Before I became a mother, I was a world-class planner. I poured my mental energy into networking and career building. Parenting, I thought, could be approached in much the same fashion. I had pregnancy and motherhood planned out in my typical anal-retentive fashion, after all, shouldn’t parenting be neatly compartmentalized into digestible bits that can be tackled much like a work project?
I had preconceived notions of what type of mother and wife I would be. I would have my first child at around age thirty (missed that goal by nearly three years). Our home would be impeccably organized (uh, check my overstuffed closets and drawers ... on second thought, don’t, as you might be injured by falling items). I would whip up nutritious and tasty gourmet meals (just ask my husband who does most of the cooking).
When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, a coworker was telling me how chaotic his home was when he went home in the evenings to his wife, who stayed home with their two-year-old daughter. Their little girl loved to toss all the sofa cushions on the floor for a makeshift obstacle course and she would dismantle their organized video collection. He told me about a family outing to the zoo and how he turned his head for a second from his daughter while his wife went to the restroom, only to find their little girl about to jump in a pond. I was mortified. Surely my children would never slip out of my sight. Surely they would be docile and hold my hand in public places. And surely, if I was home all day with a toddler, I would have constructive play with minimal TV.
But the realities of motherhood would soon deflate my mommy-snob ego like my unrecognizable postpartum belly. You can plan as much as you like, but pregnancy and parenting can swiftly sweep a world-class planner off her aching feet. The two pink lines that signal a positive home pregnancy test happen on their own schedule, sometimes much sooner than expected, sometimes much later.
Sometimes your smug confidence in an easy delivery after being reassured by a dozen girlfriends that labor is a piece of cake once the epidural kicks in crashes like your unborn child’s heart rate with every contraction, and you are prepped for an unexpected emergency C-section, despite missing that segment of child birth class. Sometimes you look at your husband and your new baby and marvel that you once took a bath whenever you wanted. Free time becomes a novelty. A trip to the grocery with your new baby requires the type of strategic planning you once saved for presentations. Will you need a bottle, a pacifier, one diaper or five? Your briefcase begins collecting a sheer film of dust, while your diaper bag is permanently attached to your shoulder. Extra curricular business networking functions fall by the wayside but you become intimately familiar with the tattered-edged children’s books at the pediatrician’s waiting area.
Babies rarely arrive on their due date, and they start sleeping through the night when they are ready, not when you are desperate for a few hours of uninterrupted slumber not punctuated by their hungry cries. Sometimes you can’t decipher or quiet their cries despite pacing and bouncing with them for what seems like a thousand miles in your living room and all the childcare books on your nightstand may profess to provide you with what to expect, but you feel you are fumbling around in the dark without a flashlight. Parenting is a wake-up call that cannot be turned off, even when one is sleep deprived and bordering on tears.
All selfish notions are put on the back burner. Welcome to parenting. There is no turning back. The rewards are great, but those first few months are tentative and sometimes a little scary. But it does get easier. The times that you “get it” overshadow the times you are frustrated. You click with your baby. Motherhood suddenly feels comfortable. You hum along and suddenly you are in the motherhood groove, breastfeeding your baby, talking on the phone, and making dinner at the same time. It feels good. A few years before I even became a mother, I recall telling another coworker who was discussing her son’s day care that whenever I had a baby I would do anything I could to avoid putting them in day care.
She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Well, if I didn’t work we wouldn’t be able to pay our mortgage.”
I had no idea how smug my statement must have sounded and the mother I am today cringes for my naivety and snobbishness. I had no idea how difficult it is to find both employment and child care that fit snugly into the parenting utopia I had fashioned in my mind, with no hiccups or bumps along the way. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to have an employer that allowed me to work from home after my second daughter was born and I returned to the office when she was eleven months old with a more flexible four-day workweek.
These days, I am no longer quick to judge others for their parenting choices. And I realize that the one thing I can count on about parenting is the unpredictability. You can also plan on me being ten minutes late to every appointment I make. I quit wearing a wrist watch a few years ago and for the most part I have made an effort to not let my blood pressure soar on workday mornings when my girls dawdle and it takes ten minutes to get them to put on their socks. They are only little once and work deadlines will still be looming over my head when I arrive at the office. So see you later, mommy snob. You’ve been banished along with “I’ll never wear holiday-theme cardigan sweaters to my kids’ school parties” snob and “I’ll only let my children watch PBS” snob.