Working with What You’ve Got!

Credit: The Far Side

(This post originally appeared on the Sarah Wells Bags blog.) 

Holy smokes. What am I going to do? 100,000 words per day? How can we possibly meet that quota? It’s just me and the hubs; no family nearby. My child is going to be a failure. If only I didn’t move down to DC for a career that I’ve found tremendously fulfilling, I’d be close to my family in NY, who could help me meet this daily word count. Dear me.

Ok. Stop fretting. Just do it. Just start yammering. Talk to him while you’re doing the dishes. Talk to him while you go to the bathroom. Talk to him when you’re talking to Mom about talking to him about talking to you. Wait; what does 100,000 words even sound like? Where’s my stopwatch? 0:00:58 0:00:59 OK! Go! How many words was – oh, wait, I’m leaking – GAAAHHH!

This was basically how the first 6 months or so of my firstborn’s life went. (Well, the self-inflicted paranoia continues, but the severity peaked during this time.) I’d read any and everything about childrearing, all in an effort to fill the daily wisdom gap that I feared we were missing out on by living at a distance from my family. No family nearby to casually drop some timely knowledge. No family nearby to help us reach the 100,000 daily word quota….

So when the time came for returning to work and sending my child to daycare, I earnestly prepared (read: overprepared) by reading every pro-con article on the planet just to find the one confirming that sending my child to daycare was the best decision for him and the rest of humanity. I never found that article. Time marched on. Work beckoned as did our rent, so it was off to daycare we went. I was a mess; wracked with guilt and tears that felt like they would never end.

And then it happened. The teachers at the daycare where I sent my child, women with years and years of experience caring for infants, started sharing some helpful tips with me. I’d bring questions about last night’s feed or weird fussiness and they’d have 3-4 tricks up their sleeves to remedy the situation.

After my son started taking longer than normal to finish a bottle, I wasn’t sure what was going on. Was he not hungry? He usually drinks X amount by Y time. What’s going on? I mentioned the issue of the day to the Head Aunty, and she suggested we try a larger nipple size for the bottle. What? These things have different sizes?!? How did I miss that? SMH. What about the Bumbo chair? A-ok for him to go in that now? How about the exer-saucer? I read you shouldn’t put them in one until they’re at least six months old….My list of questions went on and on as did their patience and encouraging input.

It wasn’t until about month 3 or 4 of sending my child to daycare that I realized that these women were helping not only take care of my son but, of me, too; their advice quieted my endlessly running mind and seeing my son thrive helped whittle away my feelings of guilt. They were becoming my local “aunties,” caring women whose experience and advice helped me fill that knowledge gap I feared, the aunties who casually dropped infant knowledge like it was their job (pun intended). Their help tracking milestones was tre helpful when I finally got down to doing that baby book for him three years later…!

This experience demonstrated to me that parenthood is about doing the best with what you’ve got. Some folks are your village because they’re your family; other folks are your village because they become your family.

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