DID I ASK FOR YOUR ADVICE?

You know, when I became a parent everyone warned me that inevitable, unsolicited and inappropriate advice would be forthcoming from all sectors of society. Relatives, friends, little old ladies in the grocery store would all feel free to tell me exactly what I should and should not do with and for my children.

I was advised (this is where is starts, eh?) to ignore said advice when the bombardment began – smile, nod and understand that the person really is trying to be helpful while disregarding everything they’re saying.

I was prepared for the typical bits of pseudo-wisdom regarding how babies should be fed every
three hours / minutes, should never / always sleep with their parents, should be weaned before they can crawl / start first grade, shouldn’t be held too much / not enough, should / shouldn’t cry it out, etc..

Occasionally I would have someone start a story, for instance, which went "Oh my god – I knew this woman once who breastfed her son until he could walk up and ask for it," to which I would smile, nod, pretend not to understand the tone / implications of what the person was saying and exclaim "That’s wonderful! You know, the WHO recommends breastfeeding until a child is at least two, but people in our culture don’t usually make it that long. I’m hoping to breastfeed my child until she’s three."

Then, it would be their turn to smile and nod.

But, though I prepared my smile and practiced my nod, said advice was not particularly forthcoming. I waited and waited, almost hoping that someone – anyone – would tell me what I was doing wrong so that I could bombard them with sixteen pounds of scientific research and blow their Victorian inspired anti-touch notions right out of their skulls.

All the while smiling and nodding, of course.

I made it through an entire infant and beginning of toddlerhood with no real unsolicited advice from anyone about parenting. I did get advice at times, but it was advice which I requested from sources I considered reliable, so my smiling and nodding skills went largely untapped.

Once baby number two arrived, I figured I was in the clear. Everything I had heard said that people feel free to give new mothers unsolicited advice, but clearly now I was an expert, culturally speaking, and would be free from scrutiny.

But then, all of a sudden, it started to happen – and it wasn’t at all what I expected.

No one was telling me anything about what I should or should not be doing with my child(ren) or how I should be doing it. No one said that I shouldn’t co-sleep or that I would "spoil" my children by holding them too much. I didn’t even really get any crap (pardon the pun) about using cloth diapers.

Instead, I keep getting advice about ME, and I have no return replies prepared for this, other than the smile and nod. (Thank heavens I practiced so much so the surprise doesn’t just leave me with my mouth hanging open.)

I know that people mean well. I know that they’re just looking out for my health and happiness. I know that their intentions are good.

BUT IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!!!

And I couldn’t even tell you why, exactly, this bugs me so much, but it does.

The advice I keep getting is some variation of "you have to take time for yourself," whatever that means. It seems to mean (I do question the advisor a bit to make sure I understand) that I am somehow supposed to magically go do something alone, regularly, with no children.

Um, yeah – right. I do take time for myself – twice every week I get fifteen minutes to take a shower – does that count?

The thing is, I’m not complaining about how much time parenting takes, or bemoaning my loss of freedom, or any such thing. I fully understood the commitment that I was making when I chose to have children – that’s why I balked at that possibility for so long.

To me, in order to "do it right," one does commit to being on-call, twenty-four seven, for the rest of one’s life when they decide to have a child. My kids probably won’t need to wake me up every time they want to eat or take a dump when they’re twenty-seven, so the job does get less intense as time goes on. But for now, they do.

People are babies for such a short time – they’re not going to need or want me like this in just a few years. Why would I want to miss this when it is never going to happen again? There will be plenty of "me time" in the future when they’re off having their own "me time."

And in a way, this is "me time." I want to be a parent, I enjoy being a parent, and I don’t mind one little bit that it requires nearly every second of my life. I’ve learned more doing this than I ever have in such a short time before. In some ways, it really is a egoless state – I am not so much me as "she who takes care of babies." My transient whims are not the be-all of importance – often, other people come first.

This would, perhaps, be unhealthy if undertaken less consciously, but I am very conscious of who I am and what is going on in my life / mind / consciousness. Jon Kabbat-Zinn put if very well when he said that having a child is like going on an eighteen year meditation retreat and having your very own Zen master living in your house.

Everything I’m doing now is a continuation of what I was doing before – it’s just that now I can’t take a break from personal growth. It is constant, immediate and intensely important in that my own internal betterment directly and instantly effects the course of another person’s life and happiness. The skills I learn for myself are modeled for my children and given to them at their foundation so that, hopefully, they don’t have to flounder around when they’re in their thirties trying to figure this stuff out.

So how, exactly, is this NOT time for myself?

Maybe some people mean time BY myself, which in a way I get pretty often. I have a tremendous amount of time for thinking and contemplation, for observation and learning – it’s not like I can’t do all of that with a baby attached to the front of my chest. And how many books have I read in the past year and a half? I couldn’t even count them all.

That’s the other thing – no one ever seems to have a concrete idea of what I should be doing when I magically get away from my kids – I should just get away from my kids… and do….what, exactly? I have no idea.

I’ve just begun to get this advice since my youngest daughter’s birth – no one ever said anything like this to me prior to that. So why now? When I have a tiny infant who is completely reliant upon my presence for her survival? Who, exactly, is going to breastfeed her while I go out and do… whatever it is that I’m supposed to go do?

Again, I know that people mean well – perhaps they’re giving me "permission" to take time for myself if that is what I secretly need to do. There are some moms, especially those with new babies, who can feel overwhelmed and resentful that they don’t have time alone, and perhaps they would benefit from such advice.

BUT I’M NOT ONE OF THOSE MOMS!!!! I don’t complain about the millions of things I’d rather be doing if I could just get rid of my children. I am grateful for the amount of involvement that other people (my partner, the grandmas, etc.,) have in our lives and how much care they give to the kids – that’s just peachy. And yes – when the youngest is at an appropriate age (more than a year from now), she’ll probably go spend the night at Grandma’s house and my partner and I can have a night alone, and that will be great.

But, as of yet, no one but me can take care of the youngest for any length of time, and that’s just the way that it is. It was this way with the first one, too – it was more than nine months before I ever left her for more than an hour. Was I being pressured then "to take time for myself?" No. So what is different now?

And that’s the thing – though it isn’t meant that way, to me it just feels like pressure. Though I’m sure that the intent is to try to take away some imagined pressure that I must be feeling, the actual result is that it creates pressure where none formerly existed. When they say "you have to take time for yourself," what I hear is "I know that you’re busy twenty-four seven and that your life is completely full, but here’s one more thing that you ought to be doing."

For me, it is someone telling me that I’m just not doing enough, that practicing Attachment Parenting with an infant and toddler at the same time just must not fill my time completely, so here is one more thing that I should be squeezing into my day, whether I want to or not.

I know that in this culture it is "okay" to put a child in a glorified cage with teddy bear decorated padding on the bars and leave them there all day, but that is not the kind of parenting in which I have any interest. I’ve made the conscious commitment to hold, feed and be there for my kids to whatever extent they need / want me to be during the highly formative stage of their early development. I’ve made this choice because I truly believe that it is what is best for human infants and that my behavior and care for them now will effect their worldview and happiness for the rest of their lives. The basis for everything they learn in their lifetimes will be built upon the foundation of what they learn now, when they are first encountering this reality.

That thought keeps me on my toes, in a good way.

And yes – at some point I think that it’s healthy to learn that you can take time by and for yourself, that love doesn’t mean the person never does anything else. But, I’ve already learned from experience that attachment needs that are satisfied early lead to confidence and independence – my toddler (who spent approximately 23.5 hours a day in my arms for nine months) shows me that everyday.

I have a ten week old baby who won’t take a bottle – I’m not going anywhere without her until she’s happily eating solids, i.e. not until early next year sometime. That’s just the way it is and I’m perfectly happy with that.

I’ve had the most difficult time figuring out what to say to people when they give out this particular advice – I’m usually just kind of dumbstruck and fall back on the smiling and nodding thing. I think that from now on, though, I have an idea of how to respond….

Them: "You really need to take time for yourself. It’s not good to parent all the time."

Me: "Are you offering to watch both of my kids while I go do something enriching?"

Them: "Um…"

Me: "Are you presently lactating so that you can breastfeed the youngest one while I’m gone?"

Them: "Um…"

Me: "Then shut the hell up."

And, I think I can say all that while smiling AND nodding.