On Mother’s Day last Sunday, I started thinking back to when I became a mother many years ago and my perplexity over the whole process.
I was an only child. I remembered nothing about being a baby myself. I never paid attention to my younger cousins as they came along, since they just lay in their beds and couldn’t do the interesting stuff my older cousins and I could do, like climbing trees and shooting Dr. Pepper bottles off the fence. I never babysat. So I had a limited perspective on dealing with babies. In fact, I made it a point not to deal with babies.
After I married and started life in the Delta, my friends began to have babies. Those friends changed. Their conversation filled with worlds like “diapers,” “soy formula” and “bonding” mystified me. Their schedules changed too. No longer were they available to have lunch with me or run to Memphis to shop. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would rather have a baby than a shopping trip.
All these little people that glared out from pink and blue blankets looked a little too wise, as if they were on to me. “You don’t know beans about babies, do you?” As if they were judging me.
So when the doctor confirmed my suspicion that my husband and I were going to have one of these blanket-clad bundles of our very own, I was at a loss as to how to prepare.
People began to ask what I was doing to “get ready for the baby.” This is when I began to wish I had paid more attention to what other mothers did for their offspring. I shopped around a little, examining all the choices of baby stuff. Then I bought a children’s book, Peter Cottontail, that I thought all babies should read, and I sat down to wait for another inspiration to hit me.
At a baby shower, someone gave me a sheet for the baby’s mattress. It was a fitted bottom sheet, so I thought I would finish getting the baby bed ready. I spent 30 minutes at the Ben Franklin store in Marks, Miss., looking for the top sheet until a matronly clerk came over to see why I was anxiously tearing through the pile of baby bedding. “Dear,” she whispered, as if explaining the facts of life to an imbecile, “babies don’t use top sheets. They would get all tangled up in them. Maybe you could just buy a blanket?” I bought one and ran out before I could look any dumber.
But on April 12, 1972, after planning for a daughter that I was going to name Susan for whom I had picked out dress patterns, I had a son. I quickly changed his name to David and put the dress patterns away. That should tell you how much mother’s intuition I had. But I began to learn about these baby people quickly.
I learned that babies don’t have the same sleep schedule as other humans. They don’t stay dry longer than five minutes. They have no inhibitions about expressing their needs—or their lunch. They don’t care what their parents need, like sleep or silence.
They can look perfectly healthy one minute and be running a 103 degree fever the next. Mom can be all dressed up in her Sunday best one minute and be mysteriously covered with baby upchuck the next.
As David grew, I learned that toddlers can get into things about two months before parents think to baby-proof those things. I would be so thankful for David’s silence for a change that I would fail to investigate when things got too calm. When it finally dawned on me that something was wrong, I would find him sitting in a puddle of nail polish or standing up in (in, not on) the toilet in one of those heavy fleece sleeper suits that absorb ALOT of water. Or banging on his record player yelling, “I can’t get this blank-blank thing to work!” (Only he didn’t say “blank-blank.” By this time he was a church day care kid, and I had no idea what a “grown” bunch of toddlers he was running with!)
I did finally settle in and get the hang of the motherhood thing, at least well enough to present my child dressed, fed and in his right mind on most days, though I couldn’t claim the same for myself.
And I kept learning. I saw that David could usually survive whatever he was gutsy enough to try, and he could even survive most of what I did wrong. His dad gave him the lecture on not cursing his record player, and I learned to lock up dangerous stuff like nail polish. Things began to calm down.
When he was about two, someone suggested that I should have another baby. “You’ll be so much more relaxed with the second one,” she said.
Ha. At that point, I had learned all I wanted to know about babies. I threw away Dr. Spock and l did what made sense. At that point, if I had been any more relaxed about babies, a second one could have crawled off around the block and I wouldn’t have noticed it. The one I have has done well in life, but I didn’t press my luck to have a second one.
So happy late Mother’s Day to those who know what they’re doing, and to those of us who just played it by ear until the kids got grown! If you’re in the middle of the process, I can assure you, it usually works out.
