Welcome!
to the fourteenth edition of Tiny True Stories! If you’re new here, hello, and thank you! I’m so happy to see you. This is a monthly newsletter where I share supershort true stories you can read in 5 minutes or less. I also share recommendations for other things I loved this month—food, books, poems, memes, anything. Tiny does not just mean short—I write about the forgotten, small, mundane stories of our lives, where most of us spend most of our time, and look for their unexpected magic.
I’m also trying something new and adding an audio clip of me reading the story to you! When’s the last time someone read to you? Let me.
This month’s post is not monthly, a little late, because our son Noah was born a few weeks ago. We are all healthy and doing well! We’ve been living in a haze of Olympic replays and alarms for feeding every three hours, or getting songs from the kids’ show Gabby’s Dollhouse stuck in our heads (♪ On the mermaid cruise ship ♪ ♪ a mer-tastic trip ♪ ♪ come and play with us ♪ ♪ the mermaid way with us ♪ ). The couch is full of crumbs because all four of us (four of us!) spend most of each day on it. Going for a walk feels like a feat. I take my daughter to camp and the baby for a walk; give me a gold medal! Everything is blurry—what time is it? What day is it? How many times has my daughter watched this Gabby’s Dollhouse episode? Everything is sharp—the baby’s fingernails are the size of seed pearls, the baby laughs in his sleep, my husband and I argue in the middle of the night while our son pees on everything; my husband and I laugh hysterically in the middle of the night while our son pees on everything; my daughter tells me baby brother is her favorite person; my husband brings me my water and coffee without asking every time I breastfeed because I am always leaving them in the wrong place; the sproing of the recliner when I plop into it at three in the morning, the baby’s eyes opening to look at the white light of a cloudy sunrise; writing this sentence by sentence over the course of many days.
Thank you for waiting while we hold our son and vacuum the couch again and attempt to figure this out. I will be back with monthly posts now! Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading.
Today’s Tiny True Story
How to Feed a Newborn
On demand, they say. And he does demand. Feed your baby whenever he does that little thing with his mouth, like sipping air sideways. Even if it’s every 30 minutes. Feel proud that you can drink water and turn blood into milk. You can do it. Say it even if you don’t believe it: you can do it. You may wonder every day, every minute, how you can possibly care for two children, especially one that needs you from the inside out. Shut that down; no time for doubt. Time to feed again.
Feel proud when you can lay the baby down and bake a boxed funfetti cake with your daughter. Measure oil, water, dump the mix, crack the egg, then whisk. Put the cake in the oven and shoo your daughter away from the heat. You are doing it! You planned a fun activity! Both children are safe and fed and happy! But then the baby wakes up and you have to stop mid-cake frosting, and your daughter is no longer happy and neither are you. Your husband will have to take over cake-making. You give him despondent instructions from over the top of your son’s sweet, soft head. You have failed.
People will say you are being too hard on yourself—talk to yourself like you’re a friend! It’s just a cake. But the thing is, it wasn’t just a cake to you. It was a sign of competence.
Eat the cake with your non-dominant hand while your son nurses, your dominant hand holding his delicate neck. Try not to spill crumbs on your son’s head in your lap. When you inevitably do, lick your finger and pick them up, crumb by crumb. You think that a better mother would not spill food on her child’s head. You think that a better mother would not eat the spilled food anyway. Make sure to tell your husband to please cut up some strawberries for a cake topping. If your daughter is watching TV all day, eating cake for a snack, you can at least attempt to give her some fiber. You wonder if you’ve already turned into a stereotype—the buzzkill, frazzled mom of two young children.
You’ll wonder what’s taking your husband so long with the strawberries, until he brings them to the table. He’ll have cut the biggest ones into a spiral for your daughter, and cut tiny hearts for both of you. You’ll say I’m sorry and you’ll love him even more when he looks baffled and says, For what?
Your daughter won’t remember that you had to quit halfway through making a cake and leave her to help her brother. She’ll remember the sweetness of the strawberries, the sweetness of her father, remember how she got to eat cake as a snack for days. It turns out, this is what you remember too.
Your son sometimes takes a few tries to get latched to eat. Even though he doesn’t understand words yet, remember to tell him it’s okay. Tell him try again. Tell him you can do it. Remember: he is not the only one learning something new. After your daughter has gone to bed, have another slice of cake. This is the sweetness you’ll remember, too.
Today’s Letters of Recommendation
The Netflix show Girls5Eva! I’ve been watching lots of TV while I feed the baby in the middle of the night, and y’all have been sleeping on this show! It’s about a fictional 90s-style girl group (Girls 5Eva, because 4Eva’s too short!). Starring Sara Bareilles, Busy Phillips, Paula Pell, and Renée Elise Goldsberry (who played Angelica Schuyler in the original Broadway cast of Hamilton!), all singing, and with Tina Fey as a producer, it’s HILARIOUS. The songs are stupid and satire also still very good.
The book When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others by Elissa Strauss. This book! When I read it I’m basically Alexis in that episode of Schitt’s Creek where she highlights every single line of her textbook. In this book, Strauss argues that care work is a place for major philosophy and life-changing epiphany, just as much as climbing a mountain, or doing ayahuasca. It’s brain-meltingly good and affirming. Go read it now.
McDonald’s breakfast with your daughter when making your own seems entirely too hard.
Tell me about your heart-shaped strawberries. What did someone do for you that made you feel cared for, the tiny thing to make your life a little better? I want to hear them!
Until next time,
Jill
