Benjamin Penguin

Before I was pregnant with Benjamin, I was aware of children in the abstract. I knew they existed. I knew that I once was a child. I knew that other people had them and that it made them four parts elated and one part exasperated. I knew that some ladies’ bellies  swelled with the magical brew of baby and stretched-to-the-max woman parts, and I knew that some ladies’ bellies remained silent with a melancholy emptiness. But I don’t think I ever really paid attention to mothers, to children, to babies, until I had one of my own. I say “really” paid attention because there were moments when I thought of my own reproduction, but they were fleeting and quickly tucked into the recesses of an unspoken longing. I knew that I would have a baby some day. And that was all the time I took to think about it.

However, in the past few days I’ve been overdosing on baby stories on cable TV and the blogs of online acquaintances and the multitude of comments and posts on the numerous website devoted to baby care and motherhood. In part this has been because I am robotically programmed to procrastinate when I have important work to finish. But also, it is the proximity of being so close to the lake. The combination of the wind, the sun and a large body of water always leave me feeling something of a profound need for reflection. Right now, in my life, this thing that consumes me is motherhood. It’s what I find myself thinking about every day – both intentionally and not. It’s the new role that I am constantly trying to fit myself into. Kind of like a new pleather shoe that needs a lot of work upfront but gets more and more comfortably worn with the passing days until it becomes THE vessel with which you could not imagine not having to get you through your days. I’m a mother now. I am many other things as well, and those things are not gone, but they have fallen into the shadows for the moment and have been replaced by this powdered and ointmented little man that, in an instant, became so very much of my world.

Arriving at motherhood is easy for some and difficult for others. Online and in real life, I have known and supported those that seemed to be continually thwarted by this miserable bad luck impervious to their aching desire for a child. Before Benjamin, I would respond with genuine, but muted, concern. I am reminded of the exact day in which I learned that a close friend that I love dearly had, many years before, lost a daughter a few days after her birth. At the time I felt a distant sadness and in the subsequent years I’ve often hoped that I was able to clearly express in that moment that I was sorry to hear her news. Of course, not having had a child myself, I could only comprehend the tiniest hint of the possible sorrow she and her husband may have felt at that time. Years later, staring down at my own child, I am somewhat concerned that I could never appropriately express my sadness for that loss because I don’t know that there is any way to describe what it would be like to lose something so precious. A simple word like “sorry” is woefully inadequate. It requires a language all of its own – one that is learned slowly through the process of becoming a mother. Now when I read of women, even strangers, that experience a pregnancy complication, or a pregnancy loss, or the still birth of a child, or the loss of an infant, I find my breath catching in my throat. In part because of the constant, nagging fear that something similar will happen to my own baby. But also because I have joined this community of mothers and when they ache and grieve for their babies, I find that I am doing so, too.

I’m not immune to loss and pain myself. I’ve experienced pregnancy losses as well, though at a mercifully early stage before their little heart can even start pumping away. It presents a certain sadness, true, but it’s a different sadness than some mothers with later stage losses feel. Having now felt the gentle thumps of a foot against the inside of my belly or the triumphantly strong thumping of a heartbeat at 20 weeks pregnant, 30 weeks pregnant, and having now held my warm little boy in my arms, I now see my early losses in a very different way. In the past they were a very sad but disconnected experience. They were the potential of a baby, but not a discernable child to me. An unfortunate, unlucky event. Now however, I find that I mourn them in a new way. Having finally had the opportunity to hold the end result of a pregnancy, having kissed the soft cheeks of an infant that finally made it to term, I want to acknowledge all the little ones that didn’t. I’m OK with it in the same way that I’ve always been OK with it, but I have a newfound love for those little rosebuds that never came to bloom. I never talked about the losses because people don’t really talk about that sort of thing. It’s not exactly something you bring up over dinner, and people never really know what to say afterwards anyways. “Sorry for that whisper of a promise” makes for awkward small talk. But because I love and cherish Ben, and because I offer him the respectful acknowledgement of his being, I think it’s only fair that I do the same for his metaphysical siblings. So, hello little ones, wherever you are. Hope you are well.

I sometimes read the earlier posts here – those posts in which I complain about the exhausting early postpartum breastfeeding dance and the mind numbing boredom I sometimes felt watching the minute hand slowly revolving around the clock – and I feel a little embarrassed. Not because I can’t acknowledge how frustrating motherhood can be sometimes. It is. Incredibly so in some moments. But I sometimes get embarrassed thinking that some woman incapable of getting pregnant, incapable of carrying a baby to term, will stumble across this site and think to herself, “This is the worst of your worries? The fact that your favorite channel isn’t quite coming in clearly because your landlord wouldn’t allow you to post the dish on the front of your apartment so you have to rig it into this contraption in the sun room? Oh, if only, you unappreciative wench. If only.” I suppose I want those theoretical women to know that I, too, have paced in frustration as my uterus flagrantly betrayed me. That I’ve known loss and sorrow and come out on the other side, but never forget where I’ve been and where I hope to be. Added to these memories are the more recent, more fresh, memories of a difficult and prolonged labor, the bright red scar of a transverse c-section incision enfolded within the plumpness of my lower belly and the just barely skirting of a severe postpartum anxiety that often had me moments from tearing my own hair from my head strand by strand.

Yet, with all that I’ve experienced, I’ve grown to appreciate this woman that I have become now that I have Ben in my life. The appearance of Adam in my life roughly eight years ago began the process of making me into the person I most wanted to be. The addition of Ben has added a new texture, a new layer of passion that I could scarcely have imagined prior to giving birth to him. I am somehow feeling more connected to the world and to this interwoven human coil. When others smile, I smile brilliantly with them and when they cry, my own cheeks are damp with a complimentary sorrow and pain.  

Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Adam. My life is now blessed with a new, humbling humanity and two wonderfully fabulous gents. Truly blessed.

Motherhood defies a simple emotional state. It is at once wonderful and awful and fabulous and horrendous. There are moments when I look down and take note of Ben’s cherubic cheeks and long eyelashes framing his big, beautiful brown eyes and I can’t begin to understand how I could view apple pie as the sweetest thing ever created when this little gentleman puts that tasty, all-American dessert to shame. And then there are days like, oh, the past three days, when the sound of Ben’s shrieking is so loud and shrill that I have to peel my escaped brain off of the wall and ram it quickly back into place before attending to the next super-important baby crisis. On most days I can shrug off the infant sass with a weary, beleaguered smirk, but there are just some days where my patience is tested to degrees I never thought possible. I’ve raised an incredibly active breed puppy from an eight-week-old little fluff ball into a fine adult pooch. I live with four cats, two of which have an inexplicable vendetta against the oldest cat, thus providing me with ample opportunities to experience magnificently fun things like the spilling of the entire contents of my desk on the floor and getting caught in the middle of a cat squabble (resulting in the compulsory cat scratch across both my thighs). I’ve even survived those sporadic occasions when Adam is sick – a situation that requires near saintly levels of compassion and understanding because the litany of complaints and hypochondria-induced concerns leaves my head swimming by the time the virus winds down and meets its maker.

This Wednesday, however, was rough. I can laugh about it now, and this subconscious desire to maintain a healthy psychological homeostasis is probably the only reason I am sitting here at this hour alternately typing away on this blog and watching Reno 911 rather than rocking back and forth in a corner babbling incoherently and weeping inconsolably. I did weep a little bit on Wednesday, but I can triumphantly say that it was quite amenable to consolation. On Thursday. But hey, that’s not a bad turnaround time. Tuesday was a fussy day and Wednesday started out similarly. However, Wednesday quickly devolved from a fussy day to “unleashed like the fiery fury of hell” day at about the midday point. I can’t really say that it was any one thing that made me want to temporarily pack this whole motherhood thing in, but rather it was just how spectacularly awful the day felt to me. Ben started the day mildly fussy but fairly genial. I think it was the point in which he had a massive diaper blowout that things took an ominous turn for the worse. Ben was a bit overtired and I knew I should feed him and then try to get him to nap, but he let go of a tremendous fart followed by an impressive sounding movement. What follows is a play-by-play of my momentary lapse of sanity in action. Ben is like his Mama in that we are spectacularly okay until that moment in which we are not and then we are spectacularly NOT OK. So Ben can go from smiling to screaming in .00005 seconds. So he’s beginning his “I’m hungry” huffs and puffs and then the movement. Error number one is making the decision to check the diaper instead of just feeding him first. So the crying ensues. Upon closer inspection I note that the diaper has theatrically failed us and there is poop everywhere. No really. Everywhere. Oh that my sense would have jogged back into its rightful place at that time. But no. I decide to attend to the poop! So I make the decision to bathe the crying baby. Since the water temperature in this apartment during the day can be likened to that of the surface of an iceberg, I had a hard time getting the water really warm for the bath. So I proceeded to give the now screaming baby a hasty bath in barely tepid water. The screaming baby was then transported to the cold changing table for a quick rub down and diapering. Following this I made the most laughably moronic choice yet. Ben does not really like the over-the-head onesies or any other outfit that must be pulled over his head. When calm, I can generally coax him into one, but I better see a minimum of three large smiles before attempting that feat. So with the screaming, wriggling baby in one hand, I use the other to reach in a drawer and grab out an outfit for him. Mind you, he is still hungry, but now he is cold and pissed as well. The outfit that emerges is a cute onesie. A cute over-the-head onesie. For a split second I think I should throw that outfit back into the pond and fish out a new one, but I dig my heels in and pop him on our bed and attempt to dress Ben. Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The ear piercing scream that bursts forth from this boy’s mouth nearly crosses my eyes and with the onesie stuck somewhere between his nose and his mouth I again think to scrap the whole thing and try with a different outfit. But I am a gal that apparently finds it necessary to honor her commitments at the most inopportune times, so I plow through the hysteria and get the onesie on the boy. The screaming grows louder, I’m seconds from vomiting myself and I just want to scramble out of the apartment, down the stairs and run anywhere. Well, quickly walk anywhere. OK, walk anywhere. Not quickly, because I’m horribly out of shape, but just away from the screaming. However, since I can’t do that, I pick up a pillow and crush it to my face and loudly scream “OH. MY. LORD. WHEN. WILL. IT. STOP” into the forgiving polyfil.

The screaming? It did stop once he settled enough to start feeding. When Adam came home that night, I handed him the baby, some bottles and told him I needed to be alone for a while. I felt this unnerving mix of embarrassment, frustration and guilt from making blunderingly poor decisions and from seriously wanting to be away from Ben for a period of time. I didn’t want him smiling at me or crying at me. I didn’t want him near me. I wanted him in Daddy’s arms so that I could stare gape-jawed at the television by myself. This caused a pang of guilt so profound I nearly crumpled from the weight of it. However, guilt is a dish best served in gluttonous portions because later that evening, Ben vomited copiously from the bottles that Adam fed him. While I was staring gape-jawed at the television. Ben’s stomach was so upset, in fact, that he needed yet another bath because he threw up so much. How’s that for feeling like a crap Mama?

But Wednesday ended. And Thursday was better. And today was better still. I love him so much that it makes my heart seize, and yet this is sometimes the most unbelievably frustrating and exhausting thing I have ever done. How in the world do you ever learn to balance that tremendous joy with that harrowing frustration?