My plan was to sleep in. I’d had three drinks at dinner and gone to bed after midnight even though the baby gets up at 5:30 – but! -I was in the clear because today is Mother’s Day. On Mother’s Day every mom is allowed to sleep in, have breakfast in bed, and an endless cup of piping hot coffee. Also the kids agree not to scream, hit, or fight.
When the baby woke up at 1:15 my head was fuzzy in the way heads are fuzzy when you’ve had three drinks at dinner and gone to bed after midnight. David’s night, I thought. But the baby doesn’t usually get up in the middle of the night. Something must be wrong. I went in to pick him up while David got the bottle ready and he was as hot as I can ever remember any of the kids ever being. We found a thermometer – 102. We gave him medicine and the bottle and David stayed with him for awhile. Back in bed after 2 and I knew if we were lucky we’d get 3 and a half or 4 more hours before he was up for the day – that’s on a good day and today was not. He woke up crying at 5:15. So did his brother. His sister wasn’t far behind. David’s morning. It’s Mother’s Day. I’m supposed to sleep in.
The thing is, it’s hard to stay in bed when your baby wakes up crying after having a fever overnight. It’s even harder when the birds are chirping. “He wants his mom,” they said, “go to your kids.” That’s the thing about being a mom, isn’t it? There really isn’t ever a day you can wake up and let someone else deal with it. Mentally, I mean. Their dad knows the morning drill and it’s nice for him to have quality time with them. But not when the baby has a fever. Not when his brother wakes up saying “Moooooommmmmmy…Moooooommmmmmmy..where aaaaaaare you????” I’m their mother. They need me and maybe more than that, I need them. So I went to them, of course. I got big smiles. Leo wanted me to read Ant and Bee. The baby wanted to be held. At breakfast my scrambled eggs were divided among the children who, not 5 minutes before, had said they didn’t want scrambled eggs. Eventually we made coffee. It was the same morning as every morning – up too early, not enough coffee, quiet reading and playing peppered with not at all quiet reading and playing. The morning was like any other morning and the day was like any other day. The kids didn’t miraculously stop yelling because it’s Mother’s Day. I ended up at pediatric urgent care with a baby who had been crying most of the day and whose fever stayed high until we realized we’d better get him checked out by someone other than dr. google (turns out it’s coxsackie.)
It wasn’t the Mother’s Day of most mothers’ dreams but to me it was a giant reminder that this is in fact my dream. In nursery school, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a mother. I’ve never wanted to be anything else. It’s not always glamorous. But! There’s a big bouquet of peonies in the kitchen, my kids and husband love me, and every day I get to wake up and be the mother of the most incredible children ever born (not at all biased.)
As I write this, David has gone to retrieve our Indian food from a nearby restaurant and the baby has started crying. I know this is going to be a long night if he’s already crying and he’s only been sleeping 30 minutes. And I know it’s not a coincidence that he started crying 2 seconds after David walked out the door – I always think babies sense these things. So I’ll go, rather abruptly, and be a mother.
Mama Mader at Home 