How to Be a Better Mother – by Lisa Kenway
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
Don’t wait too long to start a family, but before trying to conceive, make sure you’re ready to support a child, financially and emotionally. Be prepared to put someone else’s needs ahead of your own. Write a birth plan. Exercise regularly. Don’t smoke or inhale second-hand smoke. Don’t eat raw fish or soft cheese. Cut out caffeine and alcohol. Religiously consume prenatal vitamins, but think twice about taking any other medication, even a headache tablet, during the pregnancy. If you have epilepsy, know that your prescribed anticonvulsants may damage your unborn child, but weaning off them and having a grand-mal seizure in the second trimester might also affect uterine blood supply.
If your baby measures large, especially if you are ten days overdue, demand a caesarean section. Don’t ask the question in a deferential way and don’t allow yourself to be swayed, unless you want your baby’s shoulder to get stuck in your pelvis and a midwife to lean her full weight into your belly until the infant emerges, slippery, bloated and coated in meconium. Insist on skin-to-skin contact after the birth — how else are the two of you going to bond? — unless your baby’s lips are blue, in which case push him into the doctor’s arms and lie there, paralysed from the waist down, legs in stirrups, listening as they force a tube into his trachea, as they suck the thick black tar from his lungs and whisk him off to the special care nursery for oxygen, scans and tube feeding.
When your baby refuses to walk until 21 months, don't drop out of your competitive mothers’ group and give up on mapping milestones. Don't tell yourself that children develop at different rates. When a family friend notices the way your two-year-old child runs, with one arm curled in front of him, and utters the words ‘cerebral palsy’, take him to see a specialist but don’t let the paediatrician reassure you that everything is fine. When, at four, he spends hours arranging his toy animals in a conga line, refuses to walk on sand or grass and resists every attempt at a haircut, do not ignore the stone in your gut. When, at six, his teacher says he lacks focus and you timidly ask her the question you’ve been holding in your chest, do not let her talk you out of pursuing a diagnosis. When, at eight, the teacher at his new school suggests he might have autism and the new specialist agrees, shut down the part of yourself that still isn’t sure — so many experts told you he wasn’t on the spectrum, that you were worrying over nothing. Question your sudden reluctance to label him.
When he’s seventeen and you notice the obsession developing, the conga line of animals replaced by a constant stream of YouTubers, move his desk to the living room and limit his screen time. Install a blocker on his school computer even though you know it won’t work, that you can’t watch him all the time. Apply to the university for special consideration. When, at eighteen, he starts university and you decide to step back, to let him be an adult, do not assume your work is done. Watch from the sidelines while he misses deadlines and skips classes to spend every waking moment fixated on some Irish guy who lives in his mum’s basement and plays video games for a living. Recognise that it’s all your fault. That you should have known when to step in, that you should have been a better advocate for your child. That you shouldn’t have spent all that time working and writing and having a life. That you should have prepared him better for his. ▼
Image: Sandy Millar
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.