NPR Essay Draft Attempt 1

This may be my only attempt as I should not have done this instead of working, but I have to publish it somewhere since I spent so much of my life doing it. I way overshot the word limit and did not even answer the question. Also it needs more showing and less telling. Yes, yes I know. Anyway, here it is . . .

The question: Has parenthood changed you? Was there a moment or incident that sparked the realization? Tell us about it.

In the early months I found myself describing it in terms of learning to swim. Though I don't remember it that well I imagine there's only so much you can do to prepare to learn to swim. Then when you're actually in water deeper than yourself for the first time, the key thing becomes simply not drowning, not choking on the water, flailing to stay afloat. Eventually you can work on getting from point A to point B via dogpaddle. The progression continues from there and even very good swimmers can still find themselves out of their element from time to time, in rough waters where the basics of staying afloat come into sharp focus once more as the main thing.

The first couple months of Adele's life, the routine was: wake up to her crying, stumble through the darkness, breastfeed her for 45 minutes and then hand off to my husband who would give her a supplemental bottle-feed and then hold her upright for 20 more minutes while she digested and I attempted to sleep, and two hours later repeat. Adele has no major health issues but she was a small baby with a weak sucking reflex early on and she was cursed with acid reflux like her father before her. Not to be left out, I was cursed with low milk supply and mild post-partum depression. Hint: this is the part where we flail to stay afloat.

Now Adele is 19 months old. We survived colic and post-partum depression and every bump since then and now I have on my hands a little toddler whose idol is Curious George. Today she ate part of a pencil, opened a box of bowtie pasta and spilled its entire contents, repeatedly poured buckets of water out of her baby pool despite my parental wisdom "water stays in the pool, not out of the pool," half-fell half-jumped off a couch (cried for two seconds and then climbed back onto that same couch), ran away from every diaper change as always, hit mom in the head on several occasions, danced, laughed, and said "mommy!" like I was the celebrity obsession of a love-sick teenager.

I often think to myself, "I left a promising career I was actually quite good at for this?" In my career I had my challenges and personality clashes and learning curves just like everyone, but I have to admit that most of the time if I did my homework and worked hard I saw success and received praise. Simple as that. I knew parenting would not be as easy as my job, but I did think I could prepare and arm myself with the tools and information I needed to succeed and it would happen in much the same way as it did at work.

I read books, I planned strategies, and I assumed that I would have the natural instinct of mothering the way I naturally excelled at most things in my career. Then Adele came along, laughed at my strategies and books, demoralized and humiliated my instincts. In short, she tore me down and then taught me how to be her mom from the ground up. Somehow in the middle of all that I started to realize what a miracle this parenting thing is and how it is making a new person of me. A person that doesn't already know the answer to anything.And when she says "mommy" in that in-love sort of tone, I think "Of course I left a promising career I was actually quite good at for this."

Now I swim a rudimentary freestyle stroke. And I tell everyone I can not to trust the books. There are no answers. I don't know if I even want answers anymore--that's how I've changed. Read them and use what works, but don't trust them. Sometimes you can't even trust yourself, though you are usually better off trying that. Mainly you have to trust your kid to show you the way. I don't mean give them ice cream and candy all day. I mean try everything until you find what works for them.

I thought parenting was something you planned ahead of time and executed, and yes to some extent it can be and it is certainly important to be consistent in discipline where possible. But mostly I now think parenting is the thing that happens in the meantime while you figure out how to do the thing your child needs. It's spending those agonizing late nights or patiently reading "Go Dog Go" for the hundredth time with all the same pauses and invented sub-plots. It's learning to embrace the fact that a conference call that goes past nap-time is going to get hairy and there's nothing you can do about it. It's breastfeeding your baby in the middle of a crowded metro station on a holiday because you know it's the only thing that will stop the crying. It's understanding that there is going to be so much amorphous whatever now in your life rather than schedules and plans and if-then scenarios.

It's "I once was found but now am lost." I mean, in a way, right?