I'm The Boss Not McDonald's

This evening, my husband’s cousin (who also happens to be our occasional babysitter) told me something disturbing. She told me that on a Nickelodeon program, a young boy made a joke about having big feet, “you know what that means …” (insinuating the whole “big feet” premise). The reason it disturbed me is because I couldn’t imagine any age demographic that Nickelodeon targets, in which that joke would have been appropriate. What really gets to be about this, though, is that one of my managers at work, having just returned from a marketing conference, communicated some of the topics on the table with regard to children and advertising. This led to a discussion amongst a few members in our department about what was appropriate in terms of marketing to children. Juxtaposing these two conversations, I find it ludicrous that people are suggesting that certain advertising is “bad” while sexually implicit content, on the right tv station, seems to be okay. I, personally, find some of the content in programs far more offensive than any commercial for some sugary snack that, frankly, at the end of the day, I don’t have to buy. I digress. On the matter at hand-advertising and responsibility. I didn’t grow up with sweets in my house. Period. We got to trick-or-treat and even most of that candy was removed from our clutches. My mother determined what I ate and she explained to me why certain things weren’t allowed (e.g. sugary cereal). There was no debate. She was my mother. Period. Candy was a luxury I indulged in while in the care of my grandparents. What that led to—I didn’t have a single cavity until I was an adult. My BMI was consistently low. I was a great athlete and much smarter than I am now. I didn’t become addicted to candy later and I didn’t hate my mother. Basically, I was a good, smart, healthy kid who, looking back, was far more occupied with something some kids just don’t do nowadays—PLAYING. Has it occurred to some of these researchers that, in fact, lack of physical activity and not commercials may be the cause of childhood obesity (I play with my son, even when I don’t feel like it)? Further, has it occurred to parents that, in fact, WE are in charge of what our children watch on TV and eat? Like, hello, my 4 year-old doesn’t have an ATM card. He can’t hop on his bike and drive to McDonald’s to get a happy meal. When did it become the responsibility of advertisers and toy companies to assure the proper diets of children? Aren’t we, the PARENTS, supposed to be teaching our children about nutrition, diet, exercise, etc.? Parenting is a difficult job. It’s low paying; you usually only get recognized when your kid screws up; people are always judging you; you are always judging yourself. But it is one of the most important jobs anyone has if he or she chooses to take it on. When I see young, obese, children, my heart breaks. Research published in the journal Nature, in 2008, found fat cells can shrink--but they don't go away. This means that those children, who are obese, will struggle with weight for the rest of their lives and that isn’t fair. But it isn’t the fault of advertisers, or McDonald’s or anyone outside of the home that these kids are facing this battle. Baring disease (such as in the case with kidney recipients who are forced to take immunosuppressive drugs that can cause rapid weight gain), it is OUR fault, as parents, if our young children are overweight. I get, personally, very little sleep because I have a new baby. So, if I get 5 hours, it’s a miracle. But most nights, I’m getting between 3-4 hours of sleep (the baby is teething, oh joy). I am at work between 8-10 hours, including lunch. I am driving between 1-2 hours (depending on if I have to stop at the store, pick up dry cleaning, go to the bank, etc.). I am nursing. I am cooking. Occasionally, I am cleaning. I am reading bedtime stories. I am giving baths. I am washing clothes. I am nursing. I am 42!!! But even in my sleepy, drained, state, when I stop at Ralph’s on the way home, and my 4 year-old insists he have cereal he saw in a commercial or candy he saw on a bus or chips he saw in a friend's lunch box at his school, if I decide he can’t have it, guess what, HE CAN’T HAVE IT. I don’t care if he cries, screams, promises me I can’t be his “best buddy” ever again, etc., I run the show and no advertiser, no matter how catchy their jingle is, has more power over MY CHILDREN than ME.

Mom Vs. Kid

This morning, I realized why my relationship with my 4 year old son seems so familiar. He was headed toward one of those dreaded temper tantrums and I snatched him up so quickly his heart started beating as if he were in fight or flight mode. Yes, I snatched him. I was so angry because he literally has these crying clusters (what I call them) for days at a time and this was DAY 3. I’d had enough but I was surprised he could get me so angry and even more surprised to realize that I had experienced these strong emotions before. What our relationship has become is similar to that of a woman and man in love-but not the kind of wistful puppy love that one experiences in the beginning of a relationship. We are at the part where you see each other’s flaws, learn how to push each other’s buttons and battle each other emotionally until you figure out if the two of you are compatible or just too different to make it. Not everyone has these woes. Some relationships are seamless and you’re finishing each other’s sentences by week 2 and engaged by week 4 but, for the rest of us, we’ve had to fight our way to common ground and pile on a lot of forgiveness in order to heal the damage from the territorial wars waged in the early part of falling in love. I never realized I would be repeating this pattern with my son and this conflict is no less draining or painful than that between his father and I over a decade ago. As much as I try to keep my emotions in check, occasionally, he gets me riled up and I pull the car over in the middle of my commute to work or pull him out of a store in the middle of a should-be normal shopping experience. Sometimes I win. I am calm. I am composed. I give the perfect lecture. He listens. I am victorious. Other times, I fail miserably and resort to, “wait until I tell your father,” a weak response in my moments of pure desperation. But some of the best and strongest relationships started with two people at odds. I hope that I will one day be able to look back at my relationship with my son at the point when it is strong, powerful and beneficial for both of us and this growing pains phase is well behind us. Otherwise, I’m going to have tell his daddy!

Natural Mom in Unnatural Circumstances (Breastfeeding While Working Full-Time 101)

Okay, so my mother thinks my breastfeeding trials are perfect fodder for a stand-up routine. Let me start by confessing that this is not the life I planned for myself. First of all, I remember standing in the parking lot after pitching a sitcom episode about 2 decades ago and professing, “by age 40, I will either be running a network or running my own show, either way, my kids will have a nanny …” I also told my boyfriend at the time (now my husband) that I was going to be at home for the first few years of the lives of our 3 children. That’s right, before I became a mom, I actually thought I could effectively manage/raise/nurture three children (kudos to those women who have done it because I now know that I couldn’t)! I also thought I’d be having these three children at 32 and not one at 42. But nothing about my life reflects the plans I laid out for myself decades prior. This includes the list of mishaps that have occurred since my return to work (doing the very same job I had when I started in the entertainment industry 20 years ago). No one ever mentioned to me how difficult, inconvenient and, at times, downright painful the process of breastfeeding could be. Upon reading all of the literature on the advantages, I felt like it was the only choice I had. It’s a natural process that contributes to a higher IQ, better immune system, better bonding with your child, etc. So, who wants a dumb kid with a low immune system who can’t stand his mom? Guess I better breastfeed! Many of my friends had done it. At least that’s how they presented things to me. Upon further investigation, I found out, they didn’t all quite do it the way I meant. A few did it for like a couple of days. Some for a couple of weeks. Some did it until they went back to work. One did it a couple of hours! Hey, does that really count? And, by the way, NONE, mentioned the trouble it was until AFTER I shared my woes. “Oh, yeah,” one friend quipped, “I hated it and quit because it was so painful but I’m glad you’re doing it.” Uh, HELLO, could you have warned me BEFORE I took the plunge? Of course not. Breastfeeding, much like having children in general, is one of those things people pretend is perfectly normal and pain-free. NOT. There is nothing normal about having to run out of a conference room, down the hall, with tubes sticking out of your shirt, because your lactation room has been double booked. There’s nothing normal about having to borrow a shirt from a co-worker because you started leaking when you worked on a project too long and were late to go pump. And there is nothing normal about spilling milk in the back seat of the minivan because you were locked out of your designated lactation room and couldn’t figure out how to balance the milk bottles, keep track of time and post updates on facebook simultaneously. This is the life of today’s working mother and the reality is it is no more easier than for previous moms, just because there's some cool, $300 machine to help. I would venture to say, because of all of these gadgets, much more is expected of you. My mother's favorite mantra is, "I didn't have that when I was raising you." But even with the extra circuitry, women find this loving task of feeding their babies problematic. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “[ women] who breastfeed for six months or longer have far steeper declines in income, mainly due to their increased likelihood of reducing their work hours or quitting,” The article also refers to a past observance that many women who intend to continue to nurse after returning to work, give it up after a few weeks. DUH! Will I personally continue? Sure, as long as I can. But I know the truth now. I am in a minority of women who are not VPs or managers who can shut their doors and have their assistants keep people out of the office or who work from home or, better yet, who are full-time stay-at-home moms. I'm just a regular worker bee who has to prove that just because I rush to take my two breaks at work, hoping that the curtain hasn't been removed from the conference room or that I've been replaced by a "real meeting," I am still a good employee who is committed to doing a great job. But it has surely not been seamless. I have had 3 lactation coaches; I have had a phone consultant; I have spilled milk on my lap; I have fallen asleep while pumping; I have left equipment at home; I have left milk at the office; I have tried 10 different creams; I have been given 4 different breast diagnoses; I have had the wrong shields size; I have had the wrong hands free bra size. In other words, I have spent a lot of time, energy and money trying to get this right and almost every single day, something goes wrong. In the end, my daughter will have received the best nutrition I have to offer and maybe, just maybe, I will have at least gotten one small portion of being a parent right. If nothing else, I will have provided comedic stories for my mother to share with her friends!

When Ignorance is Bliss is Best

Since most of my friends know me as a writer (albeit a procrastinating self-deprecating one with little finished work to speak of), it seems odd to them that I haven’t written about being pregnant. I have been asked on more than one occasion if I’ve written anything to or about the child I conceived at the end of March of last year and carried well into December. In those 40.3 weeks of time, I have written nothing. Nada. Zero. The main reason is that my husband and I were nervous the entire 1st trimester. 2010 was our 10-year anniversary and this was our first pregnancy. We were in shock! At first, we didn’t know who to tell or in what time period we should tell them. Between us, we had four friends who had recently had miscarriages. We worried about the glass of wine I had one night out with friends and the drink I had at my sister-in-law’s birthday party. We worried about the green tea I drank everyday that could have blocked the baby’s folic acid intake. We worried about the amnio and then worried that we decided not to go through with it. We worried we didn’t have enough space, enough money; enough time … we were worried. We were the antithesis of 16 years-old and pregnant. We knew we didn’t have everything together and there was no mommy and daddy to run to in order to pick up the pieces. We were mommy and daddy. Despite our concerns, we shifted into gear and tried to come up with some plans, still leaving a few things hanging, in case something went wrong. We prayed A LOT and asked others to pray for us. We tried to get in some one-on-one dating time and even spent one night at a hotel downtown together as a mini get-away to celebrate our anniversary before the world wind we were sure to walk into. By my 37th week, the OBGYNS at Cedars were congratulating me. “You accomplished a great deal, making it this far” one doctor told me. With all of my unnecessary fears, I had no idea that there were real concerns with pregnancy at my age and it actually was a real accomplishment to go full-term. According to recent studies, “at age 40, your chance of getting pregnant in any given month is just 5%.” I would be 42 by the time our daughter was born. Not only that, carrying a child over 40 weeks, at my age, comes with a laundry list of risks, of which I was completely unaware. There could been a host of real problems for me to concern myself with, google and obsess over that might have completely taken over my free time. This was definitely a case where "ignorance is bliss is best" because in the plans that God has laid out for us, stats don't apply. When he is in the midst of it, his will is bigger than numbers. Thankfully, I was able to get through most of the 2nd and 3rd trimester, feeling as if everything was going to go well and that our baby would be delivered safely. As a matter of fact, I actually thought I would be able to work until the day I needed to be rushed to the hospital. I tried very hard to do just that but succumbed to the pressure of both grandmothers and the direction of my doctor to go on leave. The baby’s arrival was imminent as I was 1 centimeter dilated on my last day at the office before maternity leave. I was also 1 centimeter dilated 16 hours before I delivered Alexandria, 2 weeks after my last day of work. Now, I hope and pray I am a good mother to her and a real friend. I hope that I can move her into her destiny and provide her a strong foundation for success in whatever she does. I hope that I will be able to allow her to make her own mistakes and live life on her own terms. I hope that I am able to teach her about God and the power of prayer. And I hope, no matter what I find on google, and how much it causes me to worry, I will be able to rely on old school mother’s instincts when raising her. And when it comes to unnecessary information that will only make me anxious, I hope to remain blissfully ignorant.

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;” Phillipians 4:6

What did you just say?

This is what my husband and shout throughout the day now. Sometimes, what we hear from our son is funny, like “go play, mommy” or “I need my coffee in the morning” but other times it’s embarrassing like when an elderly woman opens the door for me and my son and he says “that’s stupid” or in the middle of prayer service at church when he yells, “I wanna call grandma, now!” Within the span of 30 months, we have gone from “how do we know what he wants since he can’t talk?” to “I really wish he wouldn’t talk so much.” It’s both fun and scary to await the gems spewing from the mouth of a 2 ½ year-old, most of which he doesn’t completely understand. There is a lot of pure repeating (i.e. “I need my coffee in the morning”) and exploring his own voice and feelings. His real personality is starting to develop and, like it or not, it will be uniquely his. This is just the beginning. He may not be a peace-loving, tree-hugging, war-protesting, liberal like his mom or a conservative, fiscally moderate, traditionalist like his dad. He might be an amalgamation of the two of us or nothing like either of us. When his voice begins to speak his truth, our job will be to listen, influence and provide sound direction. But we will have to love and accept the parts of him that we may not understand, just as our parents have had to do for us. None of this will be easy. As a matter of fact, looking back now, the first year was probably the easiest of our whole parenting career. However, the future holds a world of excitement and we will have a third set of eyes through which to view the world. What a gift!

Modern Day Mama

Those who know me well will find it hard to believe that I now awake any earlier than 8:00 a.m. Obviously, I had to do this while working from home as my son woke up at around 6:30 in the morning. But I could always lay and vegetate for a moment—especially in the latter months when he started feeding himself. It’s amazing what the human body can do, even at 40, when forced. I am up at around 5:00 a.m. (sometimes even 4:45). Even this slacker time will soon change as I will be forced to get out of the house by 6:00 in the morning in order to beat traffic (so that's a 4:30 a.m. wake-up time). This will keep my commute down to a manageable 45 minutes. Otherwise, we’re talking 1 ½ hours, just shy of the amount of time my close friend has to drive to get to her job after dropping off the little one. This is now the life of the working mom.

Working while mothering is not a foreign concept to most women of color. For generations, most of our mothers have had to hold one or more jobs while caring for their families. However, many of these positions were smaller in scope and closer to home. I personally know of no mothers from my grandmother’s generation who drove 2 hours to get to their jobs and even in my mother’s generation most of the women I know were home in time to cook dinner and actually eat it with their families. Sometimes when I get home, both my son and husband have already gone to bed and, unlike most of my friends, I am not in a high-powered position such as producing or “doctoring.” I’m an executive assistant, who, on a good day, spends two hours each day in traffic. Further, while my job is administrative, it still isn’t the kind of thing you do just to keep busy or add a little spending change to your budget. My job is a necessary component to our economic survival and it requires mental stamina. Unlike before my son was born, I’m no longer in the position to take a low-paying industry gig in the hopes that some producer may recognize my brilliance and promote me to show runner (or at least staff writer). I have a real job, with real benefits and real expectations. This is the “Mama Big Leagues”—all so that 10 years from now I will able to avoid saying that fateful phrase, “we can’t afford it.”

The days of liberal government with liberal programs have now passed, despite the hype. The fact that my mother could simultaneously afford tennis lessons, piano lessons, theater lessons, dance lessons and private school, is a mystery beyond my comprehension (especially given the fact that this woman is no accountant). But I realize she had help. There were neighbors who were also good friends. There were grandparents who lived nearby. There was a father (though divorced from my mother) who, at one point, lived within walking distance of our house. And yes, here’s the liberal in me, there were programs. They were heavily funded by both the government and private donors. In the days when I grew up, everyone pitched in. There really was “a village.” Now, there are more like little islands and as much as friends offer to help (when it takes at least ½ hour to get to your house, you can’t go around asking folks to babysit all of the time), it takes so much more now to raise children—more money, more energy, more work, more, more, more … Even my own mother, upon visiting me for a week, commented on how much harder it was for me than her. “You get home awfully late,” she quipped. Just imagine if I were an executive! Or a lawyer! Or even a successful screenwriter! Perhaps a nanny would be involved in those scenarios but the angst, the stress, the sheer weight of a modern-day mamahood would still be present. There is no manual for us, no women who went before us and very little sympathy. After all, almost all mamas are going through some version of the same thing. It is a major adjustment, the effects of which we won’t fully see until our children have fully grown. We can only hope that while we may have missed bath time and a few first words, we’ll be able to relax in the later years and make it to the baseball games and plays. We hang onto the dream that we will not only have enough money but enough time and energy to help with prom and SAT preparation. We're banking on (literally and figuratively) a future for our children wherein we are very much present for them when they are old enough to remember.

The Food My Mama Fed Me

When I was a little girl, I expressed to my mother that I wanted a puppy. I believed that I demonstrated my maturity and responsibility through completing my chores and obtaining a part-time job at the local hair salon. I was 11 years-old. My mother thought that our yard was too small to accommodate an animal and although I certainly had proved a level of dependability, I would most likely become bored with the task of caring for a pet and she would be left doing all of the work. She opted, instead, for a garden. I took for granted that we could easily access fresh vegetables and herbs (without the use of dangerous pesticides)--just as I took for granted that the Jewish deli down the street provided fresh kosher meat. My brother and I even contributed to the vegetation by using a technique I learned in science class on a potato. We grew a watermelon patch on the side of our garage that was not approved by my mother and eventually destroyed by neighborhood kids. Years later, I learned that farming was in our blood as our great grandfather, along with some of his cousins, owned several acres of land in Arkansas. That was before large corporations produced 98 percent of all poultry in the United States and a mere two percent of farms produced 50 percent of all agricultural products in the country.

According to “The Nontoxic Baby,” a book written as a guide for parents in the 90’s, “over one half of all the food on grocery store shelves has only appeared within the last decade.” At the time the book was written, Nancy Sokol Green estimated that “in another 10 years, that number is predicted to be as high as 80%.” Much of the food research now is conducted by the corporations who produce the food through their “committees.” The regulations that existed to protect us from toxic chemicals have been cancelled or severely weakened and in the early 80’s, according to Green, “budgets of several federal environmental and consumer protection regulatory agencies were cut by millions ...” It should then be no surprise that we received toxic toys from China since, according to our own government’s documents, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has “suffered the deepest cuts to its budget and staff of any health and safety agency.”

This is the world my son will grow up in. And I am forced to make choices everyday based on the choices that our government has refused to make. It occurred to me recently, this is another way in which the poor and the wealthy will be separated. It will not just be more acreage and a better car that separates the classes but the consumption of non-organic food, containing some of the thousands of new chemicals introduced each year that are connected to the significant increase in male infertility, asthma, hyperactivity, recurrent ear infections, moodiness, depression, leukemia and several forms of cancer or the more expensive organic food that we can only hope is much safer. These children who suffer the diseases resulting from toxin exposure will probably have less access to healthcare (I’m assuming that if you can’t pay for organic food you probably don’t have comprehensive healthcare coverage). We live under a government that is directed by corporate interests rather than the interest of the people it is formed to protect. And when representatives do stand up to protect us, they are deemed radical or leftist.

So, for the mom who reads too much, watches too much C-Span, listens to too much talk radio and surfs the internet too much, the only choice is browsing the aisles of Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s for the best deals she can find and waiting for the Whole Foods knock-off to open in the neighborhood (a discount organic store chain is coming soon!). What I am really trying to do is give my son the food my mama fed me—it came from a family farm, it wasn’t cross bred with anything, there were no hormones in it, there were not nearly as many chemicals on it, it wasn’t genetically produced. It was rare that it came from a box, a can or a plastic thing (according to John Hopkins Research, “the combination of fat, high heat and plastics releases dioxins into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Dioxins are carcinogens and highly toxic to the cells of our bodies ...”) and it was hardly ever microwaved. I hope and pray these small changes I make will be enough to overcome the pollutants my child faces everyday due to poor air quality and the continued use of toxic substances in toys and even in some school structures. In fact, more than anything, it is prayer that will protect my child because it is clear our government has no interest in doing that at all.