Don't Panic!

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the last 18 months, it’s this: Don’t panic!

When I hear, “She fell down the stairs!” I ask if it was an entire flight of stairs or just the bottom step. No need to have a mini stroke before I know the whole story. I find that sensible parenting skill to be key to the shred of sanity I have left & no doubt it will serve me well when Haven is a teenager.
When I hear, “She’s eating dog food!” My response is: …And? Was the dog food part of a recall? If not, carry on.

I’ve watched my daughter crunch on ladybugs, Cheetos she found under the couch, & she has even used a plastic garden hand rake as a fork. Dog food at this point is not alarming. If she’d rather eat the dog food than the perfectly good hot dog I cut up into itty bitty pieces on her plastic Hello Kitty plate, I actually take a moment to wonder if it counts as a meal before prying the kibble from her fingers & baby wiping her hands profusely. (Side note: Speaking of baby wipes. They are awesome. They clean up everything. I could prep for surgery with those bad boys!) If I add up everything she eats (the items that are meant to be edible) it adds up to one full meal a day. I think that’s a victory with an 18 month old.

While we successfully sleep through the night now (and have for quite a while, thankfully!), there are new day time challenges.

1) Being serenaded by her high pitched “Mariah Carey cry” (the toddler wail that eventually hits a note so high only dogs can hear it) while I try to shower. I usually forget if I’ve even put conditioner in my hair. {Currently my three basic hairstyles are up, down, & homeless. HELP ME ERIN TOOMEY!!!} (That's my awesome friend & hairstylist y'all. She makes me feel beautiful & listens to all these crazy stories while she does my hair!)
2) Her food isn’t good enough. If I actually sit down to eat a meal, the only food she will eat is what’s on my plate. Even when both plates have the exact same food. This is where a clear understanding of reverse psychology helps!
3) Don’t turn your back. Not even for a second. Grow eyes in the back of your head. In the split second you turn away, she will climb the stairs, find a hammer (!!!!!!????!!!!), an unattended cup will be dumped on a couch or a rug, chaos ensues. Remember, I said don’t panic!

And let’s not forget The Witching Hour. This is the unholy time around 5-7PM when my child becomes a raving lunatic.
“FEED ME! YOU CAN’T PUT ME DOWN TO MAKE DINNER BUT I MUST BE FED IMMEDIATELY. CAN YOU TELL THAT I’M SPEAKING TO YOU IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, MOTHER? I NEED YOU TO PUT A PLATE OF FOOD IN FRONT OF ME SO THAT I CAN EAT EXACTLY ONE BITE AND THEN CHEW UP AND SPIT OUT SEVERAL MORE BITES. IT WILL BE A SURPRISE WHERE I SPIT THEM OUT! YOU WON’T FIND IT FOR AT LEAST A DAY!”

In all seriousness, I have to remind myself often not to panic. I waited until I was 27 years old to have a baby so that I would be prepared. [Insert hysterical laughter here]
There was no way to prepare me for the love that washed over & almost consumed me. There was no preparation for the misery of sitting on a couch around the clock nursing, praying for sleep, praying for that feeling of fulfillment I’d been told I should feel.

And now that she sleeps through the night, I find myself awake late at night, letting my mind carry me into the not-so-distant future & I’m already trying to prepare what I’ll say to her when she has her heart broken for the first time, preparing words to explain what it means to be a woman - strong & brave & delicate all at the same time. Thinking about what I will do to encourage her to follow whatever wild dream she has when she’s young & free & hopeful.

I already think about the honesty I will give to her in explaining motherhood when she begins to wonder about it.
How sometimes I laugh to keep from crying, how sometimes the little things are really big things when you look back from a distance, how being her mother is a part of me but not all of me.

I almost lost myself in that first year, I panicked. A lot. Trying to figure out who I was consumed me because I was overwhelmed by the constant demands of feed me, change me, comfort me, let me poke you in the eye & send you to the doctor with a clean corneal abrasion. (Yeah, that was her first birthday gift to me. True story.)
Then there was the overwhelming guilt-- feeling selfish for thinking about myself, wishing for an afternoon alone, wanting someone to take care of me. I wondered hundreds of times if I was cut out for motherhood because I mourned the loss of all my free time.
I knew before I was pregnant that, as Juno so eloquently put it, babies are "quite the time suck", but you don't really understand the 24/7 thing until you're living it. Goodbye, spontaneous lunch date. Goodbye, sleeping in past 9AM on the weekend. Hello, checklist of items I need in this giant diaper bag before I can leave the house. Hello, I can't remember if I brushed my teeth this morning.

When Haven was about 10 months old, I was busy raking an entire shelf of Gerber Hawaiian Delight into my Target shopping cart because it was on sale with my Cartwheel app & it was the only thing she would eat that week. There was a woman in the aisle staring so hard at the rice cereal that I thought she may have fallen asleep with her eyes open. I knew that to be the trademark new mom look.
"How old was your little girl when you gave her rice cereal?" she asked, appearing embarrassed. I told her Haven was six months old when I gave it to her. The woman sighed a little & I asked what was wrong.
"Well, I have my mom telling me to give my 3 month old son rice cereal in his bottle to help keep him fuller longer & then I have other people telling me he can't have anything but milk until he's six months old. I'm really desperate to help him sleep longer through the night but I don't know if I should try the rice cereal."
I wanted to hug her. I remembered how little things like that felt like such a monumental decision & I didn't know if I was doing the right thing as a mother. "Whatever you decide for him will be just fine."
She looked so relieved when I said that I think she almost hugged me. As I was leaving the aisle, I turned around & said, "You're doing a great job."
I knew she needed to hear it & I meant it. I had loved ones tell me I was doing a great job (usually when I was bawling my eyes out & leaking from my boobs) but it isn't possible to hear it enough in those early months.

In those early months of motherhood, I had panicked over if Haven was nursing too much or not enough & if I was pumping enough at work & if her poop was supposed to be the color of guacamole. I panicked having to make decisions for another life. It felt much too overwhelming.
My first instinct is no longer panic, but there's something about putting her to bed -- after the witching hour, after her dinner of a sliver of hot dog with a side of Rachael Ray dog food -- that finds me awake still, even after I swore that I'd sleep every delicious second that she sleeps, wondering about how well I will handle the first time someone is mean to her & if I'll have the right words. I lie awake & pray to God that I will be strong enough to love her with all that I have & that I live a life she can look up to. I hope that sometimes she will choose to laugh & find the humor in a bleak situation rather than crying; that she will always choose hope.

All these things I hope for her, I am finally learning to choose for myself. Haven is always there, watching; waiting for my reaction to a situation.

While sleep deprivation // temporary insanity may be to blame for some choices I made in the first few months of her life, I chose to leave an office job to work full time in photography because I know that one day she'll have a dream of her own. And she'll try to tell herself that it's impossible or not meant to be, the way I always thought of being a full time photographer. Instead of asking why, I want my daughter to ask herself, why not? Her whole life is in front of her, ready to be filled & embraced. Praying that she chooses to embrace her life has led me to embrace mine.

I wonder when she's going to figure out that I really have no idea what I'm doing; that I'm just winging this whole parenting gig. This is where I still have to remind myself not to panic.