Most days I feel like a bad parent.
Don't get me wrong, Char is loved and adored beyond compare. She is the light of my life and my number one priority, but all my wonderful plans for how I was going to raise this "free range baby" have evaporated along with adequate sleep.
It's a slippery slope, this descent into (far) less than perfect, and it began waaaay back before she was even conceived. I had read, and believed, that one should basically live like a monk in the year leading up to the blessed event (and I don't mean the birth) so that the "vessel" could be pure and conception "perfect". It all started out OK, with organic, gluten free, dairy free, home made portion controlled meals I slaved over all weekend, but quickly descended into frequent trips to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard.
I also remember reading that stress was bad for conception and that it should be avoided at all costs if you wanted to get pregnant. At the time I was working in a newsroom; hardly a peaceful environment for planting the seed. I was sure there was no way I'd be able to get pregnant working at that job and was busily trying to engineer a way out. And then it happened. In one of the most stressful weeks in my professional career: a federal election, the launch of a new video service and a company takeover, it happened. I got pregnant. Fully and totally stressed out, while living off fast food and coffee.
Go figure.
I decided as soon as I heard, I'd eat like a monk again. And it worked, for a short period of time until the nausea hit. Then, for some unknown reason I was craving lunch meat (great - hello listeriosis?) and could only keep down crackers, potato chips and hard candies to keep from retching at work. Hardly a diet that would build a super baby, but she stuck around. Things got better in the 2nd trimester after a close call with gestational diabetes, and then slid back into a bad place with the siren call of Blizzards and home baked muffins and cookies at the end. Curiously, I only gained 7 pounds.
All the diet stuff aside, we were also trying to have a natural birth. We hired a doula, got a midwife and attended classes in HypnoBirthing. This, I can actually say, we did very well. We were great students, did all our homework and dutifully attended the classes. We were feeling pretty good about our chances to have a natural birth. But Char had other plans. Two weeks late and every last idea we had was shot to sh*t. I won't bore you with the details again, but it wasn't pretty. So that little attempt at being a "natural" mom didn't work either.
Then came breast feeding. Anyone who knows me, knows my boobs. It's not like I showcase them, it's just that you can't avoid them. I have to say when I was about 18 years old they were pretty impressive and for a brief time I did let them out to be seen. But within a few years the weight and the wardrobe crept back over them like a glacier over the rockies. Still, there are some things you can't hide. So it would follow, you'd think, that breast feeding wouldn't just be easy, it would be resplendent! I imagined poor Char overwhelmed by the torrent of motherly love pouring her way. We (James and I) became strident advocates of the practice before we'd even tried it. What could be more natural? More normal?
In yet another cosmic joke, that didn't work out either. And it wasn't from lack of trying. My poor little girl lost weight in the first few weeks, trying desperately to get those giant orbs functioning. I remember her tiny hand coming down on the side of my massive breast, slapping it, to try and "make it go." No dice. What followed was a cavalcade of visitors all well versed in breast feeding, with tricks, techniques, pumps, herbal teas and admonitions to "lock ourselves in the bedroom for 24 hours" to get things worked out.
Hah.
What surprised me about all this was the lengths that "natural" folks were willing to go - even using an off-label pharmaceutical to try and get things moving. That didn't seem very natural to me. There's a real lack of understanding about this from the natural birthing community when it doesn't work out. It felt like a massive failure. Not long after I finally gave up, I was told my hormones had made it pretty much impossible to breast feed. But that didn't take the sting away; to this day I wish it had worked out. Because according to the "experts" my daughter won't be as smart, healthy, well adjusted, resilient or feel as loved as if I had been able to breast feed her.
The final frontier was TV. We had said we wouldn't watch TV with Char. Perhaps the odd episode of Sesame Street, but in no way would it be a part of our everyday lives.
Wow. Were we out to lunch on that one.
Between my job, our collective ages (we're elderly, dude) and James' illness, a few episodes of Max & Ruby has made the difference between sanity and madness. And I feel bad every minute she watches. I feel like I've set her up for ADHD, depression, obesity and just about any other societal ill you can blame on non-specific sources.
So there it is. Our dream of a free range baby conceived on organic kale, grown in a beautiful broth of nuts and berries, birthed at home in a tub, exclusively breast fed and given nothing but books and wooden toys has turned into... every other kid I know.
And I wouldn't trade her for the world.
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