Motherhood
By Holly Beal

Nursing!  Diapers!  Swaddling!  With her hormones in post-pregnancy over-drive, this well-read mom discovered that maybe it was ok if she didn’t have it all figured out.

otherhood is a bit of a paradox.  It’s full of expectations, and yet when you experience it, most of what happens is completely unexpected.  When I was in college and I thought about being a mother, I thought I had it all figured out.  I had taken classes on childhood development and had watched plenty of TV shows about how to be a good parent.  All it took was a little willpower, a large amount of consistency, and a boatload of love.  Why did everyone mess it up all the time when the answers were so easy? 

When I got married, I was confident my husband and I would be good parents.  My husband is one of those natural fathers, always great with everyone’s kids.  I was so well-informed and well-educated, I knew I would be a great mother. 

Two years later, when pregnant with my first child, I decided to read everything I could about pregnancy and taking care of infants, just to cover all my bases.  I read at least a dozen books, as many as I could find on the small foreign island where we were living.  I was armed to the teeth with information.  I was confident.  I knew my labor was going to be rough, but with the techniques I had learned, I was sure I would be fine.  I could handle it.

And then I ended up with an emergency c-section.  I’m not going to give you the gory details, but needless to say, it was not what I was expecting.  And that pretty much set the standard for parenthood.

The first week of my baby’s life is a good example of how everything went completely not according to plan.  I was startled, no shocked, to find out that I was not a natural mother.  I didn’t know the most basic of things about being a parent: I didn’t how to feed him.  Even when the midwives tried to help me it was difficult.  I had a hard time changing his teeny little diaper.  I couldn’t do a proper swaddle.  And sometimes he cried, for seemingly unknown reasons, for what seemed like a very long time. I didn’t know how to make him stop.  The only thing that was according to plan was that I loved him. I loved that wrinkly, tree-frog-ish little baby.  He was beautiful, and he was mine, and he was the first really great thing that I had ever helped create.

Love aside, my emotions were the most unexpected of all the parenthood surprises.  What had happened to the cool, calm, collected me, the one who knew what to do in every situation?  The pre-child Holly had been chased away by a crazy, hormone-driven, sleep-deprived girl who looked a lot like me and responded to my name.  I panicked anytime my husband left the room.  When he had to leave me in the hospital at night I cried until I collapsed from exhaustion, only to be awoken an hour later by a starving baby whom I didn’t know how to feed, and who would fall asleep as soon as he started eating, and so never got fed enough, and therefore was always hungry. 

After five days of this I was sure I was going to die.  I, who had read every book and knew everything, had found out the real secret of parenthood: Parents Do Not Know What They’re Doing.  This is something that you can never really understand until you are there, with a hungry baby and mixed-up hormones and unhelpful nurses and oh yeah, that big slice through your stomach that doesn’t allow you to move.

Luckily, I had good help at home in the form of my husband, mother, mother-in-law, and sister, and so I survived.  Within a couple of weeks things had settled down.  Life moved on (and so did our help) and we got into a rhythm, my husband, my baby, and I.   I was beginning to get the hang of things.  We got the baby onto a schedule.  We were sleeping again.  Life was going well.

A year later, the next child arrived.  Having done this all once before, I was sure that it would be better this time, since now I knew what I was doing.  Much to my surprise, that same sense of helplessness was there again after the birth of baby number two.  This child was so different from his older brother.  And it had been so long ago (not really, just a year) that I didn’t remember the mechanics of meeting a tiny baby’s needs.  How do you bathe a newborn?  I don’t remember.  How do you swaddle him?  I don’t remember.  I didn’t know anything.  My books, lying mocking and dusty on the shelf, were useless.  In fact, I felt the urge to scowl at them whenever they were in view.

Fast-forward.  I now have three children, and although it was a bit easier with number three, the boys had gotten older and were presenting new challenges at the same time I was trying to remember how to take care of a newborn.  Potty training.  Potty talk.  Fights.  Time outs.  So much to try to deal with at once. 

I quickly learned that in order to survive as a parent, I had to give up my expectations of parenthood.  Kids have an amazing, innate sense of knowing when things are getting routine.  They say to themselves, “Hmm, it looks like Mommy is getting confident when taking three kids to the store.  I think I’ll try to do something different, just to shake things up a bit.”  And then that child decides to see if an orange is not only the same size as a baseball, but if it will fly like one when batted with a zucchini. 

The first time something like that happened, I freaked out.  I yelled, I cried, I was embarrassed beyond belief.  Now, the seven hundred and fifty-sixth time, I am a little bit better.  Instead of standing there, open-mouthed and red from shame, I show off my catcher skills.  I’m still embarrassed beyond belief, but at least the yelling can wait until we get to the car, and the only crying will be from the batter.

The farther I’ve waded into parenthood the more I’ve realized that the best way to deal with the fact that Parents Don’t Know What They’re Doing is to Relax.  Say it with me now: RELAX!  Of course the unexpected will happen—it’s the only thing you can count on!  But I’ve learned that when I relax a bit and just enjoy my children, they enjoy me back, and we’re all a much happier family.  And that really isn’t so unexpected.