#thingsthathelp

There are a lot of words on this blog about the emotional, psychological and metaphysical experience of being a mother and a creative at the same time. But I just realized I haven’t really shared much of the down-and-dirty details of how the hell you make this work.

The good news is that it’s only taken me 3.25 years to pull together a few pieces of concrete practical advice that might help you. I hope. (An obligatory disclaimer: This is what works for my family and my family is not your family and I am not you and this might be stupid advice you’ve already heard and really what do these dumb little life hacks matter in the face of the fact that, in the scheme of all things, we are all just insignificant flashes of light in a vast swath of interstellar darkness...ahem.) Money

I hope this does not come off as the most obvious and obnoxious thing to say. But I’m not being flippant, I swear. One of the advantages of being a working parent is you have more money than you would if you didn’t work. A friend once told me, “Don’t be afraid to throw money at the problem.” And she’s absolutely right. Childcare is expensive. Prepared food is expensive. But they are way less expensive than the long-term costs of leaving the workforce. Your time has value, too. And, since having Seraphina, I realize that time is really the one thing there’s never enough of. So yeah, if you can buy yourself a few more moments in the day, do it.

Help

You cannot do this alone. If you try, you will hate your life and you will fail. If I have one regret about the first year of Seraphina’s life, it’s that I rarely accepted the help people offered me.

Whenever someone offered to watch the baby or do something for me, this little voice would start jabbering in my head, whispering things like “They don’t really mean it, they’re just being nice, you don’t want to burden them, what if she poops, what if she poops on them while they are holding her, what if she simultaneously poops and pukes all over them and they hate you and your child and will never talk to you again.” If you have a voice like that, tell it to shut up. People like babies. They want to help. They love feeling useful.

Don’t be like me. Accept the help people offer you. Ask for help when you need it. People love you.

(And if the baby pukes and poops on them at the same time, you will all laugh about it someday and when your kid is an adult, your friend will be all like ‘haha, you puked and pooped on me once when you are a baby.’ It’s going to be great. Seraphina once peed all over my friend’s upholstered chaise lounge and we are still friends. I think. (Hi, Ellen, I love you.))

Of course, you’re going to need more significant help than friends holding your kid or bringing you dinners. You are going to need HELP. Like help that you pay for. (Unless you have a local family member who is dying to care for your child full-time, in which case I envy you with the fire of a thousand burning suns.)

The good news is that you have lots of options. You can hire a nanny. You can find a great daycare. I ended up doing both.

Seraphina goes to daycare for most of the day, but a loving, wonderful, magical woman named Maggie picks her up at 4:15 and stays with her until I get home from work. They play, they do art, they read books in Polish -- and I don’t have to stress about racing a clock while my kid is sitting all alone, the last one on the playground.

It’s really the most awesome setup. But I never would have thought of it myself. One day when I was pregnant, I was bitching to a co-worker about how neither a nanny or a daycare felt totally right. She said “Why don’t you do both?” I looked at her and actually said out loud, “WAIT ARE YOU ALLOWED TO DO THAT?” Turns out, you are. You’re allowed to do whatever the hell you need to do to make it work.

In the last three years, to make it work, I have had to:

Bring a co-worker to babysit my 11-month-old while I was in a pitch

Leave my husband to solo parent for almost two weeks

Sit my kid in the pitch room with an iPad for most of a Saturday

Post a cry for help on FB for last-minute help

Fly my sister in from Arizona to babysit for three hours

But it has always, always worked out. And, as I drove S to school this morning, she was singing and happy and seems to be not terribly broken. (Though when I went to kiss her goodbye, she did sneeze directly into my mouth because children are disgusting.) This YouTube Video

Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, the outfits capture pretty much every crime of the ‘80s. Yes the boy in the last scene looks entirely too old to be sitting on his grandmother’s lap. But, when I had to travel for work, I would watch it with Seraphina before I left. And she would watch it almost every day while I was gone. And yes, to tell the truth, sometimes I would watch it in my hotel room while I was gone and cry and cry, but I’m maudlin like that. Now that she’s three, she needs to watch it less, because, yep, she’s realized that mommy comes back. And probably she’s also realized that when mommy is gone daddy lets her watch all the Bubble Guppies she can handle and that’s pretty awesome too.

Clothing Subscription Boxes

I really, truly would be naked without Stitch Fix. I was never a big fan of shopping, but now that I’m a mom, an uninterrupted hour to stand alone in a dressing room is an unimaginable luxury. If you’re a stylish person who enjoys shopping, that’s what the Internet is for. But if, like me, you don’t love it, why not outsource the job to someone who is better at it than you? When you sign up, you tell them what size and shape and colors you are, you tell them what you like and don’t like, you tell them how much money you’re willing to spend. And then, like magic, a box of five things shows up on your doorstep. Try it on at home after the kid is already asleep, package up everything you don’t want, and drop it in the mailroom on your way into work the next day. It has made my life so much easier. And sometimes, when I am feeling very very fancy, I will get a shipment from Trunk Club. Which is just like Stitch Fix, except all of the clothes come from Nordstrom, which means they are very nice but expensive, so I only do it a few times a year and feel very fancy when I do.

Bringing Your Kid to Work Sometimes

There are times you might have to, because your nanny is sick or because daycare is closed for a teacher workday. But you should also bring the kid by sometimes just because it’s fun to show off the little creature you made. And they will LOVE coming to your office. They will love being treated like a tiny little superstar and they will love it when your co-workers talk to them in that weird voice we all reserve for cute kids. They will love touching all the crap on your desk and playing with the random toy you got from some production company and they will marvel at all the snacks you are surrounded by and they will get jacked up on sugar and have the time of their life. And I think it really does help them to know where you are when you are not with them.

To Be Continued...

Fresh air that already smells a bit like spring

Sunshine

Drinking tea from your favorite mug

Crying until you are empty

Hiding in a big pile of pillows and blankets

Coloring Mandalas

Watching Monk (even though I will never get over the fact, that Mr. Monk lost his Trudy... it's simply heartbreaking...)

drinking tea

a cuddly blanket with sleeves

A hot water bottle at my feet

Eating strawberries

It was weird to watch you watch me today.

Maybe you didn't know but at the beginning of this week, I was terrified I'd cry at work. I felt that bad. I still feel pretty bad. I had to figure out some way to get past it. So I googled it. 

I know some people like to submerge themselves in things they can relate to--maybe Mumford & Sons or some poignant indie rock--but I wanted the opposite. I wanted to take on a role that took work. Something I didn't understand. 

And so I chose Jay-Z's 99 Problems.

I'm not black and my trunk is not raw because I don't even really have a trunk

And every time I thought I might cry or I felt like a have-not this week, I put my head down and studied up on this rap. Sometimes that meant muttering it to myself in meetings. Sometimes that meant ignoring any of your intelligence and scribbling out all the dialogue. Sometimes that meant when you smiled and looked me right in the eyes I would think, "clappin, cap'n, AHHHHHH WHAT'S NEXT"

Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know