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Time for a road trip (and a guilt trip)…

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This weekend is going to be a challenge for the Guilty Mom… Will and I got tickets to see Phish in Raleigh on Friday. Way back when we put in for the ticket lottery, it seemed sooo far away on the calendar, and I thought, “we’ll have a 5-month-old then, surely we’ll be just fine leaving him for a few hours.” And then we got our tickets! It’s exciting because it’s been a few years since we’ve seen Phish, and it’s something that’s been a pretty big part of our lives as a couple, and for us as individuals for many years before we ever met.

So we made plans to drive to Will’s parents house in Burlington. They’re out of town, but my mom will drive down from Va. to watch baby J while we make the trip to Raleigh, see the show, and drive back to B-town afterward.  I didn’t really do the math on the drive time, show time, etc. until a couple of days ago and that’s when the anxiety and guilt started to set in…

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Advice for new parents… with disclaimers

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I always thought some of the things people say to expecting or new parents are pretty hilarious. “Your life is about to change!” (No shit.) “You’ll never love anyone as much as you’ll love your baby!” (Well, duh.) And one of my favorites: “Oh man, you have NO idea.” (Um, obviously, since I haven’t done this before.) And is that even advice, really? Or is that just your passive-aggressive way of making me feel even more clueless and inferior?

But really, I get that *most* of what people say comes from a good, well-meaning place from parents who have been there, done that. And I did seek and receive some very valuable advice, mostly from friends with babies and younger kids who actually remember what it’s like to bring home a brand new person. If your kid is older than 5, then you might want to skip out on giving advice to people about pregnancy, childbirth and the early days of child rearing. Instead, take some notes on how to cope with the toddler years (3 is the new 2!) and how exciting/awful the first day of kindergarten is, and send it to your friends along with a bottle of wine once their kid approaches those stages.

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6 things I do now that I have a baby

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Okay new parents. Do y’all ever find yourselves doing things that you would never in a million years do if it weren’t for spending so much time with the little tiny human that depends on you for its every need? I’m not talking about giving up sleep, or showering or your social life. Those are a given. I mean, little weird behaviors that become second nature and you don’t even realize how often you do them, until you do them when the baby’s not even there. Like…

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Breastfeeding is so easy! (Is not something you’ll ever hear me say)

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Last week was World Breastfeeding Week – At least I think it was last week, it might be this week, or it could have been last month. I’m never really quite sure what day it is anymore… Anyway, What a fantastic week to have, to promote and celebrate breastfeeding across the world; to help normalize it in all countries so that mothers might not be gawked at or shamed if they dare to attempt to breastfeed in a restaurant or airport or mall or other public place. Actually, I’m pretty sure America is one of the few places have to worry about the gawking and shame thing. But, hey. Breastfeed your babies! It’s the best thing for them! If you don’t breastfeed, your baby might end up like this guy!

And breastfeeding is soooo easy, right? You see photos of beautiful celebrities and models like Gisele Bundchen breastfeeding while in the middle of getting ready for a photo shoot, and the videos you watch in childbirth class of boringly real people make it look totally normal and natural. Even the creepy animated video that shows what happens to your nipple when your baby properly latches make it seem perfectly logical – like showing you how it’s supposed to look will completely ensure that your baby will hone in on your nipple right away and start sucking. Ha.

For me, and for many mamas I know, it just ain’t that easy. Once little J finally got his alien-shaped oblong head through me and the rest of his body followed, he was immediately put on my chest, as is the ideal situation right after birth. But he wasn’t there long, as they whisked him over to the baby warmer for a little jump start. (More on that later when I post my birth story.) Once he was crying to the satisfaction and relief of everyone in the room, I had him back on my chest and my boobs were there for the taking, and he just didn’t. He cried for a really, really long time, and wanted nothing to do with the nipple. By the time we got to the Mother & Baby floor, still no suckling had happened. I was discouraged and confused and hurt and worried.

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Read to your newborn or their brain will shrink!

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Long before my son was born, and even before I became pregnant, I knew reading would be an important part of my child’s early years. My mom read to me early and often, and I credit that as one of the reasons why I had such a love of books, that grew into a passion for writing (remember me, the book nerd?). I wanted to pass on that passion to my child, so there was no question that we’d read stories every night from the time he or she was tiny to the time when he or she started reading to me. And then my child would write a best seller by age 20 and make millions from the movie adaptation, and we’d be set for life.

Lately, there’s been a lot of news about scientific evidence showing how awesome it is to read to your children (YAY! Go mom for doing that for me even before the “experts” said it was good!). But for it to really work, you have to start reading to them when they are tiny little babies. One NPR story I recently heard about it actually used the words “from birth” to describe when you should start reading to them. I’ll come back to that later.

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The Guilt List

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So originally, I had the idea that writing a list of all of the things I feel guilty about as a mom might be a good cathartic exercise that would help me recognize, and move past, some of these feelings. Here is the list I came up with. Some are contradictory, some complementary, and all of them have washed over me at some point over the last 5 months. Some have been fleeting and some have been more consuming.. So, as a mom, I feel guilty about:

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Welcome to the Guilty Mom Blog!

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Hey mamas! And other readers. Though if you’re not a mom, you might find this blog incredibly boring, seriously offensive and quite un-funny. If you ARE a mom, congratulations! I’d like to apologize in advance for bringing you yet another mommy blog written by a white, middle-class, first-time mom. Ugh. How typical. Well, if you’ve made it this far, I might as well keep going…

I have always used writing as an outlet, or at least since I was about 10. Before that, I was a huge reader. I remember in third grade, we’d have to bring in a book to read after lunch or something. It was probably the teacher’s favorite 30 minutes of the day, when she didn’t have to talk and nobody else was allowed to. Everyone would have to hold up the book that they brought to read. I always had a giant plastic grocery bag full. Oh my god, what a freakin nerd. Anyway, my dad died when I was 10, and that’s probably what originally drove me to start writing. And I just sort of never stopped. At one point – mostly in high school – I had no problem sharing what I wrote with others, even things about my deepest, darkest, sappiest emotions (because those feelings mattered!!!). I thank the sweet little baby Jesus that social media and the internet did not exist when I was that age, or the poems I wrote about catching fireflies in my dreams and blah blah blah would be preserved forever.

Well then, that was a digression… fast forward a couple of decades later, and here I am with a job where I actually get paid to write. Y’all, I get paid to TRAVEL AND WRITE. Being a travel writer was literally my dream job when I entered college, and I got lucky enough to land a career in some form of that. Well; lucky, and I worked my ass off (and continue to do so). So that’s awesome, I get to write and travel for my job, but doing so has pretty much extinguished the whole “writing as an emotional/creative outlet” novelty. Mostly because I don’t want to look at a computer by the time I get home (Facebook on my phone doesn’t count) and pretty much the only thing my brain can do is comprehend which characters are enemies, which are related, and who’s banging who on Game of Thrones.

So, now that I am working full time and have a five-month-old son and have a TON of time on my hands, I figured I’d dabble in the blog world again. Mostly because I’m an insane over-thinker and all of the over-thinking I’m doing while trying to keep this tiny human alive has to get out of my brain somehow, but also because I’m genuinely inspired by other mamas in my life, especially a group of us here in Asheville who all have babies around the same age. We mostly all met in pre-natal yoga class, and we did pregnant stuff together, and now we do baby stuff together – which primarily consists of virtual conversations in our Facebook group about sleeping and puking and pooping and birth control and where did our brains go? Is this real life?!?!?!

A major topic that comes up often is mom guilt. I know, the articles say don’t feel guilty! Here’s why you shouldn’t feel guilty! But every single one of us who has expelled a baby from our bodies in one way or another knows that simply “not feeling guilty” is not really an option at this point. Maybe it gets better as they get older, or maybe it gets better with kid #2. Or maybe it just changes into different kinds of guilt. Whatever it is, I want to, NEED to, put it all on the table in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to let a little bit of it go every now and then. And maybe by reading this, you can too! Or we can all just find new things to feel guilty about together.

This is my first post, and I could keep going. I have so many ideas. I have ALL OF THE IDEAS. But I also need the sleep.  While you’re here, check out my About page.