Control

Today I am featuring my first guest blogger EVER.  Monica from Peeper Summarized is visiting today.  She has an adorable little girl, Ada, and struggled getting pregnant.  I love reading about her days with Ada, and just seeing through her words how loved and absolutely adored Ada is.  We both have experienced motherhood without the help of our mothers, which is what brought us together.

So read here, and then venture on over to read more of the tales of Miss Ada and Peeper.

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I love Lisa’s blog and am so excited to be here as her guest!


A couple of weeks ago I discovered a blog written by a beautiful young woman who is now about midway through her first pregnancy. She is a self-proclaimed perfectionist who knew exactly how she wanted the process of getting pregnant to go and has everything planned out. Lucky for her, it's all working out so far. A couple of times as I was reading I caught myself saying, "Sheesh" and shaking my head from side to side. Not because I'm judging this girl, mind you. Rather, I was exactly like her! That is, until my journey to motherhood taught me a few valuable lessons.

When Tim and I decided to start a family I figured it was a done deal. We're young enough, healthy, smart, prepared, capable people. Then it took us a year and a half and a little help to get knocked up.

OK, lost control of the situation for a minute there but we're back on track now.

Early in pregnancy I was militant with myself to avoid anything that might be even a bit harmful to the baby inside me. So I was shocked when I lay on the table at our 20-week ultrasound watching the ultrasound tech furrow her brow while she scanned the brain. I turned to look at Tim whose face was solemn and concerned because he knew what was going on. She couldn't find a major marker for proper brain development. We waited for the longest, most anguishing 2 weeks of my life to see if she was OK (she is).

We could do nothing but wait - we had no control.

A few months later my mother was diagnosed with cancer that would ultimately take her life in less than 4 months. (My experience with my mothers illness and death is how I found Lisa) From across the country and 8 months pregnant or with a newborn baby I received panicked, dooms-day texts and emails.

From where I sat, desperately trying to make breastfeeding work (it never did), I had no control over the situation.

Now that we are well into toddler hood many days come and go when I feel like I have no control over anything! But that's OK. See, these days my definition of control looks a lot different than it did 3 years ago. I've learned that I can approach something as smartly as possible and there will always be some elements that I can't control. I focus on what I know is under my control and leave the rest to do as it will do. It’s been one of the toughest lessons of my whole life!

More importantly is the lesson it taught me about raising my daughter without controlling her. I don't mean just controlling her actions. Right now I kind of have to - it's all about keeping her from killing herself. She is completely kamikaze - just totally unafraid! An embarrassing percentage of our daily routine is spent cajoling, distracting and, in an emergency, flat out lying cause I know she'll forget later ("Let's go to Elmo's house!").

I'm referring to the stuff that will emerge with greater importance especially as she grows older. Things like respecting her. Things like recognizing that even before she is capable of caring for herself, she is very much a person with wants, feelings and needs. It's up to me, as her mother, to act as her ambassador to the world until she can speak for herself. As she grows I need to watch that I don't make decisions for her. Instead, to guide her to do whatever she is going to do responsibly and with empathy. It's my job to support her interests even if they are vastly different from my own. It's a big responsibility but I am happy to say that losing control has prepared me for it. A little bit. I hope.

I've come so far already. Today, I crouched between the shoe displays in the Allen Edmonds store in downtown San Francisco with my cupped hands catching Ada's goldfish vomit. As the fancy business men stared with their mouths gaping open I thought, "Yeah well, I can't control everything."