Forget the hot local band scene, your iPod, your carefully crafted mix CD. Clementine has turned me on to the hippest new radio station around: 101.7. Never heard of it, you say? Sounds like static, you say? Exactly. Nothing says cool mom like tooling around listening to static. It post-punk, beyond music. Too cool for words.
Clementine has made sport of dispelling many of the notions of motherhood I had before giving birth--peaceful, easy breastfeeding, for example. She'll have none of it and would much rather watch me pump and then take my milk from a bottle. Packing up and hitting the road like a couple of vagabonds is also not on her agenda. Horror of horrors, she has decided she hates the car. Hates it. Screams bloody murder almost every time we get in.
I've tried just about everything to get her to feel calm and relaxed, but listening to very loud static is the only thing besides pulling over and getting out or having someone ride in the back seat with her that works. And it only works part of the time. You can imagine how relaxing it is for me to drive with a screaming baby (she sometimes cries so hard that I end up crying, though that hasn't happened for a while) and static so loud I can hardly think. Upside: keeps me off my cell phone and close to home. Downside: makes me feel crazy and sometimes a little trapped. I often wish I would get pulled over just for the satisfaction of getting out of a ticket. Who would have the heart to push a woman all the way over the edge instead of just letting her teeter there in her car with the static and the screaming?
A few weeks ago, we took a jaunt up to work to visit my friends and coworkers. Clementine was O.K. on the way up--just a little fussy. She screamed and cried so hard on the way back, though, that I ended up stopping at my friend Laura's house because I was afraid Clementine was going to choke or stop breathing. Yes, she was crying that hard. I was so beside myself that in removing her from the car seat, I left my coat on Laura's front lawn and my purse spilling out the side of my car.
What is the universe trying to tell me? How could I of all people end up with a baby who hates the car? Nate and I have planned out half a dozen road trips we want to take her on in the first year of her life and now we can't go anywhere without one of us in the back. It's very Driving Miss Daisy. Except of course that no one screamed in that movie and there was never a half-crazed mom in the back seat trying to use a breast pump in a moving vehicle while looking for a pacifier and trying to keep her baby distracted and happy all at the same time.
Motherhood is so glamorous.
1 comment:
Maybe she already knows how to read and is frustrated that she can't hold a book or read in the car? You could try handing Plath over to her and see how she does.
I'm kidding, of course. I get vaguely carsick if I'm riding in the backseat. It didn't used to be this way, but maybe that's part of what's going on with Clementine--maybe she gets nauseous. Or maybe she needs some little booties with things on the toes that she can play with--like little frogs or lizards or bees. Maybe she doesn't like I-94.
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