Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (16 page)

W
omen love to tell a new mom, “Don’t forget to take care of YOU, if Momma’s not happy then nobody’s happy.” Before you had a child you
probably
thought they meant going for a monthly massage or pedicure. You had no way of knowing they actually meant, “Close the door when you pee so you can have sixty seconds to make your grocery list,” or “Be sure and lock the door when you get in the bathtub so you don’t look like you’re bathing in the baby pool at the YMCA on the hottest day of summer.” You couldn’t know, you were pregnant and full of hopes and dreams… and still believed the lies sold to you by Johnson & Johnson commercials and Pampers’ multi-million dollar ad campaigns.

I used to get my toes done once a month. The more kids I have had, the less frequently I have had the money or more importantly, the time, to sit still while someone massages my feet and paints my toenails. I have developed a pedicure especially for moms that you can do in your own home, in your own time in only five short days.

Day 1: Remove old crusty nail polish from eight toes; leftover from the last time you had a “real” pedicure (probably about the time your last child was born or the last time you had to have your feet in stirrups.) Break up a fight between the kids, cook dinner, feed the baby, and clean the kitchen. Take a shower, realize you never finished taking off your polish, remove nail polish from remaining two toes. Clip three toenails, put your four-year-old back in the bed, get water three times for your two-year-old until the ice to water ratio is exactly right and you finally get the cup she wanted, feed the baby. Collapse in the bed due to exhaustion.

Day 2: Wake up at 4:00am, feed the baby. Get back in bed for a few hours. Get up again at 6:30am, get dressed, put on makeup. Finish clipping toenails and possibly filing them. Make lunches and serve breakfast, take your kids to school. Run errands, feed the baby, clean house, pick kids up, put kids down for naps, feed the baby. Apply base coat. Collapse in the bed due to exhaustion. Get up, cook dinner, clean kitchen, bath time, feed baby, bed time. Then — you got it, collapse in bed due to exhaustion.

Day 3: Congratulations, today you get to apply your first coat of color — to six toes, until your four-year-old diva catches you and demands a mani/pedi. Do laundry, feed the baby, fold and put away clothes. Make lunch. Feed the baby. Naps. Feed the baby. Dinner. Feed the baby. Collapse in the bed.

Day 4: Feed the baby, make breakfast, make lunches. Take the kids to school. Go to the grocery store, put up groceries. Come home and feed the baby, clean the bathrooms and apply a second coat of color. Feed the baby. Pick the kids up, put them down for naps. Feed the baby. Dinner. Baths. Proceed to the bed, collapse and sleep if anyone will let you.

Day 5: If there is any nail polish left on your toes, you may now apply your top coat. If not, you get to remove your already chipped toenail polish and begin the whole process again.

Wasn’t that fun and
so relaxing
? Can you
believe
you ever left the comfort of your own home to waste your money for someone else to do this for you, when all this time you could have been doing it yourself?

Going to the spa or the salon are not your only two options for “Mommy Time.” After tucking my kids into bed every night, I fill my bath tub with scalding hot water and bubble bath and grab a good book. Several nights a week my husband will take over the bed and bath time routine and I will slip into my bedroom early to relax for a few minutes.

When I was about thirteen-months pregnant with my third child, I had slipped away for a long, hot, and quiet soak. The only sounds I heard were the muffled screams of my children as they fought tooth and nail with their poor Daddy over which toothbrush was whose and which pajamas they wanted to wear. All of a sudden the bathroom door came crashing open as Emma, came running into the room shattering the silence. She began stripping at the door and was totally “nekkid” by the time she reached the tub.

“I wanna take a bath wichu, Momma!”

I sighed. “Fine, get in.”

About that time Aubrey came walking into the bathroom and yelled, “HEY! No fair! I want to get in your bathtub, too!”

“
Whatever
,” I said. I was too exhausted to argue with them or try to scream for my husband to get
his
kids out of
my
bathtub.

They splashed and played for a few minutes before Aubrey turned to me and said, “I think you’re too fat for this bathtub, you need to get out.”

I knew full well I was exceeding the weight limit for that bathtub, but we don’t have a zoo in Charleston so I couldn’t exactly call the hippos and tell them to scoot over and make some room for me.

“Actually,” I told her as I gently kicked her out, “this is MY bathtub. I set the weight limit, and YOU, my dear, are
much
too small. Go find your Daddy.”

Date night is another important part of taking care of yourself but you need to go ahead and prepare yourself that date night isn’t going to be anything like it used to be. First off, your husband who used to get dressed
all
by himself to wine and dine you, can no longer find a pair of underwear or socks without your assistance. Secondly, you have to have a babysitter. Which boils down to this: you have to have the permission of a fourteen-year-old girl to go out to dinner with your very own husband.

I used to go to dinner with my husband B.C. and talk about our future, my work, his work, life in general. Now when we go out to dinner, we usually fight through our appetizers and salads about things we haven’t been able to discuss in front of our children. By the time our entrees are on the table, we are ready to play nice and move on.

One date night, as we argued our way through appetizers Zeb made an announcement. “From now on we are getting a babysitter on Friday nights so we can go to Taco Bell, eat bean burritos, act like rednecks and yell at each other. Then on Saturday night we’ll go somewhere nice and actually enjoy being together.”

I actually got food poisoning on that date and ended up pulling double duty on the toilet when we got home. Taco Bell would have probably been a safer dinner choice.

You know it’s been awhile since you've been out on a date with your husband when you have to go to the mall
on
your date in order to buy clothes to wear
for
your date. The standard Mommy Uniform of matching sweats and puke stained t-shirts is usually not the best date night ensemble.

After a trip to a local festival which had been held in the middle of muddy strawberry fields, my one and only pair of jeans were no longer suitable for anything other than cutting grass or perhaps a trip to the Flora-Bama. (A honky-tonk on the Florida-Alabama state line and a Mecca to Southerners.) Thanks to what is known as the “in-between-stage” of post-partum weight loss, I had one pair of pants to my name which didn’t have an elastic waistband and they were trashed. My mother was visiting and my husband wanted me to go out to dinner with friends.

I knew I was in trouble in the pants department but thought I might be able to find a pair that would work. I dug out an old pair of Levis, slathered some Vaseline on my butt and thighs and pulled them on. I buttoned them, butt (heh-heh) breathing was no longer an option. My husband walked through the bathroom as I sucked my stomach in and attempted to zip my pants.

“Babe, you look cute,” he said.

I rolled my eyes.

“What?”

“I can’t sit down in these pants, much less sit
and
eat.”

I explained to my husband that I only had one pair of pants to my name, and that they were unsuitable for public viewing. He called our friends and told them we would be a few minutes late. Then the Best Husband in the Entire World took me shopping to get new clothes. I won't reveal the name, but I will say it's the first time I had bought clothes in over a year from a store that didn't have shopping carts or a snack bar.

I stood in the dressing room in nothing but my Spanx and nursing bra, and waited for Zeb to purchase my date night ensemble. As I waited, I was hopeful that this night would end better than the last date when I paid a babysitter to watch my kids while I contracted food poisoning. Ah, happy endings... new clothes and no vomiting
or
diarrhea.

Having kids changes everything from your definition of a pedicure, to the places you choose to shop, to the way you date your husband. My advice? Take every second the little devils will let you have to yourself… whether that is standing in your girdle and nursing bra in the changing room at your favorite store or sitting on the potty taking care of business with the door blissfully dead bolted.

T
he thing I miss most about my life B.C. is the luxury of being sick all by myself. Gone are the days of sitting luxuriously on the toilet as the latest gastrointestinal bug rips its way through my body. No more calling in sick to lie in the bed for days on end reading trashy tabloid magazines while sucking on Luden’s Cherry Cough Drops and recovering from a bad sinus infection. Nope. Those days are over.

The only person who cares when I’m sick is usually my husband, and mostly because that means he has even more work to do when he comes home. When any member of my family is sick I rush to their aid with popsicles, medicine or hot tea, whatever the situation requires — I am prepared. And I’m not complaining. I am a mother and a registered nurse. I am a nurturer.

I just think it would be really nice if someone in my house could bring me a roll of toilet paper when I am stranded on the toilet with diarrhea instead of standing in the bathroom, watching and listening to Mommy’s Musical Bowels, holding their nose and trying to peek in between my legs while saying “Ewwww, it stinks in here Mommy!”

Here’s a novel idea: g
et out
.

Thankfully for my family, the worst sickness we have ever had to deal with was a particularly nasty stomach bug Emma contracted when she was only five-months-old. We had lived in Savannah, Georgia, for a few short months and only had a few acquaintances. When we were told by our doctor we were headed to the hospital for her to get IV fluids we realized we had a problem. Zeb had to work, I had to be at the hospital with Emma and we had nothing to do with Aubrey.

I called Gena, an acquaintance I had met through a church mother’s group. And I do mean an acquaintance — not a friend. Not yet anyway. We had met for play dates with our children on a handful of occasions and barely knew each other, but her father was a well-respected pastor in Savannah and a pillar of the community, which was one of the only reasons I did something
so
horrifying that I shudder now even thinking of it.

I called a woman I
barely knew
at the time and asked her if my two-year-old (who had never spent the night away from home) could come and stay at her house… indefinitely. I was
aghast
. Firstly, because I really didn’t know her that well, (but I figured at least half the folks in town knew who her Daddy was if she tried to run off with my kid,) and secondly because
who
calls a woman that has a two-year-old and five-month-old of her own and says, “Would you like an extra toddler to take care for a few days? Oh, and a member of her immediate family has just been hospitalized with a highly contagious stomach virus… thanks so much! 'Kay, buh-bye!”

But Gena was more than willing to help me out and agreed to let Aubrey come and play until Zeb could come and pick her up — which would have been great, if I hadn’t started vomiting about four o’clock in the afternoon the day before Emma was to be released from the hospital.

In between breastfeeding Emma, holding her so she wouldn’t rip out her IV and vomiting in the trash can, I called my husband at work and told him I needed some major help.

Emma couldn’t stay in the hospital by herself and I could no longer sit upright, I was burning up with fever and needed to go home and sleep.

Zeb headed to the hospital and I called Gena to see if Aubrey could stay a little longer.

“I think if I go home and lay down until I feel better then I can come and get her,” I told Gena.

“Why don’t you go home and take a nap and call me when you wake up and I’ll just bring her to you after dinner and baths, so you don’t have to get out of the house?” Gena suggested.

As soon as Zeb got to the hospital I began the five-minute drive home. I was as focused on the road as I could be while doubled over with stomach cramps and shivering uncontrollably with fever.