Dependence, Independence, Codependence, Interdependence; Or, My Life as a Blanket
Over the years, I’ve accidentally offended a number of people by asking them whether they ever worried about creating inflexible if not untenable dependence by too-carefully setting certain developmental stages (pun) for their children. I’m talking about kids who can’t sleep without their white noise machines or their blankies or their one special [limited edition and discontinued] stuffed animals, that type of thing. Ever living my life out of the Worst Case Scenario Handbook, I fret on their behalf about the Etna-like hell due to erupt when the white noise machine breaks or the beloved stuffy goes missing at the park, and I can’t decide whether it’s better or worse that the hell is of the parents’ own design. Hell is hell.
With Wombat, we were lucky he took to the “plan” (haaaaaaaaaa) that our child would be a bastion of flexibility and independence, able to cope gracefully with the range of life’s inconsistencies and surprises, pleasant and otherwise. From the beginning, he adapted to our somewhat random schedule, he was able to nap at various times and in various conditions and locales, and he never attached himself so fiercely to something that its absence precipitated a magma blast that incinerated to ash everything within a ten-mile radius. When one of his favorite toys would go missing, we simply told him it was on vacation in Barbados and that was that. This still works.
It was mostly luck, of course. That he didn’t need special sleeping conditions was luck. That he never took a pacifier was luck. That he’s a happy-go-lucky type is both happy and lucky, and, okay, fine, maybe a little bit the result of being related to Simon, but we can hardly congratulate ourselves for our genetics, now can we? We didn’t create an independent kid, we just got one. Happy, lucky us.
I have learned some lessons, though, and here they are: First, I shouldn’t waste time fretting for others about how they raise their children. Next, I should stop asking even innocent, honest questions about parenting that start with “But aren’t you worried about…” because that almost inevitably leads to defensiveness. Thirdly, I should come clean about Fox’s addiction.
What does Fox want? What can he not live without? What will send him into a rage if the object of his desire does not appear within .2 seconds of his call?
Mama. Fox wants Mama. Mamamamamama. And yes, it’s flattering and life-affirming and heartwarming and all that rainbows-and-butterflies stuff, but it also verges on soul-sucking in those times when I just want to…not be Mamamamamama, whether because Dada is home or I want to spend time with my other child, or maybe I’d just like to feel the fresh, cool water lap against my briefly de-barnacled side because, as a wise woman once said, the years are short but the days can be loooooooooong. Frankly, sometimes I’m too sick/tired/asleep/over it to be a good Mamamamamama, but Fox doesn’t care, no siree, and so sometimes I buck up and just do the best I can, but other times I secure him with some apparatus or responsible person and run to the other end of the house and hold really, really still lest any mama molecules escape my body and the little bloodhound catches whiff of my telltale maternal scent and tips back his head and commences to halloo until he finds me again. I am hunted.
It’s nice to be wanted, of course, but it’s also nice to have the option to defer.
Although I know better than to say anything out loud (and here I pretend like blogging it somehow doesn’t count), I still wonder about all those kids with their noise machines who have been trained to sleep only when the ambient sound waves and temperature and lighting and angle of the mattress are just exactly so. I think about what happens when they lose their pacifiers or their special bedtime toys, and I worry for the parents who have to deal with the fallout. Poor suckers, every last one of them. (This is not smugness, this is sympathy, I promise.)
And then I think about my own kid, whose dependence is no better, and actually is worse than all that because he’s hung up on something that can’t be replaced by a trip to the store or a click on Amazon or eBay. I am not something that can be left at home with a babysitter. I worry for myself that I will always have to be here with him and that my heart might never have the chance to grow fonder if I never get a chance to be absent. Not that I don’t love him to the end of the earth already, but I’d still like to test that old adage by, you know, maybe separating from him for longer than an hour and seeing what that does to the magnitude of my adoration. Maybe it won’t work, but it’s worth a shot. Please give me a shot!
It’s not the worst of problems, sure, but it’s less than ideal, and it’s day after day after day after day, which obviously wears on a person when that person is me. When Simon gets home from work in the evening and I’ve been alone with the baby since first thing in the morning and am more than ready to hand off that adorable little diapered baton to my trusty teammate, it pretty much sucks that said baton starts wailing piteously if I even so much as fake a pass. And it has nothing to do with my competence or even his actual preference. I really think it’s just habit. I am the only one that will do because I am the only one who does do. Doobee doobee doo.
Doobee doobee dooooooooooooo.
That’s the sound of me teetering on the edge of sanity at 6:15 p.m. every weekday because I’m just not cut out for full-time childcare. (Guilt, shame, etc.) At 6:15, it’s a free-for-all pounce-and-pull; everything and everyone converges at home but then immediately diverges–each of them, it seems, with a piece of me in their teeth. For the previous hour I’ve been pulled between two children, and when my husband finally comes home, I’m pulled a third direction. I feel like a well-loved but ratty and threadbare old blanket, each corner clamped in someone’s jaws, and sometimes I don’t know whether I’m about to tear, unravel, or just keep stretching and stretching until I’m completely unrecognizable. Who will even want me when I’m in that kind of shape?
Well! This took a turn. I’d intended to steer this post toward a closing quip that said, “Hey, at least the fallout from Fox being obsessed with me is fallout that, by definition, will only happen when I’m not around, ha ha ha! Who’s the sucker now?” but suddenly and quite unexpectedly here I am, transformed into a blanket. How do these things happen? How does one pick up HTML for Dummies one afternoon and then wake up the next day ten years older with a husband, two kids, and a ridiculous identity crisis playing out in strange metaphors on the Internet?
So, fine. I’m a blanket. I’ll be a blanket. I’ll let the little one crawl around on me all day and the bigger little one wear me as a cape and the biggest one roll me into a ball and tuck me under his head when he lays back on the couch.
Say, this is actually kind of nice.
Cozy. Comfortable. Right.
See how I stretch to wrap around all three of them? See how warm I am? See how I smell like home? See how tomorrow I will be a fort and the next day a parachute and the next day a stage curtain and the next day a hammock and the next day a sail? See how I have always been a length of soft material but I didn’t become a blanket until I could tuck people in? Until I had people to tuck in?
Those are very original and nice extended metaphors, and you write about it (as always) in an interesting and entertaining way, but I see myself a lot in this post, and myself? Is tired. Tired and burned out and really thinking hard about what it’s going to be like when I am not The Only for three different people. That day will come. And I’m sure it will be sad in its own way. But man, right now, it looks like the light at the end of a long, LOOOONG dark tunnel. (A tunnel comprised mostly of sleep deprivation, I expect, so maybe the light comes when I get to sleep more than four hours at a stretch. We’ll see.)
True, true. I wrote most of this a few days ago, at the end of a loooooong week. It seemed there were just so many days in a row when I was looking forward to Simon coming home from work only to realize (again, again, again), that just because he’s home doesn’t mean I get to spend any quality time with him because we have children crawling all over us and then a kitchen to clean and computering to do and things to get ready to start the whole crazy cycle again the next day. Thank god for weekends, I guess.
Oh man, I can totally relate. I have been the only. The ONLY. The oooooonly one for my just-turned 4 year old son since the day he was born. And it really is kind of soul sucking at times, especially when you add in another young son and a husband who would like some attention too, thank you very much. I especially liked your description of hour after everyone comes home in the evening…some days it is all I can do to not scream and run away (temporarily, of course, who would put the boy to bed?) Anyway it’s always good to hear it isn’t just me. Oh, and the baby is totally addicted to paci’s, which are mercifully one click away on Amazon.
I can’t even imagine what that would be like with a four-year-old. You have my sympathy. Wombat is plenty needy in his own way, but at least it’s not focused all on one person (or at least not all on me; Simon could probably handle it better).
We never did get Fox to take the paci consistently, but he’s totally addicted to napping in his swing and sleeping in a really tight swaddle at night, both of which are about to bite me in the ass in three…two…one…
Oh, I have been there. Jacob was just like this and I never got a break. It is hard and draining and you feel bad to leave him because you know how much work it’s going to be to entertain a baby that only wants MAMA.
Yeah, he’s seven months old and I can’t imagine leaving him with anyone for more than a few hours because he will come UNGLUED if he decides he has neeeeeeeeeds. I thought it would be easier once he started solids, because then at least I’m not the only food source, but then see above about how he can’t really fall asleep without me and man, leaving him with someone for an extended period of time would be a total dick move. :/
That would be my daughter, who turns 1 on Wednesday. I’m Canadian, and have been on mat leave for the last year, until Wednesday. All she wants is me, and that’s been tolerable on mat leave, but the transition to day care has been a soul destroying nightmare. Tomorrow we try the full day. The only question will be: for how many hours will she cry?
Ugh. Babies.
Oh man. I remember going back to work when Wombat was four months old, which wasn’t so bad for me because I was just leaving him with Simon, but it was horrible for Simon because all the poor little thing did was cry for me, although I think that had mostly to do with the milk situation, since he never really learned to take a bottle. I can’t imagine having to leave a mama-dependent kid with a daycare worker, although I know for sure that they get over it and it works out and everyone comes out okay. It’s still just SO HARD to be that end-all-be-all for a baby when you know you actually need to be apart now and then, for their sake as much as for yours.
Good luck on the daycare transition. Even in the best of cases, it’s still pretty rough.
Oh the bloodhound line (and the barnacle reference) made me laugh. I get it. I am there too. Thanks for making it funny.
Sometimes it’s either laugh or cry, right?
Oh, I LOVE that last paragraph so much.Beautiful! My daughter was like that. I remember vividly handing her to my husband and saying “you have to try”, but it was easier for me to deal with her and him to take care of the older one. Man to man and all that. You are a wonderful mother and he knows it. Fox deserves the best and that is you. None better, few as good!!
Oh, thank you. And yes, we had the “You have to try” conversation at 2 a.m. last night, so that was fun. (It was NOT FUN.)
This is so me right now. My husband is pretty much the primary caregiver for our 3-year-old while our 10-month-old clings to me. She likes my husband, but she only wants to play with him while I’m holding her. If I’m out of her sight, it’s “Mamamamama,” until I come back and take her again. Or she’ll crawl after me and trail me through the house, crying for me. She’s my little crying shadow.
And I never realized how much my son sleeping through the night at six weeks old was just pure luck until my daughter, who still wakes up 2-3 times a night to breastfeed. And I do worry about her not being able to settle back to sleep without me. Will she still be waking up like this when she’s 3? Should I be letting her cry it out (because I know sometimes she’s not hungry, she wants to cuddle)? Except she’s so loud she’ll wake up her brother if I let her cry, and then we’d have two kids to settle back to sleep and it’s just so much easier to just let her nurse for a few minutes. Most days I feel like I’m never going to be alone or sleep more than four hours at a stretch ever again.
We are living parallel lives, Leah. Everything you say is exactly what’s going on here, and damn, it’s exhausting, isn’t it? Even more than the sleep-deprivation, I’m emotionally exhausted by (1) being so depended on and (2) worrying that it’s going to be like this FOR-EV-ER (even though I know it won’t). I mean, this can’t go on indefinitely, can it?
Umm, yes. That is it over here too. The mantra I play over and over in my head is “this too shall pass..” and some day I am sure that I will miss being her universe. But right now? I just want to sleep.
My second little one is 10 months old and yeah, I am so that blanket. I went back to work after having my daughter so she had to learn how to do without mama (though she is still fairly mama focused). But after having my son, I have been staying home. No breaks, no date nights, hardly even a bathroom visit to myself. It’s tough, but I know (or rather cling to) it won’t be forever.