The Real Truth About Mothering

by BethAnne Yoxsimer Paulsrud

(Warning: The essay you are about to read contains graphic details of real-life mothering. If you suffer from weak knees, a sensitive stomach or an aversion to others' bodily fluids, please read no more. You have been warned.)

Once when I was camping in college, my friend John dropped some M&M candies on a hiking trail. He scooped them up, dusted them off, and popped them into his mouth. "Ewww!" I exclaimed. "How can you eat those after they have been in the dirt!" Alas, I was young and naive to the dirty realities of the world. This was, after all, before I became a mother.

The truth is, motherhood is gross. Motherhood is messy, dirty, sticky, smelly, bloody ... and most of this applies to the period before you ever even hold the baby in your arms for the first time. Before I had my first child, I thought I was well-prepared for the harsher realities of motherhood. I was, after all, a preschool teacher. In the line of duty, kids had thrown up on me, pooped diarrhea all over my arms, thrown sand in my ears and mouth, and peed on my feet. I had seen a child eat the lint from between her toes. I learned to grit my teeth, soothe children, and control my gag reflex. I felt prepared. I also felt smugly sure that while these very normal children at my place of employment were full of yucky surprises, my own child surely would not be the same. What I didn't realize was that these kinds of incidents were not rare moments in motherhood. This was the day-to-day life of motherhood. Motherhood is gross and I am here to tell you the whole truth. So help me, God and Dr. Sears.

It really started on the day I first suspected I was pregnant and I willingly held a test stick under a stream of urine not only once, but at least six times to be sure. Don't let anyone fool you that you can do this without getting your own pee on your hands. Not only did I happily accept this but I unabashedly presented this stick with my own urine on it to my husband, and would have done the same to my mother, my neighbor, or just about anyone else had my husband not stopped me. I even considered saving it for my child's baby box. When the hormonal fluctuations stabilized, I did wisely decide against this. Throughout the nine months of motherhood training, I learned to let strangers poke around my private parts and to describe in detail my frequent urination and problematic constipation with the midwife or any medical student who might be passing by. I commiserated with other expectant mothers--whom I only five minutes earlier had met in a grocery store--about varicose veins, heartburn, and vomiting (euphemistically labelled "morning sickness"). When a four-year-old asked me, "So when the baby comes out of your 'gina, what are you going to do with that string?" I sagely explained the functions of the placenta and umbilical cord. I even, albeit briefly, considered saving my baby's placenta to eat or to bury under a tree, not as uncommon as you might think.

When labor finally started, I rejoiced when a gush of liquid splashed down my legs--it wouldn't have mattered if I had been at home, in a bank, or at church. Luckily I was in the hospital. I felt free to both examine and describe mucus plugs, to walk around half naked, and to let troops of residents examine my birth canal. When my baby arrived, I gleefully excused him for squirting out a dark sticky meconium poop on my belly ("He is so advanced!"). I lovingly massaged in the remaining bits of amniotic fluid matter into his skin and cheered when he later filled his first diapers with yellow breastmilk poop. I actually thought he was dark-haired until I finally washed his hair and realized that it was really blond with bits of dried blood in it. I wiped up endless streams of projectile vomit, sported burp cloths marked with baby spit-up on my shoulder for months on end, and dutifully changed soaked nursing pads. The one incident of a child having diarrhea on my arms at the preschool paled in comparison to the hundreds of cloth diapers I changed. Scrubbing poop off of wool diaper covers by hand and throwing load after load of urine-drenched cotton diapers into the washing machine became old habit very quickly. I barely had time to shower or wash my own hair and I sported the distinct perfume of breastmilk for months, but can't say I noticed any of that when my only focus was my beautiful perfect baby. Besides, I think I still believed that this, too, was a phase that would pass. Everyone knows babies can be pretty messy, but children?

Here is more of the truth: the grossness of motherhood is not limited to those first messy months. It just evolves. Mothers learn to improvise in ways unthinkable to them in their pre-baby days. I quickly learned that if I threw away every bit of food that had touched the floor, my baby would soon be starving. Babies and small children--and 8-year-olds for that matter--drop, throw, and spill food on the floor. They pick it up and eat it. (I know that now, John.) My days of clothes covered with spit-up and breastmilk may have faded as my babies weaned, but they were replaced with days and nights of cleaning up vomit, nosebleeds, and wet beds. While, thankfully, the extreme situations did not occur every day, they did strike without warning, something you'd think I would have learned in my many years as a mother. Some things came and went, like carsickness. When my younger son was two, carsickness could turn regular road trips into harrowing experiences. The worst was probably when he suddenly spewed not only all over his car seat, the back of my car seat and himself, but also directly into his brother's face. The shocked look of my other son was matched only by the horror of having to drive two more hours trapped with the stench of vomit-soaked woolen sweaters. As they have grown, both boys have learned to give a warning before the vomit strikes, thank goodness, meaning more possibilities to pull the car over and avoid carsickness altogether.

Still, and I hate to be the one to break the news to you, the grossness does not entirely subside when your children grow into their school years. Last year, when I boldly wore pale green linen pants on a transatlantic flight, my 6-year-old woke up with a squirting nosebleed. Although I did manage to catch most of the blood spray with an airline pillow (I do hope they washed it!), alas, my lovely linen pants were decorated with a fine smattering of red dots. The last time my husband and I talked my in-laws into taking our boys overnight was the same night my 8-year-old contracted a violent stomach flu. Instead of a late night at a restaurant table for two, I spent the whole night sitting by my son, helping him to hit the bowl every 20 minutes or so when he vomited. Keeping my own gag reflex under control, I whispered encouraging words, changed bedsheets and pajamas, and rinsed the bowl over and over again.

What is it that keeps mothers going and strengthens our stomachs of steel? What keeps us from blowing our tops when we yet again find poop on the toilet seat or pee on the bathroom floor? Well, people say love can move mountains, so perhaps it can strengthen the weakest stomach and the faintest heart as well. Because while motherhood is indeed not for the sensitive soul, it can make you accept the grossest of situations that you never would have faced pre-baby days. Last week when my 6-year-old son came to my bed early one morning, he cuddled up to me with his warm little body. I sleepily opened my eyes to say "Good morning," only to catch him eating the sleep from his eyes. Yuck. I quickly closed my eyes, gave him a hug, and tried very, very hard not to think about what he was doing. Instead I thought of how warm and sweet he was snuggled up to me. After all, as long I remained dry and clean, I couldn't complain much.