The Legend of My Ten-Pound Baby

Despite the ever-increasing responsibilities, there are no promotions in motherhood. You’ll never get an annual review followed by a fat bonus and a healthy raise. There’s a once-a-year day of gratitude, but the rest of the time we take our props where we can. It is not enough that we (almost) singlehandedly grew an entire human being inside our bodies and then managed to keep the little sucker (literally) alive in the face of deadly car seats and crib bars. We value what we can quantify as credit for a job well done.

I earned a gold star for my daughter’s birth weight. Despite a carefully constructed birth plan, an ancient Korean midwife’s fetal turning technique, and my doula’s soothing-sounds-of-the-snow-owl CD, my second child, a precious flannel bundle, had to be pried out of me under anesthesia—with a big knife. She was born gray with an Apgar score of one, and nearly killed us both. Why? She was a ten-pound baby, that’s why. Ten.

Okay 9 pounds 14 1/2 ounces. I embellished, but when you have a baby that big you’re allowed to round up. An ounce and a half isn’t an exaggeration; it’s a shot of tequila. (Which may have taken the edge off the cheese-grater-on-nipple sensation of breastfeeding.) I’m just saying, it wasn’t a big fib. From Day One my daughter was a 10-pound baby. For the last decade all my kick-ass-ness as a mother has been implicit when I casually mentioned, “That one? Ten pounds.”

Okay, just under ten pounds. Who’s counting?

I would have perpetuated the legend indefinitely, but on her tenth birthday my daughter asked look at her baby book. This couldn’t go well. Surely she’d notice her book consisted of a few good pages, followed by a few more of random baby items, and then two-dozen blanks. I figured as long as we didn’t break out the meticulous record of Big Brother’s first year for a side-by-side comparison, she might never know that she was conceived primarily as a playmate for our favorite child. I shouldn’t have worried. All she wanted to see was her birth certificate. My husband and I beamed over her shoulder as she flipped through the handful of pages devoted to her first days. Then the trouble started. There on the first page of the sub-standard baby book was her birth announcement, the one I had created with my own breast milk-stained fingers.

“Do you see what I see?” I asked my husband.

“What?””

“Eight pounds fourteen ounces? What is that?”

“What?”

“She weighed ten pounds! Ten! Well, you know, nine fourteen.”

Like all good husbands faced with an unwinnable situation, he shrugged.

How could I have made such a mistake? As I paged through the official documentation, a ten-pound knot formed in my stomach. The hospital record of birth, her crib identification card, and in the doula’s notes all confirmed her actual birth weight: 8 pounds 14 1/2 ounces.

She wasn’t just under ten pounds at all. She was just under nine pounds. Nine. This fact would not reconcile with my myth. I was a five-foot-one She-Ra, a warrior among women, a ten-pound babymaker! Now what was I? Just over average? Big deal. And it wasn’t just about me. My daughter had bought into my heavy white lie too. The thought of her infant self as bigger than the rest had built up her self-image as a tough girl, maybe even helped her become the best defenseman on her ice hockey team. The facts presented in that stupid baby book shattered all that.

“You mean I wasn’t ten pounds?” She looked like I’d just wiped out the balance of her iTunes account.

“I don’t care what it says,” my husband told her. “You’ll always be a ten pounder to me.” He glanced in my direction. “And don’t worry, Babe. Your secret’s safe.”

The legend may live on, but I don’t feel right about keeping that gold star.

Stupid Things Mothers Say

If you’re a mother it is inevitable that you will on occasion find yourself saying the stupidest things. Blame it on lack of sleep, hormones, pre-coffee syndrome, genetics–whatever, but it happens. The other morning I was picking up after my family in the kitchen when I went off.

“Whose plate is this? Why is this plate here? Who do you think is going to pick it up? The Plate Fairy?”

The Plate Fairy? Seriously? I said that. And you can’t take back that kind of stupidity. You just have to accept your punishment. This time my daughter meted out the perfect response to my ridiculous question:

“Plate Fairy – that’d be cool.”

Have You Earned Your Mother’s Day?

This Mother’s Day I suggest you take a good long look at yourself to ascertain whether or not you really deserve that Hallmark card. Oh, sure, they say you’re a good mother, maybe even the best. What else can they say – you are their food source. But are you a really a good mother? Are you as good a mother as I am? I doubt it. Ask yourself these questions to find out.

• Do I teach my children the value of respectful communication ?
• Do I spend hours lovingly baking their favorite desserts?
• Do I steer impressionable minds toward appropriate media and role models?
• Do I protect the Earth for future generations?
• Do I explain the important things in life with wisdom and maturity?
• And perhaps most important, do I make a material contribution to the PTA?

If you can’t answer yes to most of all of these questions, what makes you think you deserve the card with the embossing and the ribbon? Much less the grocery story bouquet. Get over yourself, Mother.

My Belly Wrinkles are Thanks to You

The other day I was telling my family all about my friend’s belly dancing group and how great this woman looks and how fun I thought it would be to take some classes.

“I think I might take up belly dancing myself,” I told them.

My daughter looked at me with a blank stare. And it really was blank, not all snotty like it will be in a couple more years. She’s still sweet and basically approving of me. Still, she had a look.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She returned to her pancakes. Maybe she hoped the whole thing would go away.

“Not nothing. What?”

“Well,” she said, thinking longer before speaking than she usually does. “Do they even take people with wrinkly bellies?”

I smiled and laughed.

I envied her flat little belly–the one that will stay that way until she has her own little puddle of sunshine to point out that, oops, it’s not anymore. I did not tell her that my wrinkly belly has nothing to do with my age or my level of fitness or anything other than the fact that I foolishly mated with a man who is a full foot taller than me and who has an extremely large head. I did not tell this little ingrate that she and her brother each grew so large that I gained almost half my body weight carrying them around for nine months. Didn’t mention that the little suckers were so big and ill-positioned that they had to be literally cut out of my body. And that one day she too may suffer this hideous fate.

I just smiled and laughed.

My belly. Yeah, it’s a little wrinkly. You’re welcome.

Suburban Housewife Rap

I can’t get this out of my head so I had to share it with you. And if you don’t live in the suburbs, let me assure you, it’s all true.

When You Want to Run Away

This is the September edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

When I was a kid I never wanted to run away and join the circus. Now that I’m older, I get it. Although it’s not my dream to tame lions or become the bearded lady, I understand the lure of escaping to some exotic life where the tightrope you walk is literal as opposed to the figurative balancing act we do here in the world of diapers, homework, and ear infections.

My mother tells a story about her mother, who would tell her children that if they didn’t behave she would run off to Tucumcari, New Mexico and they’d never find her. To which my mother calmly responded that they most certainly would find her – in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Mom shouted similar warnings to my brother and I as kids. She would run away and never return. We didn’t have reason to believe her empty threats, but then again, you never knew. Moms are crazy like that. Our mothers and grandmothers didn’t mess with balance – work-life or otherwise. They didn’t have spa days or antidepressants or Oprah. They just woke up in the morning and did what needed doing. And if they lost it once in a while, well, they were entitled.

Genetics notwithstanding, I have yet to issue such a circus-running-off sort of threat. I prefer short periods of actual escape to fantasies of long-term flight. Running off for weekend writing classes and conferences recharges my depleted mama batteries and gives me strength to face the days of infinite laundry and incessant requests for Nintendo DS cartridges. I schedule my respites months in advance and write them on the calendar – in pen. In Sharpie even.

My retreats may not be as exciting as swallowing swords, but for me, some quality time with a spiral notebook and a half decent pen is usually enough to return equilibrium. And if it’s not, I run off to yoga class, where we make like a tree and stand on one leg, or rest our thighs upon our biceps. That’s balance. These are the things that keep me from losing it.

So next time you’re tempted to run away and join the circus, remember that you can juggle fire in your own kitchen and rig up a tightrope in your backyard. Just make sure you wait until after you’ve finished all that other balancing  – you know, the checkbook, the food groups, and the quality time spent with each child.

And if you hear of any writers’ meetings in Tucumcari, New Mexico, don’t come looking for me.

Lela Davidson is a Northwest Arkansas writer seeking to balance life, love, and laundry with a husband, two children, a dog, and an ever-changing number of fish. Read more at www.afterthebubbly.com.

An Inheritance From My Mother

When I visited my mother this year she reminded me for the zillionth time how important it was that when she died that I not overlook the gems that fill her house and comprise my inheritance. She knows me, knows I’d sooner level the place with dozer than pick through her life’s collection of multi-sized clothing, dishes too good to use, and books about decreasing clutter.

The material things I look forward to inheriting from my mother are few. There is the beautiful family ring that will be passed to my daughter, and – God willing – her own after that. I also look forward to keeping few of the vintage 1970s I-was-a-hot-rocker-mom keepsakes, specifically the wood and green leather platforms and the suede vest with the fur and bead accents. I will also possibly make some sort of memory quilt from the towels that have lived in my various of mother’s bathrooms for as long as I can remember and which I can only assume will continue to be there once she is not.

But life’s not about things. What will stay with me longer than any jewel or nostalgic terry cloth memento are the physical traits I’ve inherited from my mother. Certainly she will snicker from beyond every time I fill a cart with Poise pads, as I similarly teased when an ill timed sneeze sent her away for a change of clothes. And I don’t doubt it’ll happen, as evidenced by my husband’s frequent warnings to the children to ‘stop making Mommy laugh – she’ll pee”. And let’s not forget the single persistent chin hair (oh please, stay singular) and the thicker than necessary thigh zone. Why oh why I didn’t get those 2 extra vertical inches seems especially cruel in light of the aforementioned thigh situation.

Completely beyond the physical are those personality traits mom gave me. There’s the knack for smart ass remarks (often at wildly inappropriate times), the delusional belief that everyone should like me, and the significant disdain for authority.

Despite the passing down of all these material, physical, and emotional legacies, there is one inheritance I am most afraid of receiving. It is more terrifying than sorting my mother’s clutter and facing the lone, hearty chin hair. It is more fearsome than any absorbent feminine necessity and potentially as dangerous as the worst personality flaw.

It is the curse.

Perhaps your mother has issued the same to you:

“I hope when you grow up and have kids you have one just like yourself.”

Why a mother would inflict that kind of pain on her own daughter I will never understand. Unless of course, it comes true. In that case, perhaps I will utter those same words to my still-sweet little puddle of sunshine – right after I lock her in the closet.

This post was written in response to a brilliant prompt by the Parent Bloggers Network to promote Johnson’s Celebrity Hand Me Down Charity Auction.

I Will Beat You With a Stick and Sell You to the Gypsies

We parents have our own special language don’t we? I often threaten to beat my kids with a stick. And of course, it’s only funny because I haven’t so much as spanked them since they were toddlers.

My mom used to tell me all the time she was going to sell me to the gypsies. I’d never heard anyone else say that – ever – until a few weeks ago when I found this. Now, if you don’t know Dooce, you’re supposed to. I didn’t know I was supposed to like her, but how could I not? Gypsy selling and all.

In case you don’t know it, I’m a big geek for knowing how expressions, idioms, and other odd sayings originated. If you can help me trace the beginnings of threatening selling kids to gypsies, I’ll be forever in your debt!

PS – If I have a choice, I want to be sold to Johnny Depp. He’s a gypsy, right?

Pumps to Pampers: My First Year of Motherhood

Okay – not Pampers, because those were too expensive. More like pumps-to-off-brand-diapers-and-formula-bought-at-Costco-with-the-leftover-money-after-paying-the-scary-West-Coast-mortgage.

My first year of motherhood was crazy. Having thought I’d always work, I spent the first twelve weeks racing against the FMLA clock to get my late summer baby sleeping in his own crib and taking a bottle.

By October I was back at work, my easy bus commute replaced by an early morning ride with wails at stoplights, a very expensive parking space, and lunchtime nursing sessions frustrated by child care providers who cared more about my son’s selfish need to eat than my own desire to breastfeed – they always seemed to give him a bottle just before I arrived for our lunchtime nursing session.

On Thanksgiving we moved into a new home – the one with the yard and the quiet neighbors (and dry rot and leaking walls), but no handy coffee shop downstairs, no gym in walking distance, no doctor’s office and grocery store in strolling proximity. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t home much anyway. In addition to working full time, my position required me to travel. During my second trip out of town in a month, I decided in a Phoenix hotel room that I was done. I resigned a week later.

By the end of my son’s first year I had morphed from suit wearing spreadsheet maven to a freaked out first time stay home mom. We had no money, on account of losing that second income, so there was no shopping at Baby Gap or decorating the nursery. There was no nursery. (In fact, there was no kitchen for a while, but that’s another story.) However, my Excel skills came in handy when trying to figure out which bills to pay first.

So what did I do for fun with my baby?

Here’s the thing – when you just have one child, your first child, it’s really more like a pet or an extremely lifelike doll. You get to take the baby around with you collecting accolades. You get to go out to lunch with friends who marvel over your new toy. That’s fun. You still get to eat in restaurants with your husband because babies sleep a lot, and those carseats don’t take up much space. You hang out with your new baby-laden friends at the park. You go to the museum on free days and watch cheap matinees with a nursing baby on your lap. All this is fun.

Oh yeah, making him laugh. That’s the most fun of all. You do anything to get your baby to giggle. And I made up songs, because that’s how I roll – the stroller.

You even have time for occasional sex. This is fun, and yet, also problematic. Before you know it you are pregnant and while that’s pretty fun, soon you have another baby. That’s two kids – if you’re counting. You are now a full fledged adult and card carrying parent. That’s when the fun having gets a little more challenging. How about you? Rookie Moms everywhere are dying to know. These amazing women have put together a website to help new moms find fun things to do every day of the year. Oh how I wish I’d had their help during my first year. Check out Parent Bloggers Network today to read more stories.

ps – Happy Mother’s Day, y’all!

Motherhood Paints a Messy Picture

If you were to paint a portrait of a mother, it would have to be one of those collages that has about a million little scences in every color of paint you could squeeze onto the canvas. Motherhood is diverse. There’s really nothing special about motherhood. It’s just a woman going about her life – oh wait a minute – completely responsible for someone else’s!

We mothers are always stumbling around wondering if we did it right or how much it’s going to cost to fix what we did wrong. We have so many choices that we don’t even realize they’re just that – choices. Too many of us try to be the room mother and the CEO. We’re playing Martha Stewart and driving through Mickey D’s. We wear jeans and khakis and business suits. Or we spend all day in yoga pants if we don’t get a chance to shower – or just if we feel like it. We are trying to eat right, recycle, and keep the frown lines at bay. We scream a lot (is that just me?) and laugh and cry.

Our portrait needs a lot of blurred lines and messed up brush strokes because that’s how we feel much of the time. But as a whole it comes together. As long as our children’s needs are met – that they are cozy and smiling when we tuck them in at night – we paint a pretty good picture.

Parent Bloggers Network is asking lots of bloggers for portraits of a mother.

Next Page »