Meet Thumper, the oldest boy of Aspen Real Life. With him I became a mother, which brought out a fierceness I didn’t know I was capable of.
When Thumper, our now seventeen-year-old son, was born, Baddy and I were the happiest people alive, running to his crib at the first sound of his little voice singing and calling “MAMA” and “DADA” each morning. Our love for each other grew stronger as we fell deeper in love with our baby boy.
Mothering the First Baby
I adored being a mother and was surprised that I was capable of so much nurturing. Refusing to have one of those greasy-haired, snotty babies that make people quickly glance away, our baby was going to attract people with skin as fuzzy as a fresh peach, trimmed nails and freshly washed, baby-chicken-fluffy hair. Like a mommy gorilla, I was incessantly grooming and fussing over him, straightening his clothes and pulling prize boogers out of his nose into a handy tissue.
Everything was new and exciting, even when his schedule flipped and he began sleeping during the day, and nights became lessons in entertaining a baby as wide awake as a bat at sunset. That was when Baddy kicked in, walking and singing to him in his arms as he strolled around the house, becoming Baddy Zombie with each sleepless night.
And then there was diaper changing. All it took was a couple of shots directly into my surprised mouth before I developed an efficient system with diapies, Mama’s best friend. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Thumper knew exactly what he was doing. This was a game for him: “Wait for it…”
We catered to Thumper’s every demand, keeping him from learning to be independent and master challenges on his own (we didn’t know that too much catering makes for bad husbands). As I did my chores around the house, I had to move him every ten minutes when he started to fuss: from the Baby Björn to the toy station to the exercise saucer to the play mat to the vibrating chair to the bungee jumper. Even then he had a restless energy that needed constant attention.
Motherhood redefined me. Gone were the days of leisure. Gone were the spontaneous nights of fun with friends. Gone was the sex. Someone should have prepared me for keeping the love alive with my starved-for-attention husband, who would snuggle up to me in bed right after I had swatted a baby, asleep mid-suck, away from my nipple. “The sucking,” I’d moan, “it never stops,” sending him the loud and clear message: don’t even think about it, because I am oh so done. Baddy’s Chippendales mating dance on our balcony wasn’t helping.
What I really needed was a double shot of espresso dumped into a few ounces of tequila, but I learned quickly that the payback spit-up wasn’t worth the quick fix.
As much as I adored our Thumper, I was in a constant state of shock at the responsibilities that came with raising a rambunctious, inquisitive, funny, curly-headed little boy. Nobody ever told me that life doesn’t stop so you can sniff, bounce, coo to and nurture your new baby with all your heart and soul. The routine of life still continued, and if you were going to be a mama, you had to keep up.
Wise Words for Pre-Parents About to Throw Caution to the Wind
I often wondered why, along with birthing classes, there wasn’t a mandatory class on child rearing for unsuspecting parents. I think they didn’t want to scare us out of wanting the kid. Actually, it would be a far better idea to take parenting classes before you decide to throw caution to the wind.
Those maternity nurses spent so much time teaching us how to breathe properly in labor, a waste of time for people like me who have no tolerance for pain and go for the epidural without fully asking about the risks. (It’s really our childhood dentist’s fault for giving my sisters and me laughing gas while pulling our teeth.)
They should have had a La Leche League consultant teach me to drink enough water and eat enough milk-producing food so I could have kept my breasts from becoming horrifyingly deflated, south-pointing sacks courtesy of my ravenous, milk-sucking boys. I was living proof that baby boys are more demanding of their mothers than girls, with their ravenous appetites.
But Thumper was, and still is, an adorable golden retriever of a boy who loves to entertain, even though a smug (soon-to-be-fired) babysitter once informed me that Thumper was very good at needing to be entertained by the other child in the playgroup. Who never gave her the memo to NEVER criticize a mother’s child?
At three, the age when boys tend to hit their terrible twos, his humor began to shine, as did his crazy energy. Soon I noticed I had grown a button on my bottom wired directly to him, so whenever I sat down, an alarm rang in his head and he made a demand. It became apparent that the time had come to go for number two. Thumper needed a playmate. (Segue to Axel.)
