A Girl Becomes A Mother
Proposal
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This second experiment will be based on the last poem from my creative writing poem portfolio, entitled “Thirty”. This poem tackles the the life-altering event of becoming a parent and the changing perspective and emotions that come with it. I will transform this poem into a baby book/photo journal loosely based on my grandmother’s eight children, with visual components giving imagery to the progression of having more children, but also accompanied writing providing more explicit description. There’s a common sentiment that when you become a parent, your child doesn’t just become a part of your life, it becomes your whole life. I want to explore that sentiment. Yet my personal interest lies with my late grandmother. I only knew her as my grandma, but I want to see who she was as a mother. This baby book/photo journal is best intended for parents, who can relate more to the psychological changes that occur and reminisce more on these experiences. Yet, everyone knows someone who has children, and this project can better give an overall sense to the changing behaviors parents go through. Whether you’re witnessing your friends becoming parents or are thinking of going down this path yourself, this project can give a more comprehensive understanding as to what parenting entails psychologically and biologically.
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Genre Analysis
Baby books became popular as accounts of mundane moments of infancy. There were previous, scientific-oriented recordings of babies, but it was in the early 1900’s that these detailed accounts were created solely for remembrance rather than research, due to medicine and sanitation advancements giving confidence to parents on their baby's survival. Baby books soon gave parenting advice and health measurements, and evolved to creative pieces with spaces for picture recordings and blurbs for written description. The photo essay discipline began in 1936 with the first publication of LIFE magazine, made possible by halftone printing and hand-held cameras. Photo essays utilize the photographs to depict the event and writing to give the perspective, a contrast of illustration and description. Similar to baby books, photo essays began as more formal, informational pieces and have now developed into aesthetic creations. There’s plentiful research that inspects the psychological and biological aftermath of parenthood. In fact, one's neurological system changes, as neurons that correlate to happiness and reward become more synced to your baby. Additionally, the amygdala, which connects to emotional control, decision-making, and empathy, becomes more hypersensitive. However, parents are significantly less happy than non-parents, due to the stress, time, and money a child requires. Similar to the first experiment, my project will take these psychological and biological changes and put them into an artistic lens.
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Sketch
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Eight sets of photos with accompanying journals addressing a different child, sequentially from eldest to youngest
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First emphasis will be the new paranoia and anxiety that parenthood brings, changed attentiveness and daily routines
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Followed by exacerbated stresses that come with multiple children, monetary, social, and marriage costs
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End with lapses of journal entires due to fatigue, final entry will reminisce on entire parenting process and appreciation of children
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Sample
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The First Boy Born December 12, 1960, 8 lbs.
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I studied “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” like it was scripture. What I needed was “What to Expect After You’ve Expected”.
This baby has become my life. There is not a moment that goes by where I am not feeding, cradling, playing, watching, or thinking about him. It’s been four days since I had a moment alone. It’s been two weeks since I got more than four hours of sleep. It’s been ten months since I’ve had a drink. I can’t not worry about him – the second he leaves my eyeline or train of thought, the inevitable disaster that was waiting to strike has done so. When I leave the room, I come back to a boy dressed in mashed peaches, or a wall designed with spaghetti strands.
But it’s all worth it. I have never felt such joy, such affection. I have never loved as I do now. I cannot help but smile when I look at him. I’m doing it right now. He is so innocent, so pure, so beautiful. I spent the first 33 years of my life without him, and now I can’t imagine a single day without him. I feel like I might be going insane, but it’s a good kind of an insane. It’s an insane I never want to give up. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the god-awful smells he expels or the shrill screams he emits, but I’m sure I’ll learn to love them just as I love the rest of him. More likely I will learn to tolerate them. They are the worst.
There’s just so much I couldn’t see coming. Everyone tells you how it’s going to be, but you can’t actually know until you leave the hospital. That’s when it hit me that this was real life, that I have a real baby that I, myself, have to take care of. It’s not babysitting, there are no breaks. He is with me, forever. Forever. That’s a really long time. He is with me to the day I die. Why am I thinking about death? I just got sad now.
It’s okay, I saw him make bubbles with his mouth and I’m happy again. I can’t help but wonder about the man he’s going to grow up to be, about all the potential he has. He could become the fastest man alive, he could cook the greatest apple pie known to man, he could cure Alzheimer’s once and for all. He could save the world. He’s already saved me. I didn’t think or know that I was in need of saving before, but now I am sure of it; he saved my life.
To tell the truth, I have no real clue of what I’m doing. I just want to be a good mom for him, because he deserves the best darn mom in the whole world. He’s truly my favorite thing in the world. He’s my everything.
I want another one :)
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The Second Boy Born April 29, 1962, 7 lbs., 6 oz.
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They say it takes two to tango. If that’s the truth, I am fumbling this dance. They also say two heads are better than one. Those people are liars.
I began working before I was a teenager. I gained a university degree. I’ve worked in a failing industry. None of that compares to the stress I experience when I am home alone with these two. My mind can only focus on so much. To my left is a boy trying to eat a crayon, to my right is the other trying to stick toy cars in his mouth. I feel like I need to grow another arm to handle this double trouble. If anything positive has come out of this heightened anxiety, it’s that I have become a much better multi-tasker. Sometimes I even impress myself in my abilities to juggle these hooligans with just the two arms I have.
I guess I’ve had more experience now. I haven’t repeated the same mistakes of the past, or at least I’ve tried not to. I know how to trick him into eating peas now, but I couldn’t resist the urge of introducing him to ice cream, just because all babies look cute when eating ice cream. However, there are tricks of the trade that baby books simply can’t teach you, because every child is different and unique. My first boy loved to be rocked in the middle of the night; doing that to my second boy just makes him cry even more. I guess no matter how much experience I have, I’ll always have to learn on the job.
Yet the love that I felt when bringing home that first child has exponentially grown. I thought the joy and euphoria I felt when looking at my first son would never be replicated. Boy was I wrong. It’s not that I love any son more than the other. It’s that there’s now a new delight in watching them interact with one another. They already care for one another, make each other laugh and smile. There’s a comfort in knowing they’ll always have each other, two brothers watching out for one another and loving each other.
When I had the first one, my life was obviously totally uprooted. It was hard to see friends and family just like the old times. Now I’ve realized I don’t need to try to make it like the old times, I can adapt to the new times. My kids have become a part of my social gatherings, my family reunions, my daily chores and routines. They go hand in hand now. I don’t even feel a desire to escape motherhood anymore – wherever I go, it’s almost a given that my boys are coming with me.
It’s hard to be a mother of two.
I still want to be a mother of three.
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Reflection
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I have mixed feelings about this experiment. I ultimately liked how my stylistic choices, such as the black-and-white photos and page-long entries, turned out to look, but I think it would especially hard to avoid redundancy subject-wise if I realized this into a final project. There was a struggle in figuring out what mode I wanted to emphasize, the baby book or the photo essay, which I think lessened the mixture that was being created. However, this changed my own perspective. It was something that had a lot of meaning to me that I think made me grow as a person. I got to explore my grandmother's life more in asking my parents and grandfather questions, and I got to know her in a way I really previously hadn’t for who she was as a mother. In this, I think I captured my grandmother’s spirit and who she was as a person. Yet, it was weird for me to try to capture her voice. It was unnatural for me to try to write from her perspective; this wasn’t a character I could fictionalize but rather someone I know. Trying to write using her words, her mannerisms, her emotions, felt off. Overall, this experiment left me with an array of different feelings, but either way I’m glad I did it.
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