“One of the most astonishing and precious things about motherhood,” writes Kathleen Norris, “is the brave way in which women consent to give birth to creatures who will one day die.”7
I am not so brave. Far more frightening to me than the threat of interrupted plans or endless to-do lists is the threat of loving someone as intensely as a mother loves her child. To invite into the universe a new life, knowing full well that no one can protect that life from the currents of evil that pulse through our world and through our very bloodstreams, seems a grave and awesome task that is at once unspeakably selfish and miraculously good. I am frightened enough by how fervently I love Dan, by my absolute revolt against the possibility—no, the inevitable reality—that he will get hurt, that he will experience loss, and that one day he will die. I’m not sure my heart is big enough to wrap itself around another breakable soul.
I was once waiting in an airport next to a woman whose six-year-old daughter suffered from a rare heart defect that could take her life at any moment. In spite of mounting medical bills and the pressures of raising both a child with special needs and another younger daughter, the woman said she and her husband planned to adopt a boy from Ethiopia later that year.
“What made you want to grow your family in the midst of all this turmoil?” I asked.
“Why did the Jews have children after the Holocaust?” she asked back. “Why do women keep trying after multiple miscarriages? It’s our way of shaking our fists at the future and saying, you know what?—we will be hopeful; things will get better; you can’t scare us after all. Having children is, ultimately, an act of faith.”
Dan’s Journal
May 31, 2011
Since we don’t have kids of our own, Rachel’s been researching and writing a lot this month. However, she did babysit some of our friends’ kids. We had two little girls over for a day while their parents were in the hospital as their new baby sister came into the world. I felt that since this month Rachel was focusing on motherhood for the project, I wouldn’t have to be as present as I might otherwise be for the babysitting part. I came in and played with the kids for a half hour or so, and then went back to what I was doing.
That didn’t go over very well. Rachel got pretty upset. It turned into a “you-said-when-we-had-kids-you-would-help-raisethem” argument. This discussion started after we were both in bed, the lights were off, and I was almost asleep. Rachel started crying. It didn’t help that when I asked, “What’s wrong?” I asked with a tone of annoyance rather than concern. After a while, we resolved the issue. When she told me that she felt like the brunt of the caretaking fell on her, and that she wanted me more involved, I told her I thought that since this was part of the project, she was supposed to be the one caring for the kids. We both understood each other’s position better and we were able to go to sleep. However, I think this will be a point of further enlightenment and self-discovery if we ever have children of our own
Bidden or unbidden, God is present.
—ERASMUS
After the babysitting ordeal, I decided to lay it all out there and confess to God and everybody that I was terrified of having children.
“I’ve been punished by fellow Christians for saying this out loud,” I wrote on my blog, “but it’s the truth: I’m afraid of motherhood.
“I’m afraid that having children will disrupt our happy marriage. “I’m afraid that starting a family will put a swift end to my career. “I’m afraid that I will never figure out how to use [D]iaper [G]enies. “I’m afraid that my inability to multitask will make me a bad mom.
“I’m afraid of losing myself in a world of diapers and Dora and nursery themes and mommy wars.
“I’m afraid of being totally responsible for another life.
“I’m afraid of bringing into this world a little person who can and probably will be hurt and disappointed.
“And I’m afraid that I have to figure out my own faith before I can pass it along to a new generation.”
As always, I felt a strange sense of relief upon giving all those amorphous fears a shape and parading them before the public like wild animals on a circus train. Blogging is an inexpensive form of therapy if you do it right, if you use it to tell the truth about something other than what you had for dinner that night. I asked for feedback and received hundreds of comments from readers, many of whom surprised me with their candor:
• “Oh yeah. Had all of those fears, plus some. (I mean, stretch marks? Nursing bras? Spit rags? YIKES.) I filled up an entire journal when I was pregnant with my oldest, recording every single fear, no matter how irrational. We had been married for six years before we got pregnant, so I was particularly concerned about what it would do to our marriage.
“So how did I overcome the fears? I had me some babies! Aaaaaand, I’m still scared. And bonus: EXHAUSTED. And I’m still happily married, and I love my girls with a love that is in one moment smooshy and saccharine and in the next desperate and fierce. And I’m thankful for this path we are on.”—Sorta Crunchy
• “Motherhood is transformative, and traumatic, but one thing I wish I had been told more often is that in many ways you do get your old life back—piece by piece, a little more every year. So my career definitely suffered for a few years, but now it’s mostly back on track. My sleep suffered for many years but now (with a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old), I get an uninterrupted 7 hours every single night. There are parts of me that have changed forever, and that feel natural and right to me now, but in many ways the biggest surprise is how much like my old self I am now that my kids are a bit older.”—Bea
• “I have 6 children and still fear a lot of the same things you do every day. I fear that I’m doing it all wrong, that I’m screwing them up every single day. I fear that I’m losing myself, and when I do my own thing (I’m pursuing my [master’s]), I fear that I’m losing them. Kids complicate things but (and here’s where I go and get sappy) they make things so much more amazing. Baby feet are the cutest thing ever, nursing has been my best experience, and the first time your baby smiles at you you’ll fall apart and never be put back together the same way. They can drive you crazy all day and then when you sneak into their rooms at night you’ll forget every awful moment and fall in love all over again. And your marriage will be so different but, in my opinion, watching your husband fall all over himself to impress his little girl/boy is twice as good as quiet dinners and weekend getaways.”—Maria
• “Thank you for this post! I’m a single woman with no children at 32. I want a family, but I am also slowly coming to terms with the idea that I can be OK whether or not that happens. However, the people around me don’t seem to be coming to terms with that idea. They all say ‘when you get married’ and ‘when you have kids’ as if those are the certain next steps in my life. I feel like they are waiting for those things to happen before I’m invited to sit at the ‘grown up table’ of life.”—Julie
What I loved about these responses was that they didn’t read like parenting books. They read like diaries, like real life. The thoughtfulness and honesty with which these women told their stories reminded me that a woman only loses herself when she stops looking, that no role is too confining or too grand for a woman of valor.
I confess that a part of me had hoped that by the time I finished this month of motherhood, I’d have overcome all my fears about being a mom and that I’d know for certain when and if Dan and I should start a family. But as hard as I looked, I didn’t find the answers in the Bible, and I didn’t find the answers in my stack of parenting books. There’s a certain security that comes with feeling like you’ve found a magic text, be it authored by Sears, Ezzo, or God Almighty, that tells you exactly when to have children, exactly how to raise them, exactly how to love them, and exactly how to be a good mom . . . right down to the very last detail. But no such text exists because faith isn’t about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figu
red out ahead of time.
I didn’t wait for certainty when I married Dan. I didn’t wait for certainty when I wrote my first book. I didn’t wait for certainty when I decided to follow Jesus—or when I started this project. I just listened to my heart, and let love pull me through the unknown.
The moms on my blog helped me see that perhaps I had more motherly instincts than I’d been giving myself credit for.
Two days after my thirtieth birthday, a baby arrived on our doorstep.
It was delivered via UPS at 1 p.m. on Friday afternoon, just as expected, in a giant cardboard box labeled “Baby-Think-It-Over: Some Decisions Last a Lifetime.”
(You could say we had a successful home delivery.)
I told the lady on the phone that she could surprise me with the gender and ethnicity of the child, so as soon as I pulled away the Bubble Wrap to reveal a life-size baby doll in blue pajamas, with fair vinyl skin and glossy azure eyes staring blankly up at me, I called Dan.
“It’s a boy!” I sang.
“Well, congratulations!” Dan said.
“I’ve just got to put in the batteries and he’ll start working. Right now he’s still a little creepy.”
“Um, yeah . . . because adding batteries makes it a lot less creepy. I’ll be home around five if you want to wait until then.”
“No, I’ve got it under control,” I said with cheery confidence. “We want to get our money’s worth. Just be thinking of a good name— something playful. He’s Caucasian, and looks more like you than me, but I won’t be able to tell you much about his personality until—”
“You put the batteries in.”
“It’s material,” I said, before hanging up.
Someone at the baby rental place must have dusted the little guy with baby powder for effect, because as soon as I lifted my Baby-Think-It-Over out of the box and smelled the top of his vinyl head, every latent maternal instinct inside of me kicked in and I immediately began nesting. I vacuumed the entire house, made a crib out of a laundry basket and towels, went to the dollar store to find a baby blanket and new set of clothes (they put the kid in long sleeves in the middle of June, for heaven’s sake!), and read the Baby-Think-It-Over instruction manual cover to cover.
“Baby-Think-It-Over makes it possible for people to practice caring for an infant 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said the manual. “During simulation, Baby cries for care at all hours, day and night. The Caregiver has to figure out what Baby needs: feeding, burping, rocking, or diapering. The caregiver wears a unique wireless ID bracelet to ensure accountability while Baby’s computer tracks its care and safe handling. Detailed data is downloaded after simulation, including exact times of missed care and specific mishandling . . . This simulation will be challenging for young adults. It will teach them more about the responsibilities of parenthood than any amount of lecturing ever could.”
I bristled a bit at the suggestion that the only folks ordering Baby-Think-It-Overs were concerned parents and sex-ed teachers, but read on.
“Baby’s activities are those of real infants . . . Parents of 50 newborns kept diaries of their infants’ activities for several days. Baby’s schedules re-create some of those days. Each 24 hours of your simulation may be the schedule of a different infant.”
The doll came with a small diaper bag that included a bottle, a purple ID bracelet, and two cloth diapers. On the ID bracelet was a metal sensor that lined up with a sensor on the baby’s back. Sensors on the neck, mouth, shoulder blades, arms, legs, and bottom would record every movement, from feeding to rocking to burping to changing. According to the manual, whenever the baby cried, I had to touch my sensor to the baby’s back, wait for it to beep, and then offer care. The manual said the baby would let me know if he was satisfied by cooing.
I had trouble imagining how all of this would work out exactly, so I decided to just stick the batteries in and give it a go. It took about fifteen minutes to get everything activated according to the directions, and even after I was sure I’d done it right, the kid just lay there on the living room floor, looking up at me without making a sound.
I touched the sensor to his back.
Nothing.
I rocked him back and forth a little bit.
Nothing.
I placed him in his makeshift cradle.
Nothing.
He just looked up at me with that same glassy stare, his stiff little arms outstretched like a plastic mummy’s.
“Hello?” I asked, thumping his foot with my index finger. “Anyone there?”
I figured I might as well start dinner, so I went to the kitchen to boil the water for the spaghetti and dice up some garlic for the bread, peering around the corner every now and then to see how the kid was doing.
Nothing.
Finally, just as I was plopping a bunch of frozen meatballs into a saucepan, I was startled by a piercing scream.
He’s awake!
I ran into the living room, picked the baby up, and immediately stuck the bottle in his mouth.
The cries continued.
So I ripped off his diaper and replaced it with a new one, careful to make sure the Velcro patch lined up with the proper sensor.
That didn’t work either.
The noise (a rather convincing recording of a real infant’s cries) kept coming, and it seemed to grow louder and more insistent by the second.
I picked the baby up, careful to support the head, and swung him back and forth in my arms, hoping my exaggerated movements would let the sensors know I was rocking him.
He must have thought I was about to discus-throw him out the window, because his cries turned into hysterics. I stuck the bottle in his mouth again, but to no avail.
Right at this moment, I heard Dan pull into the garage.
Perfect. Just in time to catch me at my maternal finest.
Desperate to get it together before Dan walked through the door. I turned to the instruction manual, and within seconds realized I’d forgotten to activate the main sensor on the baby’s back with my ID bracelet when I provided care. As soon as I did, a loud beep issued from the baby’s belly. He kept on crying, but when I grabbed the bottle for a third time and stuck it in his mouth, the screaming stopped and was replaced by the sound of sucking . . . just as Dan walked through the door.
“Look, sweetie! I’m feeding the baby!”
We decided to name him Chip after the bundle of silicon that made up his soul, a suggestion offered by a Facebook friend.
Chip cried about once every two hours. Most of the time he quieted down after a bottle or diaper change, but occasionally he just kept on screaming.
“Sometimes infants are just fussy and cannot be comforted,” the manual said. “Baby simulates fussy times, but for no longer than three minutes. The real infant may have been fussy for much longer.”
If folks are handing these things out to teenagers to keep them from having sex, I can personally attest to their effectiveness. As the night wore on, those “fussy times” occurred more and more frequently, as if the kid had been programmed to go nuts every fifteen minutes beginning at 8 p.m. This crying schedule meant another night in the guest room for me, just like the good ole days of niddah . . . Only this time I got a lot less sleep.
The moment I’d start to drift off, Chip would wake me up with his cries. Feeding sessions lasted at least twenty minutes each, and if the bottle slipped for a just second from Chip’s lips, he’d punish me with a grating scream. Once, at about 3:30 a.m., when I lifted Chip out of the crib I’d pulled next to the bed, I let his head fall back just a little, and the kid went absolutely crazy, releasing a series of bloodcurdling screams that I’m pretty sure woke the dead and prompted Dan to knock softly on the guest room door to ask if everything was okay.
According to the instruction manual, failure to support the baby’s head would result in one minute of crying, recorded as “neglect” in the baby’s computer.
Great. I’d had the kid for less than twenty-four ho
urs and already Baby-Think-It-Over’s child protective services were on my back.
On top of all of this, Chip was a picky little fellow. If he wasn’t properly burped after his feeding, he’d cycle through a pattern of three cries, followed by seven seconds of silence, followed by three cries, followed by seven seconds of silence . . . a pattern I listened to over and over and over again as I watched my alarm clock crawl from 3:00 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. I put his laundry basket crib on top of the chair next to the bed and tried to rock him while I dozed off, but the minute my arm stopped moving, he’d cry again. By 6 a.m., I could tell instantly from the tone and severity of his cries whether Chip needed a diaper change, a bottle, or rocking.
“We should change his name from Chip to Chucky,” I said, with my head in my hands at breakfast the next morning.
“Maybe you should let me take him tonight,” Dan offered.
“No, this was my idea,” I insisted. “I want to prove to you and to myself that I can do this, that I can take care of a kid without going nuts.”
“Hon, babysitting a computer is totally different from caring for your actual child,” Dan said. “Don’t get too carried away projecting all your insecurities about motherhood onto Chip. Just think how rewarding this would be with a real baby, a baby we created and that we actually love.”
“You mean a baby that stays like this for weeks and weeks? I can’t even get through one night! How am I supposed to handle years and years and years of this insanity?”
“Hon, I don’t think babies cry like this for years and years,” Dan responded with mild irritation. “You’re being a little overdramatic. Why don’t you take a nap?”
“IT’S SEXIST TO SAY I’M BEING OVERDRAMATIC!” I screamed, before storming to the bedroom to sob for forty-five minutes.
A Year of Biblical Womanhood Page 20
