YO MAMA: Embracing the moments that challenge us most
OPINION
Shortly after my son was born, my mother sent me a birthday card featuring a mother goose and her offspring.
The image, by artist Doris Cyrette, depicts the pair engaged in a beautiful, yet emotionally charged dance. The duckling is rearing up at his mother, wings out, fierce and defiant.
The two are intimately connected, yet captured in a power struggle. The image is, fittingly, called “The Challenge.”
At the time, I was figuring out breastfeeding and “The Challenge” resonated deeply. The flailing of arms, the crying out and the struggle to both get comfortable in our new relationship sometimes felt like a wild battle.
Various images from the Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna Litta, showed what I wanted breastfeeding to look like: blissful, tender, cooperative and quiet. While it was sometimes all of those things, it could also be difficult, uncomfortable and draining, not to mention it could also leave us both covered in messy spit-up.
“The Challenge” and other works by Cyrette, whose subject matter often portrays images of parenthood, is a remarkable illustration of the powerful connection between mother and child, and an image I have returned to over and over again throughout my first few years as a mother.
Recognizing that my beautiful boy will, at times, challenge me in ways that are completely natural, healthy and expected, has helped me navigate through some of the more difficult moments of parenthood with grace.
From the moment he was placed on my chest, my son and I were bonded together as a mother-son unit — glued to each other almost constantly in those first few months — yet we were also two distinct individuals. We were one entity, and two; joined, yet separate.
Our partnership was always loving, yet it was not always peaceful or harmonious. Sometimes, we disagreed on things: I wanted to sleep; he wanted to play. I wanted to change his diaper; he wanted to kick me in the face. I wanted to go for a walk; he wanted to breastfeed for hours on end.
Powerful and conflicting emotions were all tangled up: pure love, frustration, rage and joy. He was exerting his will to not only survive, but to carve out his identity in this big world. I was in awe of his spirit and vitality, if a bit terrified of it. I hadn’t expected he would be such a strong force so soon.
He was not, and never will be, a passive tag-along in my life. He was his own person, right from birth.
Now that he is a full-fledged toddler, I find myself engaged in “The Challenge” daily, if not hourly.
I put his socks on, he takes them off. He wants to ride in the stroller, then decides he’d rather walk. I run a bath, he pulls the plug. I pick him up, he wants down. I put him down, he wants up. I want him to pee in the potty; he goes on the floor.
He must do everything on his own, even if it means shutting a door I have just opened so he can open it himself. He is Mr. Independent and I love and respect him for it.
Even in the midst of one of his little tantrums, I am proud: in the only way he knows so far, he is voicing his opinion, expressing his emotions, making a statement. He is a squawking, feisty little duckling, taking a stand in the world.
— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.
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