What Are We if Not Mothers in Training?

It's a set up!

October 7th, a few hours after delivering my second baby.

As a girl I didn't think much about babies. My sister and I shared a room until I was about twelve. Our room was roomy thanks to our bunkbed that took up minimal space. We had trunks of toys that consisted of primarily barbies and Sanrio characters and plush animals. My barbie collection grew slowly over time until it was complete with a three-story house, a sports car, a closet full of different outfits, and a Ken doll. Barbie had it all, right? I felt the need to make her complete. I didn't know why. As a girl I couldn't pick up on the context of what this was all to mean.

Amongst my trunks of toys lived a "water baby," a trendy doll in the '90s. A water baby was supposed to imitate a life-like baby. The concept is you'd fill it up with water so it could give the toy real squishy baby vibes. Since the doll was filled with water, it could also cry and wet its diaper. I did not use this toy in the way I think it was meant to be used, which I guess was to coddle it and say silly little words to it and take it everywhere as if it were a purse. After a while I stopped maintaining the baby altogether - I stopped holding it and dressing it until it ultimately became clothe-less and diaper-less. It would live naked in one of our toy trunks as I'd moved on with my life, likely playing with other toys that didn't require mothering. Then, it started becoming useful as something different. I'd use it to hit my sister whenever we got into an argument. We'd use toys as tools for sibling savagery, and I discovered the water baby was very useful for this. It would explode water upon contact. Handy!

Squishy baby vibes are what I imagine draws people to want to hold them so much. In my girlhood I saw many mothers mothering their babies. They'd be my moms' friends or coworkers or distant cousins. We'd visit them in different variations of setting: their homes, a restaurant, or sometimes even their place of work where they'd bring the baby in just for people to hold them. The mood was always light. I'd found myself growing curious at this mantra, an elusive ritual that I was unable to connect with. Passing around a baby as if it were a relic. One thing I knew for sure, people love to hold babies. Each baby holder stared at it, violating its personal space, even giving it kisses on its neck. Another holder would fidget with its clothing, tugging its sleeve or fixing its bow. There'd be hand-holding and even smelling of its bottom to see if its diaper had soiled. Poor baby, I'd think to myself, what a god damn violation.

During the baby passing ritual, the one where a postpartum woman passes her baby around like a bag of Doritos, was a certain kind of banter - the group of women would engage in talk of body changes and deep longing for a break from the baby, either a night of rest or a night out of the house.

This was at a time I was fully immersed in my girlhood, just having perfected my cartwheel and spelling my name in cursive. I couldn't possibly have had the wherewithal to see it then, that at some point in my future, I would be expected to pass my future little baby around like a bag of Doritos.

But you see, as I put this all together now, the girlhood memories consisting of water babies and witnessing real babies being passed around was a sense of Motherhood in training. But what's worse is that it was training with absolutely no context at all, and even worse than that, feeling like the training gave me absolutely no choice in the matter of having children of my own. As women I guess that's what happens - we are destined for things without even being given a chance to consider whether we want them or not. So as I sit here writing this, my second baby sleeps in my arms, and my first baby plays at my feet with his choo-choo train. In other words, I am involuntarily participating in the inequality of sexual politics because of my body and its capacity to produce children.

My sex, by default, makes me a frivolous little thing. I must worry about my weight, about the level of coverage my foundation gives me, about the aesthetics of my gift wrapping. My sex automatically deems me a bad driver and incapable of programming the new TV in the family room. But what pisses me off the most about this is that it's true - I am a bad driver and I can't program the new TV in the family room and I do worry about my weight. What pisses me off more is at the same time, this world, so far, has been of my choosing. A world of my own voluntary oppression. The strain of womanhood has been embedded in me since I was handed that water baby and its corresponding bottle. Said differently, I was never set up to be a good driver in the first place as I was to know how to hold a baby and give it a bottle.

Pain is something that's been embedded in me since girlhood. A practice of tolerance: I remember my first period, I remember my first wax, I remember the agony of miscarrying on my bathroom floor, and the agony of having to push out a full-term baby, twice. The way no one prepares you for any of those things, since pain, if you're a woman, is something we've all conformed to a long time ago.

A woman's well-being depends on her level of pain tolerance. I remember a time in high school, my boyfriend and I got our wisdom teeth removed around the same time. My dentist opted against putting me to sleep, saying it would be much easier and faster to numb me in my mouth and remain awake. I complied. So, on the day of, I had two nurses on either side of me to hold my head down while my dentist and his pliers used all their might to remove my four wisdom teeth, one by one. Tugging and tugging and tugging. My boyfriends' dentist, however, never even gave him that option and went ahead a coordinated with an anesthesiologist so that the removal could be done while he was asleep.

Having always lived in a world of feelings, I realize how impractical I can be. Sometimes I can be incapable of separating emotion from fact, dealing with the hand I am dealt, understanding that my sex comes with a lot of societal complications much bigger than myself. Like, I could just get by knowing all this, looking forward to brief respites every now and then. With children, respites are rare, but when they happen they are so worthwhile.

With that said, my second baby has me in a prolific state. He is always in my arms. And when he is not, there is a void in the air that tracks me down until I recover him from his bassinet and affix him to my chest. He makes me feel rich with meaning. Looking at him lifts me out of my silly sour moods. When we make eye contact, I can't help but put on a big silly smile and say silly non-words over and over. Even though he's my second, this is a new feeling for me. With my first, I was exhausted, shocked, crippled with anxiety at this new transition, almost rejecting any sense of matrescence. It was a time of conflict; motherhood did not wear me like a glove but more like a weighted blanket of fear. It was not an easy adjustment.

This time the newborn stage is softer. I am fully absorbed in it. I wear it. It does not wear me. My matrescence and I, for the most part, have found a slight sense of balance (of course, this being subject to change at any given moment). I have adjusted to my "career" as a mother. How said career will bring wins and losses, love and hatred, feelings of emptiness and yearning, peace and wholeness. After all, my journey into motherhood was determined by forces greater than myself. Motherhood wears me, and maybe it's been wearing me since I was a girl. What are we if not mothers in training? Water babies, baby passing rituals, lack of compassion for oneself, high pain tolerance, monthly uterus pain. We have been set up! Don't you see?!

So yes, I do still feel ripples of not-so-vague longing, comings and goings of angst, ups and downs. It can give itself away sometimes, no matter how hard I try to suppress it. There is an ambiguous pain that lingers, a confusing combination of torment and love. Both of these things have a different meaning for everyone, I guess. Torment and love - people carry them in their own ways. I'm still figuring out how to hold both of these things in tandem while recovering parts of who I was before I had children.

For a career in motherhood to be successful is to accept that a mother no longer has much jurisdiction over her mind and body; my sex has bound me to my children both physically and emotionally. My thoughts race frantically at all times. When I am out of the house I sometimes find myself in a sudden sweaty panic. When I am with my children I am not myself. When I am away from my children I am not myself. I am changed forever. This, this is what I like to call… a mindfuck.

I imagine the only people interested in reading this are other mothers. And maybe other mothers, who, like me, find that reading about other people's journey into their matrescence slightly amorous. I say this because maternity leave really gives you zero sense of the outside world, trapped in a bubble that requires you to check yourself and your silly little needs at the door. My maternity leave self is an entirely different side of myself. Lulling babies to sleep and keeping inventory of diapers and formula, and constantly wondering when I'm going to find time to do laundry can really do something to a person and their individuality. So while this motherhood gig can be a unifying experience, it is still lonely as fuck.

When I gave birth the first time, I had to really scour to find reading on the paradox of motherhood, the "torment and love" thing I mentioned earlier. Perhaps that says it all, the overall tone-deafness of a women's journey once she has kids and what parenthood is like (really like) overall. As a non-parent I'd roll my eyes whenever my parents talked about their parenting - the sacrifice, selfless love, and financial struggles. Now, the invisible baton of nagging has been passed down to me. Don't I wear it so well?

Someone told me recently that motherhood is a burden. While it can be a burden, it comes with an abundance of meaning. I provide so much value to other people, the ones I delivered, the ones that were plopped onto my chest, covered in vernix and placenta stuff, instinctually knowing that I am their life source. I have begrudgingly swallowed so much wisdom in my short two years of this gig. I am so selflessly devoted to them that when I go to bed, I long for them, even after being with them all day. There is nothing in the world like a mother. This is for certain. I am so honored to mother the kids I've been sent. Mothers keep the world afloat. But like any essential high-ranking job, there is a cost. Maybe this cost is something I've been seeing first hand this whole time. Maybe I'd surrendered to the pretense of my individuality a long, long time ago, not just when I had kids. Maybe it was when I perfected my cartwheels and my cursive. Maybe it is now that I am coming to terms with it. Mothers don't live freely but in some weird emotional limbo for the rest of their lives. My children have chipped off pieces of me, and I have been forced to grow new skin, and with it, a vague understanding of the words "torment" and “love.”

Ok, I'm afraid I've said way too much. I'm afraid this bonding time with my children has temporarily cauterized parts of my brain. I must find time today to get out of these pajamas and take a shower. I must remind myself that my feelings are not shortcomings. I must be gentle on me, as I am with my children. So, this is me, on maternity leave, in a weird in-between bubble, just doubling down on the things I know: big feelings and small children.