Memorial Day

A few weeks ago, I was loading my daughter into the car after visiting with my parents when my Mom asked me a difficult question.  "Now that you're a parent, do you understand a little better why Thomas's death affected me so much?"  (My little brother Thomas, for those of you who aren't familiar with my family, was killed in combat on November 11, 2004, at the age of 20.)  I had to agree with her that having my own child gave me new perspective on losing one.  Losing a brother left me devastated, but losing a child... I'll stop there.  Let's just say that I am amazed at my Mother's strength.  Becoming a mother has strengthened my love, admiration, and respect for my Mom more than I thought humanly possible.  Love you Mom!

Before 2004, Memorial Day was all about sales and barbeques, the beach and starting Summer.  The last several years, the holiday has meant something a little different.  I spend the day missing Thomas so much it hurts, and thinking of all the other families that are hurting right now as a result of the war.  I think about all the veterans that are walking around with memories of their fallen friends, and I weep.  I found myself angry every time I heard someone say, "Happy Memorial Day!" or I saw yet another ad on TV for the "Super Memorial Day Sale!"  I was angry that the majority of our country does not understand the meaning of Memorial Day, judging them all for their ignorance.

I must say that this year marks a turning point for me.  I find my anger diminished, my patriotism re-established, and my love for my brother less painful.  Thomas died defending his friends and his country.  He defended our right to be free and to live our lives in the pursuit of happiness.  I will always miss him, but he would want us to enjoy remembering him and his fallen comrades.  This year, I vow to judge no more.  Those who have been untouched by this war, may their innocence go untarnished.  Those who do not understand the meaning of this holiday, may they learn to respect their troops and the sacrifices they make.  Those who use this holiday as an excuse to barbeque and shop great deals, may they continue to exercise their rights as Americans, since that's what the fallen died for in the first place.  I, for one, will be barbequing, and plan to toast Thomas's memory this afternoon.

Be safe this holiday weekend, and be sure to toast our fallen soldiers today.

For the love of blueberries!

Happy Mother’s Day, mommies!  I’m not a big fan of Hallmark holidays, but let’s celebrate this one by spreading love and joy to all the other mommies around us.  Every day should be Mother’s Day, so let’s look at it as the “New Year’s Resolution” for moms, a Mother’s Day Resolution, if you will: I vow to reassure, encourage, thank, or learn from another mom every day.  I promise not to judge other moms for their decisions, and give them the benefit of the doubt that they are making the best decision for their child.  Sounds easier said than done, but perfection is worth striving for…

The other day, I was at Target browsing through the baby food aisle looking for teething biscuits, and a mom and her mother were shopping for baby snacks.  “Blueberry flavored?  I thought they weren’t supposed to have blueberries!” the mom exclaimed.  “Don’t risk it,” said her mom.  “Oh, I’m not.  Why are they making these?”  I restrained myself from commenting.  Where on earth did she read that blueberries were deadly?  I can see holding off on whole blueberries (they are larger than peas, and could be a choking hazard for a child just starting on solids) but what’s wrong with blueberry flavor?  There seems to be so much confusion out there about what is and isn’t safe for our children to eat, when from what I’ve read, a lot of pediatricians have lifted most restrictions on a child’s diet.  The rules seem pretty simple now.  No honey or cow’s milk until they’re a year old.  Hard stuff that requires grinding with teeth (like nuts) could be a choking hazard.  Breast is best, but formula is a safe alternative.  The rest is up to you, mommies.

Some parents choose not to give their children anything that may be an allergen until they’re older, but studies have shown this does not prevent allergies from occurring.  A friend of mine, who grew up in Israel, shared with me that in her country a baby’s first snack is made with peanuts.  It’s similar in texture to a soft cheese curl, but the flavoring is made with peanut butter instead of neon orange cheese product.  Peanut allergies are virtually unheard of in Israel, and you’ve got to wonder… is this because the Israelis expose their children to peanuts early on?  Or do they just cultivate their peanuts without various pesticides and genetic alterations?  I’d be curious to see a study done on Israeli babies with American-grown peanuts… but I digress.  Bottom line, it makes sense to watch your kids when giving them something new to see if they have a reaction, but you’re watching them anyway, right?  Keeping an eye out for signs of choking?  You could take it a step further and avoid giving them anything new during hours that the doctor’s office is closed, too.

Today’s real-life parenting example does not include a “mean mommy” comment, but rather, the lack of one.  I stopped myself from saying “Where the hell did you hear that?” and kept my mouth shut.  Notice that my Mother’s Day Resolution is not only to avoid being a mean mommy, but also to be an encouraging and supportive mommy.  What could I have said in the baby food aisle to make this mom feel good about what she was feeding her child?  “What did you hear about blueberries?”  “Oh, my daughter loves those, and they seem to dissolve easier than Cheerios.  You could always try the sweet potato flavor, if you’re unsure of the blueberries.  What did you read about berries that you don’t like?”  I’m just throwing out ideas here, and wouldn’t mind hearing some of your comments on the subject!

Give sleep a chance...

A few years ago I attended a family-friendly party where a new mom had brought her 2-week old son, and was trying to get him to nap in one of the bedrooms.  I could hear the little guy wailing from the living room, and a glance at mom told me she was fighting every instinct she had to run in, pick him up, and snuggle him.  She turned to me with an apologetic, pained expression and said, “Everyone keeps telling me I need to let him cry.  He’ll never learn to self-soothe if I don’t let him cry.”  I didn’t get it at all, but I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging look, and walked away.  I had no idea what a hot topic this was!  People are adamantly for or adamantly against “crying it out.”  This is like the “politics and religion” subject of mommyhood.  Seriously, you can’t have a discussion with someone of the opposite viewpoint without offending the other person!  Here’s an example.

Mommy 1 (whining): My daughter just won’t get on a sleep schedule.

Mommy 2 (patronizing): Do you have a bedtime routine?  We give my daughter a bath, read her a book, and then put her in the crib.  She might cry for 10 minutes, but she goes to sleep and stays asleep for the rest of the night.

Mommy 1: You let her cry for that long?  That’s cruel and uncaring!

Mommy 2: What’s cruel is holding your child every night until they fall asleep so that they always depend on you.  How is she supposed to learn how go to sleep when you’re not there?

Mommy 1: Your child will grow up detached and angry because you’re a bad parent.

Mommy 2: Your child will grow up dependent and overly sensitive because you’re a bad parent.

I may have dramatized that a little bit, but I have witnessed similar conversations and I swear that if you read between the lines, this is exactly what they were saying.  Parents get so self-assured that what they’re doing is better than what everyone else is doing.  I was actually offended at a La Leche meeting once, and never went back, because one of the women spoke disdainfully about crying it out, making it sound like Satan himself concocted this scheme for cruelty towards babies.  She made it sound so awful that I was embarrassed to mention my own practices of letting my daughter cry for 10 minutes before I go in to check on her.  Simultaneously, I judged her for coddling her children too much.  “Plus,” I thought, “how do these people take care of their children if they never take care of themselves?  Don’t you need to be somewhat sane to be able to bring up sane children?”

As with many things, moderation seems to be the healthiest option.  In fact, if you look at the AAP website, www.aap.org, they recommend a nice compromise between the two sides of the argument, saying that you should put baby to sleep when drowsy but still awake, and then wait a few minutes to respond to fussing…to give the baby a chance to settle down on their own.  I’m not a representative of the AAP, but it seems to me that they are agreeing with both sides to a degree.  They’re saying, be warm and compassionate toward your child, but also give them some space.  That sounds decent, doesn’t it?  So how do we show respect for both sides of the fence, while making the best choice for our family?

Personally, sleep is a really sensitive subject for me.  What’s funny is that I used to sleep like a hibernating bear (I even slept through a fire alarm once or twice) but during pregnancy, I could barely sleep a few hours at a time.  I understand getting up to pee in the middle of the night when you have a watermelon growing on your abdomen, but I would literally wake up for no reason and stare at the clock for hours, waiting to fall back asleep.  Isn’t it a cruel trick of nature that leading up to the most sleep-deprived several months of your life you get…no sleep?  Guess what makes it worse?  The mean mommies that tell you, in a patronizing voice, “It’s good practice.  Soon you won’t be getting ANY sleep…hahahaha!”  I can’t tell you how many individuals are lucky that I don’t condone violence, because I really wanted to punch them in their laughing mouths for saying something so useless.  Did I mention that I am also bear-like when sleep deprived?  Or when I’m woken up in the morning?  Just ask my husband.

My point is, sleep is very important, for every member of the family.  Do what you feel is right for your child, but don’t tell others that their instincts are wrong, just because they differ from yours.  (I still think about that mommy at the party, and I wonder if she ever made a decision for herself as to how long was too long to let her baby cry.)  If you see someone struggling and you want to help, ask them what they’re doing to help their child sleep.  Get some perspective on what their beliefs are and where their challenges are.  Then ask if you could offer a piece of advice.  Offer it respectfully, without making any judgments on their beliefs, and ask them how they feel about what you've suggested.  Look at it this way: if you were Jewish, would you ever go up to a Christian and tell them to stop believing in Jesus?  Not unless you wanted to start a really unpleasant argument… But if you walked up to that same Christian and asked them what they believed about God, you could probably have a pretty cool conversation.  Give peace a chance, mommies...

Thumper or Thump-her?

When my daughter was only 10 days old, I developed a rare disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS).  Essentially, your own immune system starts attacking your nervous system, usually in response to an infection (no one knows which infection it was reacting too; I’d managed to have a sinus infection during my birth and I picked up pink eye on the way home from the hospital.  Oh, and I managed to catch a violent stomach bug in the Emergency Room at my local hospital before they sent me to Johns Hopkins.  Lucky me, huh?  Like giving birth and caring for a newborn isn’t exhausting enough!)  The symptoms were stroke-like and therefore terrifying, but the doctors at Johns Hopkins had me diagnosed, treated, and home again in less than a week.  (Hooray for living 20 minutes away from Baltimore!)  Amazingly, one of our neighbors said to my husband, “The reason your wife got sick is because she was out and about too soon after the birth.”  More amazingly, my husband didn’t punch her in the face for saying something so callous and rude after the most harrowing week of his life.  Not only did he catch the violent stomach bug too, but he thought his wife was going to die, leaving him a single parent of a two week old baby that he barely knew what to do with.  What she said was just mean!  Let me point out that not one of the doctors at Johns Hopkins mentioned “being out of the house with a newborn” as a potential risk factor associated with GBS.

So how do we deal with these mean mommy comments?  How do we ignore the crazy things people say, without getting angry?  I’m not an expert, but here are a few things that help me get through.

1. Give them the benefit of the doubt (or “the BOD,” as I like to call it.)  Maybe their parents/doctors/internet told them something contrary to what you were taught.  My neighbor grew up in a different generation, and when her kids were born she probably sequestered herself until they were sleeping through the night.  She can’t understand why I wouldn’t do the same. 
2. Educate them, as kindly as you can.  Keeping the moral high ground can be very satisfying when someone is particularly nasty.  For example, I could have said, “My doctor says it’s completely safe for us to be out of the house, and the illness is unrelated.  It was probably in response to one of several infections I was fighting at the time.”  Sometimes, I like to over-explain and make them sorry they made the comment in the first place.  Had I been there when my neighbor made the comment to my husband, I probably would have gone into detail about how GBS occurs, what my symptoms were, what the doctors had to do to diagnose it, how the food was in the hospital, and so on.  This can be especially effective with people you see on a regular basis.  You establish yourself as an expert, and make them try to avoid engaging you in such discussions in the future.
3. Smile and nod.  Every time I hear, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” I imagine Thumper in “Bambi” reciting this sage advice from his father.  Thumper’s dad was right.  Sometimes, you just make things worse by saying anything.  My husband looked at our neighbor like she had 3 heads, but he kept his mouth shut because he knew that if he started to say something, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from completely alienating her.
4. Be a total jerk right back to them.  Hey, it’s petty and childish, but sometimes it feels really good.  I’m not proud of it, but I’m sure God will forgive me if I slip every so often…

It takes a village...

The moment it becomes apparent that a woman is pregnant her body is suddenly transformed into public property.  Precious new life is growing inside of her, and people have an uncontrollable urge to help that child and its mother.  While this sounds nice, the “help” is frequently offered in the form of unsolicited advice and criticism of the mother’s choices.  Everyone has opinions about what she should be doing, what kind of birth she should have, and what she should do for her baby when it arrives. While the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child" implies that a child is impacted by a great many people besides his or her parents, loving support goes a lot farther than criticism and judgment.  In my experience, society at large does not seem to share my viewpoint.

My husband and I had only been trying for a few months, and while we were impatient to start our family, we didn’t want to get our hopes up when I came out of the bathroom carrying the most recent pregnancy test.  We started the timer and sat down on the couch, trying to avoid staring at the little stick, willing it to be positive.  Finally, the time was up, and we gently lifted the test and looked at the results.  A million thoughts and feelings coursed through me as I looked at that little window and saw not one, but two little pink lines.  “Oh my god,” I said, “It’s positive!  We’re going to have a baby!”  I went through what a lot of women go through in this moment: I was simultaneously the happiest and most terrified person in the world.  “This is amazing!  I can’t wait to be a mom!” I screamed internally, trying to drown out the shouts of “What if I’m the worst mom ever?  Am I really ready?  Are we really ready?”

Many hugs and tears later, after the initial shock wore off, we started making phone calls.  I called my midwife’s office, to set up our first prenatal visit.  We took turns calling my parents, my husband’s parents, and two of our best friends.  We went out for a celebratory breakfast (“Well,” I said, “I guess this explains why I’ve been so ridiculously hungry this week.”)  The fear was still there in the back of my mind, but the joy was much louder, and I couldn’t wait to go to work and share the great news with my boss (and request a day off for my appointment with the midwife.)

At first, I was excited to share the decisions I was making: I was going to have a midwife deliver my baby as naturally as possible, I was going to breastfeed, I was going to use cloth diapers, and I was going to use a co-sleeper so that my baby would be right next to me for late night feedings.  I quickly became discouraged when I realized that some people thought that my decisions were silly, or worse, dangerous.  “You have to get one of those c-sections,” one of my husband’s friends told me, as he spoke fondly of his son’s birth.  When I tried to explain that I wanted a natural birth with a midwife, he exclaimed “Why would you want to do that?!” and then went on to share a story he had seen on the news about a midwife who had been reckless and caused the death of a baby.  “They sued her and she went to jail,” he said, implying that all midwives are incompetent and that we were endangering the life of our child by trusting one.  What he did not understand is that while there are bad apples in every profession, having a trained midwife attend your birth is very safe.  Natural childbirth can also allow a mother more time to bond with her child, and gives her more control over the birth itself.  Not to mention, any doctor will tell you that a vaginal birth has a lot fewer risks than a cesarean birth, and that major surgery such as this is not something to take lightly.  There are, of course, instances where a c-section is the safest option, and that is why they are available.  I wasn’t going to run out and “get one of those c-sections” unless it was medically necessary.  He was not interested in hearing about our research on the subject, assuming that because he had a child, he knew better than we did.  We walked away from the conversation feeling angry and frustrated, and not at all appreciative of his so-called advice.

Well-intentioned coworkers and customers, specifically the veteran mommies, pelted me with a variety of comments that I found only slightly more helpful.  “You should stop drinking coffee right now.  Otherwise, your baby will be hyper.” “You shouldn’t be climbing that ladder.”  “Your cloth diapering won’t last 3 weeks.  You’ll go to disposables.”  “Your mom cloth diapered?  Did you always have diaper-rash?"  Here I was, simultaneously blissful and frightened, and everything that I said or did was being challenged.  As if pregnancy isn't taxing enough, we have to withstand constant, and often conflicting, criticism and advice.  Do I think that any of these people intended to make my life harder?  No.  Do I think they could have shared the same ideas in a much more constructive way?  Absolutely.  How about, “What does your midwife say about caffeine consumption?” “Do you feel comfortable climbing that ladder?  If you start to feel unsteady, don’t feel obligated to get the higher items, just ask me for some help.” “I’ve never used cloth diapers. How does that work?”  See the difference?  Instead of telling me everything I was doing wrong, they could have asked why I thought my decisions were the best for me and my family.  They might have learned something, and I might have felt supported instead of bombarded.

Ultimately, what we parents need here is respectful, supportive information-sharing.  We don’t all need to make the same decisions in birthing or raising our children.  What we need is love, support, and open communication.  (Sounds like the recipe for a good marriage, doesn’t it?  That’s not a coincidence!)  Let’s face it, we’re not getting enough sleep, so we’re a little more sensitive than usual.

Just getting started...Disclaimers, Dedications, and Warnings

This blog is dedicated to all the mommies out there who have ever received or given well-intentioned advice and criticisms.  My words are not intended to offend, and I hope that all of my mommy friends who read this will take it as a compliment when I use them as examples, for better or for worse.  We are all guilty of passing judgement on other mommies, and I hope this blog allows you all to examine your own comments and actions for their meanness.  Hopefully, my writing will help us all learn to be warm and supportive, not just of our own children, but of the other mommies in our community as well.  Be warned: I will make every effort to be kind and objective, but I am not immune to the occasional urge to bluntly discredit someone else's advice.  My intention is to grow and learn some amount of restraint when it comes to commenting on other people's decisions.  Thanks for reading!