I found myself staring at the camera, hypnotized. She was saying all of the right things. It’s true. I had always wondered how Emily’s social media accounts were constantly full of gorgeous meals and perfectly groomed children, and boasted of her latest ventures, when the only thing I’d accomplished last week was moving my laundry pile from the bedroom floor to the recliner. I’d also figured out that a spoon half full of Nutella and half full of peanut butter dipped in powdered sugar tastes like a Reese’s cup.
“My new book, Motherhood Better, will take you from frumpy to fabulous, struggling to spectacular. It’s time to become the mother you’ve always known you could be.”
This was exactly what I needed. With that realization, I practically flew off the couch, startling Aubrey, and grabbed my computer from the dining room table. Within minutes I’d purchased the book from BookSpot, a local store downtown and opted for same day pickup. This was an emergency, after all.
I was almost shaking with excitement. This was my moment. This is exactly what I’d been waiting for. That, and I was running out of places to hide laundry.
I opened my email and was excited to see a confirmation message waiting for me.
You purchased Motherhood Better by Emily Walker.
I looked at my phone. Only four hours until the store opened. Today I will become a mother, better. A better mother? Anyway—I’ll get the book today is what I’m saying.
2 P.M.
I’d finally gotten Aubrey down for a nap and was lounging on my bed, trying not to let the two sinks full of dishes distract me from my well-deserved break. The day had been one for the record books. Everything that could have gone wrong had, and I learned some important lessons.
Lesson #1: If you forget the diaper bag at home and your baby needs changing at a bookstore, remember that you CANNOT, in fact, craft a diaper out of an old ziplock freezer bag that you found in the trunk of your car and a pair of emergency period panties from your glove compartment.
Lesson #2: When you arrive at home and see that your mother-in-law, Gloria, has popped in for a surprise visit with one of her classic six-cheese casseroles because she thinks (knows) you can’t cook and doesn’t want her David “starving to death,” don’t forget about your ziplock bag/period-panty diaper monstrosity and hand the baby to her.
Lesson #3: When your mother-in-law gasps and recoils in horror upon changing the baby and seeing your ziplock bag/period-panty diaper debacle (complete with a stained merlot mosaic of periods past), think of something clever and blasé to say rather than just standing there with your mouth open. Don’t manically yell “Yolo!” She’ll just ask what “yolo” means and you’ll sound like an idiot explaining it. Also, don’t try to cover your tracks and say that yolo is an ancient Tibetan prayer, because even though your mother-in-law doesn’t know how to call before she visits, she does know how to Google.
Lesson #4: Be more prepared. Keep the diaper bag by the door. You should be better at this by now.
What kind of people “just pop by” anyway? Perhaps my dear husband casually let his mom in on the not-so-secret secret that I’m not taking to motherhood as naturally as I thought I would. In my defense, Aubrey is only eight months old. Eight months into any job isn’t really enough time to become an expert.*
* Not that I’m calling motherhood a job. It’s a blessing. Really, it is. Such a blessing. I’m blessed. Truly. #soblessed
Despite my sweet mother-in-law going on and on about how motherhood is an instinct, I can’t be the only newish mom having a bit of a time finding her groove.
To be fair, I had very little preparation for this whole motherhood thing. Before Aubrey, the only newborns I’d ever held were my sister Joy’s kids, the last of whom, my niece, was born just a month before I joined #TeamMom. That’s a day I’ll never forget, and not just because my niece was so adorable. Joy had just dropped the enormous bomb that she was giving her baby girl the name we’d both loved, I mean LOVED, as in we’d named every doll and teddy bear Ella since we were four and seven. When we found out that we were both pregnant, we even met at a coffee shop and decided that neither of us would take the name. So when the nurse said, “Isn’t Ella darling?” I almost hit the ground.
“Don’t be childish, Ashley,” was Joy’s response as she lay looking like a freaking goddess in her hospital bed. She was probably the first woman there to give birth in a $200 custom nursing gown. It was gorgeous. Pink apple print with cute little yellow blossoms.
It wasn’t just the gown. Joy always looked fantastic. Her hair was even prettily tousled like she’d been boating all day rather than pushing six pounds and seven ounces of person out of her vagina.
When I told her I wasn’t being childish and brought up the conversation in the café, Mom chimed in to defend her like she always does.
“Stop it, Ashley. Your sister just had a baby, for goodness sake. And she really does look like an Ella.”
I had Aubrey one month later.
I love Ella and, of course, her brother, my three-year-old nephew, George, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting a little every time I hear her name.
“Aubrey is a gorgeous name,” Joy gushed when she came to visit me in the birthing center. Joy and Mom were dead against my giving birth to my first outside of a hospital. In our typical Easton style, they never actually told me this. They just sent me every birthing center/natural-birth-gone-wrong horror story ever published while I was pregnant.
So maybe I did feel a little smug when Aubrey was born all warm and perfect in my hippie den aka birthing center. That is, until Joy spoke.
“You really are brave, Ashley. I never could have rolled the dice with my baby.”
Once again, Mom backed her up. “Yes, Ashley, you’re very lucky.”
Lucky? They acted like I’d run blindfolded across six lanes of traffic while balancing my baby on my head rather than just given birth in the #1 birthing center in the nation, directly across the street from a top-rated, fully equipped hospital.
Before Aubrey was born I’d decided that I’d be one of those all-natural moms who made their own peanut butter, wore their baby 24/7 in one of those slings and breast-fed well into toddlerhood. Giving birth to Aubrey in a birthing center was just what I needed to catapult me into my new, organic lifestyle.
But my earth-mother adrenaline rush lasted until about four days after Aubrey was born, when my milk didn’t come in. After Aubrey lost two pounds, even my “fight the man” midwife had to admit that something was very wrong.
“You might just be one of those women,” she said to me in a hushed whisper, as if we were undercover spies trading government secrets. “One of those women who don’t make milk.”
“BUT YOU SAID THEY WERE ONE IN FIVE MILLION!” I cried, pushing my raw nipple into Aubrey’s screaming mouth. “I HAD A NATURAL BIRTH!”
Two lactation consultants, bloodwork, a dozen delicious but ineffective lactation cookies, two boxes of lactation tea and a rented breast pump later, I gave in and bought my first tin of failure powder. That’s what a mom from my online breastfeeding forum calls formula. Failure powder. For failures like me. Did I mention that Emily Walker made so much breast milk for her last baby, Sage, that she donated gallons to her local milk bank?
Joy was as helpful as she always is. “I’d totally pump for Aubrey, but I’m making just enough for Ella as it is. Sorry.” I could tell she really was sorry, but it didn’t help with the feeling of crushing disappointment. The studies that go around Facebook every fifteen minutes about how babies who aren’t breast-fed grow up with dragon scales covering their entire bodies didn’t help.
Eight months later I still hate myself just a little every time I scoop that white powder into the bottle. Formula. I’m a formula mom.