Murder, Monsters, Mamma Mia, and Motherhood

There is a reason I try not to say things like, "You'll understand when you have kids", other than the fact that it's obnoxious My motivation in avoiding such clichés is that now that I'm a mother, I don't always feel a sense of being let into an exclusive society and finally having access to their secrets, like I thought I would. In fact, in my experience, some of the old standards put pressure on me to feel things that I just...didn't.

For example, that tried and true cliché about looking into your newborn's face for the first time and "feeling a love you never thought was possible" did a fine job of triggering paroxysms of guilt and panic when, in place of that all-consuming love I was meant to feel, was an overwhelming sense of confusion. Maybe it was the drugs, but my foggy head was so busy trying to piece the puzzle together, it didn't really have time to bask in my daughter's glory. In the midst of the "Wait. This is MY baby. It's over? Placenta, what? You're putting stitches WHERE? Oh, right. I have a baby. I should be feeding her. With my boob? Huh?" madness, I had an unsettling revelation:

Love! I'm supposed to be loving her. It's supposed to be core-shaking! Earth-shattering! Where's all the love?

And I didn't cry. I thought I would cry.

In the days that followed, I was so preoccupied with making sure Charlotte was breathing at all times by employing a regimented schedule of staring at her and arranging for someone else to stare at her while I napped, I didn't have time to feel the love! And then there was the jaundice to consider. Not to mention changing the ice packs stuffed down my hospital-issued-granny-panties.

It wasn't until much later and after talking to others about their experiences that I realized I was normal. A friend of mine told me that when they handed her her first son in the hospital, she looked at him, then at the nurse, and said, "What do I do now?". I think that's how we all feel the first time around. And it's normal. And all that fear and anxiety and watching our babies breathe with our hearts in our throats, IS the love.

I digress. My point is that I don't tell people how they will feel or what they will or will not understand when they have kids, because I honestly have no clue. They might greet their new baby with a deluge of love and groovy vibes, and anxiety will be nowhere to be found. Or maybe they will, unlike me, find breastfeeding to be the magical bonding experience of their fantasies. Maybe they won't want to have sex with their husbands for a year, or maybe they'll be marking off with a big, red pen each day on the calendar that stands between them and the six-week green light. Maybe they will co-sleep, or maybe they, like me and Chris, will be at their wit's end and Ferberize the hell out of their kid. There is just no way of knowing.

But, there is one thing that I have found to be a constant amongst the mommies and daddies I know, and that is a marked difference in how one views music, movies, and other media upon becoming a parent. When I was pregnant with Charlotte, I was out with a friend. We had just dropped her kids off at her parents' house where they would be spending the weekend. On the way home, we listened to the Mamma Mia! soundtrack, and when the song Meryl Streep sings about her daughter and how quickly she's grown came on, my friend's finger was already on the skip button. She told me she had a hard time listening to that song, especially when she wasn't with her daughter. I must have nodded and said "Oh" or something equally profound. But on the inside, I was rolling my eyes. Cut to me this afternoon as I hear two notes of the song and promptly change it because I don't want to be forced to think about the day my daughter will grow up and get married, and I REALLY don't want to think about the fact that it will be here before I know it.

I mentioned this phenomena to that same friend after we watched a movie wherein the main character loses her mother as a small child. I found myself fighting tears while watching her clutch her mother's possessions to her heart and other such maudlin gestures, because the thought of not being there for my little girl killed me. My friend told me that she experienced a similar breakdown while watching Titanic. While I was caught up in the Kate and Leo teenage hysteria, my friend had just given birth to her first son, and the image of watching a mother tuck her children into beds on a sinking ship was more than she could handle. I read in a fellow mommy's blog once, that she had sympathy for the Cloverfield monster, once she learned that it was just a baby monster who was looking for his mother.

And then there is my mother, who says that she had to stop reading her beloved True Crime books when she had me. Reading about deceit, lies, and homicide was exhilarating for her. But, as a mommy, every victim in every book became her daughter, and she had to quit cold turkey.

Maybe this is one things all parents can agree on. But, probably not. I'm sure for every person that sees their child's face on the screen of every horror movie, there are five who can easily separate their real life from the lives of those they read about in books or hear about in songs. And, that's just fine.

But, I'm curious as to what you guys think about this topic. If you have kids, did your perceptions change? What surprised you? If you don't have kids, what expectations do you have, and what are you excited/terrified about?

Speak up!