This morning I woke up in need. It was one of those Sundays that called for a crispy Belgian brown wonder, dripping with butter and warm syrup. You know, a waffle kind of morning. I rolled over and asked Greyson as sweetly as I could to be taken out for breakfast. Denied. As our tot bounced between us asking for iPhone videos and saying “I’m hungry!” I thought, “Hmm…I can be an amazing mother and get my waffle fix.”

“I’ll cook!” I announced, feet hitting the floor.

As I warmed up the waffle maker and measured out the mix I thought, “Eggs. We need eggs too.” We had some grocery store brand Egg Beater-like carton eggs. Greyson checked the expiration date. October. Score. I found a smaller carton with a  late August expiration. I cooked them up anyway. Mistake. They looked funny. I tossed them. I cooked the October carton. Eh. Still looked a little off but no biggie. October date. We’re good. I was even short cooking spray and the waffles still cooked perfectly and came off the iron evenly. Greyson said to Charlotte, “Isn’t your Mama great!? It was so nice of her to cook breakfast for us.” I thought with great pride, “It is great of me. I am a good mother!” 

Charlotte has been doing this thing lately where she puts food in her mouth, chews and then decides she no longer likes it and wants to spit it out. This happened after she took a bite of the eggs she begged for. Greyson is very perturbed by this quirk and told her, “No! You will swallow what’s in your mouth!” She cried and protested while keeping the half-masticated eggs in her mouth. Greyson said, “Fine! Time out! You will sit in Time Out until you swallow your eggs!” I thought, “Ugh! I hate doing that, but we need to make sure she’s eating what’s on her plate. We need to teach her that. We’re doing right by her as parents.”

Her wimpers subsided and I scooped some eggs on my plate as well. I took a bite. “Oh God! Ugh! Greyson, have you tried these? Charlotte! You can come out of Time-Out. These are bad.” Greyson said, “Oh, Charlotte! Come here, you can spit them out.”

Our bewildered, sniffling child spit her rancid eggs into the napkin I held to her face. She looked at us with tear-filled, confused eyes. Thankfully she seemed only a bit resentful. We apologized profusely and tried to explain when food tastes “funny” or “bad” she can tell us and spit it out.

Now I’m wondering how often anything will taste “funny.” As if punishing himself, Greyson took a bite too, before spitting them out. We bought the name brand carton eggs today, thinking that $1.50 could save us from further parental failures. Okay, I’m not the fantastic waffle-making mother I’d like to be. Sometimes I’m one bad egg in a pair of imperfect parents.

From the profound to the ridiculous, here is a list of worries that have crossed my mind in the last week:

• That I will not be ready for maternity leave in time to get everything done that I need to do at work or home.
• That I will be more than ready for maternity leave and have time to kill.
• That someone will mistakenly think that Sen. Lindsey Graham is from North Carolina and not South Carolina. I prefer we keep that crazy beneath us where it belongs.

• That someone will say that I am somehow swollen in any way at all. I did not swell with my first pregnancy. I don’t plan on swelling this time. I pity the person who says that I look the least bit swollen. I will lose it. 
• That someone will now open fire in a Starbucks, specifically my Starbucks, simply to prove a point. Come on, Mr. Schultz, we could get shot in any public place. Why highlight one of your fine stores?

Courtesy: Caracas Chronicles

• That when I get into Starbucks, they will be out of Pumpkin Spice Lattes.
• That my kid has a cavity.
• That I will have a moment of pregnancy brain like I did last time. You may recall this $600 mistake.
• That I might get hemorrhoids.
• That this baby will resent me because I didn’t spend $250 to get 3D ultrasound pictures of him/her like I did their sister.
• That I might hear “Blurred Lines” on the radio again any time, ever. Remember earlier in the summer when that was “my jam?” Shoot me.  (But, not at Starbucks, please.)

Lately I’ve witnessed what I’ve dubbed “clingers,” particularly at Charlotte’s dance class. But, I’ve seen them other places too. Daycare, birthday parties and other get-togethers seem to reveal children who are clingers. You’ve seen them. They get all panicky and weepy when they have to leave their parents.

I think there are two types of clingers:

Level 1 Clingers: There are kids who HAVE to sit on their moms’ laps and warm up when the other children sit excitedly together in the circle or play at the party. These children are mostly ignored by the others. When asked by other adults if they would “like to come and play?!” or “join the group!” they bury their faces and their parents say stuff like, “He’s shy.” The party, class or event typically continues as planned and the child may or may not join in.

Level 2 Clingers: Oh goodness. A level 2. Take a breath. We’ve all seen them and feel terrible for their parents. One child was SCREAMING in dance class the other day. You would have thought the poor dance teacher had asked if she wanted to burn Elmo at the stake. She had really just asked if she wanted to sit in the circle. The child had a death grip on the woman.  I watched the bewildered mom try to catch her breath as she opened her arms and the child still clung on to her. This was snot streaming, choking type of crying. This little girl legitimately must have believed her mom had sold her into slavery. They would have been a tribe of little pigtailed slaves in pink tights. The crying stopped for a moment, and somehow the mom escaped. We heard her later on wailing again over the music and the assistant teacher eventually brought her in the waiting room to call her parents.

Non-clinger: I have a non-clinger. 9 times out of 10 she is happy to see her friends at daycare, psyched for the birthday party and ready to sit in the circle at dance class. There are the few days where she’s out of sorts when I drop her off. If she’s not feeling well or mad about the toy I made her leave in the car that day, she may be a little weepy, but it’s rare. ALL children have the occasional clingy days. We all know what that’s like as a parent and it sucks. No one wants to leave their child upset.

Most of the time  the challenge for me as the parent of a non-clinger is to help my child react to a clinger. When Charlotte is excited to see her friend who is a Level 1 Clinger, but she wants to share toys and play, it’s hard sometimes to explain the behavior. She often seems a little hurt that the child doesn’t want to play at that moment. That’s when I try to distract her or say something like, “She needs to sit her mommy right now. Why don’t we go get some juice.”

When it’s a Level 2 Clinger, distraction is not really an option. Come on. There’s no way to ignore the screams. My little non-clinger often looks at me panicked like, “Um, should I be worried too?” That’s when I’ve started saying “He is having a tough time right now, isn’t he? He’ll feel better soon. Let’s go talk to the teacher/another child etc.” Sometimes if the child is past the wailing and is just sniffling, I’ll say “Charlotte, why don’t you go give her a hug.”

I in no way want to talk bad about another child to my child. I think it’s crummy when parents do that. It’s hard. As an uber-extrovert, I do not appreciate, nor value “shy” behavior. I do not think it is okay for parents to label a child “shy” or use “shyness” as an excuse for anti-social behavior. A lot of times I really want to roll my eyes and tell the kid to suck it up. But, that would set a really poor example for my daughter. I also understand that it is very judgmental of me to feel this way. It is a fault I need to work on. Some kids have issues that I may not know about or understand. Sometimes kids, especially toddlers,  just have an off day.

So, that is how I’ve been dealing with clingers. Tell me what you do and how you deal with it. If you have a clinger, what do you want non-clinger parents to do?

You all have heard me lately whining that I’m so busy and life never stops, blah, blah,  blah. I’m sick of writing it, so surely you’re sick of reading it.  I was starting to feel very guilty about the limited time I was getting with my daughter in recent weeks. I’ve had some after-hours commitments and a lot on my plate.

I got all weepy in the car the other day as Darius Rucker belted out lines about how “it won’t be like this for long…” At least we have that song now to hammer home parental guilt. I think we can all agree that Harry Chapin’s 1974 “Cat’s in the Cradle” is the most ridiculously melodramatic piece of folk rock to hit the airwaves, ever. That is not a statement to rebel against my parents’ music by running away from Cat Stevens’ Peace Train, it’s just true.

One night recently I was leaving an event about 20 minutes before Charlotte’s bedtime. I called Greyson to ask him to keep her up so I could see her and put her to bed. He said, “No, she doesn’t want to see you! She’s in the corner rocking back and forth, crying and singing ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’.”

I almost had to pull over I was laughing so hard. He kept on by singing “When you comin’ home mom? I don’t know when. We’ll get together then.”

I think it took that joke to make me come to my senses and realize I am indeed a pretty awesome mom who need not feel guilty when country or folk singers lay it on thick.

“My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and there were bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away”

This has been staring me in the face for the past few weeks. I wondered what irreparable damage I was doing to baby 2.0’s internal organs and future psyche as I passed the 30 weeks mark a few weeks back.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge advocate of better-living-through-chemistry. Zoloft was a literal life and sanity saver as postpartum anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behavior started THE NIGHT I gave birth to my daughter nearly three years ago. I had a successful and mostly happy pregnancy the first time around. I had weaned off Prozac before conception efforts began with Baby #1. (I had taken that since my eating-disordered days as a teen many years ago.) I felt totally fine. I thought I would be totally fine. I was until I gave birth, the hormone drop began and mental illness reared it’s ugly-head again.

Fortunately, I knew about Katherine Stone and her amazing work for women all over the world. (She really has become a role-model for me in my life and someone I hope to meet in person one day so I can tell her that. ) So, I took action immediately. I talked to a therapist and joined Team Zoloft so I could be the kind of mother I knew I could be. I stopped worrying about the negligible amount of Zoloft in my breast milk thanks to Katherine and the community she built. I stayed on Zoloft throughout this pregnancy until recently. 

So you may be asking why I decided to wean off Zoloft in the 3rd trimester this time, knowing what I know about my mental health. Well, I just started to sort of panic that there would be a problem. I understand the odds. I took a very low dose and the odds were very slim that there would be a problem. My doctor said the baby could have some withdrawal symptoms like listlessness and trouble eating.   Yes, I know newborns are typically listless by nature and have to learn to eat anyway, but I just had a weird feeling. My doctor said there are many other women who feel the same way and take the bottle of Zoloft with them to the hospital and start it up right after giving birth.

That was good enough for me. Done. That’s the plan. It took 1-2 weeks to wean off the meds and feel fine for now.

I just felt like I had done everything in my power to have a healthy child the first time and I wanted to make that same effort for the second. My husband reminded me that even when you do everything to have a healthy child, babies still get sick and we’ll handle that together if it happens. True.

But, I still feel better knowing it’s out of my system and the bottle will be waiting happily in my hospital bag.