Parenting: It Gets Funnier

Congratulations - you are a mom! First and foremost, you are awesome. You probably deserve a mother of the year award, but chances are, you will not not receive one. Or if you do, it will likely be from a spam site that is trying to steal your social security number.

There are a million variations of parenting and loving that you will discover over the coming months and years. They are all wrong. There is an academic journal article that will discredit every choice you make. And every correction you might consider making. You are Facebook friends with the only person who has ever read these obscure articles. Trust your instincts. Sometimes you will know the exact right thing to do. Other times, not so much. Be ready to mess up and own up, a lot. I once called the pediatrician after I dropped a camera on my newborn's head. I could barely speak, I was crying so hard. The doctor stopped me, "Mrs. Llorens, Noah isn't crying. I only hear you crying."

Here is the best parenting advice you will ever receive from a mom (with two data points, thus making her an expert):

1. You're going to get pooped and peed on. It will not be funny in the moment but I promise: the memory will get funnier and funnier over time. My son once peed onto his own face moments after I thought to myself: "I've totally got this." Scrambling to do something about it, I shot breastmilk all over our couch because I was new to breastfeeding and forgot my breast was out. I cried at the time. Now? Hilarious.

2. It will get funnier with time. Even colic can be funny a few years off. My first born cried from 8-12 or 1 am for about 7 weeks straight. It sucked, but I repeated over and over "You are loved, you are safe" (to myself?), cuddling him while he screamed his head off. I can't help but giggle thinking about all of the parental acrobatics suggested by the happiest baby on the block techniques, which failed spectacularly. I am pretty sure I googled "Can my baby go deaf from sushing?" more than once.

3. Stay away from competitive moms. You'll recognize them by their ability to simultaneously be happier and more miserable than you. Their kids are either way more difficult or way more awesome than yours, depending on the Facebook comment they are responding to. Their partner is either Dad of the Year or doesn't help at all, depending on the gush or complaint being volleyed. They love percentiles from their doctor's office. Run. Do not engage. Their kid will eventually eat their own shit too. Or at least "taste" it.

4. Some moms have it way more together than you. You'll just have to deal with that one.

5. If you breastfeed, at some point you will forget your boob is out in public after your baby finishes. On a roadtrip to New York when my son was 9 months old, I nursed him in the car before heading in to a rest stop to pee. I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of another car and realized that my left boob was completely out of my shirt. People will be nicer about your boob hanging out than they will be about breastfeeding your hungry infant.

6. Ask for help. People are totally willing to help.

7. Don't ask for help. People are not good at helping.

8. Make fun of people that judge your parenting choices. Preferably to their face, but behind their back, if you must. More times than not, judgmental people are just insecure with their own choices. This is your gig. Do it with your own flair.

9. It is okay to feel like your child/children are the most beautiful children in the world. It is also okay that it isn't true.

10. Some Starbucks locations have drive-thrus. They were invented for moms. If the baristas at Starbucks don't know your order upon hearing your voice in the drive-thru, you're not doing it right.

11. It gets better. Like any other job, you'll get better at parenting as you go along. And whatever weird/obnoxious thing your kid is doing: this too shall pass. One day you'll wake up and they'll be on to the next weird/obnoxious thing (probably right after you figure out how to deal with that last one, but hey). The lows will be close to rock bottom, but the highs will be higher than you imagined.

12. Switch it up. Skip the bedtime routine sometimes and take them out for ice cream instead. We went through a rough patch with our son when he was two years old where it would sometimes take him hours to finally go to sleep. One night, with my husband away on work travel, I made a random decision to ditch the bedtime routine and take our wired toddler out to a local custard place. We laughed, ate a little bit and then he fell asleep on the car ride home. It is one of the moments I am most proud of as a mother. I won all around, and I got to eat ice cream!

13. When all else fails, sing "The Greatest Love of All" at the top of your lungs to your children. They will love it. Or they won't but it is almost impossible not to enjoy each moment when you are channeling your inner Whitney Houston.

Follow these easy steps and you too can dub yourself a Professional Mom. Now that you're a pro, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to laugh at all those amateur mistakes you're still making.

Parent blamers: You suck more than I do

If parenting is an art, parent blame is the act of taking up random data points and chance happenings and calling them scientific fact.  I often read articles explaining why American parenting sucks and tiger moms are great, french moms are great, conservative parents are great, attachment parents are great, naked dancing parents are great, and everyone else is setting their children up for failure.

Oftentimes these articles find one or two data points and then run with the idea that an entire parenting style is amazing or sucky.  

I've always been cautious and skeptical of the advice I get from other parents.  9 times out of 9 times the advice I've gotten has been from a parent that is feeding me what worked for their child or children or if they aren't parents some parenting technique they read about or grew up with.  9 out of 9 times, I smile or ignore or gossip to my husband later.  Sometimes, if my child is similar the advice works.  Oftentimes, it's not applicable.  There is nothing wrong with finding something wonderful that works for your family and being proud of it.  There is something fundamentally wrong with expecting it to work for everyone else.

I have news for you, parent blamers who secretly or openly shake your head at parents like me, you're not any more amazing at parenting than I am.  I know this is going to be hard to swallow, but just because your kid sits quietly eating Tilapia and broccoli at a restaurant while my husband and I switch off trying to bribe our toddler to eat pizza and cookies as he runs away from us doesn't mean you have the magical answer to parenting.  It also doesn't mean that he didn't sit quietly at restaurants all around the country and in London when he was younger.  It doesn't mean he wasn't exposed to restaurants.  It doesn't mean we give him keys to our Prius and ask him to guide us through life.  Although I wouldn't mind having a chauffer.  

We too used to consider ourselves magic parents.  Our toddler has been on something like 30 round trip flights and never once have we been those people with the screaming child.  I'd love to tell you that it's because I rock as a parent.  But a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's been on tons of airplanes, the pressure doesn't seem to bother him and he finds strangers completely entertaining.  He's a social being so seeing 80 people that have to sit there and stare back at him has always kept him quite entertained.

He's always super happy and loving, and at times, I would love to say this is all our parenting.  As a stay-at-home-mom who doesn't get raises, yearly reviews or surprise bonuses, I'd love to say that my child's heart is full of love for the world because I am that amazing.  The truth is, I really am.  I have talked to him since the day he was born and I have told him and showed him how loved he is every day.  Even on days where when he was 20 months old he held me hostage in the car because he was smart enough to get out of the 5 point harness on the car seat no matter how tight it was.  Ever been driving 50 miles an hour and had a toddler climb into the front seat?  Scary doesn't even begin to describe it.  After I composed myself from the frazzle of that experience he still went to bed the way he has almost every day of his life.  Being told he was loved and being shown that my husband and I will love him no matter what.  We are not completely responsible for the love and light that illuminates from him although we try our hardest to make sure we keep him on a path that supports his wonderful spirit.

There are times, where my husband and I have patted ourselves on our backs as our child represents all that is right and good in the world, and then at 3 am when he is running circles around our living room we have said to each other, "Doesn't he know we're magic parents and this isn't supposed to happen?"

We're just like anyone else.  Except we have a very bright, very spirited child.  Our goal as parents is to set boundaries without breaking his spirit.  Have you ever met an adult with a broken spirit?  Nothing in life is sadder than someone that once had light and love beaming from their body only to be bitter and broken down later in life.  

I have two data points so I feel really confident asserting to you parent blamers of the world that you're full of self indulgent dog poop.  My first baby had to be held all night because he had reflux and it was horrible if he wasn't held upright all night and the only way for me to sleep too is if I sat up holding him.  Crib slanting be damned, nothing else worked.  At two and a half he still has really bad reflux that sometimes means he doesn't eat as much as he should and it wakes him up at night or sometimes when he does eat a lot it wakes him up too.

Our two month old has a mild form of reflux and can be put down as long as I wait about 15 minutes after a feeding in the night.  Sometimes she wants to be put down to kick and play or fall asleep on her own.  She's her own person with the same loving mother as my son.  I still respond to every cry she makes, but sometimes she wants to soothe herself.  Neither child means I rock or suck.  They are each proof that I am trying with everything I have to raise to loving, open-minded, and internally beautiful children.

So suck it with the parent blame.  I'm sick of reading about how parenting this way or that yields results A or B.  As I've said before on this blog about parenting Noah, "I know ultimately if he turns out to be an amazing person, his genes, schools, and chance will be credited. If he turns out to be a delinquent, my inadequacies as a mother will likely be the first point of blame." So when one of my children is President and the other is an Astronaut you better be ready to give me mad props for my stellar parenting skills that managed to show them love and boundaries without breaking their spirits.  You better be ready to give me a shout out for waking up and cuddling them no matter what was going on in the middle or the night.  You better be ready to sing my praises for making them any meal they request despite what we were already having for dinner.  Or you better be willing to shake your head secretly in the privacy of your own home when they both end up in prison. 

The Art of Parenting and Pregnancy Advice or Don't Give It

If you are a parent or parent-to-be you know all to well that starting from the day you announce you are expecting a wee one whether it is your first or not you are bombarded with advice.  There are so many different kinds of advice you get during pregnancy which serve as warning signs for what is to come when you have a real human baby to care for. 

The meddler - This person wants to know all of the details of your upcoming birth.  Where do you plan to have the baby are you already set up for drugs or no drugs will you breastfeed.  These people will follow you into the bathroom at work to document how much you pee and for how long.

The doomsday prophet - This person had a rough time with their birth or baby and so they tell you in depth every worst case birth or baby scenario there is.  For them it was really hard to adjust to becoming a parent and so it will be for you too.  They have a transcript of a conversation where God told them parenting and birth are meant to be horrible.

The sickeningly perfect person - They loved every second of birth, early parenthood etc, and they will make you feel guilty if you ever ever complain about your cankles. In fact they made a collage of art with pictures of their cankles to remember you can feel differently than you look.

The one upper - This person was pregnant in a forest alone and gave birth while helping save baby seals from an oil spill. No matter what you experience they have experienced that and more.

The list goes on and on.  People mean well and when you're pregnant you get tons of advice.  For me, pregnancy advice with my first child didn't both me much because I wasn't trying to care for another little person while getting the advice.  I could laugh it off, make fun of the advice to my husband, ignore it and move on.  

Once our son was born we received lots of well-intentioned unwelcome advice.  Put the baby in the crib at three weeks, let him cry more, don't feed him on demand and lots of advice that ended up being the complete opposite of how we wanted and ultimately decided to parent.  I breastfed N on demand for almost two years and I'm sure that it's what made our weaning process so seemless and peaceful.  We cosplept and once we didn't I went in to cuddle and assure N any time he cried or asked for me in the night, and I'm pretty sure that we have a very confident, self-assured little two year old.  We have an incredibly tight knit family from my relationship with my husband to each of our relationships with our two year old, and I know it's because we parent with as much love as we can, always following our own instincts.

Now that I'm pregnant with number two the advice is rolling in again and again.  Advice on what I should and shouldn't be doing with our two year old.  Advice on how miserable life is with a second child, and I've come to notice that those people with the pregnancy advice for one baby (I mean types of people not necessarily the same people) have all sorts of advice this go around.

The meddler - This person wants you to know that there is only one way to have more than one child.  They still want to know your birth plans and if you plan to fix some of the parenting mistakes they think you've made with your first child.  They name out to you the things you should fix before your second child arrives because it'll be too late then and boy will you regret your mistakes big time when you have a second child.

The doomsday prophet - This person wants you to know you have no idea what you signed up for.  No matter what you have been through as a person or a parent, according to them, nothing will prepare you for the hell of multiple children.  They will shake their head at you and repeat over and over, "Just wait, you have no idea."  They also said this about one child and seem to forget that you enjoyed the ups and downs of your first baby.

The sickeningly perfect person - Having two kids was even more blissful than one.  They want you to know that everything about being a parent is wonderful and perfect, and they were never exhausted being pregnant with a second child while chasing a toddler around.  No they think morning sickness is something you give in to like negative thoughts.  You don't give into negative thoughts, do you?

The One Upper - This person can turn any and every conversation about your pregnancy or parenting experiences into a conversation about them.  In fact they only ever talk to you to tell you about them.  You're toddler is adorable?  Theirs did something cuter.  Your toddler is difficult?  Theirs is way harder to handle. 

And of course, again the list of advice and types of people go on and on.  And all of this has me wondering what has happened to the art of parenting advice?  Why is it that 97% of us have perfected the art of relationship advice but we handle parenting and pregnancy advice so differently?

Think about the last time a friend had a boyfriend you didn't like.  If they didn't ask you for advice on the boyfriend, you knew that meant the friend probably realized he wasn't that great and there was a reason she wasn't asking you.  I never tell a friend I like their significant other if I don't but I have said things like, "It's nice he likes to travel."  And my friends know that a compliment on travel probably means I have nothing else nice to say if I didn't already say it.  We all accept that every couple is different, and while a friend's partner may bore you to tears, your friend may be looking for something different out of a relationship.

So why do we give unsolicited parenting and pregnancy advice? 

Some people give advice because they mean well and they are so moved by the circle of life they want to be a part of yours.  But that's not why most people give advice.

The meddler - These people give advice because they are nosey and bored.

The doomsday prophet - These people give advice because they had a rough time adjusting to pregnancy and parenting and maybe that was very scary and isolating to them.

The sickeningly perfect person - These people had a wonderful experience with pregnancy and parenting and so they really just don't understand when it's complicated for other people.

The One Upper - These people give advice because they don't feel they are appreciated enough at home for the things they do.

For me, it's easier to think about what is motivating someone else when they give me unwelcome, inappropriate advice.  I continue to laugh it off, make fun of the advice to my husband, ignore it and move on.  My experiences as a pregnant woman and a mother are my own.  When I need advice I ask for it.  I can't wait to continue on my journey raising N while adding another child to the mix.  It may not always be easy, but at the end of the day, these experiences are my own and I will enjoy them.