Motherhood and the Supermom

The Supermom

You hear it a lot–especially around Mother’s Day:  Mothers are super, (!) strong, and heroic.  Their “profession” is the most important. Their bravery, inimitable.  Their beauty, beyond compare.

You can join the group "Supermoms" on Twitter.

Motherhood as an outright cult following:

All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. — Abraham Lincoln

My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw.  –George Washington

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. –Washington Irving

Because I feel that in the heavens above
The angels, whispering one to another,
Can find among their burning tears of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother” ~Edgar Allan Poe

From time to time, before Henry Rainer, I stumbled across similar quotations, and while I found some of their sentiments beautiful, I doubted their reality.  I mean, really, Edgar.  The angels can think of nothing sweeter to say than mother?!  And you, Lincoln, you seriously can’t think of one other person to thank for helping you become what you became?

You can buy your Supermom action figure from club Wireless.

The Supermom is a surprisingly prevalent symbol in today’s culture.  A Google search for the icon yields near 50,000 results, while a search for Superdad produces not even half that amount.  The Supermom is on commercials (you know the ones–she’s usually cleaning and driving kids somewhere and cooking something and exercising and then maybe she sits down to enjoy a sinless cup of yogurt).  Supermoms are on hallmark cards and coffee mugs.  They are in poetry and in magazines.

The Supermom figure is well-established in our contemporary psyche, and yet before Henry Rainer, I considered it, along with its poetic hubbub to be nothing but a placating advertising scheme exaggerating an all-too common condition.  How hard can it be to have a baby?  Any woman with an intact uterus and willing sexual partner can swing it–you don’t even need the sexual partner anymore.

Now, four weeks into the motherhood adventure, I find myself vulnerable to  Supermom.  I look to her for commiseration and camaraderie.

“You go, girl,” I want to whisper into her bright-eyed cartoon face.  “You go.”

Birth: The Big O……….uch

I happened to catch a blip on the ABC news covering orgasmic births.

Cool, I thought, Beats Lamaze.

This Supermom has got to work out.

I researched the phenomenon and read how labor utilizes the same parts as sex.  I read that because we expect child labor to be painful, it is painful.  If we change our perspective, we change our experience. Maybe if I made out with my husband or listened to Marvin Gaye, for example, my labor would quickly turn ecstatic.

Because changing my perspective was cheaper and less of a time commitment than driving to Virginia Beach for child labor classes, I stopped there.

I really believed child birth wasn’t going to hurt!  Not only did I anticipate negligible pain, but I anticipated a euphoric afternoon.  I anticipated the big O.

My labor plan was to run a bubbly bath and to pour some wine.  There, I would linger and lull in the soothing suds (smelling of lavender) until it was time to drive to the hospital, where I would push the baby out within an hour. Easy as pie.  Right?

And as it so often does, reality proved different from the idea.

I woke up at 6 AM with what I thought to be intense contractions.  Their proximity to one another (five minutes or so) led me to surmise that I was most likely pretty far dilated and it was only a matter of time.  Without waking my husband, I scurried into the bathroom and poured my bath.  There I sat, splashing listlessly, with half hearted enthusiasm, sans wine and sleepy.

This book offers devotions to Supermoms.

We left for the hospital at around 8 AM.  The contractions were closer together and more “intense”.  I made up what I deemed a Lamaze like breathing pattern and smiled excitedly.  Oh, I was so calm and joking (and secretly proud of my casual, tough demeanor)  as we arrived at the hospital.  I smiled at the cute old ladies at the front desk.  Possibly they admired my cool composure while in the throes of labor.

When a nurse met us in the lobby with a wheel chair, I balked.  Seeking to maintain my dignity, I declined the ride, but he insisted.  House rules.  I gingerly sat, embarrassed as we wheeled down the corridors.

Turns out I was a mere one centimeter dilated.  When we received this news, I turned to my husband, a disturbed realization tightening my mouth into a frown.  I thought the contractions were already intense enough.  I thought I was almost done.  You mean, I was only beginning?! They were going to get worse?

I forgot my Lamaze like breathing pattern and began to vomit.

They sent me home to further dilate, where I lasted one hour before I demanded we return.

While Nadya Suleman had a super amount of babies, most people would not consider her to be a Supermom.

When the nurse met us in the lobby, I flung myself into his wheelchair.

Fast forward many hours later.  Some minutes before midnight, my son, Henry Rainer Emerson emerged, purple and shocked.  I stared beyond the doctor as he stitched up a nasty tear.  Suddenly, the pain didn’t matter so much.

Sure, labor pain is the kind you forget.  It’s a different type of pain and it may be orgasmic for some lucky ladies, but I think it is safe to say that it hurts for most.  A lot.

I was around three or four centimeters dilated when I realized that this motherhood thing was no joke.

Ouch, I Love You!

Motherhood has already –within a month– pushed me to extremes; whether with labor pains, lack of sleep, poopy messes or on-demand feedings.  Yes, I have a new-found, somewhat bewildered respect for mothers that I previously lacked.

Perhaps the most notable extreme I have experienced as a new mom is that of compulsory, unrequited (I know “unrequited” sounds terrible, but I’m not kidding myself, the kid sees in two-dimensions) love.

When I was a child and had trouble falling asleep, I would entertain myself via “The Love Game.”  “The Love Game” involved concentrating on one person in my life:  usually a parent, grandparent, or sibling.  I would visualize this person and imagine my life without them.  This would elicit such a wellspring of love for the subject that I would often cry, overwhelmed with emotion.

You could color this Supermom's cape whatever color you wanted.

I’ve continued this sort of intensified loving into my adulthood, without the intent to entertain, however.  I’ve developed a love system that I can turn on (with all its concentrated bright and biting emotion) but just as easily turn off. A defense mechanism the psychoanalysts would say.  A survival mechanism, I would say.

Since I’ve had Henry Rainer, I’ve experienced this same love, at this same intensity, without the conscious decision to do so.  The love overcomes me like (excuse the metaphor of the recently pregnant) acid reflex at uncontrollable times and in inappreciable quantities, but always with the same bright pain and sering joy.

My love for Henry Rainer proves an unexpected wound that I resolve to now (realizing that I must) carry forever.

I will no longer so easily laugh off epidemics like the swine flu.  I can no longer wing it when it comes to my financial stability (at least on a meal to meal basis).  I can no longer indulge or romanticize self destructive behaviors.

This wound of love I have for my son makes me vulnerable.  It does not make me brave.

The poem, “Motherhood” by Joaquin Miller begins:

The bravest battle that ever was fought!
Shall I tell you where and when?
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
‘Twas fought by the mothers of men.

My experience with motherhood has required no bravery.  I had not known what to expect.  I had not known how far it would push me (and continue not to know).  How could I?

Supermom:  Busted!

Yes, the Supermom icon is in some ways encouraging, but there is another side to this symbol. A hurtfulness that may not be at first apparent lies in the pressure to be super, in the expectation to exist as an angel, solely, to suffer silently and to bear the weight of the family’s emotional girth.  These pressures are both passe and untruthful.

Miller’s ode continues:

Nay not with the cannon of battle-shot,
With a sword or noble pen;
Nay, not with eloquent words or thought
From mouth of wonderful men!

But deep in a walled-up woman’s heart -
Of a woman that would not yield,
But bravely, silently bore her part -
Lo, there is the battlefield!

and ends:

O spotless woman in a world of shame,
With splendid and silent scorn,
Go back to God as white as you came -
The Kingliest warrior born!

Supermoms need their coffee, too.

Freud loved people like Miller, I’m sure (and George Washington among others).

The mother-as-suffering-angel equation functions in the same destructive direction as all Women-as-Symbol equations–It works to silence, to objectify and to control. Historically, the only woman one could find in literature existed symbolically; loftily porcelain, elevated on a pedestal of pretty words and metaphorical allusion.  The woman as bird, the woman as tempest, the woman as muse.

It’s our job, my job, as a woman writer to inhabit my womanhood, to make it alive, dynamic, imperfect.  It is my task to inhabit my womanhood and to write out of that, to break those static symbols for the clamorous, untamable truth.

As mothers, let us never cower beneath the weight of this Supermom icon.  She is fiction.  She is not real.

Some confessions:  I eventually excepted the nurse’s offer for an epidural (and enjoyed it!)  I have experienced frustration and annoyance with Henry Rainer.  I have been far from silent and long suffering when it comes to my postpartum aches and pains, as I have limped around my house pathetically perched on pillows like a distraught princess and the pea.

I am no Supermom and will never be, but I am a mom and this is motherhood.  And this motherhood thing aint no walk in the park.  To all you real life mums out there, I send you my beyond respect–my awe.  To those of you who rise to the role motherhood demands of you, while you may not deserve one hundred percent credit for humanity (but who wants that?) you deserve a reverence comparable to that of presidents, artists, astronauts and surgeons.  Combined.