See, all that obsessing leaves little time left to ponder that actual reality of the baby herself. While it’s certainly important to understand – as much as one can – the demands of parenthood and how your life will change, there’s nothing you can really do to prepare for what those first few months will be like, and worrying about it will only make things worse. I’ve spent pretty much my whole life being a serious, dedicated worrier, and what I’ve tried to teach myself in the last few years is that worrying – contrary to my long-held belief – doesn’t actually help you prepare for whatever it is you’re worried about. It just makes the anticipation miserable.

So if you’re wondering when all my prattling on about my belly button and Cubs games and the nursery is going to end, well, don’t hold your breath. The Pregnancy Paradox is my life preserver right now, and there’s no way I’m letting go any time soon.