heath | Middle-Aged Motherhood

Middle-Aged Motherhood Truths

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Heather Scarbro Dobson

One of 14 photos of Amelia after she stole my phone.

Being the mother of teenagers is weird as hell, y’all. It’s just crazy.

My niece is the mother of three little ones and is in the boat I used to be in a decade or so ago. Whenever I talk to her, I look back and think, “Wow, I was there. Here seemed so very far away. And yet… I’m smack in the middle of it.” In a way, this post is for her. But also? This post is for the me ten years from now that will be a mom of full-fledged adults. Because THAT shit will be absolutely cray.

I’m convinced that Jarrod is trying to get a head-start on his infectious disease vaccine career. Why? Because whenever I step into his room, there’s a smell. Not a “those socks haven’t been washed in two weeks and take a damned shower” smell. More like an “aren’t those the chicken nuggets we bought for dinner last week” smell. Yeah. From time to time, I’ll stop in to his room, gesticulate wildly in the general direction of everything, and yell something about, “WHAT IN TARNATION IS THAT STENCH?!” (Note: Yes, I say tarnation.). Eventually, I’ll find a bowl full of curdled milk and moldy Cheerios that I had no clue were even in said room in the kitchen sink and the nuggets will still be sitting on his desk, in front of the keyboard he looks at every evening when he plays video games. I just keep telling myself that someday, he’ll discover a cure for teen angst amidst all of that old food.

Driving. My 4-pound, 6-ounce baby is driving.

Amelia and her friends will FaceTime each other at all hours of the day and night. No lie. I will go downstairs to check on her and there, on her side table, will be her phone, plugged in and charging, with an active FaceTime call. On the screen will be several of her friends, all sleeping. It’s like a virtual slumber party. They will talk all day and into the wee hours. No one will hang up. They’ll just stay on the call, each falling asleep at different times, eventually waking one another up when they regain consciousness the next day.

Tyler and I will be in the family room, watching whatever TV show has piqued our interest, when Heath will march in, cracking his knuckles, ready to talk. He will launch in to his most recent computer creation, whether it’s an ocean liner he’s created on Roblox or a new flag he’s designed. He will pace the floor, nearly wearing out the carpet, sometimes for ten solid minutes. We’ll pause whatever we’re watching and just watch and listen, interjecting every now and then with “Uh-huh” or “Cool!” And then he’ll go silent, walk back upstairs, and Tyler and I will just look at each other, shrug, and realize we’ve been witness to another Heath drive-by. He just designed a new flag for Cherokee County and emailed the county commissioners telling them about it. Not that there’s been a request for a new flag, he just thinks the current one is rather ho-hum. (Cue “Sheldon Cooper’s Fun with Flags” intro music.) Also? He’s on reddit. And it’s a never ending cycle of each of us texting the other with funny memes and cat videos we’ve both found on said web site.

Apparently, sleeping with a hoodie around one’s neck is all the teen rage.

All three of them sleep in. And when I say “sleep in” I mean “there are some weekends when it’s 1PM and I go to their bedrooms and hold my index finger under their noses to feel for breath because I’m worried they’ve passed in their sleep.” When we’re all kids, don’t we all make promises to our future children? That you’ll never repeat the sins of your parents? Mine have always been that I will let the kids sleep in on weekends/holidays/summer and not force them to accompany me to the grocery store. But, sometimes? When they sleep in until the wee hours of the afternoon? It freaks me out. And not only do they sleep in, but the boys will sleep in their clothes. They eschew pajamas. They shower, put on clothes, go to bed, and roll out the next morning. I mean, it’s brilliant? But I’m waiting for the day when they have jobs and are calling me to ask how to remove sleep wrinkles from a tie.

The most common phrases uttered in the house:

Chill your beans! (Jarrod. To me. When I complain about the old food smell permeating his room.)

So, there’s this video on TikTok… (Amelia. All the time.)

OH MY GOD, JARROD! (Heath. Most days.)

YOU’RE DAMAGING MY CALM! (Tyler. Typically in the evenings. When the kids and I get riled up.)

No lie. You guys are the G.O.A.T. (Me. To multiple members of my family. Even when they leave Cheetos ground into my purple carpet.

The Blink of an Eye

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Heather Scarbro Dobson

I remember lying in my hospital bed, a mother for just seven short hours. My twin babies were in the NICU and I was full of anxiety. I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to see them but wasn’t allowed because of the danger of seizures, I was worried I wouldn’t know how to breastfeed them, and my blood pressure was so high that I was mainlining magnesium sulfate through an IV pump I had affectionately named “George.” The doctor had ordered a “nightcap” for my IV (read: something to finally knock out the psycho mother in room 15) and I was just drifting off to sleep as my breastfeeding consultant walked in the room.

See, I was absolutely freaked that the twins wouldn’t get enough breastmilk. If I gave them a bottle, then I would know how much they drank. The ounces would be clearly marked on the side and with a little simple subtraction, I could know how much they were eating. Breasts, unfortunately, don’t come with those ounce marks. Plus, writing down the amount of poop and pee they created each day just seemed a bit too much like flying by the seat of my pants which, as we all know, I DO NOT DO.

So, there she was, this tired “Breast Milk is Best” advocate who was there to calm me down and give me advice.

In the middle of her instructions, her phone rang. It was her newly-minted 13-year-old daughter who was asking if she could have more minutes on her phone. You see, September 16th was her birthday, too. And she had just received a shiny, new cell phone for that 13th birthday. But, she had used all the monthly minutes to set it up and call all her friends to say, “HEY! CHECK IT OUT! I HAVE A NEW PHONE!”

Even through my drug-addled, anxiety-ridden, sleepy brain, I could hear the mom’s/breastfeeding nurse’s voice become more terse and frustrated as the conversation went on.

“No. You cannot have more minutes.”

“You’ll get more minutes on October 1st. Those are the rules.”

“It’s not my fault you used up all of September’s minutes in just a matter of hours.”

“You should have paid attention to what you’re doing.”

“I know it’s your birthday, but deal with it.”

When she finally hung up, she apologized, explained what had happened, and as she spoke, gestured to me and the pictures of my new babies, and said, “This? Hon? This is easy. All you have to do is feed them, change their diapers, and love them. When they get to be 13? That’s the hard part. Trust me.”

Of course, I didn’t believe her. I was convinced that trying to guesstimate breastfeeding quantities was going to be the hardest thing I had EVER done in my ENTIRE life. (Postpartum anxiety is a total bitch, yo.)

Eleven years later, and here we are on the cusp of that cell phone moment. There are many days when I can see the beginnings of the teen years with mood swings and attitude. It’s no fun being the mom who takes away the iPad and tells them “NO!” while their tears fall as if it’s the end of the world. I can tell you that even though I know I’m doing the right thing, I still feel like the most awful mom in the world.

Somewhere out there is a 24-year-old woman, celebrating her birthday. She most likely pays for her own phone, and she may have her own children. I doubt she recalls that conversation with her mother, but I remember it as if it were only yesterday. I can remember rolling my eyes and thinking, “The teen years are SO FAR AWAY!”

And yet, they aren’t. They’re staring me in the face. I sometimes wish I could go back to the easy days of baby giggles, diapers, and fuzzy breastmilk consumption math, because she was right, those days were SO much more simple.

But, even though these days are no longer easy, they are certainly more interesting. I’m never bored. I see children who are forming ideas about the world, learning constantly, loving those around them, laughing freely, crying, arguing, questioning, and becoming really cool people. They make me feel more alive and more tired, all at the same time. I know the next eleven years will pass as quickly as these have and before I know it, I’ll have adults in place of the babies I once knew.

And I’ll long for these difficult days of the pre-teen years.

Happy 11th birthday, Amelia and Heath! I love you so very much!

Sick and Twisted

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Heather Scarbro Dobson

“Looks like a Bataan death march.” -Brad Finn

No one gives you instructions on how to be a mother when you’re sick. Oh, sure. You receive tons of advice about feeding them and changing their diapers. Everyone scrambles to help you snap up those onsies and cuddle the cute, wittle, sweet, BABEHS! You give birth and there’s a multitude of opinions about sleepless nights, growth spurts, and the sometimes endless crying. “Sleep when they sleep!” they all chant to you. And then those sages of advice eventually went home and I was left with one twin who slept like the dead and another who was so colicky that sleep was only something I read about in magazines. And when the third one came along? Sleep became an extremely rare commodity. They all had competing schedules and I, somehow, kept three children and myself alive and fed for six months with just a few hours of sleep each night.

In retrospect, that’s nothing. What’s really hard is being a mom while you’re sick. Nobody tells you how difficult that is. It’s like this huge secret, a motherhood initiation. When I finally experienced it for the first time, I imagined all the other mothers giggling and snorting behind my back, whispering, “IT’S HAPPENING! Let’s watch the carnage and see if she makes it!” As I imagined them pulling up their chairs and digging into buckets of buttered popcorn, I bitterly dove head-first into my first-ever “sick with kids” episode.

The twins were three months old and still latching on to me at all hours of the day and night. Not only was I exhausted, but my throat started feeling scratchy, and then I couldn’t talk, and then I was using up every tissue within a six-mile radius of the house, and then I was hacking up both lungs.

There’s nothing more miserable than breastfeeding twins while surviving a nasty upper-respiratory something-or-other. And the worst part? I was on my own. Tyler had to work and none of the grandparents wanted to catch what I had. So, there I sat, at home, alone, and wondering why in the world I decided to have kids and wanting nothing more than for my mommy to tuck me into bed and bring me warm soup and Sunkist.

The above picture was taken last Wednesday, during the kids’ “Walk To School Day.” It was an official event, full of county deputies directing traffic and hordes of kids and their parents, converging (on foot) onto the school. Heck, the Chick-fil-A cow was even there! (Do we Southerners know how to do up an event, or what?) The kids had been looking forward to this morning for a week. And I started experiencing my tell-tale scratchy throat and low-grade fever the night before. When I woke up the next morning, I looked and felt like death warmed-over and knew I had nothing but misery ahead of me. That quote? Up there on the picture? Actually kind of apropos considering how awful I felt. It was 1.7 miles of speeding up, slowing down, stopping, chit-chat, and trying not to trip over those new-fangled rolling backpacks.

Yeah, I was miserable, but I was also surprisingly content. I had 45 uninterrupted minutes of my children’s time. We talked about school and friends and the cars passing us. We paused to smell late-blooming gardenias and observed a golden orb weaver spider on its web. I sipped my coffee, more for the soothing effect of the warm liquid than for any caffeine rush. And we made it. Tyler picked me up at the end and I collapsed into his car happy, yet thankful to the stars above that it was over.

In the nine years I’ve been a mother, there’s only been a handful of mornings I’ve woken up and said to Tyler, “I can’t do this. I’m too sick. You’re going to have to take over today.” No, being sick and being a parent is no fun. In the beginning, the kids don’t care. They will still expect meals and answers and activities and your undivided attention. I learned early on how to just lie on the floor as they played. They would treat me as a wall for them to climb and tumble over. I felt useless, but they would giggle and have the greatest of times. I would get up from time to time to feed them and change diapers, but I adapted. I realized that when I was sick, I was allowed to be less than myself. When the twins started first grade, I spent two bronchitis-filled weeks on the couch, with Jarrod, watching the London Olympics. And that was OK.

Now that my children are older, they are able to empathize and take care of themselves. When I say I don’t feel well, they back off, they let me have that rest, and they demand less of me. They are able to pick up the slack. All that stuff we’ve been teaching them? It’s finally paying off and it’s an amazing thing to see happen after so many years of dependence.

I decided, quite a long time ago, that if any of my children have children of their own, and they find themselves on the receiving end of a cold or the flu or some other nasty illness, I will be there for them. I will fix them soup and Sunkist and fluff their pillows, stroke their foreheads, and wish them rest and wellness.

And then I’ll tiptoe downstairs to my grandkids and take them out for ice cream, water gun battles, and Legos. Because I’m thinking that’s what all the cool, hip grandmothers will do sometime around 2030.