Over the Edge

A couple of hard weeks dealing with a friend's death on top of the usual stress of preparing for our journey has put a couple of chinks in my armor.  This recent Travel Vaccine Fiasco just about put me over the edge...

I'm not anti-vaccine by any means, but I do believe in being informed about what is going into my kids' bodies and why.  I followed a modified vaccine schedule, spreading shots out a bit even if it meant more needles, because I didn't like the idea of overwhelming their little immune systems with multiple vaccines all at once.  By the time Kenyon was born, giving newborns vitamin D supplements was standard practice.  I declined, because really, it would be an effort to not get enough vitamin D in Denver, with its more than 300 days of sparkly bright sunshine.

In preparation for our trip, a phone appointment with our insurance's Travel Clinic informed me that Sam and I would need Tetanus/Whooping Cough and Hepatitis A vaccines, and both older boys would just need the Hepatitis A vaccine (Kenyon had already had it, as it was standard by the time he came into the world).

Jackson, at 3 years old

As always, I asked what symptoms to watch for in case of a terrible vaccine reaction, and the shots were uneventful--the nurse gave me the handy tip of doing a few push-ups, even just against the wall, to reduce post-vaccine muscle soreness, and it really worked well.  Jackson, Alex and I were in the elevator heading out when Jackson leaned against the wall, saying he was really tired and wanted to rest when we got home.  We walked across the lobby towards the other elevator that provides access to the parking garage.  As we headed down to the garage, Jackson weakly said he didn't feel good at all, that he felt like he was going to throw up.

The doors opened and we stepped out into the parking garage elevator lobby, where Jackson's legs buckled, body collapsed, and he lay there totally unresponsive on the ground.

Jackson, at 5 years old

Inwardly, I was in complete panic mode, thinking of the possibility that he was having some freakish reaction to the vaccine that was just pumped into him.  I struggled, trying to lift him, but it quickly became apparent that his 8-year old body as dead weight is too much for this mother to carry.  The jackets and vaccination papers that I had been carrying were strewn all over the place.

Time stopped for me there, with my son lying limp on the tile floor.  With no one around to help and me unable to lift him, I had to drag his seemingly lifeless body into the elevator to get back up to the main lobby.  Alex was awesome; I'm sure he was totally freaked out inside but he stayed calm and I didn't notice it at the time but he swiftly picked up all the stuff that I had dropped and rode in the elevator with me.

Jackson, at 7 years old

Frustratingly, the elevator didn't appear to notice the emergency and took its merry time bringing us up to the main floor, where I dragged Jackson out in to the lobby and yelled for help; at this point he still wasn't conscious.  As nurses ran over, he was finally starting to open his eyes, and we took him in a wheelchair back up to the doctor's office while I tried to not completely lose my shit in front of my kids.

Turns out he just fainted; they said it's fairly common for boys to hold their breath while they get a shot and then it catches up to them a few minutes later when they're on their feet.

He was completely back to normal a short time later, but me?  I am ready to either spend some time locked away in a mental institution or at a spa.  Given our finances, an institution seems far more likely.

Who finagled me into this having-children-that-you-love-more-than-life-itself business?  I could be sipping Mai Tais on a beach with my biggest worry being deciding between the conch fritters or the lobster tail for dinner instead of trying to make peace with the terrible predicament of a mother desperately loving three human beings and not being able to protect them from life's dangers.  What worries me most is that in the grand scheme of things, this fainting incident was super minor, and it almost took me down for good.

There's no way I'm going to survive parenthood.

Laxative Guilt

This is my first contribution to Girl Talk Thursday--I hope to make a habit out of it. If it's anything like my desire to make exercise a habit, I will participate three times a year.  Tops.  This week's topic is Parental Punishments--what did you endure, hate, and would use now?

I'm not looking to open a can of worms here, but I'll come right out and say that this household is a no-spanking zone.  I personally don't believe in spanking as a principle, but also because if I allow myself to hit my children when I am angry, I would hit them HARD.  Where do you draw the line?  I stop myself at a firm grasping of an arm and speaking in a low, serious tone to tell them I mean business.  What 'business' is, I'm not quite sure--hey, aren't we all winging it here?  But it's usually enough to make them quit whatever they are doing.

I only recall being spanked once as a child, after my brother Matt and I repeatedly crank-called 911 while we were supposedly under my father's watchful eye.  I (allegedly) asked the 911 operator out on a date (I was not more than 6 at the time).  Man, would I love to go back in time and hear the conversation that undoubtedly occurred between my parents that day!  Anyway, I scarcely remember the spanking, but what stuck with me was the appropriately-placed guilt.  My parents never used overdone, Catholic guilt as a parenting technique (my Mom is Jewish, which is a whole different breed of guilt, and my dad is an athiest)--this was smooth and effective...laxative guilt, one might say.  Mom and Dad pulled out the "someone may have died because they had a real emergency and called 911 but you were tying up the phone line" story.  At that age, I didn't know that the 911 system was likely, and hopefully, more sophisticated than one guy sitting on a ratty brown office chair with the foam stuffing poking out, answering one rotary-dial telephone, even if this was Tallahassee in the early 80s.  I did feel appropriately terrible, although (again, allegedly) my first draft of my apology letter to the police contained a statement along the lines of "My brother made me do it".  Needless to say, I got my first lesson in revision that day.

This laxative guilt was used throughout my teenage years as well.  I am a terrible liar (thus narrowing my career options with my law degree), so it was clear when I was hiding something.  During those years, my parents' stock line after a lie was "It's going to take a long time to build back the trust".  And it was devastating, knowing that my parents viewed me as some shifty person they couldn't quite trust.  I must have subconsciously filed that line in my parenting lobe, because I totally have used that one.  Another one I use that channels my parents is "Did Daddy already give you an answer?  Because we don't shop around for answers in this family."  Mmmmhmmmm...pure gold.  I'm sure as the boys get older and we're faced with new struggles, I'll be rooting around in my subconscious for more.

Sam and I, thankfully, are virtually totally aligned in our parenting styles.  The one method he has used that I vehemently oppose is "The Pinch", something he learned from his own childhood.  When he acted up during dinner or couldn't get his act together in the car as a child, he would get a firm pinch on the leg.  When we had it out over this, Sam agreed that when he was being his best parenting self, he would not choose this option to change our children's behavior, that it was more of a last ditch effort, I've-had-it-up-to-here kind of thing.  That parenting method has since been discontinued in our household, thanks in part to a couple of great parenting books (and in part to, shall we say nicely, a verbally persuasive wife).

I'm not a parenting book type of person really, but I have to say that I am reading a book now that has helped immensely in my goal of being my best parenting self--Buddhism for Mothers, by Sarah Napthali.
Ladies, check it out from your local libraries because this one is worth reading.  I am no Buddhist, but incorporating some of these ideas into my every day life has made such a difference in my well-being, and given me a new perspective on interacting with my children.  Sam didn't know I was reading it, but noticed the way I diffused a situation was particularly calm and productive.  Mothers with more than one child may notice that something that worked fine with the first just doesn't work with the second or third.  Timeouts are perfect for Jackson--we send him up to his room to cool off for a couple of minutes, and then one of us goes up and has a great conversation about how he could have handled the situation differently, and how he could make it right.  With Alex, removing him from an argument with a timeout only escalated the situation, leaving him furiously kicking his door and screaming.  It took many agonizing tries and late-night parenting discussions before we adopted a strategy that is helping him slowly learn to put his emotions into words.  It sure is a team effort to parent consciously, learning to switch our pitch depending on the batter, but here's hoping it will pay off in the long run.

Musings On Motherhood

Motherhood is an experience that is virtually impossible (especially for me) to capture through the written word, as the experience is much too powerful and all-encompassing. The days I birthed each of my children, it just blew my mind (and still does) that I had taken part in something so incredibly extraordinary, yet so ordinary that it had been happening since the dawn of time, across so many species. I felt like I had tapped into this ancient universal force.

Now, don't get me wrong--I don't float effortlessly through each day in a flowing white gown and a flower in my hair, showering my children with nothing but patience, love and kindness. Just as Superman periodically became disabled by kryptonite, my flow of motherly love gets clogged by toys strewn about the living room, whiny voices, unfolded laundry, husbandy husbandness...the list goes on. And on.

But--I do have an innate, powerful appreciation for life and all the good that I have that I can only genetically attribute to Harold, my late grandfather. At any and every family gathering, Harold would weep out of joy for all of his family. All the women on that side of the family are the same way. When I was younger I would scoff at the teary-eyedness of my family, but that gene surfaced strongly somewhere in my early adulthood.

There are many children's books that I can't get through without my voice cracking, pausing in an attempt to keep my tears up in my eyes as my children patiently wait in my lap for the next page. I absolutely refuse to read I Love You Forever. Can't do it. Dog Heaven, which the wonderful veterinary oncologists sent us in the mail after we had to put my beloved 4-year old weimaraner to sleep is a definite, emphatic no. Yesterday during morning reading time in Jackson's 1st grade class, Jackson brought over a book for me to read him called Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, about a young boy and his relationship with a woman who has experienced memory loss. I made it 2/3 of the way through before I was discreetly wiping away tears.

Songs? I've got a ton that do me in: 100 Years to Live by Five For Fighting, Elton John's Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters, James Taylor's Carolina in My Mind, Linda Ronstadt's Goodbye My Friend...

Life in general, but particularly motherhood, is so precious, and difficult, and life-changing. I have a hard time when I think my boys are growing up faster than I'd like, but then I remind myself that my job as a mother is not to have cute little children, but to raise strong, intelligent, productive members of society. Only then does my heart feel a little less tight.

This past weekend as I made the 4 minute drive to the grocery store, I tuned into my favorite radio show, This American Life. The week's theme was The Parent Trap, about parents who unwittingly set traps for their children. I caught the show mid-way through, but sat in my car, riveted, in the Safeway parking lot for twenty minutes as I listened to the story of Lucy, a chimp that a psychologist and his wife had raised from infancy as if she were their human child. As an experiment. This was the '70s, clearly before humans had the decency to introduce ethics into experimentation. The story of this poor child that was caught between two species was heartwrenching. You can listen to the show in its entirety here.

My friend Kami at The Fence wrote a post today about struggling to be the mother she wants to be, and it really resonated with me. She recently had a few wake-up calls that are helping to put things in perspective. I get a quick, slap-in-the-face back to appreciation anytime I think of the Bingham family. In late fall of 2006, I was a mother of 3-year old and a 2-year old. The Binghams had a four-year old daughter and a 2-year old son, and went out downtown for a cup of hot cocoa to celebrate fall one evening. As they crossed the street at the crosswalk, a drunk driver plowed them over, killing the mother and her two children. The unbelieveably terrible details can be read about through my link. The father had a few injuries, but his entire life was gone. In an instant. A nice young family, with their son wearing his superhero cape, out for cocoa? They were US; that could have been us so easily. For whatever reason, I, the mother of three little boys, get to be here now, and Rebecca Bingham and her two beautiful children are not. Dammit, I'm going to appreciate it, because my life can change in an instant and I would hate to look back and think, "Man, I had it so, so good and I wasted all those years bitching and complaining."

In her blog, Kami linked to a Mom-101 video that sums up the motherhood experience so wonderfully, I wanted to share it. I don't know how any mother could watch this with a dry eye.