No Experience Necessary! Part 2

Momfidence!: An Oreo Never Killed Anybody and Other Secrets of Happier Parenting
by Paula Spencer

(Page 3 of 3)

Crossing my front lawn back to my house, I try to figure out what to do with Baby M. That's when I see all the holes in the grass. Mole holes!

"Welcome home, little guy," I whisper as I unwrap the critter and kneel down (the hardest part, since my center of gravity has relocated several inches out from the rest of my body). Even if this particular mole hole doesn't lead to his nest, I figure some tunneling distant relative might take him in. Or send a message to his mother. I vaguely remember hearing that moles cover a lot of territory in a day. I try to calculate how many houses I've passed since I picked him up. Then I lurch upright and go inside happy. Not only have I done a good deed, but I am a natural at nurturing! Whew!

"Hey! Guess what happened?" I call to my husband, Daddyo-to-be, who is preparing for parenthood in his own way, by sorting through many long pieces of white wood and short silver screws that don't look anything like the picture of the gleaming Bellini baby crib on the box they'd come in.

"What?"

"I found a baby mole!"

"A what?"

"A baby mole, with his eyes still shut, and he was so cute and helpless, and I think it was like a sign or something!"

"A sign of wha-Ah dang!" A silver screw skitters across the wood floor and two crib slats clatter after it. He sets down the screwdriver and repeats, "You found a baby mole. And it was a sign." Only he makes both sentences sound like questions. "Where is it?"

"I put it in a mole hole so its mother, or somebody's mother, could find it."

Daddyo doesn't say anything. But his telltale right dimple deepens. It always does that when he's telling a joke-or finds something hilarious but is trying to keep a straight face.

"What?" I demand.

"Um, snakes use those old tunnels to look for food."

"You mean-?"

Oh.

Great.

My first maternal stirrings led me to deliver my innocent young charge to a copperhead for breakfast.

Reassuring Tale 2:

I Have No Apparent Child-Care Skill

Next thing I know, I am dropping babies on their heads. Not real babies, let me hasten to add. Plastic practice ones. Even so, another unpromising omen.

My own mom didn't know Lamaze from La Bamba. I'd been born while she was under "twilight sleep," the prettiest euphemism for heavy drugs I've ever heard, with my dad down the hall in the waiting room, missing his General Motors League bowling night. But I am determined to be prepared. I'd learned photography, step aerobics, yoga, and algebra by taking classes, hadn't I? So why not childbearing? For good measure I sign up for courses on breast-feeding and parenting preparation, too.

I mean, I sign up both of us.

"Why do I have to go?" Daddyo wants to know.

"As my backup," I say. "In case I forget anything."

What I don't admit is that I don't want to go either. I simply feel propelled along. My belly grows bigger, I go to the doctor every two weeks, my friends make noises about showers, I begin turning my old home office (and spare bedroom) into a nursery, I take Lamaze. It all unfolds matter-of-factly and practically without me, the great conveyor belt of expectant motherhood. At the same time, I am at that point in my pregnancy where the baby is no longer an abstraction. It is big, and active, and like the title of a seriously bad 1950s movie, It Had to Come Out. I figure I may as well face up to learning how.

During the first few Lamaze sessions I discover that I am best at the academics of the whole business. When we learn about the signs of labor and the stages of labor, I take copious notes. I memorize assorted breathing patterns as earnestly as if I were a third-grader learning times tables before a big test. Just as I begin to think I might "pass" after all, we get to the relaxation exercises. I am pretty much hopeless.

"Relax," my husband croons in his best labor supporter tone as I am supposed to be letting the tension float away from my legs, my calves, my ankles, my toes. But the more I concentrate on letting go, the more self-conscious I become.

"Relax!" (More urgently now.)

"I am!"

"Stop tensing up!"

"Stop saying that-it's making me more tense!"

"I wish I was the one who got to lay there," he complains, stifling a yawn.

I wish you were, too, I think grimly.

Then comes newborn-care night.

"Tonight," the instructor, Sharon, smiles warmly, "we'll move from the abstract to the hands-on." We gather around a big table piled with newborn baby dolls. "I want each couple to take a baby," she instructs. Eager hands dart out. The dolls come in slightly different models and colors, so people begin reaching over one another to make a selection. You'd think we were prospective adoptive parents in an orphanage rather than clueless students in a church basement awaiting a short lesson in Pampers application. Some of the women begin to coo and talk to their "newborns" as if they were real.

Copyright © 2006 by Paula Spencer.

About the Author

Paula Spencer specializes in health and family subjects for Woman's Day, Glamour, Parenting, Baby Talk, USA Weekend, and other publications. She is the author of four books on pregnancy and parenting, including Everything ELSE You Need to Know When You're Expecting.