Motherhood Comes Naturally (and Other Vicious Lies) (5 page)

With three kids now, ages five, seven, and nine, I sometimes have momentary rages. Oh, who am I kidding? I have those urges
all the time
. But being a Scary Mommy is in part about knowing how to separate fantasy from reality. We might think like crazy women sometimes, but we love our kids and would never, ever hurt them.

But a girl can dream.

Every now and then, when I wake up and look at my husband I think, Well, I can either make him breakfast, or beat him to death with the pan.

—Scary Mommy Confession #202999

B
efore I had my daughter, I heard from friend after friend that having a baby brought them closer to their spouses. That seeing the person they chose to spend the rest of their life with caring for their baby made a strong marriage even stronger. That they were more in synch, more in love, and more committed to one another than ever.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? I wanted to yell to those so-called friends at three o'clock in the morning while attempting to feed a crying baby and simultaneously listening to my husband snoring peacefully in the next room.
This
makes for a stronger marriage?!? Bullshit, it does.

The very fact that a woman is built to carry and nurse a child ALL BY HERSELF should be enough of a sign that marriage is not meant to survive parenthood. A man's sole role in baby- making is an orgasm. Literally the best feeling in the world, and poof! He's done. We, on the other hand, have to suffer through nine months of bloody, mucousy,
National Geographic
–style hell. And, then, as if that hell weren't bad enough, we're the ones who have only two very bad options: pushing out a creature the size of a watermelon from a hole the size of a baby carrot
or
undergoing major surgery. What are the men doing at this point? Watching. And possibly even smoking a celebratory cigar.

If there were any justice at all in parenting, mothers' jobs would be done once the baby is born. Our husbands would turn to us with empathetic, admiring eyes and say, “You've done enough. Please, I'll take it from here. Forever.”

But that's not how it works. As if our ruined vaginas were not sacrifice enough, our boobs become the next casualty in the Battle of Formerly Desirable Body Parts. Suddenly we're lactating at the sound of random crying babies, suffering from painfully raw nipples, and literally spilling out of our maternity bras.

To add salt to the open wound, we get only six weeks—six?!—to heal before our husbands start nagging us for sex again, which is
exactly
what got us into trouble in the first place and the
last
thing on earth we feel like doing.

I swear, it's a miracle any couple survives the first six weeks of parenthood! First the good news: While it might not feel that way at the time, there will come a point when you
do
want to have (PROTECTED, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!) sex again with your husband. Your vagina will heal, you will no longer live in
fear of spraying him with breast milk, and, at the end of the day, you're just going to want to feel like a woman again. So here's the bad news: your children will make it their mission in life to prevent that from happening.

Welcome to every child's most favorite sport: cock-blocking their mothers. Maybe it has to do with the whole Oedipal complex. Maybe subconsciously they don't want another sibling. Maybe they're simply programmed that way. All I know is that my children thrive on getting in the way of my sex life and there's nothing to kill the mood like two sets of little eyes peering at me from the doorway. There is, actually. It's the memory of those little eyes staring at me and, sadly, the image is burned in my brain. Seems it's burned into theirs as well, since they bring it up frequently to people like my father. Now
that
was a fun dinner table discussion.

But, it doesn't end with sex, or lack thereof. Before we became parents, I don't think I fully appreciated just how much my husband enjoyed doing absolutely nothing. I suppose because I enjoyed it, too, and we had the luxury of sleeping away an entire Saturday if we wanted to. We'd lounge around in bed until well after noon, head to brunch, come home, and nap again, before heading out for the evening. It was gluttonous, selfish, and absolutely amazing.

Sadly, those days ended abruptly the moment we had children. Well, they did for me, at least. “I need my sleep!” my husband cries when I awaken him after I've been dealing with the kids for a few hours already. “You can operate without eight hours a night and I can't!” No, sweetheart, it's not that. I have no choice in the matter. If I slept as late as my heart desired,
the children would tear apart the house and we'd find ourselves toilet-papered to the bed surrounded by wild beasts high on a breakfast of Lucky Charm marshmallows and chocolate milk.

Surviving coparenting requires a love that is rock solid. Between the clashing of differing discipline styles and moral beliefs and dealing with once mildly annoying habits that would now be cause for justifiable homicide, you need it. I don't view anniversaries as milestones; I see them as miracles. Pop open the champagne and celebrate: you've done the (almost) impossible!

As for those friends of mine who claimed parenthood would make my marriage stronger, I'd really like to call them up and scream at them for telling me such lies. I'll ask them why they hate me so much, why they take pleasure in my pain. I'll swear to them that I'll never do to anyone else what they have done to me.

I won't really, though. I heard half of them got divorced.