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.