The cookie cutter baby

I am about to throw away all of my baby books because they all seem to be manuals for one thing: control. I have come to the conclusion that babies are not science projects, nor dogs, nor things and that no manual will convince every single baby to fall into a simple category, as in, if I do that, baby will turn out this or that way.

Feeling guilty because my baby has bouts of crying and obsessing about scheduling him is not helping neither one of us. I also would like to end the comparing games of, "my baby should be doing this 'cause so and so's baby already did it."

I think that eventually every human being figures out that sleeping through the night is a good idea, anyway.

Like my friend Mary says, it is all a good developmental phase, no matter which phase a child is going through.

So here is a questionnaire I made to myself to remind me I don't have to be perfect, when every other book says I should.

- is baby growing? Yes.

- is baby's urine clear? Yes.

- is baby pooping? Yes.

- is it a normal baby poop? Yes.

- does baby smile? A lot.

- does baby like momma and is comforted by momma's touch and voice most of the time? Yes.

- does baby seem curious about things, shapes and sounds? Yes.

- does baby sleep a lot, no matter what time of the day it starts and ends and where he does it? Yes.

- does baby seem to want to explore what he wants to do with his body, like trying to stand up and grab things? Yes.

- does baby want to eat? A lot.

- doctor says he is ok? Yes.

Then that's it. The baby books and best selling baby manuals can go flip themselves.

If you were a fly in my living room...

...this is the kind of conversations you would hear:

Me: How come you are still attracted to me when I am so doughy?

Husband: Because I am your husband and I love you

Me: Wrong answer. You're supposed to say, "because you are so damn sexy and who said you were fat?"

Me: I think we should start dividing house chores

Husband: Ok, what should each of us do?

Me: How about I go sleep and you do everything?

Me: I wish I were two, so one of me could just sit here and the other go do what needs to be done.

Husband: That would never work 'cause you guys would end up disagreeing.

Me: Out of curiosity, how did a popcorn made its way to the bathroom floor?

Husband: Some people, I am not going to say who, like to eat popcorn on the couch, but they let popcorn fall inside their shirt and don't see it. Then they go to the bathroom to pump milk for the baby and the popcorns come flying.

Me: I think you have a hearing problem. I feel like you didn't hear anything I just said.

Husband: huh?

Happy hour?

I should just change the name of this blog from "Baby Steps," an obvious reference to my lack ofsense of direction and how I should take on this new phase, to just "What the f****am I doing wrong."

Every time I think I have a hang of the whole thing, baby is on a schedule, sleeping through the night and overall happy, he turns around and proves me wrong. He starts waking up in the middle of the night again, or getting fussy for no reason and, lately, celebrating happy hour with a daily hour long meltdown.

Of course I lack intelligence and rational mindset in these moments to realize that baby doesn't think and wonder if he is doing this on purpose, like I wonder if some drivers in the road drive the way they do just to piss me off.

As I walk around the house with him in my arms for the umpteenth hour, my biceps quivering, my vice hoarse from singing and making the shhhh sound, I actually say out loud, "Why are you so upset? You're already in my arms. I didn't put you in the swing. I didn't put you in the crib. You're clean. You're fed. What IS-YOUR-DEAL?"

Then I feel like a terrible mom because baby of course is not doing this on purpose just to piss me off. Baby is upset about something, but what?

When my husband arrives late in the evening from school, he meets a woman falling apart. Baby of course has stopped crying and is sound asleep in my arms, but after three hours of screaming, so husband doesn't understand immediately why I am the one crying like a baby.

I want to get drunk but can't. An emotional eater, I want to eat my own hand, and because we have no food (it's the end of the week and I already ate the entire contents of the refrigerator), I want to do like the baby and start biting the furniture.

That's when it downs on me that baby must be teething.

I tell my patient husband that I don't understand how something so sweet and adorable can turn into a Tasmanian devil by the end of the day. Husband says, "Now you know how I feel about you!"

Of course baby will stop crying and smile, coo and steal my heart long enough so I remember whom I am holding.

I am laying on the couch, arms and legs spread in defeated exhaustion, asking the walls who is this baby and what is wrong with me, while husband places sleeping baby on his crib. Which book am I not reading?

Husband explains that this is how babies are, that ours was actually strange because he never had a real meltdown until now. He has been drooling (I mean, the baby, not the husband), biting his hands and anything he can put his little mouth on, and now the fussing, so husband says we can safely assume that teething has begun and that happy hour will be this way for many unhappy evenings to come.

Counting scars

My belly button is finally where it is supposed to be. Like a deflated balloon, the skin in my belly remains somewhat loose and there's a black line still diving the torso diagonally, but I think that overall this body doesn't seem as foreign to me anymore.

As I undress in front of the mirror, I almost recognize my old self, if it weren't for that deep line, red and shaped like a smile, at the lowest part of the abdomen, creating a fat pocket on top of it. The doctor said this fat pocket may never go away, as the scar tissue is tight from within. I know that to be true. Bikinis will never look the same. The belly shape will forever hold a grin.

Strangely, for someone who is used to slobber on anti-aging lotions and obsess about every pound, I don't hate this scar. I am actually amazed and proud of it. I draw a line on top of it with a finger and think, impressed, that a whole person came out of it. This whole person who is already sixteen pounds and already has opinions (he hates nap time).

I notice in the mirror that I collect a number of other scars, which tell a story and show me I am aging, which, for some strange reason, is pretty cool to realize.

UGLY SCAR # 1

My mother is dragging me to Sears for Christmas shopping (yes, we have Sears in Brazil) and I am three years old. She didn't want to leave me with a nanny because she didn't trust anyone with her child (a feeling I can appreciate now).

What she remembers: I let go of her hand in the escalator and its nails grab my knee by the end of it.

What I remember: a boy on the other escalator, the one going down, let his toy fall all the way to the first floor. I want to go retrieve it and turned around to descend the ascending escalator, letting go of my mother's hand, tripping on myself and falling on my knee. The escalator reached its end at the exact same moment and nibbled me.

What she remembers: she pulled me and yelled for help. A friend happened to be around and came quick.

What I remember: my mother pulls me and everything looks blurry because the water pouring from my eyes keeps me from seeing clearly. My white socks are red. My mom yells for help but no one comes for what it seemed like a long time.

What she remembers: our beige Volkswagen Beetle is so covered with blood by the passenger door that my dad goes pale at the sight of it when he arrives. I am in the emergency room getting stitched up.

What I remember: nurses and doctors strap me down to a table with my arms open like Jesus Christ (and during the csection this felt like deja vu) and hold my head so I don't see what they are doing.

What she remembers: I kept on crawling on the stitches, which made them heal ugly.

What I remember: crawling on my stitches, so they would heal ugly and make me look worldly. All the kids I knew were very impressed that I already had so many stitches and I wanted to keep impressing people with my scar.

UGLY SCAR #2

I am playing hide and seek in a Marina in Rio. It's night and I am running around from under a bush to a pier as boats and pier bop around with a wave, when I trip on a buoy and fall hard on the other knee, the one without a scar. I keep on running because I have to hide, and I do, behind a shack, where a boy finds me and steals a kiss. We are drunk and our parents don't know it. I am fifteen years old.

I ignore the blood and the pain until the next morning, when we are floating, anchored in an island. We are cleaning barnacles from underneath the boat with our snorkels on. I feel a sharp pain and look at my knee under the clear blue water. It is covered in puss and I should get out and treat it. I show it to the boy I kissed and he says salt water is good for it, thats it will make it heal faster. Now I know he didn't know shit. I look at my yellow knee under the water and notice that a sea turtle and a stingray are passing by, so I shrug away my pain and forget about it.

UGLY SCARS #3 AND #4

When I was a newlywed in my first marriage, a recipe attempt gone bad resulted in second degree burns with blisters the size of a thumb in one arm. An aloe vera plant kept them from becoming too horrid.

Fast forward to a few years later, I am placing a homemade pumpkin pie (which is a waste of calories when there is so much chocolate to be eaten in this world, if you ask me) as my last ditch effort to make that marriage work when my forearm touched the door of the oven. The entire liquid pie splashed all over the kitchen. An aloe vera plant again came to the rescue to keep those scars from getting out of control. Thank goodness for succulents.

I have found that both scars were products of one terrible mistake.

UGLY SCAR #5

As I landed from a jump, one of my figure skating blades cut the opposite leg as it untwisted from a spin. I didn't realized it had happened until I finished dancing and looked back to see the trail of blood I had left on the ice.

UGLY SCAR #6

It's eleven o'clock at night and I have finally finished moving into my own new place and am standing in front of my brand new refrigerator, in awe. It's a simple refrigerator, and it is empty, but it is humming and it is mine, all mine.

The dividers from the inside of the refrigerator are still attached to one another by a plastic wrap. I decide that I need to separate them, just because. I want to look at my new refrigerator and appreciate the smell of freedom.

With a knife (because no scissors can be found) I attempt to cut the cord, and when I am successful, my other hand gets in the way, cutting my thumb in half.

I don't react right away because, as a doctor would later tell me, I cut through a nerve, but I feel dizzy.

I wake up a boyfriend I had at the time, who was a self centered son of a bitch (you can tell we parted in good terms), who picks me up and takes me to a hospital, drops me off and leaves, saying he can't stay because he needs to sleep. With that he becomes an ex-boyfriend and I can finally smell that freedom.

UGLY SCAR #7

I have purchased a ball gown I can't afford and make up I don't need in order to go to the Marine Corps ball with my new boyfriend (now husband) when I notice something is protruding at my upper back.

I can't go to a ball looking like I have horn coming out of me, so I have a dermatologist take it out. The doctor promises me it is a benign growth and that the scar will be small, but as he is working on me, while I am laying facing the floor, he says, "hummmm..." which is something no doctor should ever say during an operation, in my humble opinion.

Then he proceeds to let me know that the scar will be more like three inches long because the growth is in fact an iceberg. When he is done with me he shows me something yucky and hard, the size and looks of a walnut, right before it is sent to a lab, along with other odd moles he shaved from my belly.

I look pretty at the ball, but have a large bandaid in my back and can't relax about what it could be growing underneath it.

The results came back negative.

UGLY SCAR #8

Baby's first picture:

What kind of stories do your scars tell?

Conversations between me and myself

True story. Things that go through my head:

Me - Don't make eye contact! Don't make eye contact! Just keep walking. Whistle.

Myself - That's kinda cold. That's your baby. He is looking at you. Look back. Go talk with him.

Me. - No! Don't look! He is supposed to be asleep! If we look at him, he will think it's play time and will smile and will act all crazy for us to pick him up and will cry for more food just because he is awake and will go to bed too early and will wake us up in the middle of the night! He needs to stay on schedule. Haven't you read that book?

Myself - Now, that was a run on sentence. You need to learn to punctuate. Anyway, I'm gonna look at him 'cause he is so cute!

Me. - See what you did? Now he is smiling and he looks so adorable that I will have to go say hi and fluff one of his feet. After that we need to turn on that damn music that comes in the swing, walk away slowly and ignore him.

Myself. - Hum. Look at that. He did go back to sleep. Do we have to hide here in the hallway for the whole time? And does the house have to be so dark? We are going to bump into the coffee table again.

Me - shhhh. Yes, just until we are sure he is really asleep.

Myself. - He is awake again. He is looking at the wall and smiling at that painting again.

Me. - Just wait. Dont go in there... I'm hungry, though.

Myself. - Me too. Should we warm up some leftovers?

Me. - Are you crazy? The microwave wakes him up. Lets just eat it cold.

Myself. - But he is awake.

Me. - No, he is not. He closed his eyes again.

Myself. - huh! He can't make up his mind.

Me - He is a baby. They fight with their eyelids when they are overstimulated. I told you it wasnt a good idea to get that noisy, crazy toy out. Oh my God! The phone! The phone is ringing! Go get the phone!

Myself - See? He wasn't sleeping. I told you. He is crying again.

Why, Oh why

Must every song from baby's toys and bouncers and mobili and swing be so darn annoying?

And why does baby only sleeps when they are really loud?

I am about to slice my wrists.

I should write fisher price and suggest that they put Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" as a lullaby option.

One of those women

Not too long ago I could be quoted as saying, "kids are selfish, needy, noisy and always have boogers running down their noses; plus they spend all your travel and home remodeling funds. Who in their right minds would want to make one?"

I was also that kind of person who looked down upon the screaming child inside of an airplane or a store and would say under my breath, but loud enough for the parent to hear, "can't these people control their kid?"

I have found that the answer is no. If a child is crying uncontrollably, guess what? The parent has usually tried everything. So, no, they can't really control their kid.

I have now crossed into the dark side, aka parenthood, and belong now to a not so exclusive group of mothers and the stereotypes that they carry.

I have become one of those women,

that can talk over her screaming child because she is immune to the loudness and can no longer feel her own headache

that looks like shit 90% of the time

that has a muffin top (although it is slowly going away)

that uses a girdle to mask said muffin top

that looks at fat pictures of herself from before baby and finds that she was actually thin

that thinks her baby is the most adorable and most intelligent baby in the world. I have actually caught myself saying, "He followed me with his eyes! He is so SMART!"

that cannot talk about anything but her adorable and intelligent baby

that goes out on a date with husband sans baby and only talks about their adorable and intelligent baby

that is too tired for sex

that is too tired to exercise

that is too tired to clean the house

that is tired of being tired

that.looks tired

that collects diaper coupons

that thinks everyone is germy and every toy is potentially hazardous

that thinks everyone is inherently good because everyone has a mother, like, "they can't gas that serial killer that murdered hundreds of people. He has a MOTHER!"

that looks at bratty children acting up and thinks her child will be different

that quickly forget all of this and plans on having another child