You Can Never Shake A Baby but Sometimes You Have to Kick a Cat

One of my favorite party tricks while pregnant was to put my hands on either side of my stomach and shake my stomach while saying "Never shake a baby".  (Okay I swear it played better in real life than in writing.)  Occasionally someone would be horrified but for the most part everyone knew that I was not "the type of person" who would shake a baby. The people who did this were one step away from the people who left their babies in trash cans on prom nights, or left them alone for hours while they drank beers with their friends and watched marathons of Jerry Springer. But on the other side of pregnancy, six hours into an intense, and as far as I could tell "causeless" crying jag, I realized that I was one breath away from being that person.

Now I like to consider my self a fairly self-possessed and restrained person.  I admit I have a red-headed Scorpio type temper that was first evident when as a seven year old I apparently stomped a chandelier off the ceiling in a fit because I was not allowed to eat French Toast while recovering from a tonsilectomy.  But I felt that as an adult who has developed both self-awareness and self-restraint through years of yoga, mediation, and my fair share of therapy, that when I became a new parent I would have so many coping mechanisms I would fly through parenting 101.  This is not the case.

The first time Owen cried for six hours in a row I was home by myself.  I started out capable:  I sang, I burped, I rocked, I nursed, I walked around the block, I nursed, I put him in the carrier, I nursed, we watched Chuggington, I nursed, gave him a pacifier, I nursed and he did nothing but scream.  He cried until he was choking.  I cried until I was choking and sometime in the middle I found myself screaming at him, "There is nothing wrong with you!!  What is wrong with you?"  His answer was of course to cry louder. And then came the moment where I felt my hands twitching and wanting, more than I could ever have imagined, to shake the baby.   I might even have begun to do it, just the first arc of the shake, not the actual shake, because right before it happened I was able to stop myself.  I'm not sure if it was due to all the videos I had to watch in high school, a deep sense of self-awareness, or just luck but I did not shake him.  Instead I put him down in the stroller, both of us still crying and turned away.

It was at this moment one of our two cats had the misfortune of adding his wail to the mix, and running between my feet almost tripping me.  And it was also in that moment that I kicked the cat.

I am not proud of the fact that I kicked the cat.  I realize that some pet activists or well anyone who has not futilely tried to calm a screaming baby for six hours in a row might argue that kicking a cat is almost as bad as shaking a baby but let's get real - it's not.  It was a one-off.  The cat was not injured and has apparently retained no ill feelings from the mild kick. It didn't make me feel better, that is not the point.  The point is that being a parent is hard and too often it's so easy to draw a huge divide in our minds about they type of people who would hurt their babies, intentionally or not, and those of us proud, together parents who would never, ever, ever do that.  But the truth is, much of what parenting a newborn, particularly a fussy, cranky, colicky newborn is like is akin to how governments torture prisoners: sleep deprivation, lack of ability to control your environment, loud high stress noises, and ISOLATION!  And none of this facilitates your ability to always respond carefully and calmly.

So when a friend of mine asked me what it was like to be a new parent I very honestly said.  "Part of the day is filled with the greatest joy I have ever felt and the other part is filled with moments where you tell yourself that you can never ever shake a baby but sometimes it's okay to kick the cat."