When Finding A Babysitter Feels Like Online Dating

The breakup happens, as many often do, over the phone. “I need to concentrate on me,” she says, explaining her decision to leave. “I can’t do this anymore.” I’m heartbroken that my kids’ regular babysitter, who we have had for over a year, is suddenly leaving us. It stings, but I know I have to move on, and find someone new.

I create a job posting on a popular sitter search websites, and I’m hopeful. That is, until I realize how much searching for a new babysitter online starts to feel eerily similar to online dating. And – as in my days of online dating – how difficult it is to not favor those people with the more “attractive” looking profile pics (regardless of whether they’re suited for me). 

I admit, I have a “type” when it comes to my babysitters (and it applies to both male and female sitters): Creatives, performers and actors. This demographic tends to be good looking, and they also tend to leave as soon as they get a better job or opportunity. “Eights or above,” my husband’s friends joke, when referring to our cache of good-looking babysitters.

But even the applicants seem to be confused about how to go about the online thing. Based on their profile photos, I begin to wonder if the younger generation is simply unable to comprehend self-promoting online without imbuing sexual overtones. As I scroll through my Inbox of would-be Mary Poppinses, I’m faced with “sexy selfie” after sexy selfie. One young lady’s pouty lips and half-closed eyes, accompany a profile in which she’s describes herself as a “young, vibrant student, looking for a regular source of income!” (Maybe she landed on the wrong kind of website, I wonder?). Yet another applicant has exclusively featured her cleavage as her profile pic – no neck or face – perhaps to show her “nurturing” side. Every other applicant in my inbox is either giving me Duck Face, Bedroom Eyes, or Cleavage Shot. 

After what feels like endless scrolling, I have to stop and ask myself: Am I searching for a loving caregiver to watch my children, or a hot date or sidepiece for my husband? I focus back to my task, and message a few prospects who have more “work appropriate” profile photos, and who look good professionally on paper, too. 

But then I find that the interviews feel like the kind of dates you have with someone you meet online. I meet with a cute young actress and we spend two hours at a café, talking about our favorite authors, social justice, and our writing. I decide to have her do a trial day with our family, but once the glow of our meeting is gone, start to have second thoughts. I realize how little we discussed her babysitting experience during our meeting. When I ask for current references, she gives me a strange excuse as to why she can’t share them. I later find out she suffered a nervous breakdown a mere three weeks ago. No surprise here: People aren’t always what they appear to be online.

My next interview is a total “meet cute”. I’ve given her the address to the Starbucks, but apparently she’s at a different Starbucks a few blocks away. We spend the next half hour running past each other on the street before we finally connect. She’s an all-American cheerleader type – all long blonde hair and a figure that would amuse the neighborhood dads. I buy her tea, and she doesn’t meet my eyes the whole time we talk. It’s awkward. “I’ll text you,” I lie, when we say goodbye.

And, as it also often happens with online dating, some people are complete duds – or worse, felons! A pretty brunette who messages me about how much she loves kids “and dogs!” (she is very adamant about her love of dogs), suddenly starts following my Instagram. I decide to do some spying too, but a quick Google reveals her mug shot and several arrests. 

My experience with the would-be Criminal Babysitter cools me off the sitter website for a while. I get a few recommendations from online mom groups, but I can’t will myself to contact any of them without a photo. 

Of course, once past the pleasant exterior, I look for all the other qualities a person must have before I allow them to look after my brood. But I also wonder what wonderful people I may be missing during my search, because of my focus on attractiveness. It’s the same thing I used to ask myself when I exclusively responded to the good looking guys who messaged me online, rarely giving the “nice guys” (who had less than stellar pictures) a chance.

The Swipe Right mentality – the tendency to make a snap judgment about someone or something based on looks alone – extends to nearly everything I look for online, from clothes, to yoga studios, to, I guess, caregivers. I think that has something to do with the fact that searching for most things online that have visual components, feels a little bit like shopping. How can all that liking and swiping that we do everyday, as we take in digital information on apps, and on social media – not trickle down into how we assess other things we perceive as “commodities”?

“Give me the Bearded Lady,” says one mom friend. “I don’t need a hot young nanny walking around my house in front of my partner.” Maybe one day, I’ll join her camp, and hire a School Marm type to watch the kids. In the meantime, I’m working on my sitter bias as I continue to search for The One (FYI open to any leads.) I’m still seeking “eights or above” – but doing my best to use that to describe the caliber of applicant, and not simply how they look on their profile pic.

This piece was originally published on Mother Mag, but was removed because of "too much backlash". 

Image: "Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead" (1991). Image may be subject to copyright.

Why I Don’t Want to Call My C-Section a “Belly Birth”

The latest chapter in the birthing wars.

Just when I think the “birthing wars” have gone too far, I recently learned  the term “C-section” is becoming passé. We now need a whole new way of describing a surgery that’s been happening since the time of Caesar himself. Behold, the new term, “belly birth” – the alternative way of talking about what many view as an otherwise cold, and/or invasive medical procedure. 

The “belly birth” is an attempt at giving women a more empowering way to reframe undesired birth experiences – i.e. those who feel they have been robbed of the joy of delivering an entire human through their vaginal canal. According to online trends, more women are renaming their C-sections as belly births, in an effort to take back their agency in birth experiences that felt largely out of their control, as well as to normalize C-sections. The idea being: A belly birth is something that you participate in, whereas a C-section is simply done to you. 

According to the Mayo Clinic, a cesarean section (C-section) is defined as: “the surgical procedure used to deliver a baby through incisions to the abdomen and uterus.” There are many reasons why physicians opt to go this route, including; the baby being in distress, the baby being in an abnormal position, or labor not progressing, to name a few. 

Despite these very legitimate reasons for surgery, the stigma around C-sections still persists. People sometimes point to the moms who have undergone them as having gotten away with an “easier way out” (remember the phrase “too posh to push”?); and some women who have had them feel ashamed of their own birth experiences.  

But wouldn’t naming C-sections something else – particularly something like “belly birth”, which almost sounds like a mystical event – be further reinforcing that stigma? Barriers are seldom broken when we dance around the thing people are afraid of, or when we make them more palatable to the people who don’t understand them. 

Renaming a C-section birth a “belly birth” disassociates the surgery from the birth experience. The term itself evokes an  image of a woman magically bringing forth her baby from the depths of her uterus, and out of her stomach, by sheer will. Is everyone supposed to pretend that a surgery never happened in order to get that baby out of the woman’s belly? 

Admittedly, for the people behind this movement, removing the surgery aspect of the C-section is probably the point of calling it something like “belly birth” in the first place. In their view, they would like the emphasis to be on the birth of the baby, rather than the surgery itself. But why erase any reference to the surgery that made that baby’s birth possible? There’s something about that act that reeks of shame, too. It doesn’t feel inclusive, but more like a rewriting of history.

I have had two C-sections. One was an emergency C-section: after I had labored for over 24 hours, my body wouldn’t fully dilate, and my son’s heart rate plummeted. The other was a planned section, for the same reasons I had to have my first C-section, under the advice of the doctor I trust with my life (and those of my babies). I love telling people about my C-sections, and, if they’re willing to hear them, I enjoy regaling them with the gory details of each one. I didn’t choose my first C-section, but there’s a lot about motherhood that I don’t get control over. My C-sections are my birth stories, and I am proud of them.

When you think about it, what isn’t empowering about lying AWAKE on a table, as a doctor slices into your abdomen? How can you not feel like a badass after you have lived through having your stomach opened, then rummaged around in, and then having a baby pulled out of it? And then, while your guts are still open to the heavens, you most likely have a moment with your brand new baby to pose and take a photo, because that is just how #momboss you are. You’re so amazingly tough, in fact, you get to witness your doctor sewing you back up, possibly feeling just a few tugs around on your insides, and maybe the ol’ burn of a cauterizer. That’s some superhuman sh*t. And then someone has the nerve to tell you that it wasn’t a real birth worth being proud of? That you had a “belly” birth? Ha! That’s cute.

Mamas of C-sections, I think the issue isn’t what we call the damn procedure. I think it’s the fact that we feel we need to rename it in the first place. The idea of the C-section being “less than” the vaginal birth feeds into that same comparing and competing that’s so rampant in the mom world. You know; things like how a vaginal birth with epidural is “less than” one without. Or how a birth in the hospital might as well be a back alley birth when compared to a beautiful home birth in a birthing tub surrounded by dancing doulas. You get the idea.

That’s not to say that I’d wish a C-section upon someone who didn’t want one. It is not an easy surgery to recover from. It requires support from friends or family members (or hired help) to help with the baby in order to allow your body to heal properly. It can take up to a year (or more) for your body to fully recover internally from the trauma. But a C-section is not a death. It is, in most cases, (nefarious doctors aside) a medically necessary means to a birth. 

So what if we cheered each other for having undergone successful C-section births instead of grieving over them, or worse, not speaking their name? Calling a C-section by any other name puts us at further distance from overcoming our fear, hate, or distrust of this surgery; and our ability to accept – and even embrace it.  

Photography by @tash.things.

Originally published here.

This Is What Happened When I Tried To Quit Antidepressants

In a recent New York Times article, “Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit,” the authors detail how the withdrawal effects can be so severe, Americans would rather keep using these drugs than suffer the consequences of getting off of them. This finding may come as a surprise to many, but not to me. I had recently tried to sever my own six-year affair with my antidepressant of choice, Zoloft, and the consequences were nearly tragic. 

My doctor prescribed Zoloft to me after a deep bout of postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of my first son. It was, for me, a miracle drug. After weeks of crying for more hours of the day than not and irrational thoughts spanning from, “Does my baby want to kill me?” to “Is my baby evil?”, I was a person again. I had every intention of staying on the drug forever (why mess with a good thing?), until a surgery earlier this year required that I cease taking any SSRI’s to decrease the risk of a hematoma. 

My psychiatrist put me on a somewhat abbreviated weaning schedule to time with my surgery — which we knew would be risky, but I still was not prepared for what was to come. As the authors of the aforementioned New York Times article point out, the medical profession lacks scientifically backed guidelines or strategies for people struggling to stop taking antidepressants.

My doctor prescribed Zoloft to me after a deep bout of postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of my first son. It was, for me, a miracle drug.

One morning, I woke up feeling like I was at the bottom of a black hole coated slick with oil, and couldn’t crawl out. I couldn’t will myself to leave the house. My children couldn’t make me smile. Sometimes my own voice felt like it was coming from somewhere eight feet below the ground whenever I spoke. I tried to tell my children that I wasn’t feeling well, because that’s how you explain when Mommy is Weaning Off of Zoloft to people under seven. 

If it were possible at the time, I would have laughed at how much my symptoms made me feel like an advertisement in a magazine – some sad sack woman sitting on a park bench, staring at her kids having fun in a park. The text above her head says something like, “You’re not yourself when you’re not on [insert drug of choice here].” 

By week three or so, things were abysmal. My whole body ached, like the worst flu I ever had, and no pain reliever could alleviate it. Several times a day, I wanted to tear off my flesh, or rip off my head – anything to take away this bad feeling. 

One morning, I woke up feeling like I was at the bottom of a black hole coated slick with oil, and couldn’t crawl out. I couldn’t will myself to leave the house.

Around that time, my family and I were walking down the avenue by our house. I’d made the mistake of finishing my husband’s Greyhound at brunch, hoping it would help take the edge off a little. My older son was being kind of a jerk that day, and as we were walking home, we were fighting about his iPad time and I lost it. My younger son started joining in on the whine-fest, and I screamed at them both, and they both continued not listening to me, and all my pain felt amplified. I walked ahead of them a bit, trying to relieve them of my wildness.

I looked at the cars and trucks rushing frantically down the avenue, leaving a slight tremble under my feet in their wake. The most bizarre idea came into my head: What if I just turned to my left, and began walking, Virginia Woolf-like, into the flow of traffic? No announcement, no farewell, just a straightforward decision to turn away from everything else and turn instead towards nothing. I could see my body as if I were observing from some distant place, like the tree next to the overpass where I had been standing, and could picture myself walking onto the avenue. In that fantasy, there was no suffering – no crushing limbs, no gore, no grieving family – just the feeling of being freed from pain. The option seemed so straightforward.

It was one of those feelings like when you’ve been sick for so long, you forget what healthy feels like, and then you finally feel healthy and you can finally say, “Wow. Life feels so damn good.”

But before I could dip my toe off the edge of the sidewalk, my older son came running up to me, asking about when he would get his iPad minutes back. Bam. My strange impulse and vision from moments before was gone, and I was reminded of my purpose and duty – to continue to be a mother and wife and child and friend – in spite of my own personal pain. I’d never before that moment, imagined in my wildest dreams, taking my own life.

After my surgery, I was given the go-ahead to go back on Zoloft. At first, I resisted – thinking, well, I made it this far. If, for some reason I ever needed to go off of this drug again in the future, I would never be able to face the withdrawal effects that go with it a second time. When I told my doctor about my “Virginia Woolf” moment, she insisted I go back on it immediately. And since martyrdom never looked good on me anyway, I took her advice. Within a week, I was back to myself. A whole person. It was one of those feelings like when you’ve been sick for so long, you forget what healthy feels like, and then you finally feel healthy and you can finally say, “Wow. Life feels so damn good.”

I am in good company when it comes to failing at quitting antidepressant use. As Carey and Gebeloff note in their New York Times piece, a recent study of 250 long-term users of psychiatric drugs revealed that nearly half of those in the study who tried to quit could not do so because of withdrawal symptoms. In another study, 130 of 180 long-term antidepressant users reported withdrawal symptoms. 

As mothers, we need all the help we can get by way of support systems. This system can look different for many people. My support system includes antidepressants – a fact of which I am certain won’t change for me anytime soon if ever. I’m frustrated that I don’t seem to have a viable way out of getting off of this particular antidepressant, and fully switching to something else. But that likely still would not have changed my original decision to have gone on it in the first place. All things being equal, this isn’t all a bad story. Zoloft saved my life once, back when I first became a mother; when I thought it wouldn’t be possible to see the brightness in motherhood. Zoloft allowed me to experience joy again and helped me finally fall in love with my baby. And when I tried to walk away from Zoloft, the effects of that nearly ended my life. So I guess, like many kinds of relationships, ours is complicated. 

Please seek medical advice before taking any antidepressants. All opinions in this article are those of the author.

Originally published here.

What Do You Do All Day?

We've all been on the receiving end of the question. #MINDRMAMA Alexis Barad-Cutler reports. 

When you’re not in the trenches of early motherhood, it can be hard to grasp the kind of mental and emotional work that it entails. From the outside, it seems like a cushy job that lets you work from home, nap during the day, and maybe even watch some daytime TV. But as any new mom eating over a sink and calling that lunch can tell you, early motherhood has little to do with rest and relaxation. It’s hard work, full of sour milk, boob sweat, and lots of tears. And yet, any new mom constantly gets asked the question, “So what is it that you actually do all day?”

The first time I remember being asked the “what do you do all day” question was during a trip to visit family in Florida with our first-born. We were walking through town, trying to get our then-infant son to nap, when my mother-in-law spotted some family friends in one of the outdoor cafes. We went over to say hi, and all I could think was, “Can we just keep walking?” (As every mom knows, babies not in motion don’t stay asleep.) Suddenly everyone was staring at me, and that’s when I realized the husband was asking me a question:

“So what is it you do all day now that you’re a mom?” he asked, an amused look on his face, like he expected me to melt in a pile of maternal bliss just thinking about how great my days were. “Do you guys, just, you know . . . hang out?”

I stood there, speechless, and my brain started to overload with the millions of things that my baby and I did during the day that did not by any stretch of the imagination feel like “hanging out.”

I wanted to scream about the four times a night I was still waking up to soothe my baby back to sleep, which made my attempts at napping during the day a necessity and not a luxury. But then I would also have to mention that the terror of waking to the sounds of a cat being skinned from chin to tail – i.e. my child’s shrieks anytime he was put down in his crib – didn’t really make the naps seem worth it. I wanted to tell him about the hours per week I spent hooked to a wheezing, huffing breast pump. And how pumping while taking care of a baby is like trying to chew gum and walk, except instead of chewing gum, you’re trying to hold a baby out in front of you so that you don’t knock your pump shields off your nipples and you’re walking to the changing table to deal with a poop situation.

And that wouldn’t even have touched the daily logistics of caring for a baby; like the fact that the minute you get them changed into a clean outfit, they’ve already managed to pee up the back of it and you need to start all over again. Or what about the Amazon orders, or signing up for baby music classes and movement classes, scheduling doctor’s appointments (there are so many in those first few months), doing laundry, washing bottles, cleaning breast pump parts, and making sure to never, ever run out of diapers. It is monotonous. Relentless at times.

It’s not easy to be with a child all day. The ones who are too young to move or talk have very big needs – the feeding, the diapering, the swaddling. By the time a baby is mobile, you can’t even think about sitting down or looking away. Every moment feels like you’re playing defense against “Team Death.” And when your child is older, it sometimes seems like they never stop talking – to the point that there’s no room for a single thought of your own. It can make spending a day with a kid feel like you’ve been trapped inside a free-association method acting exercise – except that’s just how elementary school aged kids talk.

So, hanging on by a thread? Yes. Hanging out? Absolutely not. The good thing is, as time goes by, and you earn more of your parenting stripes, the logistics get a little easier to manage, but of course, they get even bigger. I have two boys now, and I work part time, but a huge chunk of my day is spent managing my children’s schedules. It’s like I’m a personal assistant to two very important, high-up execs. For example, sometimes it takes ten texts to various nannies or several rounds of emails before I land a play date for one of my kids because Yes I Live In New York City and we are crazy here.

I’m not alone, or special. Women – moms – are mostly the ones who carry the mental load when it comes to the care of their children. Even when they are at work, the mother is the one doing all the stuff behind the scenes – advocating on behalf of their child with a learning disability, or seeking out support for a child with an emotional problem, or a medical issue – society has decided this is women’s work. Personally, I think women would take it on either way. 

There was something else that troubled me about this stranger’s question, more than the fact that he asked me and put me on the spot to explain my day (I could easily have asked how he spends his retirement, but I didn’t). His question felt like an accusation. “You must have it good. What could you possibly have to complain about, Miss I Get To Stay At Home With My Baby?” When I was finally able to respond, I was grasping at anything I could think of that others would deem “important work” and muttered something about random freelance projects I was doing in my spare time.

But why did I do that? It was because I knew – from his question, his tone, and from the look on his face – that he didn’t think my life as a mom was difficult, or important. Unfortunately, he’s not an outlier in his perception of motherhood. Women must continue to share their stories of motherhood, and to speak about their important work. I wish I didn’t give that family friend the satisfaction of any stumbled or insecure answer, all those years ago. Mothers shouldn’t have to defend or explain their days to anyone.

Photo credit: Stylish & Hip Kids.

Originally published here.