Letters to the Editor
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War Stories and Post Partum Euphoria
Parents love to talk about the tough times because they feel proud of what they did and what they went through when they gave birth and raised newborns. All the cliches are true- it is truly amazing to bring a new life into the world, and there is just no way to describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it. All of the talk of poo and sleeplessness is really just a way people have of patting themselves on the back, trying to measure the huge thing they have done by the sacrifices of sleep and time a baby requires.
I had what can only be described as post-partum euphoria. I was happy like I never was before. Everytime I heard a love song, I heard it with new ears- like they should all be re conceived as odes to a daughter. The first few weeks were hard but wonderful. They weren't as hard as everyone said, and they were over very quickly. She slept in her own room, so my sex life and a good night's sleep came back soon enough.
Now that I'm the mother of a 7 year old, I get a kick out of asking new parents about their babies, and watching how their faces light up. They probably know they are unable to talk about anything else, but they can't help themsleves. Who but a total meanie would begrudge them their joy and call them bores or something ugly and mean like "breeders"? Heather, you will soon be a member of the world's biggest secret club.
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ok, jennab, let's talk about satire
oh the earnestness of many LWs. Jennab writes "the only thing missing from your hard-hearted, Grinch-ian take on parenting is LOVE. Please promise us...once you are through the really difficult, mind-numbing first three months (I mean, waking people up every 3 hours...that's how they torture prisoners @ Abu Graib) that you will write about the overwhelming, all-consuming LOVE you feel for your child."
Um, all you guys who are taking the piece at face value, back up a moment. I believe the point of the piece (which, ahem, is a SATIRE) is that all the horror stories lead one to focus on the miserable and overlook all the good possibilities. One of the good things overlooked would be love for the baby. So the original piece is essentially in agreement with you that parts of parenting are good and happy.
I hope none of you earnest types ever read Swift. You won't enjoy it.
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Heather, you are funny and right and so wrong
Now as an adoptive mom, you'd think I'd have it easier. No, we moms who adopt have all the same things esp us who have day old newborns. But I agree with the letter that said how much love you can't imagine. Maybe it comes the first week or the sixth month, mine hit by second or third month but once there is that mutual attachment, the love is so amazing, and stands side by side with the postpartum depression--what most of us have, not clinically, but yes emotionally, for many many years. It's a strange combo, the highs and the lows. But...
It's the one thing in life that you can't undo and you won't want to. And advice here, have more than one. Have as many as you like because, a single baby is not a great idea for the babe or the parents, imo. ime. best to you, exciting times ahead. Not all awful, that's guaranteed!!
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Cluck, cluck
I want to know what happens after Heather refers to her spawn as "my little chicken" for ten or twelve years.
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Bring on the lamprey!
Thanks so much for writing this. I am at 19 weeks and have experienced all the same kind of "House of Horrors" stories you have heard (which, weirdly, no one saw fit to mention when they knew we were TRYING to conceive!) . . . but what strikes me as odd is that most of the women who tell them to me actually had another child! Sometimes even two! And sometimes they still say "And you know, I'd really like another one." So either I know a lot of people who really dig selfpunishment and poverty, or the good makes up for the bad and no one really wants to tell us about the good, for some reason that we might only come to understand after the birth. Maybe it's a superstition akin to those that require you say how ugly your child is to prevent evil spirits from wanting to steal it. Anyway, I have already had the opportunity to raise two preteens into teens (by adoption) before having had a newborn, so I can definitively say that eventually the lamprey has the very strong potential to become a reasonable, thoughtful, kind and loving human being who will do things for you just because it seems like something you might appreciate. It might take 17 years, but it WILL happen! Hang in there.
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Three month turning point
"I won't have the energy to write a book about it -- and even if I do, no one will buy it."
And it's been done before, which I suspect is what's being alluded to - Anne Lamott's "Operating Instructions" which I read before my daughter came.
Anne's advice that if you can make it through the first three months, then you've made it through the worst worked out to be true for me. By then, the baby is kind-of used to you and you are kind-of used to the baby, and it starts to get easier, if not easy.
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Yawn!
I trudged through this piece of writing while initially stifling then finally succombing to multiple gaped mouth yawns --- WHO CARES??? Have your tubes tied or, better yet, remove your entire inner plumbing and avoid the perceived catastrophe of child bearing altogether and quit bitching. Were you a bride-zilla too?
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Maybe this is kind of meta, but...
... I am SO SO SICK of the people who are always whining about articles about mothers in Salon.
Up until 2001 the "Life" section was called "Mothers Who Think." If this did not tip you off that Salon is a magazine that, in addition to carrying stories about liberal politics and technology and music you never heard of, covers MOTHERHOOD issues, then there is no hope for you.
The people who weren't subscribers in 2001? Salon hasn't exactly changed its format since it changed its look and its name. The motherhood emphasis has been there the whole time. So kindly stfu already about it. You don't like it, go read something that treats mothers as invisible cyphers, like, I don't know, EVERY OTHER NEWS SOURCE ON THE PLANET.
Seriously, why do aggressively proselytizing child-free types ever come *near* Salon? It's not like it's ever hidden its bias toward talking about mothers and their issues as if we are human beings in our own right and not just large attachments to our children, or nonexistent entirely.
And Heather? Don't sweat it. You already have the best job in the universe for a mother -- you're a TV reviewer. You can sit in front of the boob tube, breastfeeding (you thought it was called that because it's stupid? think again :-)), and then type your articles with Lamprey on your lap, nursing happily... or crawling around the floor in front of the TV set. You're gonna have to learn one-handed typing, it's true, but unlike the people who have to commute somewhere, or even the people who have to write complex computer code albeit in their pajamas, the only impediment to you continuing your career without a hiccup is the lack of sleep. (Personally I recommend co-sleeping. It's not about the "being attached to your child", it's about the not having to get up in the middle of the night, go over to a crib, grab a kid, and sit down while you feel like passing out. Being able to roll over on your side, offer up a nipple and then kind of drift off again gives crappier sleep than lying in bed sans baby for eight hours, it's true, but since that's not going to happen for a few months anyway, it will give you better sleep than keeping the sprog in the crib at night will.)