Yellow Ladybird

I just read this post on miscarriage. Every time I come across someone’s story of miscarriage, it is painfully familiar…

Seven years ago I went in for my 10 week appointment, excited to see my baby’s heartbeat, a little life already so loved. But instead of pointing out a flickering light on the screen, the doctor started asking questions. When exactly had I taken a positive pregnancy test? When was the first day of my last cycle? Had I experienced any cramps? A cold silence came over the room. No one spoke as the doctor continued to search the screen. I waited, knowing with each passing second of silence that the pronouncement of loss was more and more likely. But still, I hoped against it, even as he said the words. No heartbeat. Empty sac. Missed miscarriage.

For six weeks I believed I was pregnant. Every future point I had thought about during those six weeks - my upcoming dentist appointment, presenting a report at work, the start of the new semester  - included my pregnancy. But instead of sharing my good news with the dentist as I declined x-rays, the appointment was characterized by thoughts of how I would have been 16 weeks pregnant… Every aspect of my life was tinged with this loss, I could not escape it. The sadness lasted a long time. And even now, after three children, I have not forgotten the first.

But my perspective has changed over the years. At the time, I would have given anything to have my pregnancy back. Now I wouldn’t undo the miscarriage. Partly because of the children I have today that I might not have had if that first pregnancy had worked, but it extends beyond that. The miscarriage has greatly shaped the mother I have become. When Katherine was a newborn, no matter how exhausted I was or how frequently she wanted to nurse (every two hours day and night), I felt grateful to have a baby to nurse. How would I have handled the difficult newborn days if I had not been through a miscarriage? Would I have felt irritation towards my baby instead of gratitude? When she was a little older and had to be rocked to sleep for an hour and would still start screaming as soon as I set her down,* the frustration would well up inside me. But then I’d remember how I felt when I didn’t have a crying baby to soothe and my frustration would melt away.  Would I have been able to savor rocking her to sleep if I didn’t know the devastation of miscarriage? Today, years later, I still call upon that loss to put my parenting challenges in perspective. The miscarriage does not give me infinite patience and compassion, but it does remind me that I really, really wanted to be doing this.

Now when I hear of a mother going through the grief of a miscarriage, my heart aches for her. But my own feelings of loss are gone. Only the memory of the loss remains, and it is a memory I am grateful to have. I think it makes me a better parent.

*Never take sleep advice from me.

I don’t enjoy playing with my kids. I know, it’s one of those things you aren’t supposed to feel, let alone admit, but I don’t. I used to feel guilty about this, that I felt restless and bored whenever I sat down to play cars or dolls. I would see other moms having so much fun playing with their kids… surely they loved their kids more than I loved mine, or at the very least they were better moms.

Then at a parent evening at Katherine’s school, while a bunch of parents were trading stories about all the wonderful play they enjoy with their kids, I felt a wave of irritation, no doubt stemming from a sense of inadequacy, and blurted out that I don’t like playing with my kids. To my surprise, the teacher smiled and nodded, as if this was quite common. “That is because you are not two years old,” she said. As this soaked in, the teacher went on to say it is ok to not enjoy playing with your kids and more than that, it is ok to not play with them. They don’t need us to play with them; being present doesn’t mean being their age-equivalent playmate. Relief washed over me. I did love my kids! I was a good mom - or at least not a bad mom due to not wanting to play with them. This revelation was very freeing for me. I didn’t have to spend my days making traffic jams, diapering dolls, and coloring. I could enjoy not playing with them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my kids. I love listening to their chatter. I love seeing what they create. I love watching them play. As long as I am peripheral. In fact, I think my being peripheral changes the nature of their play in a good way. Remember the joy of being totally absorbed in a make-believe land? Dressing up and playing house in a fort built out of couch cushions and blankets? Or gathering grasses and weeds to mix into a muddy concoction that was really a stew to feed your baby bunny (aka, your little sister)?  Remember how there were no adults watching (sometimes unfortunately for your little sister)? I remember this freedom, the space to create a land that only a child can create. A land adults cannot be part of. Staying peripheral gives my kids this space.

But just because I had made peace with the fact that I didn’t have to play with Katherine didn’t mean she had made peace with it. She was used to my half-assed participation in building traffic jams. I had to reset the standard. Her teacher suggested I set aside some time each day where neither of us needed the other. No-need time. At first, no-need time only lasted 10-15 minutes. But slowly Katherine got used to it and we had longer and longer stretches. Now no-need time is part of our daily rhythm and both Katherine and Clara seem to appreciate it. We can spend a morning together, each of us doing our own thing, sometimes coming together in order for me to try a sip of pretend chai that has been prepared in their kitchen, or to change the murky paint water. It is relaxing, fulfilling time together. It is peaceful.

If you happen to be thinking, wow, independent kids who are capable of going about their day with only minimal effort on my part, I assure you that is not the case. I do dress them, feed them, clean them, take them on outings, and all the other standard stuff. And, I’m still envious of those parents who genuinely like playing with their kids… they share something with their kids that I don’t and relate to them in a way that I can’t. But at least now when my kids try to get me to play with them, I can say no. Guilt-free.

(Sometimes this happens during no-need time. But never ever in the late afternoon hours when I need to make dinner.)

I am a snob when it comes to toys. The worst kind of snob, because not only am I one of those I-only-let-my-kids-play-with-wooden-toys parents*, but I make sure everyone around me knows it. I am sure I offend, or at the very least, irritate a lot of people with this attitude. But snobbery notwithstanding, I have given a lot of thought to why I insist on wooden toys. If my attitude stems from well thought-out opinions, even if others don’t share those opinions, then it’s (I’m) not quite as annoying, right? So here is my attempt to share why I feel the way I do about wooden toys.

The first reason has to do with a connection to nature. In my opinion, our culture puts up walls to separate us from nature, from structures that keep out wind, sun, and, rain, to appliances that neutralize natural temperature variation (i.e., my house growing up was always 68 degrees, no matter what the weather outside). I feel we are disconnected from nature. Wooden toys (or toys from any natural material - wool, cotton, etc.) offer contact with our natural environment. It is a way to bring nature through the walls we’ve built and into our homes. Plastic toys feel like another component of the barrier between children and nature.

The second reason comes from an explanation a teacher once gave during a parent discussion group. She made an analogy between toys and food. Food is nourishment, it allows us to grow and develop. The more natural and wholesome the food, the more nutritious it is. The more processed the food, the less nutritious it is. Toys are the same, nourishment for the mind and imagination, with natural toys being healthier than processed, artificial toys.

That is not to say I am anti-plastic. Although I do like bringing natural materials into my home for the whole nature connection thing, there is another component that tends to go with plastic toys, and that is complexity. I love the expression, “Toys should be 10% toy and 90% child”, meaning, children should have to do the work of making a toy what it is. For example, a red fire engine with a ladder, flashing lights and a nice, loud siren can only be a fire engine. It leaves no room for imagination. A simple block on wheels can be a fire engine, a police car, a roller skate, a doll sled, and on and on and on. In other words, the more a toy does, the less the child does. Plastic toys tend to be quite complex. I don’t really have anything against simple plastic toys.

I don’t know if any of this matters; children find a way to play no matter what they have or don’t have. But at the very least, I do know that sticking to wooden toys makes for a much quieter house, and for me, quiet house = sanity = better mom. That alone is reason enough to deprive my kids of noisy, plastic toys.

*I don’t actually only let my kids only play with wooden toys. Legos. Magna-tiles. Bath toys. Balls. And more. I guess that makes me an even worse kind of snob: a poser snob.

Since Alexandra arrived, people have asked me what the transition from two to three is like, if it is the similar to the transition from one to two. In my experience, the transition to each child has been different.

When Katherine was born, I had no idea who she was and it was a complete life change to have a baby in our home. I loved her even before she came out, but it was a primal type of love, an overwhelming need to protect her and care for her. It was only looking back after a few months, a year, two years that I realized the “new-born love” was different from the love that had deepened so much over time.

When I was pregnant with Clara, I wondered if I would truly love her as much as I loved Katherine. I knew Katherine, I had no idea who this new baby would be. Of course I loved Clara right away as I loved Katherine right away, but being the second child, it was different. Katherine was so familiar to me and she was also all I knew when it came to babies. And Clara wasn’t Katherine, so Clara seemed unfamiliar. Again, though in a different way, it took time for our bond to grow, but it did. However, an aspect of going from one to two that I was unprepared for was the sense of loss of no longer having an only child. My close bond with Katherine was disrupted and I wondered if we would ever find that closeness again (we did). On top of that, I felt guilty that I felt a loss with the arrival of the new baby. I suppose there is something very special about the first baby, something a mother doesn’t have time to savor with subsequent children. But seeing the relationship Katherine and Clara have as sisters far outweighs the sense of loss I felt at the beginning.

The transition from two to three has been entirely different. Having been through wondering if I would love #2 as I loved #1, I never doubted that I would love #3 just as much. I also didn’t feel any sense of loss, I knew the big sisters would (eventually) love having a new sibling. I had strategies for dealing with sibling jealousy. And I trusted that #3 was meant to be a part of our family in the same way Katherine and Clara were meant to be. With those uncertainties out of the way, Alexandra has eased right into our family. The challenge this time has been almost exclusively logistical. How do we do bath and bedtime with three kids and two parents? How do I prepare lunch for two hungry kids, change a blow out, nurse a screaming baby, and break up fights between the big sisters all at the same time? And why does the cat chose this moment to puke up the rubber bands someone must have left out on the counter? What do I deal with first? These paralyzing moments are my challenge now.

I have heard that any big family transition takes one year. I would say that is true. So by next February I should have the three-kid thing figured out.