Why Octomama: Coco’s Version February 7, 2008

Well, I guess I wanted an Octomama because I think this motherhood thing is a little different for me–for Lulu, for other people like us in various ways–than it is for most (though even as I type that I realize that many mother probably feel that way, for all kinds of reasons). Over coffee with a friend with two children about Mavis’ age the other day, we discussed a local program in which we are both enrolled: the organization sends a parent educator out to talk to us about our children’s development and to make suggestions about how to enrich their play and promote their health. It’s a nice program, low-stress, free, and so on. My friend confesses to me that sometimes she wants to show that her daughter is really smarter, more advanced than the parent educator has seen. She knows she shouldn’t, that it isn’t necessary, but what mother wouldn’t feel that way?

And I know what she means, really. But I find myself talking, before I realize that I shouldn’t, about how our visits with the parent educator give me a different kind of worry. Mavis seems to be developmentally advanced in several areas. Along with her faster tooth growth, high weight and height percentiles for her ethnic background, and some other things, I have started to fear that maybe she is older than I think she is. Every time my parent educator makes an encouraging comment on her development, I fret over whether I really know how old my daughter is. I go back and look at pictures of her, the youngest we have, to reassure myself that she really was as young as we think she was when we met her. And my friend’s face, I can see, registers a kind of–what?–nonresponse, I guess, because what can she say? She can’t imagine not knowing her daughter’s birthdate, her age. I’ve given her no segue, no way to relate. I feel separate.

Since Lulu and I shared our long wait for our daughters together–online, always–she and I have never, I think, had a moment like that. So part of my rationale for this blog is that camaraderie. We don’t know one well another in person; we don’t get to have coffee together or even manage to talk often on the phone. But we seem to get one another. So we can share this space and think things over. We hope to expand it to other voices, too, who might be thinking about some of these same issues.

Another reason to sort these issues out online is, for me at least, that I have few friends with children at all and really only one in “real life” who has a similar story to mine. During the long wait, I earned a lot from parenting blogs, especially China adoption blogs. They gave me a template for thinking about the questions I’d face, sometimes providing me with inspiration and other times with a sense of what I would not–or did not want to–be as a parent. But it has always seemed that, more often than not, the bloggers I read were stay-at-home mothers. Although I reject the idea that stay-at-home mothers and working mothers inhabit entirely different spheres or are necessarily on the opposite sides of the “mommy wars” (ugh), I do find that some of the most pressing issues that I face as a person who is also a mother are intimately intertwined with my professional and creative lives.

So, why Octomama? Because I want to talk, to think aloud about how to juggle work and baby, relationship and baby, adoption and culture. I want to hear from Lulu and from you, to develop some discussions. But mostly? I just want to be able to get from the front door of my house to the driver’s seat of my car each morning–while I dangle from my person at least a laptop, a bag of books, lunches and jackets for me and Mavis, a can of Diet Coke, and oh yeah, Mavis herself–with some modicum of grace. Most days, I could use a few extra arms.