Who Defines Perfect Anyway?

Yesterday on Facebook a friend put a link to a new ad for plus size models vs. regular models.  The point was that women come in all sizes and the "plus" size model is actually more likely to be the woman you encounter in your own life and the "regular" models are borderline anorexic.

A few of us were commenting on the article and one friend from high school told how after her son was born she got down to a size 4.  She had tons of stressful issues happening simultaneously and wanted to be "perfect."  She wanted to be superwoman, able to handle it all and look fabulous while doing it.  She received constant praise for looking so wonderful.  Then her hair started falling out, she was chronically fatigued and miserable.  She realized size 4 was not the place for her.

I think society has this image.  Women can work, keep a perfect home, raise children who are stimulated and bright and cultured, be a loving wife and look good through it all.  If you don't work your home should be extra perfect and your kids had better be extra smart.  She said she put away the parenting magazines and got back to her reality.

I remember doing the same thing.  My children are 15 months apart and when I say to you I had absolutely no idea what to do with my firstborn, I cannot say that emphatically enough.  We got home from the hospital and I asked my husband if he knew what we were supposed to do with him.  His reply was, "Didn't that mother instinct they talk about kick in? You're supposed to know what to do."  I had nothing.  I sat and wondered if I had some magical information that had somehow implanted itself into my being while I pushed out my 8 lb. bundle of joy into the world. Sadly, I felt the exact same as when I was a huge preganant woman eating ice cream from a bowl balanced precariously on my belly in the bathtub with a Dorito chaser.  We were doomed.

I read voraciously.  I was not messing up this kid because I was underprepared for his emergence into our lives.  I was a stay at home mom, this was my JOB, I was going to be great at it.  I fed him exactly on schedule, breastfeeding, rice cereal, baby food, solids, etc.  I let him cry it out in his crib to "teach" him that's where he belonged.  Go in after 5 minutes, "Mommy loves you," no contact, 10 minutes more of screaming, "Mommy loves you," no contact, 15 minutes....We did this forever it seemed.  Eventually our precious pumpkin succumbed to his "teachings" and slept in that crib.

Fifteen months later his sister joined him.  Now I had two kids.  I couldn't have sibling rivalry. How was I going to make sure they each felt loved and special when I have two?  I had to read more, I had to look to the experts and master this.  I didn't want one of my kids growing up and venturing into society a homicidal maniac because I never had it right.  I could see the news report, "I didn't want to kill that man but my mother always favored my brother.  I felt insignificant and ignored so my anger snowballed into adulthood and it needed a release.  Seventy seven stab wounds was not enough to vent the damage my mother did to me."  Nuh-uh, not on my watch.  I was NOT messing this up.

I renewed my subscriptions to all of the parenting magazines, bought more books on multiple child households.  After my kids went to bed every night I read.  Less than two years later, I was all wrong.  Everything I had done with my first child was wrong.  New studies showed NOT to let your baby cry to fall asleep, co-sleeping was all the rage.  Five months was NOT the correct time to introduce cereal, it should be earlier.  WHAT????  I've ruined my son.  I had it all wrong.  What was I going to do?  How could I undo all of the damage I'd done?  Me, his mother, had completely ruined him, at less than two years old I had messed him up for life. 

I fretted, I stressed, I cried (that whole letting him cry in the crib thing was really hard!) and then I chucked my magazines.  I ripped out fun projects or recipes and ignored all of the parenting advice.  I breastfed my daughter in our bed, half asleep...GASP!...I carried her around like a chimp baby wrapped around my neck.  At nine months old she was eating steak and potatoes with her two little teeth.  She had zero interest in baby food and the Dr. told me as long as it wasn't too spicy to go for it and I did, with gusto.  I had a toddler and an infant.  At this point it was about survival and sanity.

You know what?  They lived.  They were smart in school, socially adjusted, well-mannered, loving, sweet kids.  Trust me, I looked.  I looked for the weak spot, the place where my God-complex messed them up, thinking I could raise them just because I birthed them.  I still have not found it.  They are sixteen and seventeen and still the sunshine in my day, every day.  I dare an "expert" to have done a better job.

We don't have to be perfect.  We have to love our kids and value them and treat them like human beings.  We have to talk to them like we talk to our friends (so many times I find our friends get the best version of us while our family gets the psycho one) and let them know that we have expectations for their behavior.  Noone is perfect, not us and not them.  Perfection is sooo overrated anyway.