Differing Parenting Strategies

The temperature is on the rise.  Coming in with the clouds like a low gray steamroller.  When I left the house this morning, Daddy was on the phone setting up a golf game and you were upstairs in your bassinet, crying.  "The baby's crying," I said to your dad, just in case he couldn't hear over the intense interaction about tee times.  "I know," he said, "but I'm starving so I'm going to eat something first and let him cry."

Sometimes your father and I have what one might call "differing parenting strategies."  Or that's what one might call it in a blog post.  When faced with one of these "differing parenting strategies" in real life I often call it "what the hell are you doing?"  Daddy and I are a little bit better at navigating these differences that we used to be but sometimes I still go a little ballistic, like when Daddy gardens in the back yard and lets Thisbe play by herself in the front yard.  Daddy doesn't watch as much Law and Order as I do and thus is not quite up to date on the number of pedophile-vampires that exist in the world.  Mommy has to take on a lot more of the worrying which, your father often points out, is a completely unproductive energy suck.

In addition to the parenting variations in our household (where, in actuality, we're generally a good team and on the same page about most things), you have been born into a moment in time where the parenting advice circulating in American society is abundant and contradictory.  Over the past few months I've learned that my children would turn out better if I: let them play with knives, avoided affirming accomplishments, roughhoused more vigorously, encouraged them to run around the neighborhood in packs, shunned time outs, wore them more regularly, did not feed them snacks, fed them a perfect balance of organic protein and vegetables, forbade screen time, demanded disciplined practice in areas where they excelled, demanded nothing but creative play, and encouraged the consumption of small amounts of dirt and grime.

As someone who is not a particularly confident parent and as an academic who reads in order to figure out how to behave, all of these different prescriptions alternately reduce me to laughter or tears, depending on the day.

Even now, when parenting you requires nothing more than taking out my boob every couple hours and wiping poop from the underside of your scrotum, the job is still overwhelming.  Though at this point, it's not the choices that overwhelm (left breast or right? bassinet or swing? Ergo or Moby?) but the unrelentingness of it all.  Daddy is going golfing today for five hours (six if beer enters the picture).  I can't yet wander away from you for that long.

Last night you woke at 12:30 and 3:30 and 6:30 (well, I guess 6:30 is officially morning but I went back to sleep so it doesn't count).  This was a terrific night for you, especially since you went back to sleep after each feeding.  But I often watch Daddy while I feed you.  The curve of his shoulder, his strong chin, the long slow breaths of deep sleep.  I teeter between deep love and spiny jealousy.  For a while at least, Matteus, we are in this dance together--the waking and feeding, the waking and feeding--and it is sometimes incredibly lonely here.  I miss my own self.

But it is also incredibly intimate: your sharp tugs on my body, my thumb smoothing your silky dark hair.  And the sound of you swallowing, a sweet hollow noise that fills and fills the darkened room.