Each time Xander visits the doctor, he gets shots and an updated round of jaw-dropping stats. At one year, for example, he was almost a pound per inch: 33 pounds and 33.25 inches. Dutiful parent that I am, I diligently publicize Alexander's growth. After all, in parenting there is little tangible measure of success, so I'm not going to shy away from proof that I have, if nothing else, been able to keep my son fed. (No small task, by the way.) Xander's renewed height and weight numbers invariably bring a round of football references: "Get that boy a football!" "Tell the Cowboys to get him a locker!" "He'll be one heck of a linebacker." You get the idea.
For the record, I do not disdain these comments. They are logical. Practical, even. Alexander is big. In our world, bigness is seen as a gift, a positive attribute--especially for boys. Most people then, seek a good use for that big size, the way a one might try to find an outlet for a child particularly gifted at drawing or dance. If a person has a particular talent, we collectively reason, why not encourage its application?
Moreover, size is the one uncontrollable factor necessary for sports success. Certainly, being a star quarterback takes talent and hard work. But those two features work in tandem and one helps to maximize the other. Haven't we all seen the athlete (or scholar for that matter) who worked hard but just didn't have the natural skill to be top notch? Or perhaps more frustrating, most of us are familiar with the sports phenom with enviable inherent abilities who can't ever seem to be bothered with conditioning or learning strategy? (You know this type; the Cowboys love to draft him.) Size is the one feature that a person has or doesn't. No amount of wishing is going to make a basketball-crazy boy 6'5" instead of 5'2". The world is full of frustrated forwards and wide receivers who were never tall enough to truly compete in their respective sports. (Trust me, as a tall person I've met them all. As a girl, I avoid the pressure to play foorball, but I think I personally disappointed at least three dozen strangers when I told them that no, no, I do not play basketball. "But you're tall!" they all say in disbelief, as if height were the only requirement. I can't run and dribble simultaneously; the ball bounces off my foot and ricochets across the gym. Trust me, you do not want me on your team. Plus, I hate contact sports. My own sweat is enough. I don't want to rub all over other people's. Ew.)
What makes me nervous is the presumptiveness and prematurity of the football comments. I can't even begin to recount the number of dads who have less than subtly asked where Alexander will be going to high school, I suppose to figure out if he will be their sons' teammate or rival. As if nothing will change in the thirteen years between this moment and high school: no one will move or discover a love of golf or musical theatre.
Big Baby Truism #5: Don't athletically pigeon-hole your child.
Alexander is an individual with his own interests, talents, and ambitions. Since he's barely verbal, I've only begun to discover what most of these are. Still, I respect that he may share my opinion about contact sports. . .or that he may aspire to be the next Michael Jordan. (And no, that title does not belong to Lebron. Please.) The difference between me and the mom at the park teaching her one-and-a-half-year-old "Down, set, hut!" (seriously) is that I am leaving Xander's options open. Do I believe children should experience sports? Absolutely. Early exposure to sports allows children to develop an interest in the sport of their choice and teaches lessons about teamwork, perseverance, and being a good winner and loser. I will without a doubt sign Xander up for sports when he is old enough. But I will let him sign up for any sport he wants to try. I will not ever tell him his size is "wasted" if he picks a sport in which height is less advantageous. Alexander's size is certainly an integral part of his identity, but it doesn't have to define his self-image or his extracurricular choices. Will the road of popularity be hard if he is a big boy with no interest in athletics? Yes. Will I support him on that road if he takes it? Without question. I'm his mother not his manager. Any parent who lets their own preconceptions or fantasies dictate what a child does (or doesn't do) in sports is abdicating his or her responsibility. A child's interests are his own and deserve to be nurtured; he is not a puppet for vicarious sports experiences or a pawn in societal suppositions about gender, size, and sports. He is your child. For me, he is Alexander, who may play football or basketball or both. Who may love golf or cross country or playing the guitar. Who will have talents and abilities that are about his brain and his insights and not at all about how big he is or isn't.
When all of those too-short wannabe basketball drop-outs reacted with true offense (not defense ha ha) when I told them I did not in fact participate in their sport of choice, I usually tried to temper their disappointment by offering, "But I row." Crew is another sport in which height is often an advantage. But either because of their own ignorance about the sport or out of tunnel-vision in regard to basketball, this addendum never seemed to make any difference, and that fact frustrated me more than the original assumption that my height doomed me to play center on some hapless team. Why? Because it left no room for me, for my ideas, for the simple fact that I loved crew and deplored basketball. "I'm not just a 5'10" effigy!" I wanted to explain. "I'm not just a hunk of tall high school girl. I'm Anna, and I row. I also write stories and babysit." But that didn't matter then, and it won't matter to the same sorts of people who will approach Alexander. The good news is that I can arm him with the confidence to take these remarks for what they are--nonesense that says more about the speaker than the audience.
And the dirty little secret that no one ever mentions is that Xander's size will hold him back from certain dreams. We don't like to acknowledge this reality since height is considered unequivocally good, but let's get real, folks: very little in this world is unequivocally good. I took ballet for ten years. I was really dang good. I had a high arch and excellent pointe and strong legs. (I was a little sway-backed, but Miss Bess tapped me on the behind enough for me to mostly keep my hips tucked under my shoulders.) Yet I was never destined for ballet greatness, despite my commitment and discipline. The truth began to dawn on me when my teacher had me demonstrate leaps across the room, telling the other girls, "Anna is the biggest girl here and she lands silently, not like an elephant like all of you." The truth cemented in my cerebellum when I took a good look at the male ballet dancers--the ones who lift ballerinas. I was taller (and likely heavier) than all of them. Not a single one would ever be stepping up to lift me, no matter how lovely my arabesque. Alexander is unlikely to succeed as a gymnast. Although I guess if he wanted to do ballet, he could lift some poor, enormous ballerina and make her dreams come true.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Pope has a Pope-mobile, but we have a Poop-mobile.
The "Infant Sleep" section at Barnes & Noble resembles some unmentioned circle of Hell. (Dante, clearly, did not have children.) The aisle is patrolled by slow-moving, irritable zombies who are not so much dangerous as troublesome. They tend to get in the way of quicker-moving folks (who are only using this aisle as a cut-through to the section on homemade probiotic smoothies) and seem dazed and discombobulated my any muttered "excuse me" thrown in their direction. These seemingly half-living entities wear the dark circles of enforced wakefulness under their eyes; they may not have brushed their hair today or yesterday for that matter. Most alarming of all, someone has entrusted babies to these people; the little ones can be seen riding around in strollers, peacefully asleep.
Generally, these zombies are called "parents" and they have come to this aisle for relief, as though it were the fountain of youth or the Oracle at Delphi. They seek answers. They seek truth. What oh what, besides daylight and a moving car, can induce their babies to sleep?
Is there any more harrowing trial of parenthood than sleep derivation? Any parent can understand how keeping a human being awake for too long is a kind of a torture. In fact, if babies were subject to the Geneva Convention, they would be in big trouble for crimes against humanity. But in their disguise of cuteness and innocence and dependence, we let these babies toy with our sleep. In fact, parents are at their infants' total mercy; they sleep when Baby says they can.
Knowledge of the kind to be gained from this particular aisle of the bookstore seems vital. An ocean's worth of ink has been spilled on the subject of getting Baby to sleep. While the basic facts remain the same (both babies and parents need to sleep, as it turns out), different researchers have different styles for accomplishing this goal. Pretty much any parent can find an author willing to endorse and explain a sleep strategy that aligns with the indivdual's parenting philosophy: cry it out, sleep train, co-sleep. . .the list goes on. Common and successful soothing mechanisms are discussed, chapters are spent on common sleep problems and bad habits. Many books even have what amounts to a troubleshooting sections, eerily mirroring the manual that parents are always told babies don't have. (Don't worry; any parenting book that attempts to be a manual for babies is always slightly off, as if the manufactuer sent you the instructions for the right product but the wrong model; the information is about the Alpha Gamma 2345 and you have the Beta Beta 1.)
Here is one problem no one covers: pooping and eating. Multiple authors with divergent sleeping philosophies (and let's be serious, I could do graudate-level research in this seemingly narow field, the writings are so prolific) have assured me that sleeping and eating are not related in the older infant, that being able to sleep through the night (defined as six hours, by the way, which is clearly a number decided upon by an insomniac) is a developmental accomplishment, not a matter of stomach size or appetite.
I say bullshit. More accurately, I say baby shit. A normal baby who eats a normal amount of food in most cases eliminates in a normal fashion: reasonable amounts at reasonable increments. A big baby, like my son, eats an unholy amount of food. He out-eats me at fourteen months of age. He has a much smaller body and, more importantly, a significantly shorter digestive tract. Can you, Dr. Ferber, Kim West, or Professor HappiestBabyontheBlock, fall asleep with a bowel full of poo? Because guess what? My adorable, sweet, perfect little baby poops like it's his job. In fact, if someone paid us for the volume of his output at the for-ounce price of gold, he'd be on his way to an Ivy League preschool. He blows out his diaper multiple times a day. He, memorably, pooped so exhaustively in his car seat that we all needed a change of clothes, a bath, an entire pack of wipes, and a hose. He can't nap because he has to poop. He wakes up at night full of farts. What do I do for a baby who eats so much that pooping keeps him awake?
Shockingly, no one sleep book spends a chapter or even a sentence on this topic. When bowel movements are mentioned at all, only problems are brought up. The underlying assumption is that if excrement is interfering with sleep, there must be a problem.
Well, my "problem" is that my almost-35-pound one-year-old can eat two pieces of pizza and fifteen ounces of baby food in a sitting. My "problem" is that he will eat one yogurt cup, scream for another, and then, as if those were merely appetizers, demolish two adult servings of macaroni and cheese. These "problems" are facts of my every day life. And they make for a lot of poop.
Baby Truism #4: Big babies have unique problems. . .and advice is scarce.
What do I do to help my son sleep? By all accounts, he should sleep through the night at his age. He is developmentally capable. If his discontent during these middle-of-the-night awakening is any indicator, he'd like to sleep without interruption. What solution is there short of a nightly pre-bed enema? (Please, lord of sleep, nooooo!)
This is the sentence in which I give my wise and tested answer. I don't have one. Usually I like to write about parenting experiences that I have considered, digested (ha ha), and resolved in some way. I don't have this one figured out. As I've said, I'm a rule-follower, and if any book offered help for my dilemma, I'd put it into action, step by step. (An awful TV show, by the way.) I'd test it out and report back. As it is, I'm at a loss. I hate to say that, because I also enjoy being succesful at what I do. I especially deplore magazine and newspaper articles that announce a problem specificaly for the purpose of announcing it, not offering any meaningful context or purpose. Spaghetti is yummy! Just thought you should know!
If I have any wisdom at this juncture, it's that no experience is as humbling for a goal-oriented, capable person as parenthood. There are seldom right answers. Most actions do not have a direct and measurable outcome. (Why else do parents worry that they are causing their children lasting damage and lining some predatory therapist's silken pockets?) Children do not offer reliable feedback, often preferring immediate and irresponsible parenting decisions to forward-looking, thoughtful ones.
So for the foreseeable future I will be changing poopy diapers 'round the clock and swabbing blow-outs out of car seats and my son's arm pits. (Oh, the glamor of parenthood.) I will continue taking the pediatrician's advice to "just keep feeding him" because his appetite and growth curve defy prediction and convention. Even though the sleep experts swear that he is too old for night feedings and that it is my fault he is a "trained night sleeper," I will continue nursing him at 3:30 in the morning when he needs it because I know when my son is hungry and he doesn't know that he is "supposed to" make it until six a.m. Normal babies eat breakfast at normal times. Big babies get hungry at times that defy expectation and ideal sleep patterns.
If I ever write a book on big babies and sleeping, it will be brief. In fact, I will likely have to credit our (very wise, very patient) pediatrican for the first two:
An early excerpt from His Poop Hit the Curtains: Sleep and the Big Baby:
1. Just keep feeding him.
2. Buy livestock.
3. Purchase stock in Gerber, Beech Nut, or your food supplier of choice.
4. Forget about sleeping.
In the end, baby sleep books offer valuable tips, but parents don't seek them out for those tidbits that can also be found on Yahoo! Answers. Those books call to us with the siren song of sleep, promising what we want most of all: rest. Here is a truism for all parents, regardless of the size of their babes: even when babies "sleep through the night," they really don't. Neither will you. For a long time.
Sorry.
Generally, these zombies are called "parents" and they have come to this aisle for relief, as though it were the fountain of youth or the Oracle at Delphi. They seek answers. They seek truth. What oh what, besides daylight and a moving car, can induce their babies to sleep?
Is there any more harrowing trial of parenthood than sleep derivation? Any parent can understand how keeping a human being awake for too long is a kind of a torture. In fact, if babies were subject to the Geneva Convention, they would be in big trouble for crimes against humanity. But in their disguise of cuteness and innocence and dependence, we let these babies toy with our sleep. In fact, parents are at their infants' total mercy; they sleep when Baby says they can.
Knowledge of the kind to be gained from this particular aisle of the bookstore seems vital. An ocean's worth of ink has been spilled on the subject of getting Baby to sleep. While the basic facts remain the same (both babies and parents need to sleep, as it turns out), different researchers have different styles for accomplishing this goal. Pretty much any parent can find an author willing to endorse and explain a sleep strategy that aligns with the indivdual's parenting philosophy: cry it out, sleep train, co-sleep. . .the list goes on. Common and successful soothing mechanisms are discussed, chapters are spent on common sleep problems and bad habits. Many books even have what amounts to a troubleshooting sections, eerily mirroring the manual that parents are always told babies don't have. (Don't worry; any parenting book that attempts to be a manual for babies is always slightly off, as if the manufactuer sent you the instructions for the right product but the wrong model; the information is about the Alpha Gamma 2345 and you have the Beta Beta 1.)
Here is one problem no one covers: pooping and eating. Multiple authors with divergent sleeping philosophies (and let's be serious, I could do graudate-level research in this seemingly narow field, the writings are so prolific) have assured me that sleeping and eating are not related in the older infant, that being able to sleep through the night (defined as six hours, by the way, which is clearly a number decided upon by an insomniac) is a developmental accomplishment, not a matter of stomach size or appetite.
I say bullshit. More accurately, I say baby shit. A normal baby who eats a normal amount of food in most cases eliminates in a normal fashion: reasonable amounts at reasonable increments. A big baby, like my son, eats an unholy amount of food. He out-eats me at fourteen months of age. He has a much smaller body and, more importantly, a significantly shorter digestive tract. Can you, Dr. Ferber, Kim West, or Professor HappiestBabyontheBlock, fall asleep with a bowel full of poo? Because guess what? My adorable, sweet, perfect little baby poops like it's his job. In fact, if someone paid us for the volume of his output at the for-ounce price of gold, he'd be on his way to an Ivy League preschool. He blows out his diaper multiple times a day. He, memorably, pooped so exhaustively in his car seat that we all needed a change of clothes, a bath, an entire pack of wipes, and a hose. He can't nap because he has to poop. He wakes up at night full of farts. What do I do for a baby who eats so much that pooping keeps him awake?
Shockingly, no one sleep book spends a chapter or even a sentence on this topic. When bowel movements are mentioned at all, only problems are brought up. The underlying assumption is that if excrement is interfering with sleep, there must be a problem.
Well, my "problem" is that my almost-35-pound one-year-old can eat two pieces of pizza and fifteen ounces of baby food in a sitting. My "problem" is that he will eat one yogurt cup, scream for another, and then, as if those were merely appetizers, demolish two adult servings of macaroni and cheese. These "problems" are facts of my every day life. And they make for a lot of poop.
Baby Truism #4: Big babies have unique problems. . .and advice is scarce.
What do I do to help my son sleep? By all accounts, he should sleep through the night at his age. He is developmentally capable. If his discontent during these middle-of-the-night awakening is any indicator, he'd like to sleep without interruption. What solution is there short of a nightly pre-bed enema? (Please, lord of sleep, nooooo!)
This is the sentence in which I give my wise and tested answer. I don't have one. Usually I like to write about parenting experiences that I have considered, digested (ha ha), and resolved in some way. I don't have this one figured out. As I've said, I'm a rule-follower, and if any book offered help for my dilemma, I'd put it into action, step by step. (An awful TV show, by the way.) I'd test it out and report back. As it is, I'm at a loss. I hate to say that, because I also enjoy being succesful at what I do. I especially deplore magazine and newspaper articles that announce a problem specificaly for the purpose of announcing it, not offering any meaningful context or purpose. Spaghetti is yummy! Just thought you should know!
If I have any wisdom at this juncture, it's that no experience is as humbling for a goal-oriented, capable person as parenthood. There are seldom right answers. Most actions do not have a direct and measurable outcome. (Why else do parents worry that they are causing their children lasting damage and lining some predatory therapist's silken pockets?) Children do not offer reliable feedback, often preferring immediate and irresponsible parenting decisions to forward-looking, thoughtful ones.
So for the foreseeable future I will be changing poopy diapers 'round the clock and swabbing blow-outs out of car seats and my son's arm pits. (Oh, the glamor of parenthood.) I will continue taking the pediatrician's advice to "just keep feeding him" because his appetite and growth curve defy prediction and convention. Even though the sleep experts swear that he is too old for night feedings and that it is my fault he is a "trained night sleeper," I will continue nursing him at 3:30 in the morning when he needs it because I know when my son is hungry and he doesn't know that he is "supposed to" make it until six a.m. Normal babies eat breakfast at normal times. Big babies get hungry at times that defy expectation and ideal sleep patterns.
If I ever write a book on big babies and sleeping, it will be brief. In fact, I will likely have to credit our (very wise, very patient) pediatrican for the first two:
An early excerpt from His Poop Hit the Curtains: Sleep and the Big Baby:
1. Just keep feeding him.
2. Buy livestock.
3. Purchase stock in Gerber, Beech Nut, or your food supplier of choice.
4. Forget about sleeping.
In the end, baby sleep books offer valuable tips, but parents don't seek them out for those tidbits that can also be found on Yahoo! Answers. Those books call to us with the siren song of sleep, promising what we want most of all: rest. Here is a truism for all parents, regardless of the size of their babes: even when babies "sleep through the night," they really don't. Neither will you. For a long time.
Sorry.
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