Dark Side of Mothering: Improv 101, BF'ing 102

Last January (almost a year ago!) I started taking an Improv class for Beginners. It was just about the most exhilaratingly fun thing I had ever done in my life; it was truly one of those experiences that gives you the sense that "YES, this is what I was BORN to do!"

Unfortunately, I was 4 weeks pregnant at the time and got too sick to continue.

And now I'm not sure when exactly I'll get back to it.

But it was so profound. It was nonstop, silly fun, true. But it was also a real lesson in learning how to let go and, most importantly, how to fail. Failure has never been easy for me. Especially in performance. But in Improv, it is not only essential that you learn to fail gracefully, but some of the funniest material can only emerge if and when you do. You also have to learn to play well with others. Give up the center stage every now and then and say "yes" instead of " no."

It occurs to me that those few Improv classes I took before I got really morningsick and had to put it on hold are the closest thing to being a new parent I have ever experienced.

The best moments, the really fun times, are usually when things are going horribly, horribly wrong. And your challenge is to figure out how to deal with it THAT INSTANT.

Like for instance, just the other day, as baby and I were saying goodbye to Sally, his craniosacral therapist, as she walked out the door, he coughed and I suddenly had spit up in my cleavage.

"I've got spitup in my cleavage!" I announced to the neighborhood. Sally started laughing.

Then we exchanged Spectacular Poop stories. In hers, she was changing a client's baby's diaper (she's also a doula) and he PROJECTILE POOPED across the room, which was small, aiming straight for the computer and pile of bills on his parents' desk. Sally, acting quickly -- IMPROV -- held out her cupped hands to catch the poo as it arced through the air, narrowly missing the puter keyboard. I told her I always kind of wanted to send the IRS some poop with my payments.

My Spectacular Poop story occurred a few days ago, while I was breastfeeding Andrew Bodhi and talking on the phone with my dear friend Mark, who lives in Southern California. He was laughing about "Mr. Hanky in yoga class" or some such thing, when I heard the telltale grunt-n-squirt. "Uh oh," I told him. And kept on talking. (Cuz, you see, AB's poops have changed since he hit 6 weeks; he pooped several times a day for awhile, then suddenly dropped down to one or 2 giant poops every few days.) Then I decided to look down at my precious baby boy, and lo and behold, there was pewp EVERYWHERE. His back. His arms. His onesie. His Boppy. My thighs. My elbow.

"Andrew!" I called out to Big Daddy Andrew, who appeared from the other room immediately. He was literally half-shaven, white foamy cream covering just his right cheek, jaw, and neck. He must have heard something plaintive and desperate in my summons. He took the baby to the changing table, laughing.

I grudgingly hung up the phone, believing that I had escaped poop contamination, thinking it had only spilled onto my yoga pants. Boy was I wrong. I stripped down and realized it had gotten all over my belly, enough to warrant a shower. Which I thoroughly enjoyed.

It's the little things, the accidental moments, that are so delightful.

Bodily functions are once again hilarious. Baby's farts are hysterically funny to me. They are so un-filtered and un self-conscious. And loud! Good lord!

The other day Lanell was saying in our new mamas group how she so wished someone would write the TRUTH about breastfeeding and those first few weeks as a new mom. I agree. And my friend Kristine was saying how Judy Blume should've written the truth about labor and birth and being a new mom.

I have thought about leading a workshop in which we get to write those stories. As some of you know, I'm ga-ga for leading writing workshops in which women tell their truths.

I was so grateful that Lanell brought that up, as well as the fact that most of us are in such a fog for the first few weeks after the birth that we don't really have the Whatever it would take to write about It. Consequently, most of what we read about breastfeeding and post partum is very vague, or glows with the joys and thrills of it all, and not the darker parts.

I mean yes, you will read and hear "Breastfeeding can be hard." But not that it can be devastating. That you will cry, either in physical or psychic pain. That you will hear ten million conflicting opinions, and that the truth is every day, every hour, every minute is different. That there are rhythms and cycles and untold factors that make your situation and your baby so very unique.

In the hours and days that followed our grueling, fucked up birth experience in the hospital, I was bloated and bleeding and starved and in pain, but that didn't stop the hourly lactation consultants from coming to our room to show me new techniques for breastfeeding. Never before had so many different people prodded and pulled and manipulated my tender nipple tissue. It wasn't exactly the kind of group nipple handling of my dreams.

So while I appreciated on some deep feminist level that we had given birth in such a breastfeeding-friendly hospital, I felt kind of brutalized by all the lactation consultation. That said, there was one LC who can be credited with keeping our baby out of the NICU. She taught me how to feed him the colostrum I was producing in the beginning, which stablized his blood sugar and kept his glucose levels within acceptable (non-formula supplementing) range. She also came to our house a few weeks after he was born and told me to throw away the standard positions for babies breastfeeding and how to use my yogic knowledge about alignment...to his benefit.

Here is a truth you may or may not hear about breastfeeding: IT FUCKING HURTS. I'm not even talking about cracked or sore nipples. I'm talking about an effective, longterm, daily activity that also has its pleasures and rewards. And when it hurts, and someone tells you it's because you're not doing it right, tell them to kiss your flabby post partum ass. You are going to hear so much that will undermine your confidence as a new mom, it's not acceptable for anyone to tell you that BF'ing (uh huh) shouldn't hurt. It will hurt, and you will be told your LATCH is all wrong, which it may be...but then you will spin out in worry that if baby's latch is wrong baby is not getting enough to eat (which you will be worrying about anyway...if you're not worrying that he or she is eating too much) and you will become even more vulnerable than you already are.

And by "you" I mean "me."

It's like my friend Jenn said to me in those first couple of weeks: "One day you'll be standing at the stove, cooking dinner while breastfeeding." And "You'll be able to whip out your breasts and feed anywhere, anytime. They will become like LEATHER."

I love that. Boobs of Spanish Leather.

To compound the insanity, your baby will inevitably lose weight after his or her birth. Our baby weighed 9 pounds and 15 ounces at birth, and indeed resembled a pugilist as soon as he was born. He'd been beating up on my cervix for 3 days, it was no wonder! And they had pumped me with no less than 3 liters of fluid and god knows how much pitocin and epidural fluid. So when he dropped down to 9 pounds and 1 ounce, our unflappable pediatrician calmly encouraged us to get his weight up, and I FREAKED OUT. I don't know what I thought; perhaps that if he didn't weigh at least 10 pounds by the next pedi visit, they'd confiscate my baby?

(What I would have given for some BRAWNDO -- it's got electrolytes! -- at any moment during this time!)

Our calm doula, also an LC, had us supplement little Marlon Brando with breast milk I had pumped in a bottle. The pugilist started packing on an ounce a day, but I was miserable anyway. I felt like a failure as a person, as a mom. I was still recovering from a 3rd degree episiotomy, the runs, vicodin poisoning, exhaustion, starvation, and sleep deprivation. It was the perfect storm for going insane. But I was determined to breastfeed and nourish Bodhi the best way I could. (And yes, it helped when my friend Heather wrote me about her troubles BF'ing and how her husband Matt said that at worst baby would get formula and still be healthy and thriving.)

Uh oh, beloveds. Little Andrew Bodhi is sitting on my lap as I type this, sawing toothpicks, and he just woke up and started gnawing on his wrist. For those of you who may not know what that means, it means he's divined all this breastfeeding talk and is waking up HUNGRY!

More on all of this later.

And more on the Dark Side of Mothering.