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

Book by Spencer Paula

Don't Cry Over Spilt Guilt

On the Oughta-Woulda-Shouldas

Oughta be playing Candyland instead of sitting here logged on to eBay with a glass of merlot. Woulda signed up to chaperone the class party--if only I'd remembered to check the backpack and find the call for help in the first place. Coulda avoided that cavity, if only I'd started rubbing my baby's gums spotless with sterile gauze back when he was toothless. Shoulda--really shoulda--deleted that expletive before it came out in the car on the way to Brownies.

But didn't.

There go the Good Mommy points I racked up making Rice Krispies treats from scratch. Scout troop leader, 10 points. PTA dodger, -10. Snuggling, 5 points. Itching to flip through fat new catalog that slid out of lap while snuggling, -5. All-nighter of projectile vomiting and fever, 25 points. Failure to schedule haircut or even brush child's hair before school picture day, -100.

On the mother of all scoreboards--the one in my head--I'm forever behind. Working. Not working. Forgetting snack day. Pretending not to notice that we've entered the fifth straight hour of Cartoon Network. Nuking Chef Boyardee for dinner. (Again.) Losing my cool. Losing my daughter at Disney World. (Hey, it was only for ten minutes. Each time.)

Not that anybody's keeping score but me.

Still! This is no game! I'm supposed to be molding their hearts and minds! Keeping them free from all germs and toxins! Launching well-adjusted, productive members of society who will look after me when I'm a dotty old dame, not sit around in therapy blaming me!

Oughta, woulda, coulda, shoulda, expletive deleted.

All mothers hear voices. Actually just one voice, as insistent as it is irksome. That would be your momologue, your internal running commentary on how it's going as a mom.

But it's never saying, "Good job, Mom! Brilliant navigation of that sibling rivalry incident! How fine and upstanding your children are! Pats on the back for that quick save of the ice-cream cone!"

No. These momologues are not about praise and positive reinforcement. They hector and nag. They cluck at you. They fret. The voice in your head recites an endless to-do list. It whispers comparisons to everybody else's kids. It tallies up your shortcomings with the precision of the IRS. It's never satisfied.

Oughta cleverly conceal more spinach in their casseroles. Oughta scrub out the bathtub every time with Clorox before I send them into it. Shoulda signed them up for after-school Chinese lessons so they can compete in the new economy. Shoulda taken more home movies last vacation. Shoulda taken more home movies ever since the youngest was born.

Woulda helped organize the school fund-raiser, if only I had more time, inclination, and tolerance for inane meetings. Woulda slathered the kids in sunscreen, if I'd remembered to buy any. Coulda found a more respectful way to nip today's bickering than "Keep that up and I might tell Santa to cancel Christmas!"

Never mind that my kids still kiss me voluntarily and make me funny hats for Mother's Day. Or that they're happy, healthy, and reasonably responsive to the word no. No matter what I do, or don't do, this annoying sense that it's never enough follows me like a phantom limb waggling an accusing finger. A perfect score on the mom-o-meter remains forever out of reach. "Oughta, woulda, coulda, shoulda" is the sound track of my life, more annoying and repetitive than a Raffi refrain.

Oughta buy elbow pads and knee pads for the skateboarders. Oughta make sure they actually use them. Shoulda counted to ten before going ballistic when the girls used the commode as a Barbie whirlpool. Woulda pulled the plug on that noisy, addictive video game system--if it didn't seem to make the house so quiet and happy.

Coulda stayed home cherishing their presence and running them through vocabulary flash cards instead of hiring that babysitter in order to enjoy a meal during which I had to cut up no one's meat but my own. Shoulda, oh lordy shoulda, showed that sitter where we keep the first-aid kit before we left the house.

But didn't.

Didn't!

Like I say fifty times a day around here to everybody else, "Enough already!"

There's no stopping the pesky momologues looping through your brain. They're as much a part of the condition of motherhood as sleep deprivation and uterine muscle flop. You can, however, quit paying attention to them.

How? By instead tuning in to the louder real-life noises right under your feet.

Both kinds of voices are constant. Both are insistent. But only one--"Mo-om!" "MOM!" "Moooooom!" "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"--is real and worth living by.
No Experience Necessary!

On Blind Optimism

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

--first lines of Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock

Zinc stearate powder, warning against.

--last entry in index of Baby and Child Care, 647 pages later

Sometimes--while standing naked in the nursery at 3 a.m. with a crying baby who has just gotten sick all over my nightgown, or while interviewing some bigwig pediatrician and frantically motioning for a barking toddler in a dog costume to quit eating Goldfish crackers off the floor as her three older siblings use them to cajole her into fetching, begging, and rolling over--a question pops into my head. How did I get here?

How does a woman once afraid of babies become "expert" enough at motherhood to write about it for a living? More to the point, proficient enough to keep her own four children alive and swell?

It's easier than you'd think.

Reassuring Tale 1: My Maternal Instincts Backfire

I am eight months pregnant, taking my evening stroll, when I spy the tiny, squirming ball of fur, so fresh from the womb that his eyes are still fused shut. It looks like a squirrel without a tail, or a puppy with paddles for paws. I think of Mole, the main rodent from The Wind in the Willows, only smaller and cuter, as if drawn by Beatrix Potter. A baby mole!

How a baby mole wound up in the middle of my suburban street, I'll never know. I pick him up, wrap him in a Kleenex fished out of my pocket, and carry him home.

Deep inside, I begin to sense a strange, reassuring glow. I feel . . . nurturing! Maybe this means I'll wind up being a good mother after all.

Growing up, see, I'd seldom played house. Never babysat. Held a baby only once, for twenty polite and panicky seconds, before returning it to its rightful owner, my boss's wife. I called kids "rugrats," and not in the cute Nickelodeon sense of the word. I was a workaholic with a dry-clean-only wardrobe, the sort of person friends might vote Least Likely to Wear a Snugli. My only pets were a pair of newts and an albino African water frog named Hugo, the product of a Grow-a-Frog kit bought as a joke, who all lived in a glass aquarium and did not require much in the way of maternal attention.

Then I turned thirty. Walking down my driveway after retrieving birthday cards from the mailbox, I heard someone say, "I want to have a baby." I looked around. Nobody there but me. And since it couldn't have been me saying those words, I am pretty sure it was my hormones talking. Thanks to my husband, a man of action and enthusiasm, I was pregnant within a month.

Naturally, I was thrilled. When I wasn't petrified. Mothers, after all, are mysterious creatures with supernatural powers, from the wisdom of Solomon to eyes in the back of their heads. How this transformation was going to happen to me, of all people, mystified me even more than where my waistline had gone overnight. Solomon? I was the girl who couldn't even decide between two different sweater colors. (I'd end up buying both.) And as for paranormal vision, I often have trouble seeing the truth when it's staring me right in the face. What kind of mother would I make?

The Mother of My Dreams played catch and handcrafted prize-winning Halloween costumes. She served hot, balanced meals three times a day. She always knew the right answer. Her clean, obedient children slept through the night and never talked back. She had the carefree glow, European superstroller, and instant washboard abs as seen on the latest celebramom. My idyllic vision was a selfless souffle whipped up from equal parts InStyle, June Cleaver, Betty Crocker, Mary Poppins, highly selective memories of my own mom, and thin air.

The Mother of My Fears, on the other hand, was the one who achieved none of these descriptions.

How could I know that she'd be the one closer to my eventual reality? And that she would be a-okay?

If an unpromising specimen like me can cheerfully navigate motherhood, anybody can. This is how it went.

"Hey, little baby," I begin to croon to the baby mole in the same primordial singsong I sometimes use on the creature growing within me. "It's okay, little baby."

A few minutes earlier, I'd been lumbering along preoccupied by an overdue work project and the embarrassing problem of which of my maternity shirts still stretched across my midsection so I could wear it tomorrow. Then in an instant, everything changes. All my focus lasers onto the helpless bitty thing in my hands. Forget blazers that wouldn't button. Deadlines, who cares? All that matters now is that I help and protect this tiny fellow. I haven't held a tissue so tenderly since I was eight years old and using one to tuck in my Liddle Kiddle dolls at night.

Crossing my front lawn back...