Ladies Who Lunch

I thought last summer was the summer for babies, since half the women I know were pregnant (including me).  But history appears to be repeating itself, as this summer the other half of the women I know are pregnant (and the first half have small babies, meaning no one — but no one — goes out for happy hour anymore.  Boo.).

The thing about knowing a lot of pregnant gals is that you find yourself attending a lot of baby showers.  These take many forms.  There are the ladies’ only baby showers, often given by sisters or moms or aunts, where there is iced tea and a light salad lunch and (hopefully!) a few splashes of white wine for the non-pregos.  There is much oohing and aahing over layette (if you’re a guy, you don’t even know that word — that’s okay), and, inevitably, a game or two which involves searching through one’s handbag (which is more fun that it sounds, actually).  There are the co-ed showers, usually given by friends of the couple, which are basically regular parties maybe with a little less alcohol, since various parties are prego or toting small children, and no games, because dudes don’t have handbags.  There are the dinner-party showers, which also involve no games and usually a lot of wine for the non-pregos, which, for the mom in question, makes these showers particularly enjoyable AFTER the baby has arrived.

Regardless of the forum, baby shower conversation always revolves around (you guessed it), babies and children and childbirth and weight loss and hair texture and how beautiful the pregnant lady looks and glowing skin and concealing dark circles under the eyes and, of course, sleep and her partner, sleeplessness.

I was at a shower last weekend of the luncheon variety.  It was a gorgeous day and a sophisticated setting, with a great group of women I like tremendously and don’t see often enough.  I was seated with a friend who has two children roughly the same age as mine and another who has a 7-week-old.  Though we have known each other for about seven years and had things in common well before our kids came along, we nonetheless defaulted to the babies and founded ourselves on the topic of sleep.

I used cry-it-out for months and months and MONTHS with Babyman to no avail.  I paid sleep specialists and behavioral specialists and to this day he pops out of bed with agonizing frequency.  Whack-a-mole, as another blogger describes it.  Babygirl just likes to sleep so I never bothered with any kind of training but just put in the 3-5 minutes it takes to rock her to sleep, which is awesome right now and may or may not come back to haunt me.  Probably it will.  Probably when she’s about 16.

My friend — who possesses, I should mention, one of the most organized and methodical minds I have ever encountered — followed the Baby Whisperer to the letter and her children (both of them!) sleep like…well, like babies.  I am so jealous.  I really wish I could go back in time and buy the Baby Whisperer books.

So New Mom innocently asked a question about getting her 7-week-old on a sleep schedule, and the two of us were tripping over each other to share our stories and our advice (“Baby Whisperer works, it worked for me” (her); “Just whatever you do, DON’T buy that book Healthy Sleep, Happy Baby unless you want to contemplate alcohol dependency” (me)) and so on and so forth.

I could see it happening on her face.  Poor New Mom was just nodding, silent, eyes growing ever wider as she attempted to digest all that we were throwing at her (“They have to learn how to go to sleep on their own”; “Of course, it’s so hard to listen to them cry but consistency is key”; “Oh, yes, definitely, BE CONSISTENT”; and finally, we threw out the great negator, “Of course, every baby is different.”).

In our defense, it was all very well-intentioned.  I mean, when something works, share it!  And when something fails miserably, warn!  But let’s not forget here that New Mom hasn’t slept a full night in at least 7 weeks and the simple act of getting out the door looking as sensational as she did (and she did) probably required multiple hours of advance planning.  If I were New Mom — and once upon I time, I was — I would have gone home, taken one look at my (awake) baby, and had a nervous breakdown.  Then I would have gone on Amazon.com and ordered Baby Whisperer and paced around like a caged animal until it arrived and I could memorize it.  (I basically did this, round about four years ago, but I bought the Weissbluth.  Oh, what an error.)

So a couple of days later, I emailed New Mom to apologize.  I really felt bad.  Since when am I an expert on parenting?  Good lord.  It’s very easy to give advice while sipping white wine and eating a light salad with my children nowhere in sight; actually making decisions on three hours of sleep when there is way too much information out there is another thing entirely, and one I have experienced all too often since becoming a mom.

In the next three days I will be attending two more baby showers, and in three weeks I am hosting another one.  I am vowing NOT to be an expert on anything at these parties…save, perhaps, at the art of relaxing for a few hours in the company of other great moms and the absence of the babies who got us here in the first place.