Coming out of the dark

Remember when Gloria Estefan’s tour bus crashed? People died, and she broke her back and had an amazing comeback with an album containing this song? Much like “Through the Rain” by Mariah Carey (lyrics: I can make it through the day....) ran through my head during much of my teaching career, this song is my latest earworm. I remember hating both songs when they first came out, but up they pop at crucial moments, apparently having taken up residency in my memory in the early '90s.

I guess I’m saying that I’ve finally turned the corner--months later than most new parents--in my motherhood (ew! break out the Mom jeans and flowered mugs of tea), from feeling utter panic at all times to feeling, and sometimes successfully ignoring, mild panic at moderately frequent times. This is huge for me. Up until very recently, the following things filled me with shame and hopelessness when I compared them to my inability to accomplish them:
* The cloth diapers I researched so meticulously are sitting in a bin, waiting to be sold on Craigslist, which I’ll probably never get around to doing, while our trash fills up with endless boxes of Huggies from Costco
*Our supply of nontoxic wooden toys and European cloth toys languish while Gracie gnaws on any BPA-laden plastic item she can get her hands on, and I let her
* All my friends’ babies were drinking from bottles, allowing such things as “dreamfeeds” (the husband feeds the baby a bottle late at night, to help the baby sleep humane hours like 10 pm to 7 am) and “leaving the house for more than two hours while someone else watches the baby”
* All my friends’ babies were gobbling down solid food--organic, homemade purees or chunks of meat and vegetables, depending on the mother’s stance on baby-led weaning--while I was lucky to get Grace to accept a milligram of Gerber (oh, the shame!) baby food, if I could find the will to make it to the grocery store to buy any. Assembling the food processor and peeling carrots? I might as well try to run a marathon after not exercising for over a year.
* All my friends’ babies were, variously: Loving being toted in their mei tais/slings/Ergos (while I was still putting Grace’s joint development at risk by letting her ride in her preferred Baby Bjorn). Going out for date nights while sitters (whass that?) watched their happily sleeping babies. Sleeping while their babies slept through the night.

Ah, there is the crux of it. Grace’s inability to sleep longer than two hours at a stretch--which, of course, turns out to be my inability to let her learn how to sleep--had the domino effect of making every single other thing about parenthood difficult for me. I have been getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night for the past six months. Turns out, that is not so healthy. I’d heard somewhere that Barack Obama only sleeps four hours a night, so I kept saying, “If it’s good enough for Obama, it’s good enough for me!” Now I think it was Jed Bartlett, but anyway. I’m no Obama, and proud of it.

And now that I’ve started getting occasional nights of 5, or even 6, hours of sleep, the world is sparkling and new!

I now understand the origin of “I love you so much that it hurts inside” (yet another song that exposes my bad taste), and why people talk about being in love with their baby. Today while I had Grace in the Ergo (which she finally likes) while shopping at Trader Joe’s, the checkout lady (sorry, sales associate) said, “Wow, talk about being in love with Mommy.” I looked down, and Gracie had her head hinged back 90 degrees with her wide eyes gazing up at me. Maybe she was thinking, “Damn, woman, get me the hell out of this kangaroo pouch!” or dreaming of getting back to the lead ink-tainted book I let her chew on for hours on end, but I choose to believe she was gazing in adoration.
At least, that is what I do these days.