Mom material (and confessions of being an early stay-at-home mom)
I think it was about one month after J was born that I realized I wasn’t really mom material. J was born two months after I graduated from university, and I thought I was pretty qualified for the job. Four years of post-secondary education should be pretty helpful in raising another human, right? I was young, sure, but I had babysat other people’s little humans since I was twelve, so I knew how to entertain toddlers and feed and change babies. This wasn’t rocket science.
I knew I would be functioning on mere hours of sleep those first few months, so when J came, and I was up all hours of the night–not just for feedings but for my paranoid need to make sure he was still breathing–I was okay with it. I knew that part was coming. I had read books, and people had given me advice, and I slept when J slept and was awake when J was awake and I managed to function pretty well.
J and I also figured out the breastfeeding thing pretty well too (I would end up switching to a bottle at six months because J ate SO much that I started to lose a ton of weight–WAY too much weight). And though I definitely felt the push and pulls of the breastfeeding vs bottle feeding camps, in the end was okay with my decision to switch to formula. I felt better and got to a healthier weight, and J was just fine with the bottle. As long as he was fed he was happy.
Diapers, baby food, toys (I made sure to only get the toys that were identified as “essential for your baby’s development”) was my life for a year. Those first 12 months were a piece of cake. Raising J that first year really wasn’t rocket science.
Which was the problem. I wanted–needed rocket science.
I found out quickly–really quickly–that I didn’t love babies. I loved my baby, I just didn’t love babies. Cute and fun and baby dress up just wasn’t my gig. I know lots of moms love that part of raising babies, and I really wanted to love that part, but I was learning really quickly that I wasn’t a baby mom.
I sat on the carpet with J, face on the floor next to his and would talk my face off to this little four-week-old. He would wiggle and squirm and then after a few minutes fall asleep. He learned to roll over and I would lay next to him and talk his face off and move his body around to encourage him to roll again, and after a few minutes he’d get fussy and I’d play with him for a little longer until he fell asleep.
Baby talk exhausted me. Setting out toys in front of him so he could learn to reach and grab exhausted me. Interacting him in every way I could exhausted me. But I did it–I did it all. It sounds funny, because those things aren’t exhausting at all–which is exactly my point. The lack of the mental stimulation I needed was wearing me down.
I wanted to stay home with J–at least until he went to school, I just didn’t know if I could make it that long.
I read books–tons of books. I watched Martha Stewart Everyday Living faithfully every morning at 10:00 am. Martha helped me feel inspired and fed my need to cook and travel–100% escapism. I guess Martha was my social media outlet before social media was ever invented. Oprah was my 3:00 daily indulgence. I was always wanted to know what Oprah was reading and who she was talking to. Oprah seemed to be on this continual quest to learn more about something more she didn’t know about or see something from a different perspective. Books and Martha and Oprah were my lifeline for mental stimulation that first year. Sure, I had play dates with other moms and got out of the house plenty, but I needed more than conversations about diapers and feeding schedules and sleep routines throughout the day. Yes, I could have my adult conversation with Steve when he came home. It sounds like I was lonely, but really I wasn’t. I’m an introvert so I LOVE alone time–being by myself (with a book or a project) is the best! And that last part was the key–I was finding out I needed something more challenging to feel satisfied emotionally and mentally. I really, really, wanted to be a stay at home mom–I wanted to be there for all the little things J would learn, I wanted to make sure that he had everything he needed (yes, I can be a bit of a micro-manager). It just wasn’t working with the other needs I was having.
When J started showing signs of autism, when he stopped going through the normal development and changes, motherhood suddenly became rocket science–in fact, it was the type of mental gymnastics I needed. Yes, I was devastated that there might be something wrong with my baby. Yes, I was heartbroken that he might not be “normal.” Suddenly my motherhood experience changed. I wasn’t having the typical sleep schedule/feeding schedule/poop schedule mom conversations. I wasn’t part of those mom conversations any more because my baby wasn’t doing the other baby things the rest of the the babies were doing. J started going to playgroups with other toddlers who had developmental delays too. I was talking daily to therapists who gave me books and articles to take home and read about speech development, human development, and intervention strategies. I would look up articles online or have Steve bring home books from the University of Illinois and then Kansas on autism and the latest research on diets and play therapies and behavioural therapies. I spent hours, weekly, brain storming with therapists and teachers, other moms who were actively researching too. I researched strategies we could try with J based on teacher observations, my observations, and the research I was reading. Suddenly, I had that mental stimulation I was aching for again, just not in a way I ever imagined.
I’ve said this to a few friends and family members before: I’ve never felt like I’ve really been “mom material” but in retrospect, I think J’s autism was something that helped me be okay with those first years of motherhood. I know it sounds really strange. I’m not saying that our family was “meant” to have autism in our home. I hate it when people say that. I don’t believe we’re given things like disabilities or other life-changing challenges because we need them. It would be cruelly unfair to J if his only purpose in life was just to teach me or other people a lesson or to fulfill a need I had. I also think that if J never developed autism, if he were a “normal” baby, I probably would have gone back to work or found some other outlet to keep my brain doing the things it needed to do. But J’s autism let me be a mom that kept me involved in his daily life and get my brain active and involved at the same time which was exactly what I was desperate for.
My journey with motherhood hasn’t changed much since those early days. Seven books–that’s the total of books I’ve got checked out right now (on top of the online resources I use), for my writing projects and autism research and that’s pretty typical. I’ve got three books checked out under Steve’s name and the NDSU library system and four from the Fargo public library. Three of them have interlibrary loan slips stuffed between the pages. Three of them are children’s books. One is a collection of short stories. The ILL books are for my own writing project (plus one titled “Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills” for the autism stuff), the children’s books are on the holocaust–supplemental material to help J prepare for reading Night by Eli Wiesel for English class. The short story collection is for enjoyment. I love all of the things I get to learn by reading all of them. I’m a happy camper when my library card(s) are full.
The autism enigma is an overwhelming challenge, but almost always it’s something I’m ready to engage with. It keeps me learning new things about J, other people, myself, the world, the miracle our human bodies are.
It’s what makes me my type of mom material and keeps my brain happy.
