The Mommy Muscle

Yesterday Eliza had her first fall. Wait, you say, she's only three months. How can she fall when she does not stand, does not walk. She fell, basically, because her mother is an idiot. Or was an idiot for about five seconds and in those five seconds, baby took a tumble.

I had arrived at my first mommy and me kind of excercise class which was very crowded with other moms and babies. A little flustered by crowd, the rush to get out the door with the baby and Eliza's crying jag on the crosstown bus, I must have unfasted the second two snaps on the baby bjorn. In my own defense, one snap on the bjorn isn't great and has come undone while I'm seated before. So perhaps that's what happened, while I sat on the bjorn, the snaps became unfastened and I didn't check when I got up which I should have. Either way, the fall was my fault.

Now don't get an image of me standing and the baby spiralling to the ground, at least I was seated on a carpeted floor. I turned to get a blanket, her still attached to me and then turned towards her in time to see her slide from my body and fall flat on her head to the floor. I spent most of yesterday reliving the fall, her little body in it's pink bunting, slamming against the floor. It was the worst five seconds, or three seconds or ten seconds of recent memory. As it happened, I screamed, powerless in a room full of other mothers. No one really noticed, I guess it was more of a silent scream. Eliza cried out and I scooped her in my arms, terrified, cradling her little head against my chest.

The instructor had started the class and I rushed out of the room, the evil bjorn dangling against my legs. Eliza cried, redfaced in her pink hat and bunting and I struggled to contain my tears, my own horror at my stupidity.

"Shh," I whispered in her ear, "It's okay, baby, it's okay."

I am so lucky to have the daughter I have. I could tell almost immediately that she wasn't seriously hurt. Already, her cries were subsiding. Already I started to morph from the stupidest mother in the world to the most powerful, simply by my ability to comfort my injured child. She should have screamed longer, should have been harder on me but she gently calmed down, her sobs becoming further apart and less forceful.

"My girl," I said, "such a good girl."

Another mother saw us. "Poor little girl," she said. "Probably overwhelmed by all the people."

"She just fell," I said. "It was awful."

The mother studied Eliza for a second, then quickly said, "Well you can tell she's fine."

I nodded, not only hoping but believing it to be true. "It was so scary."

I wanted to cry, to throw my arms around this nice mother and have her comfort me the way I comforted my daughter.

"It is, but they're always sturdier than we think."

Eliza had quieted down by now, no more tears. She was looking at the other woman and her baby, a boy I think but now I don't remember, don't even remember what this woman, this saint in my time of need, looked like. The Mommy Stupdometer is on these days, on in full force, and I can hardly put two sentences together when I'm speaking.

I looked at Eliza, her face less red as she looked at me, not smiling but generally herself. She was wearing a hat lined with fake fur and her bunting still. The hat and the bunting probably broke her fall. She fell, I'm guessing, a distance of about two feet. The shorter the fall, not only the lesser the distance but the slower the speed of the falling body. My daughter was okay and we went back inside to continue the class.

I felt discombobulated throughout and wondered if I should rush Eliza to a doctor, after all she did fall on her head. Perhaps she wasn't okay, maybe I only needed to believe it so badly, I refused to see the signs. So what if she smiled at the other mothers, laughed as we trotted in a circle and whipped her head around from one side to the other in order to take in the sites. I stepped back from the class and sat against the wall, lifting my shirt to offer a boob, the universal pacifier, comforter, love inspirer.

Eliza sucked hungrily, happy, I think, to be done with the class. She pressed her hand into my chest and clung to the neckline of the shirt. Even a bad mother seems to inspire the love of her child. I exchanged glances with another breastfeeding mother pressed against the next wall. We were partners in a universal tribe and we both knew the secret: how satisfying feeding a baby can be, how powerful you can feel as a mother, just one person with the power to hear all the world's wounds, on a small scale anyway. My baby cries and I silence her. No one can satisfy her as well as I do. And still, I don't deserve her.

Last night I had a nightmare that I killed a man. I don't remember the details, only that I killed a man and was worried I'd get caught. I didn't feel bad about the murder, nor did my friends who were assisting me in the coverup. I'm not a big dream interpreter but I think my dream was inspired by my own guilt in hurting my child. One quick fall and I am a murderer.

After the class ended and I'd asked several of the other mothers about what to look for with falls, I held another mother's tinier baby while she gathered her stuff. Eliza was on the floor, fussing in her bunting while I held Meredith's daughter, Julia against my chest. Julia immediately turned her head to my boob, wondering why it was next to her head and not in her mouth. Julia's a month younger than Eliza and I really needed to hold a littler baby. A littler baby, a fresh start, a chance again at having a child unbruised and umblemished by my inteptitude.

"Look at this." I tilted my chin down to Julia who gnawed at my nipple through my shirt. "She wants me to feed her."

Meredith eye's widened with disappointment. I know the look. She thought she'd missed her daughter's cue, that she had somehow failed as a mother. I didn't mean to make her feel this way, I'd only pointed it out because it seemed funny. As mother's, we continually beat ourselves up. Here's this woman chastising herself because she stopped nursing to gather her diaper bag and I was being far too easy on myself for Eliza's fall.

But I wasn't. I didn't force myself to relive that moment. It happened over and over again on it's own.

A woman on Urban Baby posted that it took five months for a mother to build up her "Mommy Muscle," in other words the strength to have confidence in her abilities as a mother and shut out the comments, supposedly well-meaning, that instead sound like "we're telling you how to do it right because you're doing it wrong." My Mommy Muscle in that regard has kicked in--I am not bothered by "Oh she spits up so much, what do you think that's about" or "You should use formula, you'd be so much happier if you did!" No my Mommy Muscle is needed to combat the terror I have in the real wounds Eliza may get in the coming years.

I can blame myself for what happened yesterday and it gives me some power, a way of saying Eliza won't get hurt that way again because I learned my lesson. But what about the hurts that might happen that won't be my faulty. The falls she'll take from jungle gyms or balance beams--I can't keep her locked in box sized apartment her entire life. The long road of motherhood is filled with joy, love, pride and absolute terror. I'm going to need so much muscle just to combat the fear I have in carrying her around the apartment everyday. There's no health food supplements or pills to help build up my Mommy Muscle unless you include zoloft, popular drug amongst mothers of multiple kids.

Eliza sits under her Elmo right now clad in only a diaper and booties. Her skin in luminous in the afternoon light, flawless not a scratch or mark on it. Her little legs wiggle and her arms windmill as the toy plays "She'll be coming 'round the Mountain." My baby, perfect and lovely, that I grew in my body. I took my prenatals and didn't drink while I was pregnant. I nurse her and watch what I eat to avoid a plethora of chemicals going into her body. I have several books on parenthood, all to arm me with what I need to know to reassure her in her lovely little life. But I am only the beginning for her, the start of a much larger picture. As I take in her flawless white skin, I can only cherish this moment, when I can kiss away her pains and when a little Elmo "gym" is just about the best thing in the world.