Strong, not skinny

I've seen a lot of articles posted lately offering tips to mothers about how to model positive body image for their daughters. My only child is a boy, so my first instinct was to think, "Phew, dodged that bullet!" Frankly, one reason I warmed to the idea of raising a son was the knowledge that it was hard growing up a girl, and it was bound to be hard raising a daughter.

Then I remembered a girl I went to elementary school with who was mercilessly teased by the boys in our class. As I recall, she didn't have a particularly pleasant personality, but that's not why she was bullied. Boys made fun of her because she was "fat."

Even as third graders, boys knew that the worst thing you could say to a girl, the most offensive insult you could fling at her, was that she was fat.

I remember two things about recess in the fifth and sixth grade: playing Chinese jump rope and standing around with a group of other girls complaining about various body parts that we felt were our worst feature. The implication was that in order to be humble, a true girl's girl, you had to feel bad about your body, or at least dissatisfied with it in comparison to someone else's. "But your stomach is so skinny," you might say, grabbing your own love handles for comparison. "Not me, I'm fat."

I'm sure there are a lot of women who bounce right back from childbirth to their pre-baby bodies (Maria Kang, the famous "No Excuses" Mom," for example), but I am not one of them. Nearly two years after Eli was born, I'm still a good 10 pounds over my pre-baby weight (which in turn was a good 10+ pounds over my slender college weight). It's like a second adolescence, where the instinct is to look in the mirror, grab at my love handles, and moan, "Ugh. I'm fat."

A few months ago I got tired of thinking of myself as someone who used to be thinner, or someone who might be thin again someday if she stopped eating so many cookies, or someone who was thin until she had a baby and hypothyroidism. I decided that instead of getting skinny, I was going to get strong. (In fact, if I wanted to continue lifting Eli, particularly in the throes of a toddler tantrum, I needed to get strong.)

I started lifting heavier weights at the gym and doing pushups in my office. I swung kettlebells and I held planks.

As summer approached, I started buying those Spanx-ish bathing suits with generous ruching. I loved this article from the Huffington Post: "Moms, Put On That Swimsuit," in which the author writes:

I refuse to miss my children's giggles because of my insecurities. I refuse to let my self-image influence my children's. I refuse to sacrifice memories with my children because of a soft tummy.

When I push Eli in the jogging stroller, he doesn't say, "Mommy, be skinny." He says, "Mommy, be runner." He doesn't say, "Mommy, thinner." He says, "Mommy, faster."

He knows I can do it. He knows I can run faster, push harder. In fact, besides "Mommy," that's the primary way he identifies me.

I'll never, ever be 110 pounds again. But I'll always be Eli's mommy and, God willing, I'll always be a runner. I'll always be strong -- not skinny. And that's the body image I want to model for my son.

Going the F to sleep: The many stages of bedtime

"Mommy's here," Eli announces.

It's 7:30 p.m. -- hallelujah time, or, as Eli knows it by its kinder, gentler nickname, "night-night time" -- and I've just deposited Eli in his crib after reading Tubby four times in rapid succession. ("Rapid" because the third or fourth read-through seems to become about turning the pages as quickly as possible to reach Eli's favorite pages, which we then rapturize over at great length.)

His hair is still damp from his own tubby and his cheeks have that unmistakable glow that only comes from being freshly scrubbed of tomato sauce and hummus (we like to enjoy eclectic dinners that can be smeared most efficiently across our faces). All that's left to do is recite I'll See You in the Morning -- the same book I've read to Eli every night at bedtime since he was born -- sing the Hashkiveinu and the Sh'ma and say a final good night.

Eli rolls over, yanks his pacifier to the side so I'll be able to hear him more clearly and informs me again, "Mommy's here."

I smile lovingly. "Mommy's here," I agree, and then I pause before barreling onward hopefully: "But Mommy's going to say night-night and then Mommy is going to open the door and go into the living room and Eli is going to go to sleep!"

Eli flashes a duh smile. "Mommy's here," he repeats helpfully.

By the time Eli was just a few weeks old, I was an expert in what everyone advised to do about baby sleep in every corner of the Internet, and I was determined to foster healthy sleeping habits from the get-go.

I bet you think this is where I'm going to tell you that I ate my words and learned an important lesson about the best-laid plans of parenthood, but for the most part, my plan worked. I never rocked or cuddled or nursed Eli to sleep. I did the same bedtime routine in the same order every single night, put him in his crib awake, and then left. (And then obsessively watched the baby monitor for hours, but that's a different story.)

Being such an expert on baby sleep, of course, I was well-informed about the infamous series of sleep regressions that would befall us, and we withstood them all: the one where your kid wakes up screaming every 40 minutes, the one where your kid cries when you try to leave the room at bedtime, the other one where your kid wakes up screaming every 40 minutes.

Compounding the issue of separation anxiety is when your child learns the correct usage of "Mommy" and "Daddy": as a weapon. It's one thing to ignore a crying baby when said baby is virtually a stranger in your house, the kind of crying you can pass off as, "Oh dear, that crying is certainly distressing." It's another thing when there's a little person who manages with his last ounce of strength on Earth to pull himself up to his feet and howl "Mommmmmmmyyyyyyyyy!" It's like being plucked out of a police lineup by a witness: That baby knows exactly who you are and where you live (and where you live is on the couch trying to watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey).

At one point during one of these sleep regressions I remember fervently wishing that I had the power to Apparate (you know, Dumbledore-style) out of Eli's room back into the living room so that the sound of me trying to sneak out of his bedroom at night wouldn't wake him up. (Although now that I think about it, only really advanced wizards can Apparate without causing a loud crack, the sound of which would probably be noisier than the floor creaks I already make. But I digress. For nerdiness.) At another point I came to the realization that possibly our sleep problems would be solved if I had a life-sized cardboard cutout of myself that I could prop up in Eli's room at bedtime, Home Alone-style, to convince him that I was still there.

All of which is to say: This is where I ate my words and learned an important lesson about the best-laid plans of parenthood, and also that the second you pat yourself on the back for something you did as a parent, karma is coming for you in a big way.

Bedtime these days is a total tossup. Some nights I can say good night and leave the room without hearing a whisper of protest. Some nights (the sweetest nights ever) I literally watch him drift off to sleep as I finish my song. Some nights I creep closer to the door, ever so slowly, freedom inches from my grasp, until Eli gets tired of checking to make sure I'm still there. Some nights I sit on the floor or in his armchair until he falls asleep (and then an extra 15 minutes for good measure so I don't wake him up as I leave). Some nights I leave the room and endure a minute or two of wailing before he passes out. And some nights, no matter what we try, we seem destined to get caught in a cycle of sneaking out, waking up and crying.

This is bedtime in a nutshell: You think you will epitomize motherhood and be a warm, comforting presence to soothe your child as he settles into sleep, and then it's 20 minutes later and your ass has fallen asleep and you really, really need to go pee and take your bra off.

On this night, Eli is pretty clear about his wishes. Mommy isn't in the living room, or snacking in the kitchen before dinner. Mommy. Is. Here.

Learning how to talk is a game-changer. It starts with simple labeling ("Car! Truck! Bus!"), progresses to increasingly more complicated demands (it used to be "more"; now it's "I want green lollipop"), and sometimes breaks your heart: When I bring Eli to school in the mornings, he clings to my hand and whimpers a mantra: "Mommy's coming. Daddy pick up-up. Mommy's coming. Mommy's here."

So I know that at bedtime, "Mommy's here" doesn't mean "Mommy, you are physically present in my room right now!" It means "Mommy, your presence is a comfort to me even though throughout the evening I may have been hitting at you and screaming in your face and forcefully denying all your requests for hugs, and I would like to request that you continue to stand there staring at me all night long."

Tonight I decide to go for the sneaking-toward-the-door method. Eli shifts around restlessly, clutching a red wooden car in one hand and a pair of his own shorts in the other. (Yup.) "Mommy's here," I assure him each time I take a tiny step closer to the door. "Mommy's here."

Once I reach the threshold, I literally stand in the doorway for a while. My eyes are facing the living room -- the couch! The DVR! The dinner table! -- but my backside is still hanging out in Eli's room. I take a few tentative steps away from the door, popping my head back in when Eli stirs. "Mommy's here."

At last, all is quiet. I breathe deeply and head for a well-deserved shower. I'm pretty pleased with myself: I have successfully dispatched my toddler to bed at a reasonable hour without any crying. He can sleep peacefully assured of my presence, knowing that I will always be there for him in times of distress, that I am always looking out for him even as he sleeps.

But you remember what happens when you pat yourself on the back for something you did as a parent, right?

I hear the piercing wail the second I step out of the shower. DAMN IT WHAT HAPPENED TO SLEEPING PEACEFULLY ASSURED OF MY -- clearly the shower was a rookie mistake. I grab a towel and hurry through the living room.

Peering into Eli's room, I see him sprawled on his belly in his crib, his eyes closed, his pacifier working busily in his mouth.

Mommy's not here after all. But when you've got a daddy who will lay on the floor for you, who needs her?

The long game

I am the kind of person who likes to be prepared. If I'm going to a new restaurant, I check out the menu ahead of time. If I'm traveling somewhere, I map out the route.

So I treated motherhood like I treated the SATs: I studied ahead of time. I read about the five S's for calming newborns and when to introduce bottles to a breastfed baby. I took classes on newborn care and infant CPR and breastfeeding and childbirth. I watched YouTube videos on how to install a carseat (step 1: smack yourself across the face, because that's what you're going to feel like while you're doing it) and how to swaddle (step 1: just buy those Velcro swaddles, damn it).

And then there was the stuff. If you are middle-class and you live in America, the amount of money you spend on stuff for your newborn baby is probably equivalent to the GDP of a developing country. If we thought it would stop Eli from crying one single second sooner or amuse him one single second longer, we bought it. (Phil's motto for baby purchases was: "Can't we just throw some money at this problem?" And that's how we ended up with pacifiers clipped to every single surface in our house.) We bought rattling, jingling toys to attach to the stroller and different rattling, jiggling toys to attach to the carseat. We bought blankets for swaddling and different blankets for the stroller. Once, when I was pregnant, Phil texted me from his office that his co-worker was insistent that we would need a specific bouncy chair. Phil was concerned because what we had on our registry was not a bouncy chair but a vibrating chair that was also a swing. Our unborn baby's bouncy infancy was at stake!

When Eli was just over three months old, we went to Thanksgiving dinner with my family. We were at my cousin's two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, and at the time her boys were 5 years old and 5 months old. She gestured around to the swing, the playmat, the jumperoo, the Boppy pillow and various other infant products. "You see this?" she said. "After they turn 1, it's allllll gone."

In the year after Eli was born, our apartment looked a lot like that too. We had a Baby Bullet for processing homemade baby food and assorted spoons that could attach to fruit pouches and mesh fruit feeders and various types of teething rings. We had a carseat adapter for our stroller and a Snap 'n Go for the carseat that we got when we didn't like how the carseat adapter was working out (see what I mean about throwing money at the problem?) and a Baby Bjorn that we replaced with a Beco after taking a babywearing class and then replaced with a different Beco because Phil was really extra super cautious about head support. We had a breast pump and Medela bottles and two different nursing pillows. We had a Fisher-Price vibrating swing that we used so vigorously that it broke and had to be replaced with another one.

If you ask 10 different moms what baby products to buy, you will get 10 different opinions. Oh, my baby slept great in the Miracle Blanket but hated the Woombie. Or, my baby spit up using the Playtex drop-ins but did great with the Dr. Brown's. That's because you never really know what your baby will like until you try it (and even then, your baby will change his mind a few times, because babies are indecisive like that). Even so, I felt compelled to do all this research on the best pack 'n play, the best stroller, the best carseat. I didn't understand why Eli sometimes woke up from a nap wailing like I had just stabbed him, or why he sometimes ate avocados and sometimes hated them, or really anything at all about how to take care of him, but at least I could provide him with the most meticulously researched stuff any baby ever had.

Meanwhile, while Eli nursed, I Googled questions about how to tell if your baby was getting enough breastmilk. While he slept, I Googled questions about baby napping schedules. One day he fell asleep in the Boppy on the couch and I worried because there is a big "NO SLEEPING" sign right on the Boppy pillow tag, even though I was sitting right there and ready to rescue him should he accidentally slip against the Boppy and begin to suffocate.

And then, just like my cousin promised, Eli turned 1. And allllll that stuff -- that swing and that Baby Bullet and those SwaddleMes and that jumperoo -- was gone.

If preparing for a baby is like preparing the SATs, I had taken the prep course and arrived with my TI-83 calculator and #2 pencils. But just when you get used to having a baby -- just when you figure out which positions bring out those stubborn burps, or which brand of pureed avocado your baby prefers -- wham! you don't have a baby anymore. My baby -- the one I'd prepared for by doing all that Googling and buying all that baby stuff -- was going to grow into a person. One that I'd have to feed and clothe and discipline and model kindness for and take care of for the rest of our lives.

I think that's one reason toddlerhood comes as such a shock to parents: You finally, finally get used to having a baby, and then that baby is like, "Forget this cuddling-and-rocking-me-in-your-arms shit, I am now going to run away from you and tell you how I really feel about having my damn diaper changed."

This weekend I was at a Fourth of July barbeque with a bunch of toddlers around Eli's age and a 6-week-old baby. The baby was so teeny, sleeping blissfully in his carseat, and then he woke up and started screaming, that unmistakably piercing newborn scream. His parents hurricaned into overdrive: get the bottle, pat his back, bounce, sway, swaddle him up. Next to them, the father of one of the other toddlers started reminiscing: "I don't miss that age," he said. "Back then it was like, don't kill the baby, don't kill the baby!" He gestured to our sons scampering around. "They're so much more fun now!"

I don't miss that age either -- until I do. For every time I think about what an independent soul Eli is, there's a memory of him laying on his playmat, gurgling up at the butterflies. For every time Eli wakes up from a nap, climbs down off the bed himself and runs into the living room shouting, "I play toys!", I remember all the hours I spent sitting next to his swing stroking his forehead to help him get to sleep.

I thought I was prepared to have a baby, but that doesn't mean I was prepared to have a person. This person whose first complete sentence was "Don't touch it, Mommy!", who declares "Eli's turn!" at every opportunity and proclaims "I did it!" whenever he accomplishes something awesome. This person who demands "Big higher!" on the swings and loudly sings "Wheels on the Bus" as I push him. 

This weekend Phil and I watched the premiere of The Leftovers on HBO and there was a scene where a father tried to call his son and his son didn't pick up the phone. Phil looked over at me sadly. "I hope Eli takes my call," he said. (I will not reveal whether or not we both burst into tears approximately 1.2 seconds after that comment. Imagine it for yourselves.)

The truth is, I can't control whether or not Eli takes my calls (although I think, as a Jewish mother, I may develop special powers on this front). I can't mold his whole world by buying special bottles or blankets or strollers anymore. The only way I can try to do that is through my behavior as a person -- how I talk to him and to other people, how I act when he's watching (and when he thinks no one is). We're entering, if you will, the open-ended portion of the SATs, and I'll get back to you in 30 years or so about my score.