Yesterday my husband, daughter, and I headed out early for a morning on the beach. We dug a giant sand pit, built and promptly stomped on sandcastles, and failed to convince my daughter stepping on seaweed is not the absolute worst thing in the world. We followed this with fish stew and fried bananas on the beach. In the afternoon, there was a skype call with grandparents, tutus, and puzzles, and a thirty minute tantrum during which my little ballerina spit in my face.
When I finally crept out of her bedroom at night, I collapsed on the couch thinking “I will never do this again.”
There it is. My true feelings about parenthood. I love my daughter. I also love myself. And I cannot spend any more of my one lifetime parenting a small child.
Despite being born with a uterus, I never dreamed of having children. In high school through my early twenties, when I imagined my future it never included children. I pictured travel, politics, law, publishing a book and going on tour, or accepting an appointment as a US ambassador. Babies never made an appearance. Then I got married and in my late twenties, I began to think that a child might be nice. Also, my husband is sixteen years older than I am and given women’s tendency to outlive men, I’d rather not be alone for the last twenty years of my life.
Wanting a guaranteed companion in old age is a pretty selfish reason to have a child. But aren’t they all? I’ve never heard of a couple having a child because the kid asked to be born. “I’ve always dreamed of a big family.” “We need someone to carry on the family name.” “I just love babies.” All selfish reasons. Yet society reacts with hostility to a person who decides, “Yeah, I had a kid and I really don’t like parenting a baby. I won’t be doing it again.”
Of course, I’m not just a person deciding I don’t want more children. I’m a woman declaring I’d rather spend my Sunday afternoons reading as opposed to stringing macaroni necklaces. I searched for other posts about women with one child by choice, and every mom wrote about her family feeling “complete” with just one. One child just “feels right.” Not one mother said, “It was hard. I struggled. And I’m not doing it again.” Well, I’ll say it. The last three years have been a struggle and I’m not going through it again.
My daughter was born seven weeks early by emergency c-section after a placental abruption. She spent 28 days in the NICU. Her stay would have been shorter but she developed a food allergy at 2 weeks-old which caused loose, bloody stools at every feeding and meant I, the breastfeeding mother, had to begin eliminating things from my diet to isolate the cause. I eventually removed all dairy, soy, peanuts, nuts, eggs, tomatoes, and berries from my diet but traces of blood and a poopy diaper every two hours continued for 7 months. I clearly remember sitting at a Mexican restaurant, surrounded by my entire extended family and their plates of cheesy, processed deliciousness, while I ate my skinless chicken breast between two crumbling slices of homecooked, dairy-egg-soy-free bread. On the plus side, I dropped to under my pre-pregnancy weight in three months.
Since her homecoming my daughter has rejected the idea of sleeping in her own bed. Not just her bed. In her early months, she rejected swings, vibrating chairs, strollers, moving strollers, car seats, swaddling, and every means of soothing except a parent’s arms. And when I say “reject”, I mean she would scream until she couldn’t breathe, and it would take fifteen minutes of rocking to calm her back down. At 3 and a half, she still doesn’t sleep the whole night in her own bed. At least now, she will wake up and walk to our room and not just scream waiting for us to come.
Her separation anxiety is so extreme, I have spent exactly one night away from her since she came home from the hospital. It happened this January, while we were visiting my parents. We prepped my daughter for days. Mommy and Daddy were going away for a couple of days but she would be with Gramma and Grandpa. There were chicken nuggets, new toys, and Legoland. My husband and I kissed her goodbye at 6pm. She cried from 2:30 to 7:30am and was back with us after 20 hours. It’s been two months and still every story she plays out, with stuffed animals, Legos, or Littlest Pets, involves a lost parent.
I haven’t even mentioned her tantrums. And I won’t except that my dad witnessed one and described it to my brother this way: “Whatever you’re imagining, however awful…it was worse.”
I’m not writing all this to convince anyone of how hard I’ve had it. My daughter is happy, healthy, and growing. Despite being a preemie, she is now on the median line for height and weight. Her teachers send home glowing reports about what an active participant she is and what strides she has made recently with sharing. When I ask her teachers about the tantrums, they acknowledge her fits are extreme but not abnormally so, and they are occurring less and less often. It’s clear she will outgrow them.
My point in listing my greatest parenting challenges (so far) is to say that as tough as these years have been, they could have been worse. Much worse! A second child could have health complications or developmental challenges that make my daughter’s early life a three year vacation. My marriage can’t take that. My sanity can’t take that. I can’t take the risk! In the choice between a sane mother and siblings, I think we can universally agree a sane mother is more important for a child’s development.
In the most private recesses of my mind, I think that I am simply too selfish for a parent. While pregnant, I thought that hormones would flip some martyr switch that biology had surely hard wired in me. It didn’t happen. My dreams, interests, and personality remained mostly unchanged. I would throw myself in front of a bus for my daughter, but I still find coloring and crafting tedious. I’m making play-dough spaghetti and wishing I could get back to my book.
I do see a light at the end of tunnel. I see a turning point, a threshold, an event horizon approaching. We recently took her out Stand-Up Paddling for the first time. Fun was had by all. She’s asking to revisit the sea turtle center, making up stories, and composing songs off of the top of her head. I’m seeing flashes of a person, one I can’t wait to know and think I’ll have a few things in common with.
I definitely will not be repeating the past, but I am genuinely excited about the future.
