A Lie Recast

It's a few minutes before ten in the morning as I start to write this. Last night, I slept badly, and when the kid woke around six, an hour before our 'this is an acceptable wake-up time' time, my shoulders felt like they'd been pulled out of their sockets from funny sleep positions. So I nursed the kid for awhile, then tagged monad. You're it, honey.

He asked, as he usually does, how long I needed. "I dunno," I said. "Half an hour, maybe?" Half an hour sleeping without a baby next to me, where I can sprawl and roll around and stretch and snooze, is usually enough to undo the worst of a poor night's sleep of damage.

So monad took the kid, and I went back to sleep.

Our usual routine - and by usual, I mean there is almost never more than twenty minutes or so of variation - is like so: I get up with the kid once he's awake after seven, we go have breakfast, we play together or he plays while I clean up around the apartment, and then we lay down for naptime right around ten. Barring developmental interruptions and such, he sleeps anywhere from forty-five minutes to two hours, and then we get up, have lunch, play some more, have snack. If it was a short first nap, we're down for a second at two; if a long first nap, we push the second by half an hour to an hour. It's much more common for him to sleep short for the first and long for the second, so two is almost always naptime, for an hour or two. The best days, he gets a solid three hours of naps during the day. After second nap we're up for the evening; I start thinking about dinner seriously, reviewing to make sure any extensive prep is done. monad gets home around five-thirty, I cook, we eat, there's a little family leisure time, then we (he) start(s) bathtime routine at seven-twenty. I'm up for ten or fifteen minutes right before eight to nurse, then he takes the kid for book and bed at eight, after which we have adult time for a few hours (usually until eleven-thirty).

I just woke up at nine-forty-five. Had monad taken the kid that whole time? Fed him breakfast, played with him?

I snuck out to the living room, and when I did I saw them in the guest room (that will one day belong to the kid). They were (and are) asleep in the recliner in there, the kid on daddy's chest, happily snoozing under a blanket.

I got to sleep almost an extra three hours, and my guys got what they needed, too.

Some days, I feel very alone in this parenting thing. It is an artifact of our culture, I think, to view each nuclear family as a separate, self-contained and self-sufficient. Having a kid, especially in a new city, can be isolating to the point of loneliness so big the word seems wrong.

But some days, I am so overwhelmed by the love and support that man has for me. I forget to ask for enough for myself. And some days, he gives it to me, anyway.

1. On touching. My pregnancy does not give you a free license to touch me. I'm not even showing much, yet; if you have the idea that you're putting your hand over where the baby is, you are probably wrong. If you touch me in such a way that your hand is over where the baby is, I will feel justified in hurting you or yelling for help. The only person who has a 100% free pass on this is monad .

2. On my hobbies, and the future thereof. I do not need to "get all this knitting and music out of my system now, before the baby." There are hobbies that are not very compatible with newborns; frequenting concerts and bars come to mind. My hobbies tend to be at-home affairs, relatively quiet (or at least potentially soothing), and pretty much as kid-friendly as they come. A large portion of my social life is online. Just because having a baby short-circuited the things you like to do does not mean that the experience is universal.

3. On the relative ease of life, before and after children. I get that children require time, attention, and care. I have a squad of younger siblings, and several of them are of such an age difference that I helped raise them. I know about never-ending diapers and that weird rash the doctor never really identifies and the sleepless nights and still having to see to them even when you're not feeling well yourself. I understand that every trip out of the house has a new set of logistics. I understand that I will be tired - that we will be tired. I have had it up to here with people trying to scare me about kids. I am not clueless, and I hate being treated as if I am.

4. On the merits of a life with or without children. I don't care if you love children and want a dozen, or you don't want any children yourself, for whatever reason. However. If you tell me that life starts when you have children, I will stop listening. If you tell me that people who have children are all selfish narcissists, I will stop listening. If you tell me that child-free people are somehow incomplete, I will stop listening. Life is valid and wonderful with children or without them, and claiming some kind of superiority, moral or otherwise, because you do or do not have children, will simply make me think you're not worth my time.

5. On your beliefs about birth. It's great that you're connected enough with the women in your life to know about their birth experiences. However, their birth experiences do not dictate my own. I have my own ideas about how I want to give birth, and your advice to get an epidural in the parking lot is not only unsolicited, it makes me think you haven't been listening to what I've been saying at all. 

6. On learning about pregnancy. I appreciate that you have many books that you think I should read before the birth. I have, however, had a sufficiently unusual pregnancy thus far that books on the topic have been mostly useless. My approach is instead to learn from resources that are highly topical and apply to my own situation, rather than some concepts of average woman, average pregnancy, and average baby. Beyond these highly topical resources, which I read when I feel a need, I'm not certain I'll do a lot of reading. Women did not always have a library of books to consult before giving birth. Paying attention to my body has yielded more insights than any book. 

7. On learning about parenting. In my opinion, there are as almost as many theories on how to raise a child as there are parents. I'm happy to hear your book recommendations, and I particularly love to hear about your experiences implementing various ideas. But as soon as you give me that look for not wanting to read up on the latest child-rearing fad, I'm done.

8. On the things you think I need. I don't need a jogging stroller, a closet full of baby clothes and toys, two dozen contraptions to make the baby sleep, or a changing table. All of my siblings had one or two toys that were their absolute favorites. They wore hand-me-down baby clothes happily. We rocked them when they needed soothing, and held them close. We changed them on a towel on the floor - the same way I was changed. If you want to spend a lot on baby toys because it satisfies you, or baby clothes because you enjoy it, that's great. But not having every gadget and designer baby duds will not make me a bad parent.

9. On gender-specific baby clothes and colors. Give them to a new parent who doesn't make the face I'm making right now. We know the baby's sex, but have been reluctant to share the news because newborn blue and frilly pink make us a little gaggy.

With love, as always,
alierecast 

The short version: I've needed a safe place to talk for some time.

There is no long version.

It's been a long day tweaking colors and figuring out the system, so there's not a lot of brain left for anything meaty. I'll get to it.