Faulty Programming

I was back in another dimly lit mother’s lounge, where by some miracle three rocking recliners are crammed into a space the size of my bathroom.

I often feel like I don’t belong in there. You’re a mother? And an adult, female, aunt, daughter, wife and many other things by definition but still feel like a fraud at one or all of them from time to time.

Often, I walk in to find other people in these small rooms. Sometimes they’re just in there to escape from the crowded isolation church can bring. Sometimes they, like me in that moment, are in there to nurse or rock their baby to sleep.

Today I was greeted by familiar smells sadly rather foreign in my church experience: coffee and cigarettes. She reminded me a lot of my youngest sister as she sipped her latte. Nose pierced, a few visible tattoos, a quiet confidence that seemed to masquerade an underlying uneasiness. Maybe she felt the judging eyes around her. Maybe I read her totally wrong.

Across from her sat another woman. As I took my seat in the last recliner, I saw a baby about Katie’s size draped across her arm. The baby’s ivory skin contrasted with a dark sleeve of tattoos.

I love storytelling and wanted to hear both ladies’ life stories right there. Instead I settled for some nuggets of wisdom.

The woman without a child in the room had kids too and taught me about empowering kids to make choices and giving them room to express feelings.

I soon learned that the baby in the other woman's arms was Katie’s age and that she was her ninth child. Nine pregnancies. Nine deliveries. Nine terrible twos. Nine teenagers. Nine incredible human beings to love and learn with.

Now I really wanted to hear this woman’s story. I soon discovered she was just two years older than me. And had birthed and raised nine children. Mic drop.

But thankfully she didn’t drop the mic there. She shared some wisdom, borne of life experience. She liked having a year between kids. It was her favourite gap. It was a huge struggle at first but as they grew they became best friends.

I always ask parents of multiple kids that question. My research has shown there’s no magic number. No magic gap. Sounds like the rest of parenting in my experience.

Then she shared that each time she lamented that her new baby was more useless at breastfeeding than the last one until she’d realize it’s just hard out the gate for most babies and takes time, like all skills, to perfect.

And then she did what other parents have done before when they meet Katie. She told me she wished her little girl was as active, mobile and socially engaged as Katie.

I laughed inside. I wished Katie was sleeping soundly like her baby. I wished Katie would power down sometimes and be content to just sit still. I wished she liked to cuddle or have her back rubbed. But she doesn’t. And I’m learning it has nothing to do with me.

At times I’ve felt a need to take responsibility for Katie’s shortcomings or credit for her achievements. As I sat in that mother’s lounge today, I realized it really doesn’t have a lot to do with me.

I don’t get to wear a badge of honour because Katie has four teeth and a kid her age has none while another has a dozen. Maybe I get a participation ribbon for surviving weeks of tears and sleepless nights as the teeth came through but if I had more say in the process, those teeth would have been in much sooner and with much less fanfare.

She’s been waving at people for months now but not because I repeatedly waved until she got it. She’s loved people and social outings practically since birth. She certainly doesn’t get that from her mom, the hermit. She gets parts of it from her dad, certainly we nurture some of it but, spoiler alert: she was born this way. She came with her own personality.

Unlike her mom and dad, she absolutely loves cats. She also came with a temper (okay, that she gets from her hermit mom). My badge of honour will come when I lead by example and teach her to control her temper.

Before she was born, Sterling and I would muse over what traits of ours she would inherit. We isolated our best traits and hoped she’d get all of them and none of the bad. I can understand why studying genetics is a thing. Nobody wants to see their worst parts in their offspring.

Yes, she has parts of both of us. Some bad, many good unveiled almost on a daily basis. She is our child but she is not us. Not a carbon copy. She’s her own person. She’s not going to be the same as other babies her age. She didn’t walk at nine months like I did. That doesn’t mean she’s a failure. It means I have more time to enjoy her crawling phase and can help her progress to walking when she’s ready.

There’s a propensity to compare and contrast, I find, as a parent and as a human really. With those comparisons come a floodgate of guilt and disappointment more often than gratitude and pride. But today, in that little mother’s lounge I think I got one step closer to shutting those rushing waters out.