Wake up, mommy, you are dreaming

My daughter and I had a rather rocky start to our relationship, it was a recipe for disaster from day one, really. And that recipe went something like this:

Using one slightly chipped CorningWare dish, mix the following ingredients;

• 1x premature birth via emergency C-section
• 1x stint in NICU
• 1x new mom with a history of depression and anxiety
• 1x baby suffering from severe reflux that is burning her alive
• A liberal pinch of colic
• A generous measure of rampant hormones
• Finish it off with a heaped ladle of disappointment of a new mom with lots of plans, that have all been foiled

Bake for 8 days in an incubator and then sit back and enjoy as everything you hoped and dreamed for your new role as ‘Mom’ falls apart around you.

Again I was shown that the whole baby thing is no fantasy, dreams do not come true but nightmares might.

But, for now, I want to remember some of the good stuff, not just the bad.

I remember thinking when Izzy was eight months old; “Finally, I have got this. Thank the stars, I have figured it out… “. The bad feelings had mostly subsided, I was coming to grips with the reality of motherhood, not the myth that I had bought into and Izzy was no longer struggling so severely with her reflux thanks to medication and therapy. To which Izzy replied…

“Wake, up mommy, your dreaming.”

And so we both laughed and laughed and laughed. We wiped our eyes, got our breath back, gave our aching ribs a break and exchanged a look of a shared inside joke and then we laughed some more (not literally, more metaphorically, or at least in my head).

And so at this point, the cosmic wheel turned and just like that everything that I stupidly believed I had gotten a handle on disappeared. She started crawling, she grew teeth, she started standing, she grew more teeth, she started walking, she learned the word “NO”, she started running, she learned to put words together (“go away!”).

And just like that she went from blob but was pretty much under my control or at my mercy to a high-speed train wreck waiting to happen – a train wreck with teeth and an attitude.

My mom loves to remind, with a little too much pleasure and a little bit of revenge glinting in her eye, that her busy-ness is thanks to me, seems I too had ants in my pants as a child. And Izzy had a whole colony. Well as they say, “karma is a biatch.”.

By this point, I had begun to admit to myself and others, that I was actually enjoying her. She was still hard work and I sometimes felt like it was too much. Especially as I was now back with my other demanding children – ideas, clients and creatives, as I returned fulltime to my job in advertising.

But there were some wonderful shifts taking place in my relationship with motherhood and with Izzy. Izzy has seemingly also inherited my dorkiness. This characteristic is often her, and my, major saving grace, as just as it all seems too much and the feeling threatens to return because motherhood feels more like a prison sentence and less a gift does something dorky and I remember why I can do it.

Just some of her antics include laughing at her own jokes, making farts and burps louder than her father (like really loud, like look around at around the room for the intruder loud), finding the weirdest stuff amusing, hugging my dachshund like Elmyra from Tiny Toons till it looks like his head might pop off, whilst saying “Thor you are so coot.”, doing bollymakissies (roly-polies) all over the show, shouting boo at any moment, proclaiming herself a superhero, diving headfirst onto the couch and shouting boom, singing happy birthday to me at least three times every morning and evening, standing in the bath and shooting a stream of pee into the water whilst squealing “yeuck” with unmistakable pride, when she says “bless you” every single time I sneeze, cough, burp or fart and channelling Mick Jagger as she breaks into an arrhythmic, whole body exploding dance whenever and wherever the urge grabs her.

And while this all makes her is an adorable little clown, she is still often a massive pain in the arse. Because motherhood is never all good or all bad. It’s a Ferris Wheel that keeps on turning – sometimes up to the sky and sometimes down to the ground. So, hang on and eventually, things will start looking up, but don’t get too comfortable because as soon as you start enjoying the ride, it will take a turn for the worse.

This has been evident throughout the last year and a half, in a range of activities. She went through a stage of absolute determination to electrocute herself by trying to shove her fingers into the plug points, thankfully plug protectors are cheap and her attention span is short. Soon she was onto the next thing.

A few persistent habits my darling dearest child refuses to give up on have to do with the most seemingly innocuous and inane things, like getting dressed, eating and sitting in a car seat.

She has had a love and hate relationship with food, from her reflux that made drinking her milk a hit or miss experience to her introduction to solids and her tactful communication of her displeasure by kung-fu-ing the spoon with Mantis-like precision sending her pureed hake, sweet potato and cheese (home-made mind you) flying in all directions (thank goodness for washable paint and tiled floors). She has long since stopped slapping the spoon away and is able to quite proficiently feed herself.

But depending on the day of the week and the phase of the moon, she may or may not choose to eat, or she will inhale one meal on Monday only to shove the plate away, like a displeased food critic in a Michelin star restaurant, whilst forcefully shouting, “No way, no way, no way”, until the plate is removed. Many a speckled egg has been promised as a sacrifice in order to get her to eat just three more bites.

She goes through phases of seeing her car seat and or pram as a torture chamber designed to trap her forever. There has often been a mini-war waged both just inside and just outside my car. The weapons on her frontline start with going limp, then unexpectedly going rigid and pinwheeling with her all four limbs and lastly screaming with such crazed fury, many a security guard has approached to determine if I am in the process of murdering her.

My weapons are less impressive and often less effective – I usually end up shouting at her and threatening some sort of repercussion to her person. The one weapon I have at my disposal that is often the destroyer of all skirmishes is I am just as, if not more, mule-headed than my daughter, thus I do not capitulate easily or quickly. I wear her down through sheer dogged persistence and stubbornness.

My war cry of victory is often Rag & Bones Man “I am only human” which I belt out as loud as I can to drown out the whining emanating from the loser’s quarter.

Lastly, I have saved the best for last. She hates being changed, always has (both nappy and clothes changes – hates it) and her retribution is cruel and vicious. I am 5 foot 6-ish and not small in the bust department (and post pregnancy my boobs have decided to migrate a little south). As luck would have it when she is on her compactum she is exactly the right height, that when she protests her abuse she is able to kick me straight in the boobs. And I am not referring to one or two swats with her tiny little feet, it is a volley of kicks as if they were twin punching bags. It’s super cute. Insert sigh of love here.

Whenever motherhood started to feel more like a prison sentence and less a gift, she would do something so incredibly dorky, but cute, and you all of a sudden you remember why you can do it.

Hilariously, despite all of this, I still desperately cling to the belief that raising a child will be like the fairytale that many books, movies, and Facebook show it to be.

One particular trip to the zoo stands out in my mind. I had this vision of us (7-month-old Izzy, my husband and I) skipping around the zoo while Izzy happily sits in her pram cooing over the animals, rounding off a wonderful day up with a picnic on the grass.

When Izzy was just over seven months old, we went to the zoo. I had this vision of us skipping around the zoo while Izzy happily sits in her pram cooing over the animals, rounding off a wonderful day with a picnic on the grass.

“Wake up, mommy, you dreaming.” She whispers in a creepy voice (again in my head, not in reality).

Unbeknownst to us, the same day we decided to plan an idyllic family outing, Izzy had different plans. Her plan involved a tooth cutting through her bottom gum. Which understandably caused a great deal of pain and grouchiness. One of her protest actions was to refuse sleep – so from 5 am to 1 pm sleep was a fanciful notion.

Her other form of protest was physical torture. Izzy decided she would be carried, the pram would remain empty for the entire duration of our time at the zoo, apart from intermittently carrying a stuffed bunny and a nappy bag. So between my husband and I, we carried our squirming and jabbering 8.5kg treasure up and down the hill from enclosure to enclosure for four hours.

To our credit, many others (those who have half a brain cell) would have given up and gone home, not us, we were determined to have the idyllic family outing that we had planned. No amount of screaming (her) sweating (us), arm aching (us) or hair pulling (both) was going to deter us.

Eventually, we left at 1 pm after having been there since 9 am, we high-fived as we got into the car and congratulated ourselves on our success. What fun, a day at the zoo! Never would you hear us say out loud anything to the contrary, that actually we would rather have spent our precious Sunday driving spikes under our fingernails.

I have so many examples to choose from where I have deluded myself into thinking this fantasy world exists.

Another good one, was when she was 6 weeks old, I decided to sign up for baby massage and baby gym. I had always planned (currently ROFLMAO) ongoing.

According to multiple sources, baby massage has numerous benefits from aiding digestion, improved circulation, assists in balance between ‘high’ and ‘low’ muscle tone, peaceful sleep, reduces stress in both mother and baby, supports the development of the nervous system, enhances self-awareness and coordination and has been shown to stimulate oxytocin (the ‘feel good’ hormone) for both parties involved.

Of course, this is all predicated on the basis that one might actually be able to conduct said massage, on said baby.

I had a vision of this class of moms all sitting around bonding with their babies, sharing loving tales of cuteness and drinking cups of tea. These moms and I as well as our adorable brood would grow to become best of friends.

Izzy, as usual, had other plans. “Wake up, mommy, your dreaming.”

In the 4 weeks of baby massage and subsequent 6 weeks of BabyGym, so a total of 10 classes, I probably managed to fully participate in 3. Baby massage for Izzy and I entailed bouncing on a Pilates ball (the story of my hatred of these balls will have to wait for another post) while she screamed, watching the other moms’ enjoy QT with their babas. The tea and biscuits at the end were awesome though because either Izzy had fallen asleep in my arms or Joanne, the lovely lady who ran the class would take Izzy away and bounce on the ball as a surrogate for me so I could enjoy my tea and EET-SUM-MOR in peace and quiet.

The worst part, even worse than bouncing on the damn ball, was watching the other babies in the class lie peacefully and enjoy the time spent interacting with their mommies. Did I really just pay hard earned cash to watch other moms and their precious little angels bond? Further highlighting how far from that Izzy and I were.

That being said, I still highly recommend these types of activities as at worst they act as a support group for you when times are tough.

Also just because your child has other plans, doesn’t mean you have to abandon all hope. Despite the weekly horror show of baby massage classes, followed by baby gym classes, when they came to an end, I immediately signed up or a baby group – named Moms & Babes – and prolonged my weekly torture for another six months. Maybe I am just a sucker for punishment.

Except that as time went on the classes were less torture and more fun. Izzy changed and I guess I did too, and as we grew some of the things that were awful, to begin with, became dare I say pleasant.

Again I was shown that the whole baby thing is no fantasy, dreams do not come true but nightmares might. Nonetheless, you can’t hold your breath waiting for those fairy tale moments (chances are you’ll pass out long before), the only way to survive is to find the funny in everything, see and celebrate the small wins and, lastly, accept that your tiny tot has their own plans, regardless of whatever you have dreamt up for them.