Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Jumperoo

To Read with a Coffee on Mother's Day - Feet in the Grass #3

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born." ― Osho, Indian Philospher

I always liked this quote because it captured the loss of self and the birth of a new version of me that I experienced when I became a mother, nearly ten years ago.

The metamorphosis was startling. Picture me: seven months pregnant with my first baby. The sun was setting as I clocked out of my shift at the public library and crossed the street, my feet moving on the pavement beneath my big bulging stomach. I’d never been a confrontational person, a result of my southern upbringing and an innate people-pleasing personality. My best friend called in sick for me at work in high school. My husband pressed send on difficult e-mails I was afraid to write. If I ordered a chopped salad with balsamic and received a BBQ sandwich with slaw, Oh my gosh, it’s fine. Do not worry about it. I love pulled pork.

I’d parked on the fifth floor, and was in my third trimester of pregnancy, so of course, I was taking the elevator. The elevator doors opened and I stepped inside and pressed the button for level 5. A man approached with a cigarette hanging between his lips, smoke rising from the tip and stepped towards the elevator. I blocked him and said firmly, “No. You can’t get in here with that,” I gestured to my stomach, “I’m expecting.” Then I closed the door on him.

Holy crap. I thought. Who is this woman? Nice to meet you.

It was then that I realized I would never be the same.

The last nine and half years of my life have been nothing short of a whirlwind. It’s only now— with a nine and seven year old— that I think I can speak in complete sentences again. Only now, that I’ve taken pelvic floor physical therapy, exercise again regularly, have time to read adult books again, and have taken the childproof latches off of the cabinets, that I can even reflect on what any of this means.

I remember when I was a new mom, of that same baby who was inside my swollen stomach on that elevator in the parking garage, I kept thinking something would make it easier. I had a baby carrier, but it wasn’t the right baby carrier. It was just a secondhand baby carrier my mom picked up at a yard sale. Maybe if I had a different baby carrier, my baby wouldn’t scream while strapped across my chest.

That year, I trialed three different carriers.

A cheap secondhand one. An expensive one which boasted three different carrying positions. And a soft knit one in a rich green which required a Youtube video to strap around my body.

There was crying in all three.

(embarrassing yet essential photographic proof of all three baby carriers)

Even after trialing three carriers, I still did not get it. I was in a sleep deprived haze. All of my brain cells were being pumped out with my dwindling breast milk because I somehow could not get my child to latch— the most basic maternal function. I pumped at work, at home, in the middle of the night— and even at stoplights in a strapless pumping bra with the pump plugged into the car cigarette lighter. I dare you to pull me over, this new angry woman that I had become, thought aloud regularly. But I never admitted that being a new mom was hard. I only admitted that it was the breast pump. The breast pump included with my insurance was rubbish. If I had a better breast pump, everything would be fine.

When my baby was six months old, I was in the kitchen, probably drinking my sixth coffee of the day. I’d thought the Jumperoo would be the ticket. I’d put her in the Jumperoo, and would be able to make a whole dinner while she jumped happily in the room beside me.

She jumped and giggled in her Jumperoo for a few minutes, then whimpered and held up her arms to be freed.

“You just want me, don’t you?” I said, lifting her up.

I looked down at the Jumperoo, its flashing lights and buttons, the crinkly butterfly and tactile, soft hanging toys ready to be swatted or squeezed or pulled. And I knew then two things: nothing was going to make this easy. And, secondly, why did I ever think it would be?

Life looks a lot different from that scene in the kitchen nine years ago. Today, we went to the local Farmer’s Market and then took our kids to the trails nearby to ride bikes.

My youngest is this close.

“I’m on the last step!” she says as we try and try and try to get it.

“Keep pedaling!” I repeat. “Keep your arms straight.”

“I’m NEVER going to get it!!!!” she says, so frustrated.

We try again, but her arms keep teetering side to side like a seesaw, throwing the bike off balance. It’s because we had training wheels, I think, exasperated. We should’ve used a balance bike. But I swat that thought away like a buzzing fly.

It’s just hard. And did I expect it to be easy?

I’ve been running a lot recently. I’m not very fast, but I feel really strong. Stronger than I’ve probably ever been. Once I saw a video from a race. A man stood over the bridge and screamed down to the runners, “There will be a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.”

I repeat this in my head every time I’m running and I want to stop. I imagine myself old or sick, physically unable to run three miles, and it’s like getting a mushroom cap in Mario Kart. I plow full speed ahead.

I love that perspective. And lately, I’ve been applying the same gentle pressure to motherhood.

As my daughter throws her bike down and stomps, and says, “I’m never going to get it!!!”

There will be a day that I’m not standing beside a seven year old in a blue dress with white birds on it and a chocolate stain on the front, helping her to learn to ride her bike.

When my nine year is sad and crying in the backseat because they lost a soccer game, and she didn’t get to play the last quarter, and the ref definitely wasn’t fair, and she’s the youngest kid in the league and the other girls look like they’re in middle school.

There will be a day when she’s not nine, with her hair in braided pigtails, sharing all of her sadness with me.

What, did I think this would be easy?

There’s not enough paper in all of the world to write about the things my children have taught me.

But the Jumperoo was the first memorable lesson: This is tough. Nothing is going to make this easy.

Then I remember the race I’m in, and how doing hard things feels really good. I remember the woman who was born the day that my daughter was born. The one who closes elevator doors to protect her kid and pumps breastmilk at stoplights and hisses, “I dare you to pull me over.”

I pull the bike up out the dirt, and help my daughter climb onto the saddle, and run beside her as she pedals, before I let go.

On the old, secondhand-from-our-neighbor yellow bike— the one with the broken bell and rust on the chain— she pedals and pedals and she keeps the handlebars straight.

“You did it!!!” I scream, jumping up and down.

You did it. We did it.