“Mother Shock” by Andrea Buchanan



Every once in a while I run across a book that I have to tell everyone I know about. “Mother Shock” by Andrea Buchanan belongs at this category… at the top of the list.

It was probably the best book on actual parenting I’ve read – not like what to do when babies have fevers and how to change diapers, but about what it’s really like to be a parent. For me, at least, motherhood is not always easy, and it was quite a shock in the beginning. This book tells the story much more frankly and clearly than I could, and it was very heartening for me to discover that I wasn’t (completely) nuts.

Here’s the official book description:

According to Andrea Buchanan, “mother shock” is the state in which many new parents exist during those first confusing, chaotic, and often comical years of parenting. It is the clash between expectation and result, theory and reality; a twilight zone of 24-hour-a-day living where life is no longer neatly divided into day and night. It is the stress of trying to acclimate quickly to the immediacy of mothering; of formulating a new conception of oneself, one’s role in the family and in the world; of shouldering a fearful new level of responsibility and a new delegation of domestic duties. In this much-needed and delightfully funny collection, Buchanan shares the insight she gains as she moves through the stages of mother shock. From “Fear of the Double Stroller” and “Confessions of a Bottle Feeder” to “I’m an Idiot” and “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Playgroup,” Buchanan details the unimaginably difficult and unbelievably rewarding process of becoming a mother. Spanning the first three years of her daughter’s life, these amusing ruminations on mothering will strike a chord with every new mother.

Head over to Amazon and pick it up… I highly recommend it!

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Earbrows

As a working mom, I always feel guilty (quick – anyone want to finish that sentence?) about scheduling things for myself in the evenings or on weekends, because that’s when I actually have time to spend with the fam. So, one trick I’ve learned is to do as much as possible on my lunch hour. There was a time I religiously exercised during said lunch hour, but sadly that hasn’t been the case in recent weeks (and by ‘weeks’ I mean about a year). I’m going to again start on Monday, I swear. But I digress.

Today, my lunchtime adventure was getting my hair cut. I was pretty excited about it because I thought a little pampering might make the rest of the day more bearable. “Pampering” isn’t really the right word for what happened, though.

While washing my hair, the stylist asked me if she could wax my eyebrows. She was very nice about it, but without a doubt the underlying message was “I can’t let you walk out of the salon looking like this. It will be bad for business.” So I agreed.

Prior to today, I hadn’t had my eyebrows waxed in three years. In fact, the last time I had it done was July 9, 2004. (Fun fact: I have an amazing capacity to retain completely useless details about the past, and if I thought about it, I could probably tell you what I was wearing at the time). In my defense, though, I will point out that my daughter is three years old. Coincidence? I think not.

It HURT. Really, the waxing part itself wasn’t all that bad (you know, the whole “rip the bandaid off quickly” theory), but then she broke out a cotton ball and applied what had to have been pure ethyl alcohol to my face. It HURT. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she reached for the tweezers and proceeded to pluck. It HURT. Then she applied yet more liquid fire, held up the mirror and sent me on my way.

Here’s the text message I sent from the parking lot:

To: Jenny
From: Emily

I just got my eyebrows waxed. Sh!t that hurt.

Jenny, who at the time was at our grandma’s house with her kids, Andy and Kate, sent this text message reply:

To: Emily
From: Jenny

Kate said, “Did my mommy get her earbrows cut on purpose?”

Believe it or not, kid, Mommy did get her earbrows cut on purpose. But I am not doing it again for at least another three years.

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Small Prices… Post-Partum

Since childbirth is the gift the keeps on giving, we’ve extended our list to the post-partum days.

Post-partum Small Prices to Pay for a Miracle

• Night sweats – It’s like taking a bath in your own sweat every night no matter the season. Thanks, hormones! I love not having to wash my hair in the morning! (ummm…just kidding I promise).

• Crying jags – Another gift from the ol’ hormones. Andy told me it was a good thing the childbirth classes prepared him for the “baby blues” (sounds so innocuous, doesn’t it?) because if not he would have thought I was seriously cracking up.

• Sleepless nights – I guess I don’t really need to explain this one. Of course I didn’t get a lot of sleep when I was pregnant either, but no tiny, needy person was screaming at me then. The grass is always greener…

• The six-week long period – Kind of makes up for not having a period for nine months.

• Bad hair days – my hair fell out in such abundance that I thought I was going bald.

• Jello belly – here’s a snippet of an actual conversation I had with a friend about six weeks after Kate’s birth.
Friend: So, are you back to normal?
Me: Kind of, but I have NO stomach muscles at all!
Friend: Oh really? As opposed to the six-pack you had before?
Me: (comment deleted for inappropriate content)

• Rock hard leaky/squirty boobs – I will spare you the details.

• Stretch marks – and lots of them.

• Either A) having something the size of a grapefruit come out an opening the size of a lemon OR B) having a ginormous hole cut in your gut!

But of course, all these wonderful trials are worth it. They are. Really.

Remind me of that when and if I ever get up the nerve to go through it again, ok?

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