Butterfly Mama

By Lauren from Quixotic Life

In my last post here, I compared my pregnancy to a chrysalis phase. I’d like to talk a bit more about that, about how my becoming a mother encouraged me to pursue a more meaningful life, and how grateful I am to my daughter for coming along just in time to save me from a life of being a snarky, materialistic, self-absorbed yuppie with a fabulous shoe collection. Actually, that’s quite a bummer about the shoes…

I’d like to think I would have eventually found my way down a more spiritual path on my own, but it was certainly a catalyst, becoming a Mama. Suddenly there is this tiny being, completely dependent on me for everything, even life, in the very beginning when she still lived inside me. You realise that the world isn’t all about you, and things that seemed very important before, like material possessions and image and status, actually seems sort of silly, when compared to the importance of being responsible for this magnificent, perfect tiny person.

While she was still a baby, this shift in my awareness centred mainly on basic things, like the food I put in my body (and therefore fed to her) and the chemicals I put on my skin.
I had never before bothered to read the ingredient labels on my moisturiser, or research what all those chemicals actually were.  Now, when I saw her sweet little face nestled upon my skin, feeding from the food my body magically produced for her, it made me wonder what else she might be soaking up.

So I started looking into the products I used, and the chemicals they contained. It was pretty shocking; parabens that are highly toxic, propylene glycol that de-ices airplanes and causes liver damage, sodium laurel sulfate that is linked to a whole host of disorders, titanium, benzene, PCB’s; TEA, DEA  – it was an alphabet of poisons, and I was absorbing it… then feeding it to my baby!

I started buying natural, chemical-free products, and the baby helped out by barely giving me enough time to shower, let alone pamper myself with body products.

Lo and behold the ‘chronic fatigue’ I had suffered ever since having glandular fever and Ross River fever within five years of each other disappeared. I had always believed the Doctors simply called it that for lack of a real idea of what was wrong with me, and can’t believe I suffered feeling tired and depressed for years before it occurred to me to look at what I put into my body.

Then there was the food I was eating.  In an effort to find out why my baby would scream and curl up in pain after every breastfeed (like clockwork, an hour after feeding, then an hour after that), and to prove to the Doctors and paediatricians it wasn’t ‘just colic’ like they kept telling me, even when it persisted at six months old,  I put myself on an elimination diet, where I basically cut out everything except fruit and vegies (although I did discover she got very bad wind whenever I ate pumpkin, go figure) and then gradually added food groups back in. This is how we eventually discovered she had a wheat intolerance, and I got a new family doctor who was also a Mum, and understood that a mother knows when something isn’t right with their baby.

I also started eating more organically, especially fruits and vegetables. Shopping for food actually became pleasurable, rather than a chore when I stopped hauling a wobbly shopping trolley round a supermarket designed to trap me, and started visiting the local Farmers Market. I would get up early on a weekend morning (who am I kidding, I was up already) and wander around the market, chatting to the stallholders, nibbling on taster plates, sipping an organic soy latte and generally having a lovely time. Sometimes I would leave my daughter with hubby, but I usually preferred to have her with me. I would pop her in the sling, and watch her look around as we wandered about, the stallholders would coo over her, and I would crush mint and lemongrass on my fingers and watch her eyes widen as she smelled them. She still loves to be in the kitchen with me as I cook, and loves to learn about different foods, what they smell like, taste like, how you cook them.

When she started eating, I did try the baby foods they sell in supermarkets, but they tasted so horrible I couldn’t imagine any baby willingly eating them! I did find a yummy and organic range at Mrs Flannery’s, but I finally found a use for the blender other than making cocktails and pureed my own food for her, from the organic vegies I bought at the market.  When she got older and was on a good range of foods, I would simply whizz up whatever we were eating, sometimes making it less spicy, although I stopped doing that after catching her eating her Dad’s rogan josh off his plate while we were distracted! From then on she ate what we ate, and she still loves flavourful, even spicy foods.

This was the beginning of my being more mindful in my parenting, just the simple basics of what I was putting in to her nutritionally.

Then I began to think about what I was putting into her in more esoteric terms. As she grew, what I was I teaching her?
I realise at three years old, it’s a little early to be worrying about teaching her things like self-belief, confidence, being true to yourself and respect for others, but I really do think the groundwork starts now. It doesn’t seem right to me to suddenly announce at a certain age, “Right, this is how you are to behave from now on; this is how you should be”. It seems better to me to start from day one, so she grows up having this as a part of her.

It is truly daunting to think of all the lessons I would like to teach her, to help shape her into the best version of herself she can be.
And how can I teach her if I’m not in a mindful, present state?

How can I show her to love herself, just as she is, if I don’t afford myself the same self-love?

I will demand the best of myself, because she deserves it.

I am conscious that I am teaching her, all the time, just by her watching me. What behaviour am I modelling for her? When faced with a problem, she will see me either crumble, or stay positive and look for the solution and the lesson. When I’m stressed out will she learn that you deal with it by yelling and throwing a fit, or by giving yourself a calm moment, some space to breathe and regroup?

To make the right choices as she grows older, she will need a strong sense of who she is. She needs to learn that the media, advertisers and quite a lot of the world in general, do not always have her best interests at heart.  But I do. I will teach her to look beyond the superficial and seek meaning.

I’m not going to tell her the kind of person she has to be, but I have to help her discover it. I need to know who I am first though.
And I’m working on it.