babies – BATSHIT PARENTING

Medals of valor for thankless jobs

As I cleaned out the fridge last weekend, confronting a myriad of mysterious alien lifeforms floating in briny fluids, months-old liquified meatloaf that threatened to breach its container, and hardened bits of what I can only presume was once cheese, it occurred to me that what I was doing was truly heroic—even if only in my mind.

So, in recognition of all those unseen little acts of bravery and duty that come with the job of parenting, I present: Medals of Valor for Thankless Jobs:

The Confessional Medal of Honor: Awarded for outstanding service in breaking up sibling fights, and extracting tearful, remorseful confessions of guilt.

The Dinner Service Cross: Presented in recognition of providing the evening meal, every night of the week, for a decade or more. Includes takeout and delivery.

The Purple Fart: One of parenting’s highest honors. Bestowed upon a parent who, despite being assaulted by Level 5 methane emissions by their children, continues to read bedtime stories without passing out.

The Distinguished Suction Medal: Bestowed to those who have gone above and beyond the call of duty and vacuumed not just the floor, but the fields of debris between and under the couch cushions—even though no one noticed a difference.

The Sacrificed Sleep Medal: Presented to parents who continue to provide shelter and sustenance to an infant or child, despite said child ensuring they receive less than three straight hours of uninterrupted sleep for a year or more.

The Order of Laundry: Awarded for washing, drying, folding, and putting away an entire load of laundry in a single day—without any cross-contamination of pocketed kleenexes.

The Odiferous Service Medal: Awarded in recognition of outstanding duty, bravery and resilience displayed in determining the source of a stench of putrefaction, and eliminating said source—be it from fridge, garbage, or the space beneath a child’s bed.

The Distinguished Crying Cross: Presented in recognition of outstanding self-control shown by a parent who locks themselves in the bathroom to shed tears of frustration rather than giving in to the urge to sob openly in front of their devil spawn.

The Sliver Star: For the deft removal of a sliver from the foot of a child who has been repeatedly reminded not to run in bare feet over a wood chip-covered playground because they would get a sliver—without saying “I told you so.”

The UNO Peacekeeping Medal: Bestowed for sacrificing five or more rounds of UNO, successfully averting meltdowns from a competitive small child.

The Brown Star: Awarded for uncommon bravery and resilience in the safe diffusion and disposal of loaded diapers in a public bathroom.

What I wish I’d known about becoming a parent

Featured Jessica WerbLeave a comment

Throughout my life I have gone through many moments of crisis and self-doubt, wondering what I was meant to do, and what my purpose was. (I still do.) But one thing that I never questioned was that I knew I wanted to have kids. And while there are many decisions I’ve made that I wish I could have a do-over for, becoming a mom is definitely not one of them.

That said—there are many, many things about being a parent, from birth onward, that I wish someone had told me, or that I’d had the wherewithal to internalize. So, in case this helps just one batshit parent out there, I’ve begun compiling a running list of things I’d tell myself if I could go back in time:

Giving birth is actually kind of… fun? Honestly, the day I had my first was the most exciting, thrilling day of my life. My labour was straightforward, I didn’t take painkillers, and while I screamed like a banshee and it felt like my body was splitting in half during transition, I got through it just fine. When it was all over, I just kept reliving it over and over again in my mind. I know I may be in the minority here, but nothing I’d heard before going through it myself ever suggested that it would be so, well, fun.
The sleep deprivation lasts FOR YEARS. And it will almost finish you. Everyone talks about how babies don’t sleep well, and that they’re up at all hours of the night. But what I didn’t realize is that it’s not just babies. These bundles of joy will get you up in the middle of the night, for a variety of reasons, well past the age of three. If you’re lucky enough to get a bedwetter, it goes on well past that. Oh, and if that’s not bad enough, they wake up for the day at 5am and will keep you up with them.
No one really knows anything for sure. By this I mean, the science and psychology of babies and child rearing keeps changing—not just in small ways, but in extremes. What I’m getting at is short of actual abuse or neglect, if you give your kids nourishment, hugs, and keep them clean enough to avoid diaper rash, you’re doing fine. Because whatever else you’re doing now will probably be wrong anyway in five years.

For instance:
- In the 1960s people were encouraged to bathe their babies with antiseptic soap to get rid of “common skin bacteria”. I was encouraged to give my babies baths every other day. When my siblings recently welcomed their firstborns, they were told not to bathe them at all for three days or so to encourage the development of the microbiome.
- I was told to not give my kids any peanut products before their first birthday (advice which I ignored, as it didn’t make sense to me) in order to prevent allergies. Now they recommend giving peanuts and egg yolk (and other allergens) as early as possible to prevent allergies.
- I was strongly encouraged by public health nurses to start solid food with baby cereal at six months. Now, the guidelines recommend at four months, with meat. MEAT!!
- We were told to put babies to sleep on their stomach. Our parents’ generation was told to put babies to sleep on their backs. My kids will probably be told to put babies to sleep on their sides or hanging upside down like bats.
Your kids will trigger your anger like nothing else. You know you beat yourself up for cringey moments or times when you don’t live up to your own values or expectations? (Just me?) Imagine having the worst of your character flaws embodied in another little person and thrown right back in your face. It’s… not a good feeling. And it can drive you batshit crazy like nothing else.
Your friends’ kids aren’t necessarily going to hit it off with yours. Same goes for their friends’ parents and you. Your kids are their own little people, and so are your friends’ kids. Which means that, just like the rest of us, they may or may not be copacetic with your friends’ kids. Which kinda sucks when you want to hang out with your buddy while the children run off to play dress up—only to have your kids whining at you about why they have to be here and how long do they have to stay, and why do these other kids keep changing their outfits? And your kid may make a buddy, while you discover that said buddy’s parent is operating on a completely different wavelength than you, resulting in playground sessions filled with lots of awkward pauses, stilted conversation, and internal screaming.
You will never measure up. So stop trying. Joining the mom club was a bit like entering high school all over again. At the drop-in baby groups there seemed to be a few different categories of moms floating around:
- Cool Moms: the ones still rocking their pre-pregnancy jeans, unwashed yet somehow perfectly tousled hair, and a nonchalant, effortless approach to parenting that somehow made their babies seem like the latest must-have accessory
- Valedictorian Moms: the ones who had it all under control, with perfectly
  compartmentalized diaper bags, sleep consultant-approved schedules, and not a tangible ounce of insecurity
- Hippy Moms: the ones who never cut their kids’ hair, exuded an aura of blissful serenity, and wrapped their babies onto their bodies by expertly twisting one long piece of South American fabric
- Military Moms: the ones with naps scheduled down to the second, feedings on a strict three-hour rotation, and an air of absolute certainty about what they’d be doing for the next 18 years
- Deer in the Headlights Moms: the ones barely holding it together, unwashed locks hidden under a ratty baseball cap (or whatever hat was closest to the door), a dazed look in their eyes, and a constant underlying panic about whether they were fucking up their babies brains, bodies, and minds. (Uh, this would be me.)
There is no one perfect way to parent. Despite what the Dr. Sears, Dr. Neufeld, Dr. Siegel, and whoever else out there is chiming in on what’s best for baby, babies and kids aren’t like computers or robots or programs or recipes: you don’t enter a specific set of instructions, follow a particular algorithm, or mix together the right selection of ingredients in the correct order to deliver a specific result. We’re all flying blind. There is no reliable roadmap. It’s the ultimate leap of faith.

Lies they told us

Featured Jessica WerbLeave a comment

Something weird happened after I had my first child.

After years of considering myself to be an independent, intelligent, ambitious young woman who—as the 80s girl power mantra went, could do “anything a boy can, but better”—my world imploded. I was not “the woman who has it all,” but a frazzled shell of a human whose domestic life suddenly felt like a scene out of Leave it to Beaver.

I took a year of mat leave, while my husband stayed at work. This left me in charge of keeping a tiny human alive, solo, for approximately 9 hours a day—in addition to prepping meals, attending the requisite baby classes, and attempting to keep the home in some state of order. It wasn’t anything that was discussed; I was the one in the home, and he was the one out of the home. We fell into it, obliviously, and before I realized it I was reliving my childhood, but from my mother’s perspective.

Despite her telling me over, and over again that that I could be anything, anything, in the world—a celebrated neurosurgeon, renowned artist, or even leader of the free world—I was, in fact, not much of anything at all. I was a mom. (Yes, I was blissfully in love with my baby. But I was also really, really, fucking tired.) And my mom, for all her ’80s-brand feminism, was in fact a woman who had put her own career plans on hold to raise three kids.

It didn’t take me long to realize that:

The work of caring for the baby wasn’t necessarily hard—but it wasn’t exactly mentally fulfilling. And what mental faculties I’d had were rapidly dwindling, along with my sleep.
The work was thankless. There were no colleagues sharing my work space, offering congratulations when I accomplished the feat of unloading the dishwasher, or vacuuming the house. No one called me out for praise when I successfully navigated a diaper blowout, or made it out the door without forgetting any of the infant’s accoutrements (the Sophie giraffe, the diaper cream, the burp cloths, etc).
My husband didn’t get it. Apart from the fact that there was now a baby in the mix, the rhythm of his day-to-day life was pretty much the same: wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner. While mine consisted of nursing, burping, cleaning shit, and soothing—on an endless, merciless loop.
The love for your child is a cruel master. You will literally do everything for that tiny human: wake up every 90 minutes to nurse if that’s what is demanded; pace around the hallway for hours on end, jostling them, if it stops the crying; give up the foods that bring you joy because it seeps into your breastmilk and upsets their delicate stomach; sing the same stupid song over and over and over because it makes them gurgle.
My brain, and my soul, were slowly decompensating.

Here’s the dirty secret about motherhood that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough: You lose a part of yourself—at least for a few years. And you miss yourself. A whole hell of a lot.

And despite what they say, you truly, truly cannot have it all. You can be an awesome mom, you can have an awesome career, and you can be an awesome wife. But NOT AT THE SAME TIME. If you’re superhuman, you maybe hit two out of three.

As for me? There are many, many days when it’s a complete strike out.