May 9, 2010
I'd rather lick a garbage truck
It was a year ago that we discovered just how immovable our child was, though I wouldn’t comprehend just how much until she was born. And now she’s eleven and a half months old, we’re planning her first birthday party. She sleeps all night almost every night, which makes me feel that wonder and amazement you’re supposed to feel when someone hands you your newborn for the first time. That this enormous blessing could be mine. (Other mothers say, “We’ll see how long it lasts” and then I want to hit them.)
I had a splendid Mother’s Day today, beginning with six and a half hours sleep (and it’s only that because I stay up far too late), then a lie-in, breakfast in bed (croissants! yoghurt! fresh fruit! tea!). Harriet was thoughtful enough to buy me Darwin’s Bastards (which I didn’t think I’d want to read when I first heard about it, but the more I read about it, the more I longed to). This afternoon, my own wonderful mom came into the city and accompanied us to afternoon tea at The Four Seasons. Scones were so fresh. Harriet was an angel, and the staff were so nice to us even though they had to vaccuum grapes and cheddar cheese off the floor after we had gone. (Interestingly, they remembered Harriet from our last tea in February. I am not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.)
Also, asparagus is in season, so all is well.
In really stange news, my maternity leave ended on Friday. In an alternate universe, I’d be going back to work on Monday, but as working full time and being a mother would cut into my tea breaks, we decided it would be best if I stayed home for a while. Also, my husband begins a new day job in two weeks, leaving his Bay Street office behind for work at a non-profit. I’m very proud of him, excited for him, and relieved that if I get to be home all day, at least he’ll be working somewhere that makes him happy.
And I do mean that, “get to be home all day”. Can I just say that staying home with a small baby sucks like nothing else in the world? I’d rather work in a glass chewing factory or lick a garbage truck. Staying home with a one-year-old, however, is pretty brilliant and gets better all the time. It’s also a great excuse to spend sunny afternoons outside in the park. Even though her naps are often fleeting, I get to curl up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. When Harriet is awake, we hang out together. She is beginning to show her understanding of language in ways that fascinate me, we can share jokes, she is a pretty happy kid and very affectionate, and I really do like her company. So I feel lucky that we get to continue our days together, that spring is here and summer is coming, and I look forward to exercising feats of financial acrobatics so that our little family can get away with having our income cut in half. (There may have to be less afternoon tea. This is sad).
Anyway, all of this is to say that I am grateful for my good fortune (especially the asparagus) and that I’m very happy that I’m a mother today.
May 6, 2010
Horizontal Parenting Vol. 2: Sleep Solutions
My self-published book (via Lulu.com) about my parenting method Horizontal Parenting (TM) was a huge success when it came out last Fall. Built around the tenets of The Five Ls, it showed parents how to care for their babies while exerting the bare mininum of energy (and fitting in a little yoga at the same time).
Well, now I’m pleased to be taking my Parenting expertise one step further with the latest volume in the Horizontal Parenting series, Sleep Solutions.
How to get your baby to sleep through the night? It’s simple, with these three easy steps. It’s called (somewhat confusingly) the TWO process.
1) T is for Take it easy and do whatever you can to remain horizontal at night. When your baby cries, bring her to bed and feed her. Sometimes she will eat all night. Don’t worry about this, even though books will tell you it’s causing tooth decay and that you will be feeding her this way well into her college years. If you happen to wake up again, stick her back in her crib. At some point, she will refuse to be put back in the crib. So just keep her in bed with you. Buy a bedrail so she doesn’t fall out. Don’t feel too bad about being a dairy bar. The alternative is being upright, which makes you want to kill yourself at three in the morning.
2) W is for Wait. This is the hard part. Dr. Sears (as we all know) had a child who did not sleep through the night until he was three. When your baby only sleeps for two hours at a time, the prospect of “through the night” is unfathomable, and you will think everybody whose baby does this is lying. People will propose “sleep training”, but you disagree with this on a philosophical level, because it is impossible to sleep train in a horizontal position. Cry It Out is reprehensible, because how could a mom expect to sleep through that racket? Sleep training requires will and discipline, and horizontal parents are lacking in both of these departments. So you wait. And it’s hard, and it sucks, and sleeping with the baby beside you has done something weird to the alignment of your shoulder. But at least you’re lying down. And then…
3) O is for One day it will happen. Baby will sleep through the night. WITHOUT YOU DOING ANYTHING TO PROMOTE IT (though it may have something to do with her learning to crawl and finally deciding to roll over onto her tummy to sleep). She won’t do it every night, but she’ll do it most nights, and she’ll also decide she doesn’t like sleeping in your bed because the cramped space prevents her from doing her 360 degree spin all night long. You will be reluctant to announce this too widely for fear of jinxing it, but now that it’s been a month, you think you really might be onto something. That your child wasn’t necessarily not sleeping properly because you’d failed to teach her good sleep habits, and maybe you don’t even control everything in the universe after all.
In all my sleep agony over the past eleven months, I wanted to read somewhere that the problem would fix itself without me bothering to do anything about it. Because, of course, I am a horizontal parent and therefore profoundly lazy (particularly come the middle of the night). But to all you other lie-abouts out there, let me send you a message of hope– Take it easy. Wait. One day.
Everything is going to be okay.
April 19, 2010
100 Books
Today I finished reading Brown Dwarf by K.D. Miller (glowing review to follow!), which was the 100th book I’ve read since Harriet was born last May 26. The last book I read before she was born was The Children’s Book by AS Byatt, and the first one I read after was A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin (which was the best, best, best book ever to read after having a baby). Also, because my computer died last year in June on my birthday, I lost my cherished list of Books Read Since 2006, so the new list starts with the Laurie Colwin, and it seems like these are the only books I’ve read ever.
Naps are my precious, precious reading time, curled up in my slanket with a cup of tea. The naps tend to be forty minutes exactly, twice a day, but I make the most of them, and for those forty minutes twice a day, my entire life feels pretty indulgent. Back when Harriet napped exclusively on my chest (and when did this end? I can’t remember. The last 100 books have been a blur), I got a lot more reading done because I was immobile and she slept for up to two hours, but the freedom of her crib naps is definitely preferable.
I’ve been surprised to find that hardcovers are easier to read than paperbacks– mainly because I have to hold the paperbacks, and this annoys Harriet when she’s breastfeeding, but hardcovers can be laid down on the couch beside me and stay open, and Harriet is none the wiser. The problem with hardcovers occurs, however, when I’m breastfeeding lying down and I drop one on her head. Though I don’t really breastfeed all that much these days (and when did this happen? How can one thing fade into another so subtly?) so soon this will cease to matter. Though paperbacks will continue to be easier to stuff into the diaper bag…
I’ve been much harder on the books that I’ve read, perhaps because my time is more limited, or because I’m in a surly mood more often than I used to be. Or else, there has just been a proliferation of really shitty books published since May 26, but I’m not convinced that’s the case.
I miss reading in bed. Some Saturdays, you’d find me there until noon. I still read in bed in the evenings, but never for very long because I go to bed too late, trying to stuff an impossible number of things into my evenings. The odd time I get a good chunk of reading-in-bed in, however, I am really profoundly grateful.
Anyway, this is just a post to reassure my former self that everything is really going to be fine. A day can be stretched wide enough to accommodate many things, and books are as portable as babies are. Also, that the books discovered through and with babies open one’s eyes exponentially to the magic of reading, and how amazing it is when you start to see the baby falling in love with reading too.
April 18, 2010
The Motherverse
One day last August, I reported the following: “Now, must wake baby, feed baby, change baby. For we’re off to a program at the library that promises songs, and stories and “tickle rhymes” for all. (I’m not sure if it’s sad or amazing that this is my life now.)” And I’m happy to finally be able to report that it’s amazing. These days we’re on our third round of “Baby Time” at the library, I’m getting a reputation as “the mom who knows all the songs“, andI suspect that reputation might be way less awesome than I think it is.
I find it remarkable, the way that every mother claims she can’t identify with the mothers she encounters at Mommy/Baby groups. The way that every mother claims to be an outsider in this baby-centric maternity-leave no-males-in-the-daytime universe we all inhabit– can every single one of us really be all that unique?
Of course, I am that unique. My daughter never even had a Sophie, and I only made one friend at Baby & Me Yoga (and she was picked out of the crowd due to her pants’ lack of a lululemon insignia). My daughter is now old enough that when I hear new(er) moms’ conversation, I roll my eyes in boredom (and NO. Your child is not teething at three months. I don’t care what the book says. He just drools a lot). I am tired of learning your baby’s name (which is usually something like Jaydence), his age, but never, ever learning your name. (And I also hate you because Jaydence sleeps through the night, but that is another story).
Venturing out to the world of other-moms has been more like grade seven than any experience I’ve had since then. Everybody always seems to be friends already, better at applying make-up, they’re thinner than I am and they have better clothes. And that they’re not that interested in being my friend is usually due less to the fact that they’re mean and stuck up and has a great deal more to do with me being a loser. That I’m “the mom who knows all the songs”, and moreover, I’m proud of it. I’m the one totally rocking out to Skinnamarink– what can I possibly expect?
I love the songs though. I have become obsessed with nursery rhymes since Harriet was born, and recite them on command. I’m a regular fount of bouncing rhymes, and tickling games. Baby Time is one of the highlights of my week, so I can’t help but get a little enthusiastic. And it’s strange to now be one of the moms who chases her mobile child across the circle– the first time we went to Baby Time, Harriet was two months old, and she spent most of the program asleep in my arms. We have come a long, long way since then. (And I’ve actually met some very nice moms in the interim. How wonderful is it always, that spark, that moment of connection, when someone stands apart from the rest, and you’ve no doubt that you’ve just found a new friend?)
Harriet will be eleven months old next week, and she’s never been more amazing. The last few days we’ve gotten a great idea of how much she actually understands– if we say, “Please?” she’ll hand us an object. If we ask her to wave (without gesturing), she’ll oblige us. Perhaps because we don’t have a TV, she is obsessed with books in lieu of the usual television remote control, usually whatever one I’m reading and she’ll climb over anything to get her hands on. Once she gets her hands on it, she often doesn’t rip it. She has four teeth, so much hair, the most gorgeous smile I’ve ever seen, and a little poking-out belly. She thinks I’m hilarious, though her love for me is a bit much in the evenings when she cries if I leave the room. She loves swimming lessons. Her daddy can make her laugh like no one else can, hysterically, and it’s my favourite sound in the world. She loves the swings, though she cries when we take her out of them. She even likes Miffy! She’s amazed by mobiles, windchimes, and she loves to suck on the bottom of shoes. She continues to be an appalling sleeper, though we had two weeks off from that and it was blissful. I tried to tell her that I’m a way better Mommy when she sleeps well at night, but Harriet wasn’t having any of it. Harriet yields to no one.
I often hear women saying, “I love being a Mom,” which I’ve never been able to bring myself to say, and sometimes I feel bad about that. Though I think it would be a bit like saying, “I love having arms”, and really, what’s the point? What I do love is Harriet though, and having her in our family, and in her near-eleven-months old phase in particular, because she’s so much fun. She’s the whole reason I wanted to have a baby, and it’s been so brilliant these last few months to be reminded of what that reason was in the first place.
March 29, 2010
On Mothering and Mindfulness
“If feels ridiculous even to write about this, about Buddhism and yoga. I do not meditate, although I know I should and I have periodically tried. The voices in my head are as multitudinous and persistent as the lice that infest my children’s hair at the beginning of every school year. Moreover, I actually kind of hate the people who talk about things like mindfulness, or at least the ones I run into around here… Why is it that the most self-actualized people seem so often to be the most self-absorbed?
I’m no Buddhist, but still I wish I were a more mindful mother. A mindful mother would not get so knotted up about breast-feeding that she would forget that her job was simply to love her baby and keep him healthy, without torturing herself herself and him with that infernal pump. A mindful mother would not be so worried about her children being bipolar that she would be too afraid to laugh when her daughter reported hearing a voice in her head…
The thing to remember, in our quest to do right by our children and by ourselves, is that while we struggle to conform to an indeal or to achieve a goal, our life is happening around us, without our noticing. If we are too busy or too anxious to pay attention, it will all be gone before we have time to appreciate it.” –Ayelet Waldman, Bad Mother
March 15, 2010
We aren't born alone
Honestly, don’t google “We’re born alone, we die alone” to find out the various things 686,000 hits think we should do in between. And not just because the suggestions are more than a little saccherine, but because the adage itself is patently untrue. Though some of us may indeed die alone, I’m pretty sure that the second part is wrong: there were at least twelve people in that electric yellow room when Harriet was born, and though I don’t have the stats on my own birth, it’s fair to say that my mother must made it out for the event. So you’d think it would be fair to also say that no one has ever been born alone, ever, ever, ever. Which is why I find it very strange that motherhood is such a niche market.
In her beautiful book A Life’s Work, Rachel Cusk writes “with the gloomy suspicion that a book about motherhood is of no real interest to anyone except other mothers.” Exactly why this is is a depressing tale for another day, but it’s also worth considering why that book on motherhood is of interest to the other mothers in the first place. How come, ever since I had a baby, I’ve been gravitating to books on maternal themes, in poetry, fiction and non-fiction? What is up with my insistance on seeing my own experience reflected in the books I read? Particularly an experience so incredibly banal– everybody has a mother, a lot of people end up being one. What is the big deal?
It has been a mysterious thing, though, becoming a mother. A year ago, I posted this excerpt from A Life’s Work, but I hadn’t understood it at all, and now I see that, and now I do: “Like someone visiting old haunts after an absence I read books that I have read before, books that I love, and when I do I find them changed: they give the impression of having contained all along everything that I have gone away to learn.”
Motherhood has changed my relationship with reading in two absolutely shocking ways: it’s had me running toward the self-help shelf, and actually it’s made me start reading for clues. I only realize the latter point now, that I am attracted to the literature of motherhood to make some sense of the mess I’m in. To find an expression of the feelings and experiences that are soconfusing, awful, lovely and strange that I cannot begin to articulate them. To see this experience as rendered by art– to celebrate it, to put my finger on it, to understand.
(It is also worth noting that I’ve been attracted to stories of motherhood for a long time, that my reading tastes have always leaned toward the domestic. That when Lisa Moore wrote a book one reviewer panned, describing how “The narrative doesn’t progress so much as gestate, roiling around through a series of flashbacks until the hatching and matching at the end”, I’d called it “a rare thing– a perfect book… one of the best books from anywhere.”
It is also worth noting that I might one day write an essay about the unfortunate proliferation of books in Canadian Literature about lonely people walking up and down city sidewalks, numbing their pain with illegal substances, and living in bachelor apartments with cats, all the while Canadian writers could be writing about leaking nipples, umbilical stumps, and croup.)
Now, I’m not sure how to bring all this around to my new favourite blog which is STFU Parents, in which people send in screenshots of parents’ really obnoxious and/or inane Facebook status updates. (STEPHANIE: Why must we loose an hour of sleep?? When your a parent, those hours matter!! TINA: Amen!!) I cannot get enough of this blog. They’ve introduced the notion of “mommyjacking” status updates, which is when someone posts about any arduous experience, and then a mother chimes in with, “Just try [arduous experience] with a two year old” and then Tina adds, “Amen!!” again. It totally kills me.
I must mention mommyblogs again, and how it’s dawned upon me that I do actually like them. Or rather, that some of my favourite bloggers are mothers and write about their mothering experiences, among many other passions: Crooked House, Meli-Mello, All Things Said & Done, Carrie Snyder, and Sam Lamb, for example. Even the ever-erudite Inklings. What unites the blogger/mothers that I do read and enjoy, for the most part, is how they engage with motherhood and with the wider world at the same time, creating a relationship between the two that is not such a binary at all.
This is what I’m looking for in books about motherhood as well, to understand how my experiences fit into a wider context. How I fit into the world now, while I’m toting around twenty pounds of screeching daughter. How motherhood can be addressed in literature so as not to alienate anyone who isn’t a mom. And to understand why mothers are so reviled, in real life, on the internet, in general. Because they are a bit, and that’s a funny thing. How many people might have found being born alone preferable.
March 11, 2010
ARM Update
I’ve just received an email update through Friends of the Association for Research on Mothering (see my previous post). Apparently, the response has been incredible, media coverage considerable and Andrea O’Reilly writes, “…that this was accomplished by everyday women reveals that grassroots feminist activism is still very much alive in these so called post-feminist times.” Indeed.
She writes also that they’re determined to keep Demeter Press running, and you can show your support by buying one of their titles at the new Demeter website. May I suggest Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the “Experts”, which the likes of me have called “the very best book on motherhood I have ever read”? It’s worth an entire parenting library, I promise you, for $34.95. (Read my review.)
And I think I am going to get White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood.
March 3, 2010
The Association for Research on Mothering, and Me
UPDATE: Ann Douglas speaks with ARM’s Founder and Director Andrea O’Reilly.
I am only one of many people upset at the news that the Association for Research on Mothering at York University is set to close at the end of next month. (This is particularly devastating, coming on the back of more bad news for the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, which played such a big role in my discovery of feminism via the magazines I bought there that I’d never seen anywhere else, ever). Though I’ve only been a mother for nine months, and my relationship with ARM has been peripheral, I can honestly say the two books I’ve read from their Demeter Press (which is also to close) have done more to enhance my understanding of my new life than anything else.
Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the Experts is the very best book on motherhood I’ve ever read. I’ve been a smarter, more confident, more open-minded and better parent since encountering it in November, and have been much better equipped to deal with the onslaught of other resources constantly undermining my authority. Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog has played a fundamental role in helping me to address my ambivalence toward mommyblogging (which in some ways is an ambivalence toward motherhood in general), and got me engaging with ideas I don’t think I’ll ever be finished with.
And though these were both scholarly texts, I devoured them. And not just because they were telling me things I needed to hear at a trying time in my life, but because they taught me things I need to know, and they challenged ideas I thought I knew. These two Demeter books were incredible, and to think there will be no more of them is an enormous cultural loss for everyone.
Please read Ann Douglas’ blog on more about the ARM closure, and plans afoot to try to do something to stop it.
February 26, 2010
In the post and etc.
I just tramped out through the snow to collect today’s brilliant postal haul, which included a writing cheque, my new spaceage autoshare keycard, and a copy of Susan Telfer’s absolutely beautiful collection House Beneath. And really, it tops off the most wonderful morning, which I’ve spent listening to DJ Bookmadam’s playlist, reading An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym and issue 32.3 of Room Magazine. Drinking pear lychee green tea, while Harriet napped for almost two hours (!!). This morning following an evening during which I went out and spent my time in the company of inspiring, amusing women and ate lots of cheese while my husband put the baby to bed without me for the first time ever, and they both did brilliantly. All of which is to say that I am terribly, terribly happy today, and I tell you this not to be smug or rub it in, but because this is one of those good days that I want to collect like a postcard, to pickle away and keep always to remember just how fantastically beautiful the snow-covered world is outside my window right at this moment.
January 16, 2010
Clearest, starkest brilliance #1: When Randy Bachman held my heart
Harriet is pictured here in her very early days, back when a moment of daytime peace was worth a photo for posterity. But lately, actually, I’ve been thinking of a certain moment of nighttime peace, when Harriet was about five days old.
For the first few weeks of her life (how long exactly doesn’t matter, suffice it to say, it was an eternity), we had to wake her every three hours for feeding, as she’d not yet returned to her birthweight. (This was when I was reading Tom’s Midnight Garden and “Only the clock was left, but the clock was always there, time in, time out.”) And once the alarm went off, we’d leave the radio playing while we fed her, and so we discovered that CBC at night subscribes to programs by other public broadcasters. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation at 1:00am, and 4:00am would be Swedish, and something uptight and BBC close to the morning.
This one night in particular was not so late, however, and I remember waking up to Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap. So there we were, up with our baby daughter in this weird, wide world that was the size of our bedroom’s four walls and we hadn’t thought outside of it in five whole days, which might have been a lifetime (and they were). So that, in effect, Randy Bachman was coming at us from the farthest reaches of outer space.
Fittingly, his show that night had a stars and planets theme, and Canada felt very small as Randy’s wife Denise introduced the next track, by Randy’s son Tal. Surprisingly, it was not “She’s So High”, and Denise reported that she’d always felt so envious of Tal’s talent. And then after that they played music that wasn’t by anyone related to Randy Bachman, which I think was “Blue Moon”(and according to the program log, I’m remembering this in the wrong order, but that doesn’t change the way it was). They played “Good Morning Starshine”, and we marvelled at the lyric “Gliddy glub gloopy, Nibby nabby noopy, La la la lo lo.” It was midnight, but it might as well have been the middle of the night, and the baby was sucking sustenance out of a tube stuck to my husband’s finger, but anyway, we were happy.
But no more so than when they played “Little Star” by the Elegants. Our own peculiar lullaby, to which we found ourselves relaxing for the first time in days. Twinkle, twinkle to a doo-wop beat, and the moment was so beautiful, it shone. We were a family. And I wouldn’t take back any of the awfulness of those early days, if I had to give that song back with it, and what it was like to be listening, and finally not anxious, and to be connected, in touch with a calm, blissful world.
