The Perfect Family

Here’s this week’s reflection. I hope it resonates with you and ask that, if you enjoyed, please comment and share on your social media. Heartfelt thanks for all your support!

Keeping the light on for you,

Carol

I have written on my penchant for perfectionism, and I desired the perfect family. I had a wonderful husband, a wonderful career, and I wanted a wonderful family. It wasn’t happening. Long story short, we embarked on a frustrating, costly, and physically inexplicable infertility route and IVF journey. Continually appalled at the blatant lack of compassion, logic, or control in that system, we persevered, hopeful for success. 

Nearing the end of our rope, my husband and I finally budgeted for either one course of in-vitro fertilization or a lavish barge trip through France. If I couldn’t bear children, we could at least enjoy French sites and culture, eat well, drink great wine, and move on.

As it turned out, we had joyfully been served a multiple pregnancy, along with an enormous side dish of fear. My strong Type A need for structure and control persisted. Bringing two premature infants home at the same time blew that world apart.

Due to a recent unexpected company closure, my Big Picture Guy stayed home as Mr. Mom, setting up routines and spreadsheets, taking it for the team and inching us forward while I now brought home the bacon. His unofficial family leave was an unconventional blessing in disguise, but I seemed to have hit the snooze button on dialing back my personal expectations.

Exhausted, yet still wanting to be the ultimate mother of multiples, the first months consisted of a cyclonic blur of diapers, feedings and developmental milestones (thankfully captured digitally).  I sucked at breastfeeding, no pun intended, to the chagrin of the lactation consultants, and suffered severe postpartum depression. Six weeks after delivery, I entered my doctor’s office a pile of tears, dangerously close to throwing in the towel. Taking one look, he held my hand, gave me permission to sack the dogma, and prescribed a temporary antidepressant. After immediately downing a sample in the office, I vowed to be kinder to myself.

But while an enormous blessing, old habits die hard, and coming to terms with tiny humans that didn’t follow rules was difficult. My mom seemed to always have her ducks in a row with a tidy home and perfectly behaved offspring. Other mothers I knew at the time had their infant twins in bed daily at 6pm (of course sleeping the whole night through) or breast fed two at once with aplomb. No pressure there.

My husband and I now were elderly yuppies having met their match. Sleep deprivation and an obsessive compulsive mindset sadly rendered me frustrated, angry, and ashamed of my maternal ineptitude. But somehow, common sense and self-esteem made their way back into the fold. Our schedule was, after all, our schedule, and it worked for us despite occasional critics. Ditching the glossy parenting magazines and incongruous advice was a step toward courage, self-acceptance, and happiness in our growing family. We fiercely loved these miraculous babies, and it was time to find some happy in the mix.

One day, walking back from the mailbox, I rediscovered my humor. A sweet, smiling face of one of my daughters was pressed against the storm door, her little nose birthing an enormous green booger all over the glass. That amoeba was smeared EVERYWHERE. Eyeing this spectacle and initially grossed out, I stopped, exploding into a long overdue, lengthy, raucous, cathartic fit of laughter, then tears. Washing away the mandates of my previously puckered mothering soul, I succumbed to my hilarious, messy reality, along with the realization we’d all likely survive to tell the twisted tale.

Rediscovering how to find the funny saved me. While appearance in every realm was part of my historical DNA, beginning to actively guffaw at this insanity helped reassign these traits as recessive instead of dominant. It was time to deliberately start making peace with the glorious imperfections of life.

Will I ever be a perfect mom? No. Is there such a thing as a perfect family? Sure. Mine. As is. Boogers and all.

I remain eternally grateful for my next door neighbor, without whom our daughters would have never been clean. She wielded those tiny beings like the true maternal professional she was (and still is) during their first bath, both teaching and assuring my husband and me that we would not kill them despite our profound awkwardness. I can only imagine the volume of prayers to the Almighty she must have uttered on our behalf once out of earshot.

It takes a village.

Our first pediatrician was a well seasoned godsend. Upon discharge home, I fearfully asked this aging sage: “You trust us with these preemies?!” to which he gently replied “kids are wonderful and you will all be just fine.”  Also a fellow oenophile, I then queried him if I could have a glass of wine a day while breastfeeding. Eyeing my freaked out visage, he said “Have two!”

‘Nuff said.