Kittens –

I should really start charging you, what with all the ways I’m keeping you current with new words. First it was choreplay. Then it was stressorexia. Now it’s momnesia. I ought to start my own dictionary, shall we call it Kitt-a-pedia…and I’ll make it really special. I won’t let anyone else edit it, it will be my first effort at total world domination.

Now what is momnesia? Well, I forgot already.

HA

I kill myself.

Momnesia is just USA Today’s way of talking about Mommy Brain. Sort of like “baby bump” offending some, though not me, I’m not sure if I prefer “momnesia” or “mommy brain” but just about the only thing I can remember is that I definitely have Momnesia.

An example, if you will: A colleague of mine is equally as obsessed with “Veronica Mars” as my husband and I are. We live and die for this show. It’s really filled the void of the writer’s strike (god forbid we actually read). As we burn through one season in our house, I pass the season along to my colleague. This guy thinks I am about the dumbest person walking this side of K Street because he’ll come in to chat about the Season 2 opener, and though I just watched it like probably a week ago (we’re averaging 2-3 episodes a night, chez moi), my response is inevitably “remind me again, what happened? and who is that? and while you’re at it, who are you?”

See, those without children are most apt to think that those of us suffering from Momnesia just aren’t that bright. Unfortunately this guy = no kids. Those with children can spot a fellow momnesia sufferer a mile away. Momnesia is an equal opportunity parental disease.

Ever see the woman scrambling through her bag, looking for her car keys, and can only find the extra toddler underpants, diapers, crushed up snacks and chewed up toddler books, only to realize five minutes later that she’s been holding her keys the whole time? Or the ever-hateful moment of trying to find your car in the parking lot after a long day of work, as we discussed the other day? When you see that other parent wandering aimlessly, you don’t laugh, you don’t point and snicker, you just know. And well, you’re in the same boat too.

It seems that researchers and scientists are quick to support momnesia as a legitimate reality of life post-baby. The USA Today piece talks about how we lose 450-700 hours of sleep in the first year of a baby’s life and well, sleep deprivation is a form of torture, so how can it not wear your brain out?  I mean, I don’t know about you but in those first weeks post-delivery, I was so foggy and confused, I might have asked my husband one night who he was and who sent him. Let alone that screaming kid in the other room……

What I like about the article….and shockingly, I read it in its entirety and remember a bit about what I read…is that they talk about the flip side of momnesia. The fact that though us parents might forget everything under the sun except our name and our address,  we are sharp as nails when it comes to remembering what we need to remember for our child in that phase of their life.

That, kittens, is the distinction.

How many times has a friend asked you how much your child was eating at 6 months or how tall they were at 9 months or when they started doing X, and you look at them blankly? I couldn’t tell you any of that if my life depended on it but I know what I need to know about my current two year old. This is why they invented baby journals. Not because the nurturing mother likes to curl up on the sofa and jot down every precious moment of her sweet cherub’s life but because that mother has 1/4 of a brain and won’t remember a damn thing in two months time.

What really amuses me about momnesia is how tricky it is. This piece talks about how the surge and then drop of hormones from late pregnancy through delivery contribute to the foggy haze we are all in those first weeks post partum and how this clouds our memory of delivery. It all builds, we forget the beginning, we forget how to tend for newborns. I mean hell, if and when the day comes for me to take care of a newborn again, I can tell you right now, I don’t remember the details. I just know what a busy, active, running, opinionated, silly toddler requires for care.

So where does this leave us? Forgetful, dazed and confused, faking it til we make it?

Sure. But at least we’re pretty.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-03-03-momnesia_N.htm?csp=34

My child is approaching 2.5 years old. As avid fans of KT know, people feel compelled to start asking you when you are going to have a second before your stitches even heal. I mean – this question drives me up a wall and makes me want to poke the question-asker’s eyes out with a dull fork.

Why do people feel like they have the right to ask? And furthermore, since when isn’t one enough?

So now that we are busy parents with an active, talking, walking, sentence-speaking toddler, anyone who isn’t blind is quick to ask us about having a second. I’m not even safe from the stupid BabyCenter emails that tell you what your child is doing this month. The most recent one I received and actually bothered to read, included a link to how many parents are starting to consider a second now. Even if that is true, and frankly, the only way I’d consider a second is if they are at least three years apart, why are we parents bombarded with the need to have more than one?

So, as my husband and I have debated whether or not we want to, feel compelled too, or even have the desire to have a second, I asked my mom.  She had four kids. I explained that I feel very fulfilled with my child, she’s exceeded my every expectation, so why in the world would I want to go through this all again? Unlike new moms, I don’t somehow think my baby will have his/her day or nights confused. I actually know now that they come out thinking night is day and day is night. There actually is no confusion there on the part of the baby.

Last time, I was naive. This time, I suffer from too much information. So really – why? Why in the world would we do it again?

My mom just laughed and said “I’m not touching that.”

Hmm. Not helpful. Wasn’t the answer I was searching for really this “Because don’t you know, honey, all second children are not only perfect but they come out sleeping 12 hour stretches and never get sick.”

Then my husband and I concluded that we are each the second child, so if our parents just stopped with our elder sibling, then we wouldn’t exist. So isn’t that reason enough to have another?

I’m a believer in not making things more complicated than they need to be. I like existing. Seems like a good reason.

But see, any talk of having a second inevitably leads to a conversation on how “only children are weird.”

Don’t pretend like you haven’t been a part of this conversation. Especially if the only reality you know is like mine, that of a big family.

Now – like you – I have many friends who are only children and I’m always quick to think “Well, only children are weird except X”

You know who you are.

So really – ARE only children weird?

So then the next question is this – are PARENTS of only children weird?

Now this one, I’ve wondered many times. Again, coming from a family of four children, I have parents who, well, let us get away with murder. Was it because by the time my youngest sister rolled around, they’d seen and witnessed it all, so we had more than paved a wide open highway for her to roam free? Or was it because they were so dog tired and beaten down, we could go out partying until the wee hours and get away with smelling like a beer hall in Church on Sundays? Or was it cause if, god forbid, something happened to one of us, there were still three more left?

I mean really – isn’t that one thing all parents worry about?

Regardless of why, the truth is, people marvel at parents of only children. Why did they have only one? Why didn’t they want more? Is the only child a holy terror so they couldn’t face another? Are they freaks?

Admit it, you’ve heard this. But WHY – why is this the case?

A friend of mine made it clear from the time she was preggo with her first that she would have one and only one. The thing about me is, I like people who are straight up. I don’t have time for nuances and well, I really like knowing where people stand and so I liked her even more for being so up front.

She then went on and had her baby, he’s almost one now, and because we are close enough, I knew I could ask her if she’d changed her mind on only having one. She was so matter-of-fact and just was like Nope.

Again, I dig it. She knows what she wants and she’s happy.

But see – will people just leave her be? This piece in today’s Washington Post suggests that they wont but they really should:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022401750.html

Right now, I am the mother to just one child and I am fulfilled, happy and feel like my circle is complete. Why can’t everyone just leave singles alone?