Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary (8 page)

L
ily may be our first child, but she can’t claim the title of being our first baby. That goes to the one and only Penelope, that puppy we brought home upon returning from our honeymoon.

For the four years before the kids came into our lives, every single thing revolved around Penelope. We cut short vacations to be able to come home early to her and got up at the crack of dawn to take her outside. I spent every lunch hour battling traffic just to get home to walk her, because the thought of her being caged up for eight hours was simply too much for me to bear. Her days started out with an hour-long romp at the dog park and they ended with an hour-long walk along the gorgeous streets of Georgetown. In between was filled with games of catch, treats, and doggie cupcakes. Seriously, if I’m ever reincarnated, I hope to come back as the dog of a childless couple in their twenties. That was the freaking life.

Weeks before I delivered Lily, when my hormones were at an all-time high, I remember spooning Penelope on the floor, taking in the freshly bathed scent of her fur. “You’ll always be my baby,” I sniffed. “I promise, nothing will ever change that.”

That was, perhaps, the biggest lie of my life. Since then,
everything
for Penelope has changed.

Now Penelope is still a very well-loved dog, but the pecking
order in the family has altered with every baby that enters the household. Her once soft and shiny fur now boasts an odd scent of popcorn and dirt, and I can’t remember the last time I actually brushed her. We now take her on walks out of necessity rather than joy, and she hasn’t actually played in years. Her leash is coming apart at the seams, and she’s lucky if I remember to fill her bowl without being reminded. If I’m ever reincarnated, the
last
thing I want to come back as is the family dog in a household of three young children.

I recall feeling similarly when I was pregnant with Ben. Despite my immediate feelings of ambivalence toward Lily, I had fallen deeply in love with her and she was the center of my universe. Like any first-time mother, I kept track of each and every one of her milestones, celebrating even the most minor events and agonizing over any slight delays. I frequently called the pediatrician’s office just to make sure things were normal, and her baby book was updated weekly. During the day, we played and shopped and took classes and had full-blown photo sessions, the results of which I sent to Jeff at work, daily. She was, like any other only child, spoiled rotten with love and affection.

The last month of my pregnancy with baby number two was spent overcompensating for the fact that Lily’s days as she knew them were numbered. I wondered how on earth I would possibly love another child like I loved the one I had. I knew, of course, that I was
capable
of loving another one, but exactly how much? Lily was always going to be more than a thousand days older than her brother—wasn’t it, logically speaking, inevitable that I would love her a thousand times more? I simply couldn’t grasp that it
wouldn’t
work like that.

Upon Ben’s birth, I realized that there is no shortage of the
love a mother has to offer her children. There is a never-ending supply of love, pride, and affection, and each child will no doubt receive his equal share. Thankfully, it’s just the way we are built. There is, however, something that each child
doesn’t
get the same amount of, and that is called attention.

Considering I now had two children, it made logical sense that Ben would get half as much attention as Lily. But, of course, as I was learning, motherhood knows no logic. The allocation of attention seemed more like 75 percent for Lily and 25 percent for Ben. But he never seemed to mind. He was happy as could be and totally content to just go along for the ride, another spectator in the Great Lily Show. I didn’t worry about his milestones like I did with his sister. I knew he would walk and talk when he was ready, and eventually, I was proven right. Instead of a baby book, I got him a monogrammed box where I tossed every keepsake, vowing someday to do more with them. Being as relaxed as I was, I could really enjoy the early days with him, savoring his tiny little feet and intoxicating new-baby smell. I relished the peaceful moments of his tiny body sleeping contentedly and studied his little toes and skin folds, knowing they’d soon not be so very clean and delicious. I inhaled the smell of his neck and tried to memorize his fingers. I loved every minute I stole from his sister.

When Evan was born, I took a little attention from both Lily
and
Ben, providing him with approximately 10 percent of what his siblings got. He exclusively wore hand-me-downs and his stroller and infant carrier had never really been cleaned up from Ben’s use, two years prior. I would have been appalled had someone suggested used equipment for Lily, but this round, far more appalling was the thought of buying new merchandise. He had
no baby book and I couldn’t tell you what his first foods were or when he took his first steps. With Lily, I didn’t leave the house with her for weeks, afraid of the germs and the dirt the general public would share with her. Evan made his debut after a matter of days. I just couldn’t wait to get out of the house, and he joined me. Guess what? He lived.

For the first two years of his life, the poor boy never owned a new toy. In fact, for his first birthday, I simply replaced all of the batteries in the toys he’d been playing with his entire life and it was like I had infused the house with magic. The toys actually lit up? And sang? And moved? He was spellbound. It was absolutely pathetic. To this day, he remains the easiest to please of my children, literally jumping for joy over matching pajamas.

There certainly are pros and cons to being the first, the middle, and the last of my children, and their personalities have been shaped, in no small part, by the kind of mother I was to them. Lily gets distraught when her smallest achievements aren’t applauded and her creations aren’t immediately hung for display, clearly a result of my early enthusiasm and encouragement. Ben tends to roll with the punches, much like he did as an easy-to-please little infant. And Evan is very much a last child, constantly performing and clowning around, desperate to get some attention of his very own. But they’re all well loved and well cared for and that’s what really matters at the end of the day.

Well, except for Penelope. She
really
does need that bath.

N
o matter how well groomed and well coiffed a woman might be before she has children, she transforms into something entirely different as soon as she becomes a mother. Something resourceful. Something impressive. Something . . . disgusting. Motherhood just has a way of stripping away all the girly glamour we try so hard to exude and reverts us back to how I imagine our cavewoman ancestors lived—mud on the face, raccoons for lunch, urine for hydration.

It’s part of what bonds us, I think—the grossness.

Mothers think nothing of using saliva to clean our little ones’ faces or openly smelling their bottoms to determine whether they’ve indeed defecated. If our kids swallow a penny, we will weed through their poop to ensure the coin has actually come out the other end, and we will catch vomit with our bare hands if necessary. We pluck off cradle cap from their tiny heads and find deep satisfaction in extracting a dried booger from their noses. Some moms, me included, find it safer to just bite the fingernails of their newborns rather than use scissors, terrified of accidentally cutting their tiny fingers. It’s gross, sure, but we have to do it . . . who the hell else would?

I’m a bit of a contradiction where the nasty stuff is concerned. Despite not thinking twice about wiping a wet nose with my bare hands or being kissed on the mouth by a drooly toddler, I just won’t do certain things. Drinking after my children, for instance. If Evan and I were on a desert, alone, and the only thing to quench my thirst for miles was a water bottle of which he’d consumed half, I’d rather die of dehydration than sip from that nasty-ass bottle. The child has given me a new appreciation for the word “backwash.” I swear, half of what he’s consumed for the
day comes back up and floats around in his beverage in the form of tiny white flecks. It’s revolting.

I know of many moms who habitually finish the food that their kids leave on their plates. Now, I certainly understand why some moms do the occasional grazing on food left on their kids’ plates, but I’ve seen what my kids do to their dinners, and it’s the most unappetizing thing in the world. They lick things and sneeze on things and mush them up and push them around, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be snacking on that shit. Even if I
am
actually hungry.

Another thing I would never dream of eating? My placenta.
Of course,
you’re thinking, right? I mean, who in her right mind would dream of eating such nastiness? But people do. It’s, like, a thing. Women do everything from encapsulating their placentas into vitamins (I wouldn’t do it, but at least it doesn’t make me dry heave) to mixing them into smoothies (berry surprise, anyone?) to actually chomping on them raw (OMG, hold me; I may never eat red meat again).

I was disgusted enough when the nurse asked me whether I wanted to take the thing home and bury it, but
eat
it? Raw, even? Apparently, it’s supposed to help minimize bleeding and depression, in a holistic, crunchy (and unproven) way. For me, I don’t think there are many things more depressing than eating an organ that helped in waste elimination and gas exchange for nine months of my life, even if it did also feed my unborn child. If I had to bleed a little more because my placenta ended up in the biohazard box, so be it. I have no doubt that that’s where mine belonged.

And despite my enthusiasm for protecting and preserving our environment, you won’t find me washing out my reusable
maxi pad or laundering cloth diapers. Is it horrible to admit that I might be willing to shave a few hundred years off of Earth’s life just to add a few moments of sanity to mine?

Now excuse me while I go dig out some ear wax from my son’s ear.

That’s
the kind of gross I can handle.