New Normal

A couple of months ago I took a trip to the park with my girls. A common occurance in my world, but this trip was special. I desperately needed to escape the confines of my tiny house that day, and I chose a particular park, that is more suitable for toddlers, thinking that mine could enjoy some independence while I carried her three month old baby sister around in the bjorn. Easy enough...right?


I had prepared for the mini outing by stuffing my over sized purse with extra undies, a diaper, wipes, sippie cups, snacks, a rattle, a burp cloth, sunscreen, a quilt, my water bottle, two sunhats and my travel mug of coffee. This assembly took somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 minutes as it was interrupted by a respectable blow out. 'Is the sound of being buckled in to your car seat some sort of signal that it's a convenient time to poop?' I wondered out loud to my three month old.  Having developed some sort of supermom complex, I had decided to cloth diaper, as I had done with my first, resulting in the need to climb the stairs to our only bathroom and rinse the poop into the toilet. 


"Plan twice as long as you think you'll need to go anywhere or do anything," a girlfriend of mine wisely told me when I asked her advice on taking both of the kids out alone for the first time. Her words rang in my ears as I put a clean diaper on the baby and strapped her into her car seat for the second time. I made it out to the car first with my two year old after a brief battle of wills concerning whether or not to put shoes on which was resolved by the promise of an underdog at the park. Going back in to the house to retrieve the baby, I could hear her wailing as she'd been left alone staring at the wall for ten minutes while her sister and I were in negotiations. I soothed her with a binky and a smile and slung her car seat handle over my arm. The suitcase that is my purse slash diaper bag went on the other arm, and my travel mug in one hand, keys in the other. By the time I was pulling out of the driveway, I was enjoying a sense of accomplishment on having gotten out by 9:15- in one piece. Yes, I had forgotten to brush my teeth, but so are the sacrifices of mothers, I told myself, and my children would be the only victims of my serious coffee breath. As I accellerated up my street I saw something fly by the window. My travel mug! In my rear view I watched as it rolled on the ground. "Fart knockers!" I exclaimed. "Darn it!"  I tried again. I pulled over, and ran over to my sweet brown life blood that was dribbling out of the cup mumbling something that made me feel a little better. Slugging down what was left of it, I walked back to the car and drove to the park feeling scrambled, ungraceful, and fuzzy toothed. 


During the relative calm of the car ride, I regrouped. Pulling up to the sunny park I tried to remember to appreciate the beautiful day and opportunity to spend it with my sweet girls. I spread out the quilt and laid the baby down as I strapped on the bjorn. Then I heard a little voice from the car, "Mama, I peed." I pretended not to hear. "Maamaaa.......I peeeeed!" Chanting the serenity prayer in my head I went over to the car and found my daughter smiling sweetly at me as she sat in urine. "Mama I peed." She repeated. 'No shit' I said in my head. "I see that honey, lets clean you up. Mama brought extra undies." I said aloud to her. What had motivated me to potty train at this particular juncture again? At that point the thought of changing her monstrous poops and spending hundreds on disposable diapers didn't seem all that bad. After more negotiations regarding changing wet undies, I sheepishly put her back into her wet shorts, not having brought extras. 'Their not that wet.' I told myself. Sure. Suddenly, a shiver went down my spine as I spun around to look for my baby who was still on the blanket where I'd left her ten minutes ago twenty yards away. I grabbed the older one and ran to the baby, who only looked at me blankly. She was fine. I looked around to see if anyone had been watching me. My heart thumped. I felt a lump growing in my throat. 'You can't cry at the park, Johanna.' I scolded myself. But I did a little anyway behind my big plastic sunglasses. I was horrified at having forgotten about the baby.


My children seemed unphased and generally in good spirits despite my own sense of disgrace, so I persevered and proceeded to nurse the little one, flashing boob to anyone who might have cared to look. Having forgotten breast pads in my packing frenzy I was forced to stuff the burp cloth into my bra to catch the letdown from the breast that the baby wasn't using. 'It's this or walk around with a giant wet circle on my boob,' I reasoned. 'Enjoy the show folks,' I thought as my attitude shifted from exasperated discouragement towards determined survival mode. After that, the outing was fairly uneventful. The baby slept on me in the bjorn as I followed her sister around each apparatus, and gave her underdogs on the kiddie swings, taking care to use correct posture and even did a few lunges while my toddler entertained herself on the bouncy bridge. I began to feel better. A young woman with  long hair pulled into a french braid, wearing an ankle length denim skirt holding an infant on her hip, and pushing two little girls who also wore braids and skirts on the tire swing caught my eye. I guess she'd been there the whole time I had, though I hadn't noticed. We engaged in the standard park small talk, "How old?" "What are their names?" Her children were four, two and a half, and 9 months. We talked superficially about having babies. She smiled and said, "yeah, it always takes me about six months to find my new normal." 


We made it back home around 11, and I sat for a moment in the driveway as my baby, newly aware of her distaste for car rides, bleated, and her older sister yelled, "I want Daddy, where's Daddy?" I fantasized about sprinting away from my car and home. I pondered with sleepless disproportion the daunting tasks of getting everyone inside, fed, and put down for their naps. I fretted that perhaps I would be denied my own nap if the baby was fussy, or the toddler, reluctant. I thought back to the girl at the park who had been friendly to me. She looked so much more graceful than I had felt. 'When will I get this?' I thought, as my chin trembled and I began to cry again. 'You baby. Get a hold of your hormones. Get these kids inside and feed them and love them, and do the best you can and be proud of it,'  I resolved. So that's what I did. And that's what I've done everyday since. It's never perfection, rarely graceful, but it's getting easier as each day passes.  My baby is less fragile, and my toddler no longer has pee accidents. Most days, I manage to brush my teeth, and I no longer care who sees my breasts at any given point. I've settled in the new normal that is having two kids who are 25 months apart. Both uniquely and substantially in need of my time, attention and love. I'm watching in awe as they begin to play together by making each other laugh. I've learned to let anything go that is not essential to maintaining safety or peace. I know there will be challenges every step of the way, and I have days where I feel like crawling in a hole, but I think I've come to terms with the fact that doing the best I can as a mother means being imperfect. 


Every mistake is an opportunity to learn. Needless to say, I've learned a lot since we transitioned from a family of three to a family of four. I also realize now that every other mother out there who gives a damn has many of the same feelings and experiences that I have. The girl at the park with her three probably felt just as discombobulated as I did when her baby was born. She was probably trying to offer me some encouragement by telling me that it had taken her several months to settle in to routine again. Even though it sometimes feels like I'm the only one who has ever had a day this ridiculous, guaranteed, there's a mom out there somewhere enduring an even more ridiculous one, and that's strangely comforting. New normal is messy, unexpected, exhausting, and....perfect.