Dear First Born,
I am so sorry. As a mother, like most mothers, I mess up often and I mess up worse with you than your sister. You are my guinea pig, subject to the errors of my trials. The mommy guilt is strong in me, and though I know it doesn’t serve either of us, I want to get these apologies off my chest.
I am sorry that I mistook my babysitting experience for understanding babies and that I misunderstood working with children to be similar to parenting a child. I thought the full day baby care course given at the hospital was enough preparation for all that was to come, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
You were born in Boston, a city we had lived in for only three months before your arrival. We were far from home, family, friends, and the familiar. I am sorry that your first weeks were spent with three people with no prior newborn experience –your mommy, daddy, and maternal auntie –– in a time period we deemed ‘Camp Sloane’. This camp involved staying up to watch “Letterman” (“Like, should we put her to bed or what?”) and entire seasons of “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City” (“Hehe, her first word is totally going to be f***!”). I am sorry that three adults with seven degrees between us still put you in a freezing cold first bath (I swear it said the water is supposed to be 75 degrees!) that you promptly filled with poop after screaming bloody murder.
I am sorry that it took me almost two weeks to figure out that my post-partum daily burrito indulgence was giving you epic gas. I am sorry that I waited so long to give you a bottle so that every subsequent bottle, though there were few overall, was a struggle for both you and Daddy or Auntie or Bubbie. I know you would still be breastfeeding if I didn’t have to wean you at 13 months to go back to work.
I am sorry that I tried every possible method to get you to sleep through the night (or even just to sleep for an HOUR), from co-sleeping to Ferberizing and everything in between. I am sorry I left Daddy to let you cry it out, even though it only took 30 minutes for you to fall asleep for the night and you went to sleep easily forevermore. (I, meanwhile, was at a hotel with my breastpump because I couldn’t bear to hear your wails).
I am sorry that I worried too much about milestones. I am sorry for all those Baby Einstein videos I made you watch in the name of education for you, and showers for me. I am sorry that despite my best efforts to keep you safe, your sippy cups had BPA in them, you sat in the Bumbo seat that got recalled, and you sat facing forward in your car seat too early. Every day we moms are told that what we did last year or yesterday is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I am sorry that after under-preparing you to take the G&T test (on which you did amazingly well, for the record), you told me, “That was a the worst idea ever.” I am sorry that I over-prepared you for the ERB with workbooks galore, and after all that, didn’t have you take the test. I am sorry that I seethed (secretly, I hope) when you refused to let them take your picture at a Pre-K school interview. I am REALLY sorry that we live in a city where 4-year-olds take tests and must interview to get into school!!!
I am sorry that I had to tell you about the Holocaust and 9/11, but am thankful that I had the chance to tell you before any one else did. I am sorry that the older kids on the bus told you about Newtown before I worked up the courage to tell you myself.
I am sorry for all of my hypocrisy. Your friends laugh at the giant car seat in our car, large enough to hold you in a five point restraint until you have an inch and five pounds on me. Of course, like most New York City kids, you ride in cabs, sometimes on my lap, because I don’t schlep a booster around. You get upset with me because I limit your screen time while I text and Facebook like mad. I’m sorry that we both have to gag down the fish that I insist you eat because it’s ‘brain food.’ And I’m sorry that I will let you drink alcohol before I allow you to indulge in my greatest vice, diet coke, or as you once called it “mama juice.”
I am sorry that I baby your younger sister more than I did, or do, you. I kept her in diapers longer, in a stroller longer, and in school for a shorter day, all for longer than I did with you. I suppose I realized that each stage passes so quickly and I’m trying to hold on a little longer. And though I try to anticipate what’s coming, reading books like “Your Nine-Year-Old” before you’ve finished the thank you notes for your eighth birthday presents, I’m still often caught unaware and unprepared.
I am sorry if you will be embarrassed, but you’ll be the first child I put on a bus to overnight camp and I’ll be the mother clinging to the bumper. You’ll be the first child I send to the college and I will be the mother climbing the ivy (God willing) to peer in to your dorm room. I am sorry if I drive you crazy, but I plan to be the stalker mom of the book I’ll Love You Forever and I’m proud of it.
I am sorry for all these things I’ve done and those that haven’t happened yet. Most of all, I am sorry for how fast it all goes. I am sorry I cannot slow down time. I try to savor every minute but when I cannot, I savor my memories and write about you.
Do not mistake my apologies for regret, or my wistfulness for sadness. All of these mistakes made you who are you today and made our relationship what it is today; you and it are unapologetically wonderful.
Love,
Mommy
Lani Serota is the mother of two young girls, besotted wife, sleep aficionado (both her own and that of children), and celebrity child name enthusiast who loves a good giggle. When she is not working at one of her three jobs, taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer, or procrastinating, she loves to write. Lani lives with her husband and two daughters on the Upper East Side.
