Bad Parent: Sisterhood, Schmisterhood
In those first months, I wanted to talk to anyone but other new moms.
by Kim Brooks
May 15, 2008
During the first few months of my son's life — the sleepless, harried months when every item of clothing I owned was caked with spit-up, when my boobs were like leaky spigots and my mind a brain-shaped glob of mud, when the phrase "sleeps like a baby" was as angrily suspect as Creationism, those months that I've now come to think of as the dark ages of new momhood, there was a refrain of advice from nearly everyone who witnessed my daily struggle to stay sane. "Go to a new moms' group," they'd say.
The wisdom went: meeting regularly with other women experiencing the same major life-transition was the best thing I could do for myself and for my baby. These groups, everyone insisted, were indispensable when it came to both emotional support and networking, to making other mom friends and setting up future playgroups, not to mention putting my new baby on the road to socialization and a happy, well-adjusted life.
Still, I resisted. Did I really want to spend my precious few free moments schlepping the baby through the snow to some stranger's apartment? Wouldn't I rather spend them trying to get some work done, or walking off my cantaloupe-sized pregnancy pouch (when did I become a marsupial?), or, if I were to give in to my baser instincts, showering?
"Exactly," said a friend who had been in the same boat thirty years ago when mothers' groups and women's groups of every variety were in their heyday. "This is exactly why women need new moms' groups, so you can have people to bitch to about how hard it is."
Did I really want to spend my precious few free moments schlepping the baby to some stranger's apartment?
Bitching being one of my favorite pastimes, I was intrigued. Besides, I thought, what was the alternative: spending the rest of the winter marooned in my apartment without adult stimulation, perfecting my burping technique?
The first group I found by accident. I met a woman in a coffee shop with a baby girl a few weeks younger than my son. I was trying to pay for my decaf, sooth my ever-wailing child, and steer the seven-hundred-dollar stroller I'd splurged on, which apparently required extensive NASA training to maneuver. She was sitting calmly in a corner, but had that "Help me: I haven't slept in seven weeks," look in her eyes. We started chatting. She mentioned that she hosted a group of new moms from her yoga studio. The next thing I knew, I was instructing little Roscoe about how to play nice with the other infants. But it wasn't he who needed instructing.
©2008 Kim Brooks and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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