Baby on board

maxresdefault As a young 20 something back in LA, there was a story on the news about a woman leaving her beloved Schnauzer in a hot car in the middle of July, only to return and find the poor creature no longer alive. I remember brainstorming with an artist pal about how we wanted to make a social statement about this kind of horrific act. So we came up with this live art installation concept. We were going to call it “Baby on Board” and we were going to glue an infant car seat on the roof of his Volkswagen Jetta, stick a life like baby doll in it, start driving, and observe the reactions from everyone on the road. We roared as we imagined panicked motorists with rolled down windows screaming and pointing at us as we sped along the PCH.

As a responsible human being and a mother of two boys who are my life, I am horrified to think that I even momentarily thought this was a clever idea. I remember back in the Arizona summers when you would hear tragic reports about busy, stressed out parents who actually left their babies in the back seat while they frantically went into an office or lunch appointment.

I lived in fear of making an unforgivable mistake like this due to sleep deprivation, “mom brain,” or just some momentary lapse of attentiveness.

I often became paralyzed with grief over stories like these. Friends of mine were concerned and would ask about my overwhelming depression at those times. I would tell them that I understood how a parent could accidentally do something like leave their beloved child trapped in a hot car and only realize it hours later. For me, I lived in deep gratitude every day that I didn’t make some kind of disastrous mistake like that. As a working, stressed out mom, it seemed all too easy to suddenly lose focus and watch as one by one each of my proverbial spinning plates crashed to the ground.

Once in a while another mom might nod in agreement and tell me that “she got it.” But for the most part, anyone I confided in about this told me that I was crazy and that they knew I would never do something unspeakable like that. But some other parent somewhere, had done just this and had to try to live with themselves for the rest of their miserable life. It was a staggering thing to ponder. (Full disclosure, I am also the woman who recognizes how thin the line is between my happy little suburban life and a few bad financial decisions that land you in Tent City. )

I learned to not share this particular insecurity with other parents. It tended to dramatically reduce the number of mom groups to which I was invited. But I realized that I was right. Tragedy can befall any of us. And yet, most people were so afraid of accepting that reality, they simply dismissed the possibility that anything as careless and shameful as forgetting to take your kid out of the car could actually happen to them.

I tell you this story because Wednesdays are early release days here in Seattle. We’ve just moved into a new house to be in the right high school district (no open enrollment out here). Unfortunately, we are no longer on a bus route for my 8th grader to get to and from his middle school. So I’m back with full time driving duties and frankly, I’m seriously out of practice.

Today over lunch with a friend,I lamented my new chauffeur duties and checked my watch repeatedly, telling her I had to have enough time to get to the bank, the dry cleaner and pick up my son at 3pm. We departed around 1:30 and I popped into the bank to make a deposit.

As I left the bank, I saw I had received several texts from my son inquiring about my whereabouts. Then a few minutes later, another text came in asking who was en route to pick him up. Then finally, a text that just read, “Um…hello???”

Suddenly the reality that it was Wednesday flooded into my consciousness. I became frantic and texted him back that I was on my way. “Are you okay?” I texted. “I’m an idiot.” “I forgot it was Wednesday.” But nothing I could say could quell my horror.

I got to school at 1:47. He was casually hanging out under a tree reading a book. He had been there for exactly 22 minutes. But to me, it felt like 22 hours. I wrapped him into my arms and apologized over and over again. He put on a brave front. “It’s okay, mom. I figured eventually someone would notice I was gone.”

I took him to Baskin Robbins for ice cream and bought him a giant Hulkbuster Funco Pop. If he had asked for the moon, I would’ve found a way to get it for him. He played it up with his big blue eyes and sad pouty face. He was having fun with me.

I told him that this was definitely the moment that would drive him into therapy someday and to please understand and explain to the therapist that this hideous event had nothing to do with my love and devotion for him. Instead it was an illustration of my inability to do anything right as a parent and that he should never think I didn’t cherish him in every imaginable way.

“You do a lot right, mom,” he said, “And I love you. But it is kind of fun to have my own chocolate muffin moment.” He was referring to a vacation where I woke up starving in the middle of the night and scarfed down his older brother’s chocolate muffin. I’ve never been able to live that down. “I guess everyone has a chocolate muffin moment,” he sighed.

I felt parental shame wash over me anew. But then I realized something huge. “Well, most people have those muffin moments when they’re too little to fully comprehend them,” I pronounced. “Luckily for you, I waited till you were 14 and had the smarts and sophistication to handle it, before I traumatized you.”

It really is all in how you look at things, isn’t it?

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Watch out, those birds and bees can sting!

As you’ve heard me say numerous times, my 9-year-old son, Levi, is one of the most giving, thoughtful, compassionate individuals I’ve ever known. He wants to help, to rescue, to take care of people. He is also fully versed in the academics of sexual reproduction. Now who’d have thunk those two characteristics could create such an incendiary combination.

Here’s the thing about sex; my husband Mark and I are very open about the reproductive process with our kids. We’ve always taken the approach that they will ask for as much information as they’re ready to handle. When they were younger, the simple explanation that mommies and daddies decide to have babies and then the baby grows inside the mommy’s tummy, easily sufficed. As time went on, however, more in depth answers were required. (Ironically, as things got more detailed and specific, the questions always seemed to come when my husband was working, at a meeting or out of town for a few days.) But I carried the torch and explained the mechanics of sexual reproduction using the correct anatomical names of all body parts. I never stammered or stuttered so as to suggest any amount of nervousness or discomfort. I simply told my son how babies were made in as much detail as his curious mind was ready to digest.

Flash forward to a few nights ago. Mark and I got home from our weekly date night and found our regular babysitter a bit undone. Reluctant to share the reason for her discomfort, we assumed that the boys had behaved poorly or that she’d gotten a bad grade on a final or something along those lines. But as she started to leave, she turned back and said, “I think I need to tell you something.”

We were concerned. We sat down expecting the worst. A few words of background here; this young woman has worked with us for nearly two years. We love her as if she’s a part of our family. The boys treat her with love, admiration and respect. She is a smart, thoughtful, religious young woman who wants to be a mother in the worst way. But she’s careful and responsible and is waiting to find someone to share her life with. So in the meantime, she mothers my kids and everyone wins.

She doesn’t hide her maternal longings, and her desire to have a baby had come up in conversation that evening while we were out. Eager to please, and now fully cognizant of the process, Levi leapt at the opportunity saying, “I can make a baby with you!” When she politely declined, he pressed on and said that it was really no big deal. His mom had told him how to do it, and he’d be more than happy to give her the baby she longed for.

It’s moments like these that make me really thankful for people who possess a sense of humor. Our sitter smiled as she watched our horrified expressions. Then she giggled a little. My husband and I both sighed in relief and started giggling too. We all knew that Levi’s offer had been completely innocent. But we’d both still shared a moment of panicked hysteria imagining our 9 year old offering his “services” for hire.

There are innumerous blessings in having smart, curious kids who want desperately to make others happy. But every once in a while, those kids get a little too knowledgeable and a little too helpful. As Confucius once said, “he who possesses the answers is sometimes better off holding them back.” Okay, I said that. But I think that’s the next lesson we’ll work on at home.

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…I’m Only the Messenger!

In April’s edition of “The Atlantic Monthly,” Hanna Rosin raises the question of whether breastfeeding is really the elixir it’s been made out to be, or merely an instrument of torture to suppress women and start them down the road to domestic inequity.

Breastfeeding, she argues, sets up an unequal dynamic in a marriage. And while I realize that this is an unpopular belief, I tend to agree with her. Rosin explains throughout the piece that most of us grew up with the idea of co-parenting being a reasonable, attainable goal. However, the domestic responsibilities, she suggests, begin to shift (incrementally and unconsciously) with the introduction of breastfeeding. According to Rosin’s hypothesis, once a woman becomes the sole parent responsible for her baby’s sustenance, a host of other domestic duties shift onto her side of the ledger. “She alone fed the child,” Rosin’s argument goes, “So she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, so she is the better judge to pick a school for the child and the better nurse when the child is sick, and so on.”

In addition to the disparity in domestic responsibilities, Rosin offers incontrovertible evidence to contradict the commonly held belief that breastfeeding is better than bottle feeding for the health and well-being of the baby. The truth, she concludes, after reviewing hundreds of studies and meta-analysis (reviews of existing studies), is that there is no conclusive benefit to breastfeeding. She sites numerous studies, including a well known 2005 paper in which statisticians compared data on 523 sibling pairs who were fed differently. The results looked at diabetes, asthma, allergies, childhood obesity, mother-child bonding and IQ and found no statistically significant differences. The researchers, (who in my opinion were afraid to face the wrath of breastfeeding advocates), gently concluded, “The long-term effects of breastfeeding have been overstated.”

The other issue into which Rosin insightfully delves, is the premise that breastfeeding passes necessary disease-fighting antibodies from mother to baby. “Even many doctors,” she affirms, “believe that breast milk is full of maternal antibodies that get absorbed into the baby’s bloodstream.” While this is true for most mammals, Rosen asserts that human babies are born with antibodies already in place from the placenta. Breast milk antibodies are not transferred into the baby’s bloodstream at all, but rather pass through to the gastrointestinal tract. The overall benefit, she claims, amounts to one less episode of diarrhea for breastfed babies.

Rosen elucidates that the flaws of most breastfeeding studies is that they fail to account for the multitude of socioeconomic, cultural, and intellectual variables that go along with a woman’s decision to breastfeed. “It is impossible,” writes Rosin, “to separate a mother’s decision to breastfeed – and everything that goes along with it – from the breastfeeding itself.”

Overall, Rosin, who continues to part-time breastfeed her third child, insists that the cultural bias towards breastfeeding that paints the practice as some kind of magic vaccine, is not only misleading, but also serves to entrap women and psychologically damage them by making them feel guilty, anxious and selfish if they can’t, or simply don’t want to, breastfeed.

As a loving mother who was unable to breastfeed her first child, and chose not to even try for her second, I think Rosin’s arguments are astute, thoughtful and right on. I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to breastfeed or that it isn’t the right choice for many people. But I agree with Rosin that it’s not a choice without costs. “It is a serious time commitment that pretty much guarantees that you will not work in any meaningful way,” concludes Rosin. “When people say that breastfeeding is ‘free,’ I want to hit them with a two-by-four. It’s only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing.”