The hardest job in the world isn’t working on Wall Street. It’s not diving for snow crabs in the Arctic or tracking down serial killers for the FBI. As any parent can tell you, the hardest job in the whole world is raising a tiny human into a good person.
Whether your child is with you from day one, or joins your family later (like in the case of this loving, adoptive mom), each of us makes a commitment to protect and love our children until they’re ready to stand on their own two feet.
As promises go, that’s a big one! Sure, parenthood is full of rewarding moments, like the first day of school, or telling your little one that it’s time to expect a sibling. Just as frequently, however, parenthood is defined by sheer, exhausting, mind-melting chaos.
As delightful as children can be, grocery-aisle tantrums and repeat viewings of Frozen have a way of wearing everyone down. In those moments, it’s important to have some kind of release valve, because the frustration is very real, and it needs to go somewhere.
That’s why Rebecca Schuman, the creative mom behind the blog pan kisses kafka decided to create what she affectionately refers to as the “baby bird gallery.”
You can check out her original article for Slate here, and scroll through the gallery below to learn more about her strategy.
Schuman, a writer for Slate, is also proud momma to a 7-month-old baby girl.
She uses her blog as a place to open up about the challenges and rewards of motherhood, and as a forum to write her daughter honest, adoring, and painfully funny love letters. For example, her letter when her daughter turned six-months reads, in part:
“I can’t believe you’re no longer the scary, squishy little Walter Mathau that was wrested from my pelvis…You are a big, giant, heavy, fat bundle of feelings and curiosity and need and delight, and I love you so much. “
However, as much as she adores her daughter, she's the first to admit that motherhood is, at times, the rock-bottom worst.
With that in mind, Schuman started venting her frustrations into a very specific sort of victimless crime: flipping her baby girl the bird.
She's quick to note that she's not just indiscriminately giving her baby the finger at any interval.
It's a last-gasp, end-of-a-long-day type of ritual, designed to air a little bit of mommy frustration without actually unleashing on partner, parent, or the little one herself. As Schuman writes to her little girl, "Of course I wait until you’re snuggled in next to me, sighing and content and fed and unconscious, and I only do it as a joke."
The tongue-in-cheek bedtime ritual started around the same time that Schuman's daughter started teething.
Some babies are great sleepers from the get-go, but the vast majority are not. Colic, anxiety, and generalized baby-fussiness are all excellent reasons that a very tiny person might not sleep through the night. According to the blog, Schuman's little girl was a pretty decent sleeper until right around the five-month mark.
At this point, her infant daughter was constantly hungry, and inconsolably growing teeth.
If you've ever been around a teething baby before, you know its pretty much all about fussing and trying to find anything (anything!) that will make the pain go away. Schuman describes being woken repeatedly throughout the night by her daughter crying, and began the "baby bird" gallery as a way to celebrate successful incidences of lulling her little one back to sleep.
As she noted in her Slate article, "Sometimes, it takes longer to put the little tyrant to sleep than she’ll deign to remain asleep. It is on those days that I celebrate her hard-won unconsciousness by taking a nice little selfie in which she’s conked out, and I’m flipping her the bird."
With her little girl waking up dozens of times throughout the night to cry, feed, and repeat, Schuman was at her wit's end.
Having a sad, sobbing, disconsolate baby that just has to get through the next couple of months is a lot like having someone tap-dance on your last good nerve. As she describes in her 5-month report:
“For the first time since you were three weeks old, I was certifiably sleep deprived. As a result, I was a grade-A beyotch to everyone in the house, and by “everyone” I mean “your dad,” who got to experience the joys of nine years of PMS I never had all at once, for four weeks straight.”
Fortunately, Schuman and her baby seem to be emerging on the other side of the abyss.
Once the worst part of teething is over, most babies become much better at self-soothing and figuring out their sleep cycles. Over the next few months, this little family can probably enjoy a happy respite from the release valve functions of the "baby bird gallery." Of course, that will only last until maybe eighteen months, or whenever this cutie pie realizes that the best game ever is waking mom and dad up with midnight escape attempts.
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