Riley's Blog: March 2009

I’ve decided to do something a bit different this month. So I apologize to those of you who were expecting a post by Riley himself. Riley is far too tired from crawling and standing and cruising and cutting teeth (he now has 6!) and squealing and chasing cats to focus on writing, so I’ve decided to try my hand at this blogging thing that’s so popular with the kids these days. So here goes… A mommy’s reflection on the last 10 months.

I started Riley’s blog to chronicle our baby’s development for our friends and family – Those who live far; and those who live near but are too busy with their own lives and own children to constantly stop by to see how our baby is coming along. And quite frankly, it has become a great source of inspiration and forced accountability - A turbo-guilt powered mechanism to insure that photos, videos and milestones are properly cataloged before my sleep deprived, hormone saturated mind forgets everything. You see in my old life, the one distinguished by gallons of delicious red wine (which might also account for the memory loss) and countless evenings smoking and talking out on the veranda with friends long into and past the wee-est of hours, I was kind of a free spirit, one might say. Or as my 85 year old grandma refers to herself, a bohemian – Drifting through my nights and weekends without a schedule, concrete plans, obligations or a care in the world. I remember too often saying, “Hmmm, the weekend is already over and I’ve accomplished nothing of significance.”

Well what a difference a baby makes! And this isn’t shocking news of course – It is what every mother and every father and every child rearing book ever written by every doctor and every expert has ever said about birthing, adopting or finding an abandoned baby by accident behind a bush while jogging and then keeping it because no one claimed her after a few months… Once you have a child, EVERYTHING in your life will change! And unless you are a teenage girl just trying to make it through the senior prom before your water breaks, you are mostly prepared for the obvious and well documented. Like the quitting of all child-inappropriate habits/activities and sleep deprivation and the extra expenses and the negative impact to your social (and sex) life and the mounds of baby crap strewn about the house and hundreds of diaper changes and spit-up and colic and croup and rectal thermometers and sore nipples and your inability to leave the house for a simple luncheon without 2 hours of preparation, a 40 lb diaper bag, a Winnebago-sized stroller and at least 3 trips to and from the car to retrieve the “what-if” (as in what-if while driving 5 miles to the restaurant in Pasadena the car is buried in an avalanche and we aren’t rescued for 3 weeks – If only I had the sense to bring enough formula, onesies, and diapers!) emergency supplies you have forgotten. These are the sacrifices your parents have warned you about… The givens… The universally shared “first baby” experiences by those of us existing (gratefully and sometimes precariously) in the top half of Maslow’s pyramid. These are the things for which you prepare yourself - Financially, emotionally, mentally and if you are really motivated (which I am decidedly not), physically. So while pregnant, I readied myself to be inconvenienced, self sacrificing, unselfish and the most terrifying and foreign of all… To be somebody’s mother!

Looking back on the beginning – The first few months was a blur of hormone induced neurosis and paranoia. My baby, a helpless, boneless, amorphous blob of translucent skin, wrinkles and google-y eyes that moved independently of one another, was “my precious,” and to be any distance farther than 10 feet from him was actually physically painful. I remember when he was only a week old, I had to leave him in his father’s and grandmother’s very capable care to go to Target (7 miles away). I had a panic attack in the car on the way there and it was only though a sheer force of will and the immediate need for a less complicated (meaning one that doesn’t require a degree in astrophysics to figure out how to properly anchor it to the car) infant car seat, that I was able to pull it together for the 40 minutes it took me to get there and back again before I completely freaked out and lost all control of my faculties and bodily functions. It was as if I was a primitive cave dweller, and my fragile offspring’s survival was wholly dependent on the strength of my innate instincts to fiercely protect my den and to never leave the nest for fear of the toothy predators lurking just outside. If I lived in the Pleistocene era, I would have been crowned mother of the freaking century. But as it is, I live in Los Angeles in the 21st century so all this just meant I was oozing with the post-partum crazy (not to be confused with post partum depression which is actually caused by the sudden absence of hormones). And it wasn’t a bad thing really, just marginally inconvenient if I ever planned to sleep, shower, or leave the house. So I wasn’t depressed, but just uncharacteristically neurotic - The complete opposite of my free-wheeling, laissez-faire, pre-partum self. It is precisely this type of thing for which you cannot possibly prepare. I remember thinking, “If this is the kind of mother I’m going to be, my poor little boy is doomed to a life of sanitized bubble-dum.” And we all have known and/or dated boys with overprotective, overbearing mothers. They are notoriously an unconfident lot and they tend to have strange obsessions of the science fiction and/or online role playing nature.

I am happy to report that after a few months, the hormone haze started to lift a bit and I was actually able to return to work without having a complete meltdown. So if Riley does develop an unhealthy interest in WOW (shout-out to my cousin Sarah!) for instance, it won’t be because his crazy mother never let him leave the house.

The truth is, so far, I have loved every messy, inconvenient, sleep-deprived, expensive, vice-less (as in less vices, and not the complete absence of said vices), crazy, wonderful moment. And the only thing I want for these days is more time. Because there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to kiss, cuddle, tickle and play peek-a-roo while running around the house on my hands and knees with my little Tooty. I know there will be many challenges to come… But the last 10 months of my life have been the best 10 months of my life, and every second of every day I am grateful to the very depths of my soul to be somebody’s, Riley’s, mother.