Mommy & Baby & Me

Who is who is who

One thing you think before you have a baby is “I’ll bring them with me everywhere!” These words are uttered in January before you have ever lifted a car seat period, let alone one with a baby in it in 90-degree heat. You do it anyway a lot of the time, but it sucks, despite what Internet mothers might have you believe. It involves a lot of evaluating a public bathroom floor, wondering if you can change the baby’s diaper there and, when you do, if the disease they inevitably contract will be fatal. At a certain point you need to find a place where people don’t just tolerate babies—they encourage them. This place? Mommy and Me. What about Daddy and Me? Great question, but no one seems to care to answer it. It’s Mommy and Me, and the Me, of course, is not you—the me is your baby, the you is Mommy. You is Mommy. Forever.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A painting of a mother, who wears a flowing white gown and velvet gloves (practical), holds her child, who wears a gold lame onesie (practical). This is what I look like most days, too! (source)

Because this is LA (I have not forgotten the theme!), the first activity we attempted was Mommy and Me Yoga Class. This is a yoga class where people bring their babies. The instructor is a former actress and dancer whose flexibility is exceedingly apparent, especially when surrounded by people who are have just or are about to give birth. As I struggle to reach whatever it is my arms are stretching towards, hers are well past her feet, the floor, the ceiling and on their way to behind her head.

The basic premise of the class is: try and do yoga while babies are there. The babies range from birth to a year so they do things like: cry, drool, puke, crawl, walk, run, squawk, scream, grab, and, every now and then, something similar to a yoga pose. This means at any given time about half the class is chasing after a baby while the other half attempts to do yoga. Whenever the half chasing the babies gets a hold of those babies, the other babies take off and everyone switches. The instructor often gets up to distract the babies by banging on bongos or picking them up or giving them something to chew on, all while reminding us to keeps our hips aligned.

I told my friend Carrie about it and she asked, “Do you actually do any yoga?” And of course the answer is no, but that’s not really the point, is it? The point is air conditioning.

The second activity we tried was Story Time at the library. Again, fairly self-explanatory: someone reads children a story at the library. We arrived ahead of time to make sure we got a parking spot, which is extremely competitive (again: LA). We socialized with the other attendees while I gazed at the people doing work at the bank of tables next us, thinking how recently I was one of them. I detected only the most subtle of glares, but it was Story Time and we were on the baby rug, so what was everyone going to do? The babies pulled books off the shelves and tried to grab each other while we waited for the reader, who never appeared. It turned out they had cancelled that day, so we packed it in.

It was okay. We got what we came for: air conditioning.

My life is different now. From what? From before. From before what? Take your pick. I wish it all were a little more integrated. What? Take your pick. For now there’s mommy and baby and I’m sure there’s still a me somewhere and someday she’ll write about something interesting again, maybe.