Who Doesn’t Love a 4am Wake-up Call?

Published on by Lisa Category: Notes From Home Plate, Pregnancy and Parenting

All the little things I never understood before about parenting, I am quickly beginning to understand now.

I used to look at parents of babies and wonder how in the world they can keep their head on their shoulders when a baby is crying like it’s the end of the world Answer: you get used to it.

At parties or gatherings of any sort, how do mothers simultaneously socialize, balance a plate of food in one hand, baby on the other arm, and smile? Answer: women are capable of anything.

Reuseable diapers seem like a good idea. Answer: They’re not.

Why do parents keep a million framed pictures of their babies? Isn’t one enough? Answer: You can never have too many pictures of Baby.

How do people wake up in the middle of the night to take care of the endless needs of a child? Answer: Hormones and Love.

I do believe there must be some sort of hormonal explanation for my newfound ability to meet 3 or 4am head-on. Seriously, I was the type of person who could sleep through hurricanes and thunderbolts, loud music and alarm clocks. Give me a chair, bed, reclining anything and I will sleep. On land or on a plane, I even fell asleep while floating in a friend’s backyard pool in highschool.

I used to boast my sleep agility stories like war vet stories. I’ve fallen asleep propped up against a wall in a dentist’s office. In the back of a truck on a bumpy dirt road. On someone’s shoulder in front of a campfire. IN FRONT OF AN AIRLINE CHECK-IN DESK THAT WAS REPEATEDLY CALLING MY NAME.

These instances are all true.

And now…

[le sigh…]

Now, one little meep or beep or squeak or tweek or gurgle or belch or cough or sniff or anything from my little one and my eyes are OPEN, head is rising off the pillow with one eye on the door the other enviously watching my dear spouse snore his life away into his pillow.

Isaiah has changed our lives. He’s brought us unimaginable joy and the wonderful gift of big and small laughs. E.g. Thinking about how he’ll probably be taller than me by the first grade or giggling over his tiny little toe peaking out from one of the sewn holes in a knit blanket.

There’s no further proof of the power of a first baby than the altered sleeping patterns of a night owl like myself.

Nick has a belief that the older one gets, the more prominent the true self becomes. For the most part, I firmly agree with him. However, my “true” self might be put on hold until Isaiah is 18 and away at college. Or my “true” self is permanently changed to reveal a mother who used to need a sledgehammer to the gut to wake up and now wakes at the slightest wind passing through the nursery. My “true” self loved sleep, so much so that I’d sleep through historical moments (the 2000 presidential election result/debacle) or natural disasters (tornado like conditions). Alas, my “true” self has changed. And that’s all due to my son.

Answer: I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Tim Tebow is the Best Thing to Happen to Young Women?

Published on by Lisa Category: Big Media has Big Problem, Reproductive Rights

The so-called controversial anti-abortion message. From all the coverage, I was expecting a ferocious lion. A very lame commercial came on instead.

Interesting read.

It was written prior to the Superbowl and the unveiling of the controversial Tebow/Focus on the Family ad, but I think Jenkins makes some brilliant points. Her most resonating words are those that critique NOW and its narrow focus on feminism, women’s rights, and reproductive freedom…

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn’t be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one.

Personally, I was up to my eyeballs with annoyance over the anxious and hyped up worry from particular feminist groups who, once again, gave reproductive justice and gender rights movements a bad name with their outcry of this ad being “anti abortion,” while others featuring scantily clad women holding beer bottles and footballs have been deemed acceptable for Superbowl Sunday.

Never mind all the sexist-driven ads which young women watch that bombard them with anti-health messages concerning their bodies, choice, worth, and potential. At least Focus on the Family isn’t hypocritical (with this particular commercial) – they want to celebrate life and families and they do just that with the Tebow clan. While NOW exercises their outrage over this particular ad, a million other commercials which blatantly demoralize and sexualize women go without complaint. Wouldn’t it be something revolutionary if NOW had protested the Go Daddy ads or pointed out how women are often used as a sex appeal accessory in alcohol and beer commercials?

As much as I may disagree with its stance, as much as I could argue with its points, Focus on the Family is, well, focused. Ask feminist and pro-choice leadership groups what they focus on and you’ll find a mess of disagreement and hypocrisy.

4am Lessons

Published on by Lisa Category: Feminism, Parenthood

Before I had a son, I wrote about feminism as a subject. It was a noun, sometimes even a verb. Feminism existed as a THING to be written out, explained, debated.

As the past seven weeks of my life have unfolded, I’ve either woken up to a new form or writing, or I’ve undergone some sort of lobotomy where I have no recollection about that kind of writing. You know, the kind of writing where I blatantly write FEMINISM IS THIS, IS NOT THAT, IS MORE LIKE THIS, IS DEFINITELY NOT THAT…

I breastfeed Isaiah and this painful learning process about the wonder of the body and the miracle of nurturing has captivated my writing in new subtleties. His eyes are dark and I stare into them. I don’t see anything but openness. His open pupils stare back into the dark storms of my eyelets and I wonder what he sees in me. And I think about the world and what it will tell him about being a boy, a growing man. The window alone reveals a half-snowed road and the neighbor’s holiday lights still hanging red and white, yet I see a colder world than the winter temperatures. And I worry.

I don’t believe teaching “Feminism” is going to do anything for my son. I don’t know if attending gender and women’s studies courses are going to save him from a hypermasculine society and sexually-distorted media driven world. Maternity leave has let me soak up the world without paid work and I am listening to the sounds of the news. The conversations around me. The behaviors of strangers in stores. The fragments of life are there for me to observe and I’m not convinced Isaiah will learn how to survive that world with “Feminism.”

There’s no bargaining in raising a child. The world, as I see it from Cleveland, does not bargain with mothers. It doesn’t exchange or make deals. Isaiah, with his soft cooing and heart-melting pouts, will be taught messages about his soul, his worth, his identity…and I’m praying I know how to raise him how to reject most of it.

Counter-cultural child-rearing is going to be a monstrous feat in my future. It already is…And the “Feminism” I knew – the kind that had me chasing conferences, journalists, and blog wars – has quieted itself, perhaps even buried itself. A new ecdysis is shedding, rapidly. In its place are questions of health care and education, public breastfeeding, family consumerism, and equal parenting.

To be of use, for Feminism to be of use to mothers, it must come complete with relevance to women’s lives. Ordinary lives and extraordinary responsibility. There is no room, in my son’s life, for classes or blogs, podcasts, or lectures.

All he has is me. All he knows is me his mother. His father, my partner. WE are all he will know for a window’s crack of time before the rest of the community begins to warm his world with ideas. The doubt and insecurity of my own ability to teach him weighs heavily in my heart.

And so I write. I write him letters. I whisper things into his ear at 4am when it feels like no one else in the world is awake. Just us, mother and son. I whisper things, things far too complicated for his tiny brain to comprehend, but I believe the introduction of my voice as a whisper will allow me into his psyche as a voice of reason. A guiding force of love.

I continue to write him letters and whisper into the night. And pray, that for now, it is enough.

Pic of the Week

Published on by Lisa Category: Notes From Home Plate, Uncategorized

This is one of my favorite pictures from the past week.

Isaiah, near sleep, is laying on Nick’s chest. To keep him company and to shield Isaiah’s eyes from the overhead lamplight, Nick ducks under the blanket with him.

I melt. Just melt.

Too funny. Too cute. Too many delicate memories that have to be captured.

Growing

Published on by Lisa Category: Notes From Home Plate, Pregnancy and Parenting


I forgot to mention that on Isaiah’s last appointment, he got his Hepatitis B shot. Our awesome pediatrician, Dr. Cochran, grabbed one of his meaty thighs and stuck him with the syringe and pumped that stuff right into his little body. I watched his reaction.

Nothing at first and then the torture face appeared. Dr. Cochran promptly picked him and handed him to me. I wanted to wail out of pity for my sweet little pumpkin head but decided his tears were enough. I gathered him in my arms and he spit up all over me, old milk that was resting in his belly from breakfast and shot out of his mouth from being startled so suddenly.

After I secured him inside the folds of my arms, he quieted and I felt my first triumphant surge of motherhood. He stopped crying! I’m not only a milk machine to him, he is comforted by me. Well, I thought to myself, we do spend 19 out of 24 hours of the day together. The five hours are when I in the basement doing laundry, getting a shower, or sneak in a walk. All when Nick is available to watch him. With all that time together, he should be comforted by his Momma.

In other words, we’re bonding.

Isaiah’s smiles are increasing in frequency. Nick received his first dose of Isaiah’s ray of sunshine yesterday. It’s just adorable, simply adorable.

And if being covered in milk stains and learning quick diaper changing tricks isn’t enough excitement already, I must re-announce that my new website is still underway. I’ve been working with my webdesigner for months. The project has taken so long because of my pregnancy. It’s been a stop and go process, but we’re nearing the end. Two weeks or so from now, it shall be ready and shortly after that it will be unveiled.

So, remember that Notes from Home Plate will still be up and available, but, likely, I will cease writing on this blog in the next month or so and will shift my writing to the new website which will feature many different forms of writing and other issues in which I have vested interest. But don’t worry, you’ll still have a healthy dose of Isaiah updates and my poking fun at Nick.

As January trickles to an end and the world turns pink and red for February, I am in awe of how quickly time passes. My sweet boy is almost 6 weeks old! And as he grows out of his newborn clothes as quickly as the transforming Hulk ripped through his human clothes, our hearts are growing with him as he gains every ounce and stretches another inch.

Isaiah, nothing compares to you. Nothing.

Show Me That Smile

Published on by Lisa Category: Notes From Home Plate, Pregnancy and Parenting

The weeks are flying by and I can scarcely believe Isaiah is already a month old. A month? A whole month? I can’t remember when time went so quickly. I have a feeling that it’s going to be like that a lot and soon I will be saying things like, “I can’t believe he’s crawling,” “I can’t believe he’s talking,” “I can’t believe he’s on a tricycle…”

I better reverse this whole, “I can’t believe…” because it’s all going to unfold eventually and I want to be able to soak up and enjoy every minute of it.

Isaiah is sporadically sleeping through the night. Last night he slept from midnight to 7am, which is highly unusual for someone so young, but I’ve given up worrying so I’m not frazzled by it at all. He’s getting chunkier every day (and cuter by the minute) and I have no worries about his weight gain either.

The most heart-melting moment this week happened yesterday. Isaiah and I had a long day together. We were cooped up in the house all day and he was just fussing for a few hours straight, not sleeping, constantly hungry, and bopping his head around like one of those bophead toys where the neck is a spring and the huge head swings in all directions. Finally, I fed him after having a long talk with him. Afterward, I looked down at his face. He was listening intently to my voice and, out of nowhere, gave me his first baby smile.

It wiped every irritated feeling out of my world and all I did was melt into his little face.

He smiled.

A real smile, not a muscle reflex or little side lip curl – it was his entire mouth widening into a big adorable upside down rainbow.

Suddenly, I wasn’t worried about anything and all was sunny in the world. There were no earthquakes in Haiti, John Edwards wasn’t a moron, it was the day before spring arrived, and a new batch of Rice Krispie Treats were waiting on the kitchen counter.

It was the quickest antidote to the world’s problems that I have ever encountered.

The first smile, so gentle, so NEW from my firstborn son was beyond uplifting.

Nothing, not even a new episode of Grey’s Anatomy, could hold my attention after that And with delivering his first smile, he promptly fell into a deep 7 hour sleep, as if trying to give me rest when he knows he deprived me of it throughout the day. And this morning, he woke like an angel, barely crying, just cooing and grunting and then feeding with no problems.

Ahh, my little cherub…If only everyone had a newborn to love who gave their first smiles everyday, I firmly believe we would end all wars, disease, and corruption. Yes, new life is that powerful.