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Baby Love

CMP72 asked what I thought about Baby Love, by Rebecca Walker (over to the right, in the extra-outdated category called “I’m reading,” which I created and then forgot all about.) It’s been a few months since I read it, but it’s still haunting me, so I’m glad she asked.

I like Rebecca Walker, and have for a long time. She was a sort of 3rd-wave feminist icon for me - someone only a few years older, with a famous feminist mom and knack for boiling down complicated issues into something a little simpler - but not over-simplified - and very much real in the day-to-day, rather than theoretical, sense.

Baby Love is about her experience in getting and being pregnant and becoming a mom. She has already experienced parenting in her previous relationship with a woman whose son was young (maybe 6?) when they got together. She played an active role in his life and has continued to do so even after her relationship with his mother ended. The mutual love and respect between Rebecca and her stepson is obvious.

But growing her own child is a different experience for her, and that takes up a lot of the focus of the book. She had me in her internal debates about how to be a feminist mom and how to be a feminist partner. She had me with her slow discovery that she was able to love another human so much more fiercely than she had ever known before - even before she actually met her baby.

Where she lost me was when she said (I’m paraphrasing): I don’t care what anyone tells you. You cannot love any child as much as you love the one you give birth to.

As an adoptive parent, I spit nails when I read this. I’ve never given birth to a baby, and I’ve never been a step-parent or a foster parent or anything similar. But like me, she’s only ever experienced parenting from one perspective. Despite this, Rebecca, who generally seems so careful not to presume that her experiences are shared by all, suddenly seemed empowered by her pregnancy to make an enormous sweeping statement about how is for all parents.

Remember that scene in the beginning of The Royal Tenenbaums, where they show the kids’ childhood? The dad insists on introducing his daughter as his “adopted daughter” every single time.  I thought of that scene immediately when I read what Rebecca Walker had to say about this.

I could rant and rave about this in a way that probably would be absolutely scintillating for you to read, but instead I will only say this: I can’t believe when I look at my son that he didn’t come out of my own body. I mean no disrespect to his first family by this, and it’s not that I ever forget their presence or their role in his life. It’s just that for love or money I cannot imagine being any more bonded to this kid.

Parents of any stripe or parents-to-be: what do you think?

I’d sell my soul…

… to sleep through the night. It was so good for a while, and now it’s just so bad.

 Has anyone used the No-Cry Sleep Solution? Any other books you’d recommend for the Dr. Sears set?

Seriously. At this rate I might not have any more children. Too tired.

Today

Happy first birthday, baby love.

How did I get so lucky as to be your Mom?

Sap

How much of a cheeseball does this make me?

When my co-worker asked me if we had started planning Roo’s birthday part (for a birthday still 6 weeks away), I competely choked up.

Oh, that beautiful boy. He kills me.

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Let me give you some advice

I quit posting about sleeping issues a while back because I was starting even to bore myself, but the issues are on-going.

We’re in a particularly bad phase right now involving moving him into his own room and trying really hard to get him to learn to soothe himself. Worth it and also incredibly painful.

Since I haven’t been able to shut up about this in real life the way I’ve managed to here, the unsolicited advice has been pouring in.

If one more person tells us what we should do, what worked for their kid who is nothing like ours, what fit perfectly for their parenting style which is totally unrelated to ours, I just might scream.

This has been hard. For the most part, I think NSG and I have been pretty good about letting other people’s judgement about our parenting style roll off. The judgements that flies about parenting decisions are just stunning (I’m guilty of this too, of course). I think I’m having a harder time shaking it off this time because most of the things we’ve done as parents - so far - have worked for all three of us. With less success around sleep issues, my confidence is down and the assvice is just getting to me.

In the past 48 hours, we’ve been told to: let him cry it out, let him cry for a while - but not too long!, move his bed into our room, go back to co-sleeping, feed him right before bed, don’t feed him before bed, put sweet potato in his bottle at night, sleep in his room with him, sleep in our own room, use a white noise machine, swaddle him, and don’t swaddle him.

Enough!

And the worst part about this is that when you don’t sleep, everything’s harder. I stubbed my toe yesterday morning and it was like the end of the freakin’ world.

Sigh.

In the scheme of things, this is not so big. It just makes me want to stomp my feet and be kind of petulant once in a while  - lucky you this is usually where I do it, since you, unlike the people in my physical world, can’t smack me. The only advice I’ve hear that’s been at all helpful was from my co-worker, who keeps saying: This too shall pass.

My new mantra.

P*nis down

My new post, P*nis down, is up at LesbianFamilyDOTorg:

When we were just talking about having babies, talking about transracial adoption, several people asked me about raising boys without a dad - what were we going to do, they asked, about making sure our son had plenty of male role models? One of the people who asked me this question was a white woman with a white husband who lived in an almost entirely white neighborhood and had almost exclusively white friends.

Huh.

Beautiful boy

Six months today since my son has been on this planet as a human being in his own right.

Last night we went to hear Kris Delmhorst. It was Roo’s second time hearing her - we’re getting him started on good music early - and he was a champ. He sat in my lap and listened intently for a while and then fell asleep on NSG’s lap.

 Dinner was great, the music was great, it was just one of those nights when we all couldn’t get enough of each other.

When Roo was brand spanking new, our friend V. pronounced him “a really nice person.” It made me laugh, but I knew what she meant. It is funny to say such a thing about a being so new, but as I’ve learned more and more about how to be a parent to this lovely little boy what she said stuck with me.

What a pleasure it is to parent him (even on the days when it isn’t), what confidence I have that he will be - that he already is - a nice person, a mensch, someone who will do good by being in this world.

Last night at dinner I looked at him in his high chair, intently stuffing his white bunny into his mouth and charming the waitress, and I thought:

That is an utterly perfect being.

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