Practice Baby

Once upon a time, in the days before Klonopin and Risperdal, I used to have dreams during times of high stress. The worst dreams, the ones that I woke up from feeling utterly panicked, were always pregnancy dreams. Most of these dreams occurred during church conference season.

For those who do not know, church conference season is best explained as this: it is a time of year in the United Methodist Church when quite a lot of people are stressed out because they have to fill out a bunch of reports. A smaller group of people are stressed out because they have to receive, process, and/or read all of the reports. It is in general a time of year when everyone feels a little bit sorry for themselves without having much reason to because everyone is in the same boat and all the feet in the boat are dry, so really everyone should just calm down. This is a thing I can confidently say now because I no longer work on church conferences and distance from a thing gives perspective.

But I digress.

One year during church conference season I had the strangest of stress dreams. It went as follows:

I found myself heavily pregnant and hanging out at my friends Monica and Shaun’s house. We were sitting on the couch and making plans to go see a very exciting movie which was being released at the time. I was very excited to go along, third wheeling it as I often do with Monica and Shaun. But then the worst happened: I went into labor.

Sometimes an entire stress dream would be about the labor and delivery process in gross and exaggerated detail, but thankfully this dream skipped over the most brutal images. I remember going into labor and then quickly jumping forward to the post-birth scenes only to discover that I had given birth to not one but two cats. Not kittens, full grown cats.

Presumably I gave birth to these cats on a blanket in Monica’s basement or something, because in the scenes following the birth I was still in Monica’s house. I was no longer pregnant and my progeny were behaving much as cats do, climbing all over the furniture, chasing toys around on the floor, and all but ignoring me, their mother. Soon after the birth, Monica and Shaun started getting ready to go to the movie that we had planned to attend. They were acting like they were going without me, so I stood up and started to get ready as well.

Shocked by the idea that I expected to leave the house with them, Monica stopped me.

“You can’t just leave,” she said. “You have responsibilities now.” She indicated the cats.

“But…they’re cats, “ I said. Both animals were happily sleeping in a cabinet as I said it. “I’m pretty sure I could leave them in that cabinet and they’d be fine while I go to the movie.”

Monica and Shaun were scandalized by this. “You cannot lock your children in a cabinet!”

“I didn’t say I would lock them in! Also…they’re CATS!!”

I lost the argument and ended up staying behind to watch my children, both of whom could not have cared less if I was there or not.

I woke up from the dream sad that I couldn’t go to the movie and confused at why I had given birth to cats.

To this day I’m not sure what my subconscious was trying to tell me, but I do understand that if birthing cats was overwhelming in a dream, birthing a human in real life would probably make my head explode.

I have always feared pregnancy and childbirth because of the loss of control over your own body. My mom and godmother once told me that it’s not scary, it’s natural. Your body just takes over and does what it was built to do. What a terrifying prospect! I much prefer to maintain the illusion that I have some degree of control over my body and what it does, so the body taking over idea really freaks me out.

Really though, the birth is but the first moment in a life for which you, as the parent, become responsible. And it’s not just about keeping the child alive, but teaching it to thrive. Disciplining the child when it misbehaves. Supporting the child in it’s dreams, even when they want to be something ridiculous that is hard to achieve like president or a non-douchebag club DJ. Trying not to pass on the worst parts of your own personality, but loving them through it when you do. The responsibility of parenthood is the scariest part.

At this point in my life I am proud to be a pet parent and I think I take excellent care of my little boy. I see to his every need: food, water, a clean place to poop. I brush out his coat when it’s warm outside and he’s shedding. I take him to the vet every year to get his shots and to be told that he’s a little too fat (like mother, like son). I attempt to discipline him when he jumps up on the counter or wakes me up by ripping holes in my bedsheets. We even talk about his feelings: he screams his head off at me when he wants his dinner at 4 pm, and I tell him, “it’s not time yet, baby, very soon.” And every day I get in his personal space and give him kisses that he does not want and tell him that mama loves him and that he’s such a good boy, like every self-respecting overbearing mother would. He is my precious little boy.

Yet even something as simple as caring for a cat can be overwhelming. If someone gives me a flower or plant my immediate thought is, “can I bring this in the house with the cat? Will he die if he eats it?” Anytime he gets into food that he shouldn’t be eating, I immediately Google to see if it is toxic to cats. (Meanwhile, he’s eaten so many things that are supposedly toxic to cats, I’m not even sure he really is a cat. He might be a robot cat sent from the future.) When he barfs up his breakfast, which cats just do sometimes, I nervously watch him all day, looking for signs that something is seriously wrong. If he doesn’t sleep all day like he normally does, I start to worry that he’s worried about something that is keeping him awake. It’s kind of exhausting. And that is nothing to raising a human being.

As much as I fear the pregnancy and childbirth process, I haven’t fully given up on the idea of spawning. There is still a small part of my brain that is like, “it would be really cool to create life.” Knowing that I have a uterus and ovaries and have yet to use them for their purpose feels a little bit like having an untapped superpower. But perhaps, for me, it is a superpower that should remain dormant. I am an anxious person just when it comes to keeping myself alive. Imagine what I might be like with a whole other human person to maintain. Mommy needs a benzo just thinking about it.

At this particular moment I am content with my feline child. I can leave him for a couple days with the automatic feeder and he is still alive when I get back. I can go to the movies and he barely notices that I’m gone. He’s super cute and is someone unto whom I can pour all of the excess affection I’m carrying around. It works for me where I’m at right now.

I understand that cats are not children, but I appreciate this relatively low stress opportunity to practice nurturing another life form. If I ever do decide to procreate, any confidence I have in my abilities to parent will come in part from my experience with Moishe. He is my practice baby.

I remain hopeful that a real baby would not bite and scratch me quite so much, but if it does that is one reality for which I am more than prepared.