What Child is This?

I conceived my son on September 8, 2001 and gave birth to him 39 weeks and 2 days later. I had a textbook pregnancy, and there was nothing but nature and nurture between DS and I when we gazed at each other the first time. Becoming a parent was easy.

Becoming a Mommy was another matter entirely.

I grew up thinking I wouldn’t have children. I figured that between the baggage of my youth and my ‘not crazy, but you can see it from here’ mental state, I should steer clear of producing Tomorrow’s Leaders. I developed what I called my 12-carat/10 centimeter rule. The 12 carats referred to the size of the diamond a man would have to produce in order for me to consider having a child. Grace Kelly received a 12-carat engagement ring from Monaco’s Prince Rainier upon their engagement. She bore Rainier 3 children in exchange, but they were royalty. I took the Commoner’s Up-charge. One 12-carat diamond ring per baby. Payable up front, no refunds.

Ten centimeters is how far the cervix opens to allow the baby to pass through. That’s 4 inches. Pinch your index finger to your thumb, and that’s how the cervix looks normally. Now spread those 2 fingers as far apart as they’ll go. That’s 4 inches. This does not take into account that the average size of a newborn’s head is 13.5 inches in circumference, which is roughly the same size as a softball. “No person is worth stretching me to 10 centimeters,” I’d say. “Forget it.”

Then one night, X and I were talking about our most recent visit to see my aunt in a nearby suburb. Her house was a spectacle of entropy and noise, due in large part to my 4 cousins, all of whom were under 5. X and I had been having our own I Want a Baby-talk for over a year, but had never reached consensus or quorum. Starting a family was something to put on the To Do list: something to think about, but never something that made it to the top of the line. I paused, looking at X. Suddenly I was ready.

“Do you think we should try?” I asked him. He was quiet for a long time. “I want to,” he said.

That was September 8, 2001.

All the years I spent worrying about the labor and delivery were wasted on the pain-free experience I had. I didn’t even bother going to the birthing center until I was fully dilated (I did not know that at the time, but I do think it’s funny). DS was posterior (wrong position) and it was my first labor, so everything pointed to a long and complicated birth. No chance. It was intense, it wasn’t painful. DS breathed his first just a few minutes before 2am. The midwife cleaned out his nose and then laid him on my belly. I sat still, my eyes closed and my brain racing. It’s not real, I told myself. So long as I keep my eyes closed and don’t see him, this isn’t real.

Then he made a little noise and I opened my eyes. There he was, all small and wide-eyed, looking around and pushing against me. My arms cradled instinctively around him, and the room vanished. Somewhere nearby, X kissed me, but I barely remember it. This was the new man in my life. I couldn’t even make a meatloaf, and here, I’d made a person.

Over the next 24 hours, DS nursed when he felt like it, but was otherwise quiet. Wow, I thought. This is great. I had an easy conception and and easy birth. Now I have one of those Easy Babies.

As it turned out, though, DS was not Easy Baby. He was not even Typical Baby. He was the Advanced Calculus to my Beginner’s Algebra, and he taught me early and often that I was wholly unprepared to care for another person. I didn’t sleep through the night again for three and a half years. He nursed constantly, was incapable of being left alone, or even put down for a moment, and during one period, he woke up every hour, all night long, for 7 months. My life became an endless loop of diaper changes, movements confined to baby-in-arms and fitful sleep. I thought sometimes of the talks I’d planned to have with my Anointed Offspring and I scoffed at my own naiveté. Whoever said parenting was rewarding was an ass. Or a man who didn’t ever have to function on 45 minutes of sleep.

Nobody else seemed to have problems. My girlfriends with children talked about how they played with their children all day long, or how they had time to read and talk with their husbands in the evenings because their babies started sleeping through the night at 3 weeks old. I nursed DS to sleep, and sometimes he wouldn’t let go of me for hours. I’d be stuck in one position with teeny teeth carving marks into my flesh. I stared down at the angry creature in my arms, seething at me with a metal-filled mouth, and I wondered why I didn’t get one of those little fairy creatures that my girlfriends got? What child is this who hates me so?

I went back to work when DS was 2, entrusting him first with X and then later with a nanny. Back then, I didn’t have the Angel/Goddess who is his nanny now, and I sweated every day. Did he cry when she showed up because he knew I was about to leave, or because she was secretly boiling him in oil all day long? I would never know, because he didn’t talk, and couldn’t tell me.

At night when I came home, I gave my evenings over to him, but I wasn’t really present. I watched him stack blocks or bang on his keyboards, and I made all the appropriate, cheerful and supportive remarks, but I didn’t involve myself with him, or commit myself to playing along. I think I was waiting for him to tell me how to make him happy, and when he’d be big enough that I would get my life back. Certainly I had no ideas on what could work.

When he was still speechless at 3, I began the pilgrimage across the Developmental Delay desert. At the end, armed with a diagnosis, I found relief in the confirmation of my suspicions, but also fear and sadness, knowing that I could be parent to a child forever. He would never grow up. This job would never grow easier.

And then one day, I was sitting at my desk feeling sorry for myself that I had to go through all this crap to get DS this help, and wondering why it was so much harder for me to get my child what he needs. My mind replayed the months of solitary with him as companion, when neither of us knew what to say to the other, or how to behave. I thought about my wishes to home school him, and the utter futility of that hope, given his condition and my need to work full time (and then some). I wondered why I couldn’t make it work with X, or with the transition man who followed, and wondered if Howard would give up, too, seeing that parenting a special needs child was just too much work.

Somewhere in all that obscene self-pity, I realized that I had never accepted the fact that I was a Mommy, and that I had a son who needed me. Not just for his special needs, either, but as his Mommy. I’d given him years of my life and hours of my time, but I’d never fully handed over my heart to him, nor accepted his need for Someone to Watch Over Me.

I had an epiphany right there at my cubicle. I had given DS everything but what he really wanted from me--his Mommy. I'd been so busy taking care of him that I'd forgotten to take care with him. And so I gave up trying to be normal. I gave up hoping that DS would ever ‘recover’ and be a typical boy. I decided to focus on what he can do, and what joy he brings me (it’s a lot), to do what I had to do to get him what he needed, but to stop wishing that this cup would pass from me.

I expected the transition to take a long time, with many relapses with me slipping back into self-pity or blundering confusion over how to be with him, or how to take care of it. But instead, I went instantly to a state of peace and calm. I made my pronouncements, I committed to my son, and suddenly, I was okay.

I was okay with everything, including the fact that my life would probably never return or be ‘normal’. I wasn’t all that happy before, anyway. Working hard to retrieve those years makes about as much sense as trying to catch cancer. Besides, despite all the tough times behind us and all the challenges ahead, I have a beautiful little boy at home who loves me to his bones, and who needs me. He needs his Mommy. And I need him.

I went home early that night, leaving my laptop at my office. When I got to the house, he was there, playing on the floor with his trains. I got down to the floor and sat beside him, not even bothering to change out of my work clothes. I expected him to get territorial with his trains, as he often does. Trains are sacred territory to this child. So I prepared to sit silently, watching him. But I barely got my legs crossed before he scooted over toward me and leaned his head against me. “Hi, Mommy,” he said. “Wanna play trains?”

Yeah, honey. I sure do.

These last few weeks have transformed me and him and us. We are a twosome now, a dyad of love and understanding, and, thank the heavens, of acceptance.

Things are rarely as hard as we make them out to be. Parenting was hard because I made it hard. It’s still tough, but the challenge comes from the outside. The fight against reality that raged inside me for 4 years is gone. The frustration and anger I felt all this time is so foreign and distant, remembering it feels like recalling something that happened to someone else. I’ve never had to work harder to earn a title, and I’ve never felt more deserving of it, now that it’s mine.

What child is this? This child is mine.

A the M(ommy)