Birthday Mama

Today is my oldest son's, Willy, birthday. He's a whopping 38 years old. It feels hard to believe that thirty eight years ago I became a mama for the first time. Sometimes, that day feels like it was only yesterday, I can remember nearly the whole day. At other times, it seems so far away, it might have happened in another time, long, long ago. So Happy Birthday, Willy, for your thirty-eight great years on God's green earth.

We used to have a friend, who would congratulate me each time Willy had a birthday, since he said, it was the mother who was really having a 'birth' day. And each time he said that, it would conjure up the whole brand new motherhood thing for me again.

Poor Willy, being the First, he didn't get the best mother in the world. Sometimes, I doubted whether I was even fit to be a mother. It was 1970, and at twenty, I decided I could do it all. I'd be a mother, but I'd also be working our resort business and doggone it, since there was no commute and no childcare, why couldn't I do it all? So I did, but I don't believe I did any one of those things all that well. He was a child who cried a lot and the consensus of the day was to let the baby cry himself to sleep. I spent a LOT of time listening to that poor kid cry himself to sleep. But you know what I heard on the nightly news last night? On the eve of my thirty-eighth year of becoming a mother? That "experts" now believe it is better for the baby's mental and physical health to let them go to sleep on their own naturally. If that means letting them cry it out, then that's better. It's better to put poor baby down and let him sob to sleep than it is to spend hours rocking him. That last bit about rocking him, really hit me. I can't tell you how many times I've sat with other mothers who expounded on the many hours spent rocking their babies to sleep and I felt mute with dismay because I hadn't rocked my own boys. There wasn't time. So while a little feller cried himself to sleep, I'd spend my time making dinner or cleaning up. (Willy, for your information, I wasn't having a lot of fun myself while you were crying yourself to sleep!) But I did do it anyway. The baby sleep experts they quoted on last night news, said that the babies who went to sleep on their own, without all the rocking and fussing by the mother or being put into the parents' bed were children whose sleep habits were more natural and sound and (get this next one...) also grew up to be adults who did not have weight problems. Now... that bit really surprised me!

So, Happy Birthday, Willy. You've grown into a fine man who doesn't suffer from sleep deprivation (unless you have to get up with your own little sons) and you don't have a weight problem. I'm proud that I was a mother so far ahead of her time that I was thinking of your middle aged health when I let you go to sleep fussing and crying. But also, goodness me! Aren't I too young to be a mother of a thirty-eight year old?