“For sale: Baby shoes. Never Worn.”
In the “before” days, I interpreted this microfiction to be a hearstoppingly tragic story of a lost family vision. Now that my brain has been reformatted into mom mode, my mind now jumps to new interpretations:
- The story is an indictment of corporations preying on new parents’ fears and ignorance so they buy more baby things than possibly needed.
- Indeed, baby clothing sizing is crazy. Who sizes humans by age?
- The story is a hilarious commentary on the myriad useless baby objects— babies don’t need shoes because they can’t walk.
- The story shows the futility of dressing rolling babies in clothes that are not well designed for easy on/off.
- The story is a celebration of living in a tropical paradise because Hawaiian babies don’t need shoes, or most clothing.
- The story shows overeager purchasing by new moms who order clothes that take months to arrive from off island and the baby grows out of it long before wearing it.
At one of our first social gatherings after giving birth, someone asked, “How’s motherhood?”
I haltingly answered, “I’m… not… very… sleep… full.”
Sleep deprivation is brain damage!
Nevertheless, even when I was at my most sleep deprived and averaging 5 hours a day fragmented into 2 hour chunks, instead of sleeping while my baby slept, I’d zoom up on the baby monitor to see if he was still breathing. Babyvision was my favorite tv show— we’d put his video feed up on the TV to watch him fling himself around in his sleep.
My husband would implore me to sleep, but it was hard to not watch the baby. Oscillating between awe and anxiety, I’d stare at how beautiful he was.
“The camera got unplugged. Should we go in his room to fix it?”
“No, just go to sleep. If he’s dead, he’s dead!”
As soon as I appreciate something about my baby, the next moment I scare myself because what if he loses it? He’s so cute— but what if he gets disfigured by some horrible accident?! He laughs so easily— but what if he gets traumatized by something bad?! He’s so sweet and smiley— but what if he gets taken advantage of by some predator?! Staying sane is an exercise in non-attachment.
When I’m so exhausted and angry and tell my husband, “Let’s send him to boarding school,” I just take another hit of breastfeeding MDMA and I’m back to “I’m going to home school him.”
Now it makes sense why I watched Dune repeatedly in the week before giving birth— the fantasy of psychedelic spice being the most powerful substance in the universe that lets humans bend space time appealed to me because my consciousness intuited the parallels to the altered state of motherhood. The spice agony of breastfeeding has transformed my body and mind beyond baseline humanity. Motherhood’s prescience, ancestral memory, and heightened awareness gave me the power to form the future of our species and hence our universe! And the only costs are: I fall into a spice trance whenever I inhale too much of my baby; I must maintain strict water discipline when it comes to my milk, sleep, emotions, and other reserves lest I die in the desert; and the spice addiction to my baby sandworm and never being able to return to paradise…
Anyway, for my first mother’s day, I’m celebrating how awesome I am! I’ve only bumped his head against stuff twice (that I’m aware of). I change his diaper with superhuman efficiency, pulling wipes out in advance so they don’t get tangled in the dispenser, positioning his new diaper underneath the old one so there aren’t leaks, and all my supermom techniques. I can get him to sleep or stop crying with a single boob. He literally sucks my blood in the form of breastmilk and is so addicted to it he sometimes can’t sleep without it. I can hear his cry even if I’m dead asleep several rooms away and I stagger up no matter what like an aging prizefighter. I buy all the crazy mom stuff I see ads for. I excel at dressing my entire family in matching outfits. I finally mastered babywearing, my version of the Fremen stillsuit. And I have a lot of baby shoes he’s never worn if you want them. Happy mother’s day!