Author: Rose Morgan

Writer, Maker, Mama. Working to create a space where women aren't judged for being honest about the dark side of motherhood and postpartum mental health.

I forget things. A lot.

When I was pregnant, we set up an email address for Ben. Only Quinn and I have it. I had the intention of writing Ben letters from time to time, with the hope that he would someday read them when he’s older and be able to understand his mother for the person she was, both before he was born and when he was too young to form lasting memories. As we approach Ben’s second birthday, I have written three of these letters. I keep forgetting he has an email address.

I keep forgetting a lot of things.

Eight months ago: an expectant first-time parent asks me about my postpartum experience. I can’t recall any details beyond exhaustion and a deep sadness.

Two months ago: a friend points out that Ben’s large birthmark has faded entirely. I forgot he ever had a birthmark.

Last night: I catch myself being surprised that Ben’s eyes are brown now. How long have they been brown? They used to be blue.

The idea of having another child at this stage in my life, when my first is approaching two and I am nearing approaching 34, seems like the worst idea in the history of everything. Quinn and I will be in our 50s by the time he’s graduating high school. So as someone with both feet firmly in the one and done camp, I feel a lot of pressure to get everything right this first (and only) time around. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rolled my eyes when other women have cooed at complaints of nights spent cluster feeding or comforting a sick toddler. “Cherish it!” they chirp. “It goes by so fast!”

Right, I think. I’m definitely going to cherish memories of being pissed on and kept awake for days on end.

Like so many other days, today I can only seem to focus on the exhaustion I feel after a weekend of clingy, congested tantrums. When I talk about my frustrations, I can only recall how many nights he hasn’t slept well, how many nights he refused to sleep in his crib, how many times I have had to leave the room during an inconsolable tantrum. I manage to forget — like always — the many, many ways Ben has improved. I forget that bedtime is a breeze 90% of the time, that he can drink from an open cup without spilling, that he will try a bite of any food at least once. I forget all the nights he sleeps 10 hours straight.

I worry about all the things I will forget. Big things. Important things.

But mostly I worry about forgetting the little things, like the sound of his belly laugh. The weight of his big little head on my shoulder, or the warmth of his body when he climbs into my lap to watch cartoons. The way he says “beep!” when I unlock the car. The way he pats everybody on the back when he gives them a  hug.The knowledge that there are so many things that will be forgotten lingers at the back of my mind. I worry so much about forgetting that I don’t doubt that there’s at least some bit of self-fulfilling prophecy at work.

by Rose Morgan

Don’t Make Me Do This Again: The Pressure to Reproduce

“When are you going to give him a sibling?” a complete stranger asks. It’s maybe the dozenth time I’ve been asked this question. When someone offers to be my pro-bono, full-time nanny, I think.

There’s a kind of unspoken expectation in America to have multiple children. Only children, or kids who don’t grow up with a sibling in the home, are seen as self-absorbed, maladjusted, unhappy loners lacking in social skills. I have an issue with  the way these assumed behaviors are referred to — only child syndrome — and how it suggests that being without siblings is a disorder of some kind: all children that grow up without a brother or sister are subject to this same set of negative stereotypes, with little or no regard for the environmental factors that influence characteristics like adaptability, agreeableness, empathy, and resiliency.

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The unspoken assumption is that parents of only children do little or nothing to encourage or facilitate socialization with age-mates, or that only children are treated as little adults, isolated from situations that allow them to develop critical social skills that will allow them to flourish as they become old enough to interact with the world independent of parental guidance.

To tell parents that only children are in some way worse off places an excessive amount of pressure on parents to reproduce — even if they lack the financial stability or mental energy to do so. The decision to expand (or not expand) the family is a deeply personal one. More worrying, this pressure entirely disregards the possibility that many couples are unable to expand their family, whether due to fertility reasons, a lack of resources to pursue adoption, or other equally personal reasons. How does a parent compensate for the multitude of ways they are told their child will suffer for their solitude? Can they compensate?

Of course they can. I’ll be damned if I let strangers and ill-proven theories about stunted development persuade me to put my body through the difficult, painful, year-long process of conception, pregnancy, and newborn period. I’ll be double damned if my son isn’t going to be the happiest, most well-adjusted kid ever. The common factors that are most often pointed to as being causes of only child syndrome are things that can be significantly influenced through the active and ongoing evaluation of the child’s environment, relationship with caretakers, and various social outlets.

Ben is in daycare three days a week. We get a little report card telling us how he’s doing on his interpersonal skills, like listening to directions, table manners, and waiting patiently during hallway time. We also get a note on what we need to work on at home. Right now (surprise) it’s listening ears. Ben has a mind of his own, but I’m pretty sure kids his age have maybe a 50% return rate on listening the first time anyway.

From the time Ben was old enough to be aware of the world around him, I made an effort to get him out of the house and into the world on a daily basis. While I’m sure this started as a way to relieve myself of the monotony of caring for an infant, it eventually grew into a much-needed reprieve for Ben, who becomes restless if he’s been cooped up inside all day. We have a large yard and two active dogs, but this isn’t enough stimulation for a vibrant, giggle-happy toddler. Our daily outings to the park or grocery store or a friend’s house for play time allow Ben ample time to interact with the world and other children outside of the structured routine of daycare.

So here, friends, is my deepest (and newest) fear. What if I do everything in my power, but my everything turns out to not be enough? What if my family history of depression ensnares him as it did me? How much of his adult self is determined by  nature vs. nurture? The truth at the heart of it — the same truth at the heart of everything we do — is that only one outcome is ever guaranteed to us. So I’ll do my due diligence and hold onto the hope that our efforts won’t be for nothing or in vain. The rest is a combination of chance, effort, timing, and love.

 

by Rose Morgan

Friday Five: It’s not your fault if your kid is a butthead.

We have not had an easy week. Those teeth are still coming and sleep is scarce. It makes me tense in a way that drives Quinn up the wall. You try maintaining a cheery attitude when you’ve been awake with a pissed off toddler since 4:30, you haven’t slept, and they won’t stop whining because they’re exhausted but refuse to sleep. Leaving him to cry himself back to sleep doesn’t work. He will go on for hours; I spend so much time worrying that I’m causing him permanent damage by letting him cry for so long that it causes me to lose sleep. But not to worry: today’s round up is all about the weird ways parental efforts are overestimated and how we should all really just relax about the whole effing our kids up thing. You’re (probably) fine.

Motherhood Isn’t Sacrifice, It’s Selfishness

Fathers are rarely, if ever, spoken about in the same way that mothers are. It’s culturally acceptable for men to have children and professional identities without having to choose between the two. These unspoken biases run deep.

It reminds me of a friend whose husband complained about having to “babysit” the children while she went to dinner with friends. Has a woman ever “babysat” her own children? Things are changing, but the insidious inferences persist.

Karen Rinaldi’s main point is that motherhood is still often referred to as a woman’s job — language she argues does women and mothers a disservice. Rinaldi suggests re-framing job instead as privilege but never goes into what makes  her version of motherhood selfish. The suggestion that motherhood is without sacrifice comes from a position of significant, well, privilege.

Why it’s good to have a strong-willed child, and why you should let up on them

They are more impervious to peer pressure and go after what they want with more gusto. They want to “learn things for themselves rather than accepting what others say, so they test the limits over and over,” and this relates to relationships as well. Such discernment involves not only when they cut their hair, eat vegetables, or choose to wear a coat, but also in whom they decide to trust and in whom they choose to follow or who they allow themselves to be influenced by.

The sentiment here mirrors something I repeat to myself often, just about every time I’m ready to pull my hair out because Ben is being a butthead: “Right now it frigging sucks, but the traits that drive us crazy right now are going to benefit him when he gets older if we encourage him correctly.” Mutual trust, it seems, is key to finding the sweet spot between allowing a stubborn child to flourish and maintaining safe boundaries.

What Millennials Say About Their Parents During Therapy

“We went from a parent-focused society to a child-focused society, and this generation are the products of this flux in our parenting focus… As a result, I hear consistent complaints that their parents are micromanaging their lives to the point of it being suffocating and overbearing.”

I’m a big proponent talking through personal and interpersonal issues, and this is something I think about often. What will Ben think of me when he’s older? Will he see us — or our progressive-for-the-times beliefs — as outdated products of a bygone generation? Will he even like mom, the person when he’s 30? The content here isn’t groundbreaking, but offers an interesting perspective on the shift from 1950s seen-not-heard parenting to the current climate where kids are often at the center of everything.

Most parenting advice is worthless. So here’s some parenting advice.

Like any parent, I would love to believe that my awesome kids are a result of my awesome parenting. Sadly, expert opinion indicates it ain’t so. Genes have an enormous influence. Peers and culture have an enormous influence. But parenting styles inside the home, apart from extreme cases like abuse or neglect, have very little long-term influence on a person’s personality or success in life, at least that social scientists have been able to detect.

File under This Week in My Kid Will Definitely Turn Out To Be A Serial Killer. As if the bottomless well anxiety-inducing nonsense weren’t enough to keep my doctor in business, now there’s this revelation to worry about. The days are long, but the years are short.

A new study says it doesn’t matter how much time you spend with your kids

It turns out that the most reliable parenting strategy is simply to be rich. Beyond that, it’s not clear that what parents do — at least among the range of things that more or less normal people do — is actually all that significant. Some people find that conclusion bleak and nihilistic. Hence the somewhat spurious framing around quality time.

Surprise! Your socioeconomic status has more to do with how your kid’s life turns out than how much time you spend with them. Until they’re a teenager, at least. Maybe now I’ll stop feeling guilty for taking a 20 minute nap between work and daycare pick up once a month.

by Rose Morgan

He won’t call me mama, and the weight of loving

After a few nights of teething fueled, leg flailing non-sleep, Ben woke up in a surprisingly stellar mood. Most nights (get off my back already) he ends up in our bed between 3 and 4 in the morning. This doesn’t really bother us if he can HOLD STILL, WHICH HE NEVER DOES BECAUSE HE’S A TODDLER. We’re suckers for the snuggles, but we’re also freaking exhausted and aren’t capable of anything more involved than bringing him to our bed in the middle of the night. Sleeping with a flopping fish isn’t exactly easy, but it is possible. That’s what I tell myself. Fake it ’til you make it. Or something. I don’t actually believe that. But I like to pretend I do.

Instead of waking up under his usual cloud of fog, he was immediately ready to go. He flopped around for a minute, smothered me in a few very wet kisses, and crawled over to pat the dog. The he stood up, threw his arms up and cooed “Da-da!” at Quinn. Side note: Ben has yet to call me mama after doing it exactly twice several months ago. As far as his baby brain is concerned I am still merely an extension of him, not an autonomous being unto myself. Everybody else is a separate entity, but I exist to be an anchor point in the sea of childhood. Ever-present, stable, sturdy, covered in strange growths.

Wait. No.

It’s kind of a heavy burden to bear, isn’t it? Being the center of someone’s world. There’s a constant pressure of never wanting to let them down, never wanting to see them hurt or sad or in need. It’s like universe is telling us, No pressure, but the emotional well-being of this small human depends entirely on you and whatever small village you can cobble together to help you.

There’s a well-meaning saying about having to love yourself before you can love other people. This is an unfair statement. It tells us (unintentionally, but nonetheless) that we don’t deserve to love unless we first can find ourselves worth loving. This is a cruel thing to tell people. I speak from personal experience that this way of thinking is, by and large, misguided bullshit.

Here’s the thing: in allowing myself to love others, I am better able to find reasons to love myself. In allowing myself to take on the weight of caring for another human life, I have opened myself to a range of emotions I hadn’t experienced before becoming a parent. There’s a sense of being secure in my abilities that wasn’t there before. The people I love — my kid, my husband, my friends, and even my dogs — inspire me to be better, to take better care of myself. I am absolutely, 100% capable of loving others even when I don’t love myself. There’s a quote I like much better, that doesn’t tell you that you have to have reached a certain level of acceptable mental status before you’re deserving of love:

By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.

– Thomas Browne

Something to think about.

by Rose Morgan

An Analog Childhood in the Digital Age

My 20s were spent moving around, for one reason or another, and refusing to put down roots. Before always-on GPS, before the social media boom. If my parents hadn’t heard from me in a day or two they had to send my sister and her friends to hunt me down. Case in point: my phone died and I just didn’t charge it one weekend. It was nice to not deal with text messages or phone calls. So my sister — four friends in tow — showed up at my apartment at 11:00 PM one night saying “Hey, call Dad.”

Fast forward to today: Facebook is either greedy enough to sell your information or mismanaged enough to allow your information to be “inappropriately obtained” by political firms working to install a fascist government in the White House. Google pays so much attention to where you go and when you go there that it changes your home and work locations when you go on vacation (our AirBnB in New Orleans a few years ago). Your Alexa/Cortana/Google Home/Whatever are always on and have probably recorded every argument and case of bad indigestion ever since they were connected to your WiFi.

I deleted my Facebook account some time ago, primarily because it felt pervasive. It was everywhere. Covered everything. Everyone. The idea of needing to utilize this one service in order to maintain social connections felt… uncomfortable. I didn’t like the ads that were following me. I didn’t like the idea of strangers being able to look me up. Facebook is more than a phone book. They don’t just see your phone number, but your photo, friends, and whatever else you shared when you were drunk at 2am. Even if you lock down your profile and friends list, Facebook still retains the details.

But collecting user data better allows companies to serve the user!

They want to sell you things. To make money. When was the last time you saw an ad on Facebook for something that truly changed your life in a meaningful, positive way? Now, when was the last time you saw an ad for that thing you were looking for on Amazon? Yeah. I struggle to put down my phone. Just like I struggled with getting off social media. I’m not about to trot out some holier-than-thou argument to get you off Twitter. I love Twitter. If that’s your thing, get on it. But my connection to and use of social media — of the internet — needed re-balancing. I think everybody would benefit from an honest evaluation of their technology usage.

What kind of always monitored world is my kid growing up in? And how do I instill healthy, balanced technology use in my child?

I love technology. Quinn and I use Alexa, Siri, and Google daily. We use location services. GPS. We have a Nest thermostat (that Quinn snagged for free when we switched power companies, score) and smart light bulbs so we don’t have to get out of bed when we forget to turn the lights off. We drive an electric car that comes with an app that lets us see where it is, what the battery charge looks like, and even set the heater before we leave for work from our phones. We have our eyes on those solar roof tiles when we buy a house.

Well-designed technology, in a perfect world, is seamlessly integrated, highly intuitive, and minimally invasive. Thermostats that learn your schedule and mind the weather. Solar and renewable energy. Robotic surgical assistants. Serving the user. Building connections. Not selling users a lifestyle or trading personal information for dopamine hits. There’s no precedent for how the technology we currently favor will impact social or emotional development in young children. I guess I’m going to have to make it up as I go.

I want Ben to be comfortable with technology — but there’s not really any doubt he will be. What kid born in America after 2000 isn’t? But how to I keep him from becoming obsessed with it? I see so often. Small children using tablets while at dinner or at the grocery store. Phones being used as a pacifier or a substitute for interaction and conversation. I get it. Sometimes you want an easy way out. I’m here for that. It’s about survival, about getting through the day. I bribed Ben with my phone for the first time a couple of weeks ago during a too-long wait at his doctor’s office. I let him watch Moana, his current number one. And I was granted a grim glimpse of the future when I put it away: a full blown gimme-gimme tantrum. Oh hell no. I guess playing with phones is going to be off the table for the foreseeable future.

That’s okay. We have a huge yard.

by Rose Morgan