A Dog-Eared Handbook

We all know that having children changes you. You only have to look at the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament to see that. Before you have children you have all these 'ideas' of what you will and won't do. How your child will behave. Good luck with that. Good. Luck. However, we do have a handbook. Contrary to the mutterings that all us new parents throw at one another, we do all have a handbook. Now, we can either rip out the pages or highlight and underline but rest assured the book we have is one of the first gifts our parents ever gave us. Whether we use it or not, every child rearing theory we spout or choose to rebuke comes from that book which was in turn given to our parents from their parents and so on and so forth. Yes, we amend it as we go along - or at least we hope to. I suppose the trick is to spot what didn't work and not keep that in the book that you pass down. Simple, right? Well it would be except your partner has a book too and that is where parenting becomes really fun. What you took as normal is suddenly questionable. "What? You mean your father wouldn't come in and kick off his clothes and expect his meal on the table?"
You see...my husband was spanked as a child. If he misbehaved it would be reported to his father who would later explain why such behaviour was wrong and a spanking would ensue. On the other hand, when I was told off I would likely be clipped round the ear or given a smack bottom as I scuttled out of the room. Hearing these differences, I was aghast that my husband was spanked in such a controlled fashion. He in turn didn't like that I was disciplined out of anger. Conflict? No. Why? Because we had this conversation pre-Olive when we also said that we would let our child cry herself to sleep, we wouldn't feed on demand, and we would 'happily' discipline our child. Our imaginary child. That pretend baby that you plan everything for before you actually meet, nay, conceive her. You know, before you realise that the sight and sight of your baby crying makes you want to pull your eyes out and use them as ear plugs, if only to take your mind off the pain of your heart breaking. I am nowhere near the parent I planned to be. Yesterday, i tried to be firm with Olivia when she kept undoing her diaper. I gave a firm "no" and her eyes welled up - I kissed her 17 times until i felt forgiven. I'm officially useless...

I know, i know, we are new parents. I'll get tougher in time. Soon, i'll graduate to the front seat of the car once more and stop dating the back of my husband's head. In the meantime, whilst figuring our way and condensing our parent's handbooks to form our own, my husband and I are united in our admiration of another family. We happily defer to a handbook advocating love, laughter and sweaters with leather patches.

Yes, we want to be Cliff and Claire Huxtable and if that means training Olivia to come down the stairs miming gospel we'll do it.

Here is a snippet from the Huxtable handbook- from a chapter perhaps entitled "Cliff's Tough Love".

Now, this is how you parent...

Where The Wild Things Were

Last week when undressing to take a shower I looked down at my body. The final ten lbs laughed at me. My gigantic breasts looked like a pair of Cocker Spaniel ears. I had random strands of leg hair that I had missed around my ankle and knees that must date back to the 80s. With only some scissors and nail clippers at my disposal a tummy tuck and breast reduction seemed extreme. I could however, tackle, and I use that word loosely, the proof of evolution that was also featuring heavily in my reflection. Armed with the scissors I set to "tidy" and "prune". I decided I had been 'between styles' for too long.
Ladies, within just a few moments I felt and looked beautiful. I stood on the scales afterwards just to feel the difference.
All good, right? Well...all would be good except here I am recovering from the plague that is bouncing around. All that remains is a cough...just an annoying, dry bark. A non-productive cough - i think that is how Robitussin would classify it. (Incidentally, few things can be worse than a head cold when you have a teething baby to look after... In my delirium and desperation I actually blew my nose with a diaper at one point to save dribbling on Olive's body when I was changing her).
I digress...so I have a cough. Okay. Fine. Except now I don't just cough...I cough and I dribble. Cough. Dribble. You see, ladies, I have discovered the purpose of pubic hair. For those of us who were slack at doing our kegel exercises ( I was reluctant to use the word slack anywhere in this blog but...) pubic hair is the last line of defense when us new mums laugh, sneeze or cough! Guard it wisely. From one woman to another - don't go for style over substance!

But can she bake a cake?

My name is Paula and I am an alcoholic.

OK, so I'm not - I'm actually a housewife but i feel more qualified to be at the former meeting. Don't get me wrong, i don't have bottles of vodka stuffed inside my knicker drawer - I'm just wholly unqualified to be a housewife yet this is my job. I recently had to fill out a form that asked my occupation. Hm. I went back and forth. Do you write what you trained to be/want to be/ or how you actually spend your day? When in New York and asked I used to answer "actress" only if I had recently 'done' something or just booked a job. Why? It is so depressing to hear the disappointment in their voices when they ask you what have i seen you in/what are you in at the moment? Much easier to just lie and tell them that I'm a receptionist- not much scope for conversation there. Oh yes, i can work the shredder....

So...i ummed and i ahhed and then wrote, HOUSEWIFE. Then next to it I wrote, STAY AT HOME MUM. And then I did a little arrow and wrote above it , (slightly larger)- CURRENTLY.

First of all, stay at home mum is the most ridiculous term i have ever heard in my life. SAHM conjures up an image of some sort of shut in. It sounds like we have our curtains closed and we just wander from room to room rocking our child singing about babies falling in cradles. I realise that the term is used as an alternative to mothers that go out to work but can we come up with a less depressing term? Do I need to up my meds? Seriously, can we be known as going in and out of the house mum or sometimes i stay in but often i go out mum....just something. It's enough to make a girl put on her wedding dress and sit in cobwebs.

And then, housewife...well, that just terrifies me. If we were playing mallets mallet - it would go something like: Housewife. Cooking. Cleaning. Ironing, Laundry. Baking. Vomit. OK, so maybe not the last one, but that word would work in my word association game. It's just that I trained to be an actress, people. I'm not lazy but I'm not sure i fit in this club. I don't watch the Food channel and have never bought an ornament in my life. I'm frankly embarrassed at my skills. The other day, my sister in law gave me a knitted piece of material that had the shape of Oregon imprinted into it. Brilliant, i thought. That was enough for me. Turns out it had purpose. It is for cleaning dishes - she informed me...Thank you, Amy (is that a hint?) Sadly, I have put it on the credenza - it's too nice to wash up with. Then, last week my mother just came to stay and before i had finished my morning cup of coffee she asked what we were having for dinner tonight. Early dementia? Do you mean breakfast, i asked? No, she laughed. Dinner. What meat should we get out of the freezer? Good Lord~ that would never cross my mind. My mother, sisters, sisters in law, mother in law and friend Rachel (from my days as a go out to work person) are brilliant people! Imagine knowing what you are having for dinner before noon?

In an effort to earn my keep, I baked my first cake yesterday. Relax...it was for my husband's birthday as a gift from Olive, I'm not going to be buying Tori Spelling jewelry off the HSN anytime soon. Well...I almost broke a sweat looking for a cake mix. I felt lost in an aisle of vanilla extract, flour and Tupperware. BUT...turns out...piece of cake...wah, wah, wahhhh...

Alright, so it wasn't a chocolate, swiss, embroidered, butterfly, dark forest torte but it did the trick. It was chocolate and edible.

I decided to see my cake and raise myself some housework. I changed the sheets, cooked a marvelous birthday dinner, went grocery shopping and cleaned all the rooms in my 4 room apartment. I also managed to stimulate my daughter to the point of hysteria. I didn't get to take a shower or brush my teeth until noon and olive did cry when i hoovered around her but wowzers, what a day. Now, that felt like the good old days of going to work except...I felt strangely unfulfilled. I suppose I just want to know from other stay at home or go out occasionally wives...is this something you get pleasure from? Will it grow on me? Do some people enjoy doing this each day? This is not a slight on people that do more a sad realization that perhaps I don't.

One thing that I am discovering on this crazy ride is that similar to the breastfeeding issue there is a line in the sand drawn between mothers that work out of the house and those that work in the home. Before i continue, let me issue the following disclaimers...I realize that it is a tremendous privilege and gift to have the opportunity to be at home with my daughter. I have huge admiration for mothers wherever they work. Many women do not have a choice. However, with friends sat in both camps I have noticed that there is veiled defense when it comes to this topic. The women that go to work feel attacked for not being good mothers and the stay at home mothers feel the need to prove their role as valid in this day and age. Defensive comments such as, "I would get bored doing that all day" are met with "Why have children if you are not going to raise them?" I suppose the proof of the pudding (you see, one cake and I'm talking shop) is in the children becoming balanced, happy beings. I'm not curing cancer with this blog but I have been surprised at the dichotomy of views that i have encountered. Ultimately, the biggest realization in life as you become an adult is that ALL families are equally dysfunctional no matter who is at home. Right? Before you question that statement - just have a think about your family or the one you married into...there's always one, people...always...

I also wonder what do we 'shut in mums' think of Martha Stewart: the ultimate working housewife?

At the moment I have a foot in both camps and while finances will likely send me over the line and back to work - (i know how to work a shredder, right?) I have discovered that being a mother is my greatest, most cherished role but being a housewife is much like being a wetnurse for me. Messy and sadly i'm not very good at it.

Dog eat Dog...

The other day a woman with a dog passed Olive and I as we were out on a walk. The dog bounded over and began to lick her hand and mount her stroller. I looked over at the owner who only seemed to care for her dog's safety. "Good girl" she said...to her dog. She came closer to her unleashed pet, peered in at Olive but didn't offer anymore than a stroke to her dog's flea ridden mop. She and I were a foot away. I smiled and moved the stroller a little. She ignored me and looked at the mutt. The dog jumped up again and licked Olivia's hands some more. Now, who wants a stinky dog's mouth on your daughter's hands when her fingers live in her mouth and the dog's tongue lives in it's butt?

The sour faced woman commented "That baby needs a dog. "

I smiled. She didn't.

The women continued, "May i suggest the humane society?"

Now...can you imagine if I walked up to the dog and allowed Olivia to pinch it and pull at it's fur? Then perhaps suggested "That dog needs a child. May I suggest the orphanage?"

Now, i'm not a dog person (since our dog was run over by the vet...no lie) but that would be weird, right?

Bring out the dead...

I'm back, I'm alive, I have had the plague.

Olivia has been babysat by the Sprout channel for the last 5 days.

I drank so much Nyquil I thought that I lived in a pineapple under the sea.

For the record I am the only person in the world that didn't lose any weight with stomach flu.

The fury.

More soon...

Eau de Toilet

I had been looking for a new scent. Yet, last week when my daughter sprayed the contents of her bottom all over the front of me – it’s fair to say that wasn’t what I was going for. I had finally become a mother. It was not that I was wearing my daughter’s poop on my chin, chest, pants, as a brooch no less – no, it was because my first thought was to smile at her and tell her that she was alright – it was okay and mummy would get her cleaned up in no time. Gag. In fact, it wasn’t until I had bathed and changed her, pausing only to strip my own clothes off, that I caught myself in the mirror and noticed that those new freckles were not new freckles at all...

Ay, there's the rub...

I want a break. There. I've said it. It's out there. Not a Sandals resort type of break. Not even close - in fact, if the break i wanted was a holiday it would constitute a trip to Six Flags courtesy of Coca Cola cans...Thrifty and done in a day. 

Okay, so let's get the obvious out of the way, I do not have octuplets, I am not a single parent, my daughter is a dream and loves to sleep...so, that leaves me feeling worse. I do not need a break. I want a break. I'm looking at her now and she is beaming at me, flashing those two front teeth that decided to debut together. I'm almost deleting this post - but I won't because i promised to be honest - and this is a confessional, right? So, i confess - I'm 6 months in to being a mother, I'm absolutely fried and i want a break. Not to get clean, not to go shopping, not to wander lonely as a cloud but to curl up and close my eyes and just lie and think and sleep and dream for possibly an entire morning.  

I'm a sleeper, always have been. Never been an up and at 'em, which by default is supposed to make me a night owl. Nope. I thrive at around 4pm. That's it. I love sleep. Anyone that knows me will agree. When I used to go out clubbing (just typing that sounds strange - i went clubbing...?) there would usually be a search party sent out at round 11pm. Where's Paula? One quick trip to the ladies and a bang on a few stalls would find me fast asleep on the loo.  As a child, always so quick to up the stairs and do my homework...absolutely...and get a quick nap in. At one of my best friend's 30th birthday meal so lovingly put on at her family home in Ireland I excused myself after dinner and was later found asleep in her bed. (To be fair there was jet lag involved in that one). 

I love sleep. The first thing I think every morning is not "wowzers, I cannot wait for this day to begin" but I will calculate how long it will be until I can sleep again. This gives my body a light at the end of the tunnel as i pull myself reluctantly from that beautiful, warm spot. Before you castigate me for such sloth like behaviour and long to tell me that i don't know the meaning of the word tired - I know. I've always known.  Look, some people like to salsa dance, i like to sleep.

Anyway, you can imagine the effect of having a baby on my favorite pastime. Those first few weeks were brutal. I did however, take to heart that advice about sleeping everytime the baby sleeps. Yep. You bet I did. Yes. Yes. Yes. No, i will not pick up the house, stack the dishwasher, make the bed (what's the point?) while the baby naps...at least until 5 weeks in. My little love has, I believe, also inherited her mother's love of sleep - Thank You God - I was terrified she would be like Tom -he is one of those bizarre folk who actually gets up when the alarm sounds. I, on the other hand would always set my alarm 30 minutes before i had to get up so my first thought could be - oh lovely, another 30 minutes.

 

So...with my birthday approaching, what would I like? Perfume? Jewellery? Make up? Underwear? Yes, yes, yes yes but No. I'll tell you what i want, what i really, really want, I want several hours of sleep where i don't have one ear cocked, where my heart isn't always beating slightly faster than usual, where i can wake up and instead of sprinting to a crying babe whilst pulling my hair back in a scraggy ponytail, I can just lie there and think. I can stretch in bed and turn to the nice cool spot of the pillow. I can drool like only a heavy midday nap will allow. I can sleep in nothing because I won't have to be prepared for anything.

Ahh, easy, no?  Except this teething babe is also experiencing separation anxiety so she is currently attached to my hip. That's why we have hips, ladies. I get it now. I don't remember teething but I remember toothache and it hurts. Hurts as much as earache and cystitis both of which were more painful that childbirth. So, right now I don't know if i can soothe her but i know that being with mummy (or daddy) certainly helps. Yes, I'm tired, so tired that yesterday I fell asleep on the playmat when we were doing tummy time. It was 2 minutes but it was glorious. I am well aware that I have nothing to complain about - i always think of single mums that have to clean toilets at night while their baby sleeps and then work buttering bread in a dirty sandwich shop during the day only getting to see their loved ones at rare intermissions. That helps. (Incidentally, here's a good one - If you are ever cold just think of the people on Titanic that were in the water at the end. That one always helps me...)

I know that this too shall pass - next week could be a completely different story but being back on the day and night shift a la teething Olive is making me a bit loopy. I packed an anti fungal cream in the diaper bag the other day instead of teething gel. You see, I'm a liability! Listen to me trying to justify this - do I sound terrible? I want someone to take my baby away for a morning so I can nap and NOT my husband because the time that the three of us spend together is my most cherished part of the week. However, and here's the kicker...if anyone but Tom took my Olive anywhere without me my heart probably wouldn't rest, I wouldn't relax. So, what to do? Suck it up. It's all part of the job. Just another realization that there is no motherhood chip to download after giving birth. I somehow thought that my love of sleep would pass and it did for awhile. I had adrenaline to get me through but adrenaline can only get a girl so far. Besides, at six months in, I'm sure other new mums want to take a break to go to a yoga class or to a cookery club or something...maybe i should start a sleep club? Have members pay dues and send group emails about naps and mattresses...stuff like that just to make it more legit. Because in a strange sort of way, new mums wear their tiredness like badges of honor.  Listen to them in coffee shops or at the park ..."I'm still functioning on 30 minutes of sleep over 3 days - Really? i haven't slept all week." Somehow this superhuman ability to still be a wonder mum on zero sleep escaped me. And, you are somehow made to feel lazy if you are caught catching up on sleep during the day. Yet knitting an ill sized hat or experimenting with a recipe while your child sleeps is yet another feather in your cap. I love being a wife and mother but that will never be me, not yet anyway...

I do wonder if when she's in her teens and wants to sleep in on the weekends if I'll become like every other parent and insist that she get up, that she's wasting a beautiful day outside and I'll pull the curtains and open the window? I doubt it. Right now, that's my light at the end of the tunnel. I wake up and i think 16 years, Paula, you can do it. Just 15 and a half more years and you are golden. I'll probably encourage a post breakfast nap till they go to college. 

For now, I'll tell myself that I'll sleep when I'm dead...which incidentally for other members of my sleep club is strangely a comfort should we contract a deadly disease. I'm just saying...