A Cape Nanny Diary (and more parenting lessons)

A big shout out to the twins who are 26 months old today! :)

When the winter gets way too long, I can't help but think about summer, and often that leads to the three summers in the late 90s I spent living and working as a nanny on Cape Cod while I was in college, as they were pretty formative for me.  I did keep diaries, but I didn't write a best selling book. ;)  But I probably learned more there that has been useful in life than in any other time/place (and not just how to sail and eat a lobster).  It was more of an education than a job really, thanks to the many people I met there.  The job broadly was carting kids to golf, tennis, sailing and swimming lessons and then laying on the beach, enjoying Nantucket Sound.  Rough, I know.  And now that I'm a mom, I look back at all of it in even a new light...

The first summer, I moved there to work for/live with a family (I'll call them the Potters), who lived in Wellesley Hills (near where I was going to college) but "summered" in Hyannis Port, a summer haven to the Kennedys for nearly a century, while the husband stayed back home and worked during the week.  They were my age now, with a daughter and son, who were seven and four the first summer I spent with them.

Lori had listed their position with the college, and I answered it when I determined I didn't have the resources, easy connections, or honestly the burning desire (can you say burnout?), to support a high powered professional internship all summer, but I would need to work, as I always had, to come up with my required contribution to my second year's college expenses, which were substantial.  I had no desire to go back home to WI to work for the summer, as I had before, so I figured a job that included room and board out East would be a good idea, and I had years of babysitting experience and awesome references.

Plus, I thought it sounded fun to spend the summer on the Cape, which I'd only visited once, and a welcome respite from my very busy schedule at school.  I was then in my first year attempting (to varying levels of success) to balance being a lab science major, with rowing crew competitively for the first time, working on campus (and in the '96 NH primary) and trying to have some sort of social life at a women's college.  Don't laugh.

 Rowing on the Charles

Lori and I hit it off right away when I went to their cozy white colonial near campus to meet for the first time.  They'd just bought their sprawling Cape home two years before (after she'd nearly died of meningitis) and their much loved previous summer nanny had apparently moved on.  Her husband, Ron, who was as big and blond as she was petite and brunette (she's a doppelganger for Jenny Sanford, he for a sober Ron White), and as being a hockey player would suggest, and since he worked very successfully in medical equipment sales around Boston, she left her "good job" and focused on being a traditional SAHW/M to their two adorable kids.  They'd originally planned a large family, she was the youngest (and a twin) of six, but she'd had difficult sickly pregnancies, so they'd packed it in after two.

Allie is now a BC grad, and works at an ad agency in Boston (sound familiar?).  Corey is finishing up at St. Lawrence...

Where does the time go...

Lori cooked and cleaned and sewed liked a fiend (I don't think she had help other than a summer nanny, which for her was as much about status as anything, and why she didn't have an au pair like nearly every other family there) and loved to throw herself into photography, decorating, and her extended daily work outs, even more than parenting really (the kids often complained about how little time they got to spend with both their parents).  They were basically right out of central casting and The Preppy Handbook (a copy of which she kept in my room).

  

The very first day I spent on the Cape, after driving down with the three of them (and their yellow lab) in their old school/woody Jeep Grand Wagoneer (above from TH), included lunch at "the golf club" (where JFK and Jackie had their engagement party) and a stop at "the beach club", where that day I met the scion (and Potter friend) who would later become my first serious boyfriend, and first proposal. 

HP harbor from his porch

Early during that first summer, I also met the Croydens (also not their real name) at "the yacht club", which is really just the simple town pier (above) that you see in just about every Kennedy picture ever taken in HP (this is where the razis would hang out every weekend, all summer to get a glimpse of someone, back in that day usually JFK Jr. (may he RIP) or the Arnold, going sailing).

Forget Taylor Swift, '96-'98 were the Carolyn years, here w/Friday the dog

Shannon "Croyden" had gone to Smith (so we were both of the seven sisters) and met her husband, Drew, a Stanford swimmer, when they were at BC Law.  Shannon was a few years younger than Lori, and unlike her had grown up summering in HP, like many, if not most, families there.  Shannon's family started and runs a MA based food company, which started to sell salad dressing from the family's steak house in Framingham, to now bottling for Newman's Own and having a huge retail and food service business.  There's a lot of money in salad dressing apparently.

She and Lori weren't good friends, but the story goes she'd called Lori to get my number after the first summer, and I started babysitting for her growing brood in their Newton house during the school year.  This apparently really annoyed Lori, though of course it was her doing and she didn't use me during the school year anyway.  Though apparently it was not enough to not have me come back for a second summer (after I'd gone home for the summer, I then drove all the way from WI to HP to rescue her and her kids from my apparently mentally unstable and brief replacement).

***

I loved the Potters (even w/all her neuroses), and they were all big fans of mine, so I probably would have gone back to live with them for a third summer, but by then I'd transferred to BC, was taking summer school courses in Boston (to graduate on time due to said transfer), and had an apt., job, and BF in Boston.  Not exactly condusive to a full time/live in arrangement.  But I was working for the Croydens during the year a lot, she was not shy with help, and from the first summer she'd gone from one baby to three.  She'd left her big firm job to stay home, had a young Mexican au pair live in to help, and whenever she went out, which was often and even sometimes when she didn't, I would help with her brood of tinies as the second sitter.

The third summer I actually ended up working/pinch hit parenting for the youngest of her four brothers, whose newly ex-wife had apparently had a life crisis and left their children to move to LA to find herself as an actress or something.  Like many men in HP, her brother worked out of town during the week and wasn't exactly a hands-on parent.  Their daughters were four and seven, and as I'm sure you can imagine, we're not in a great place emotionally after being "abandoned" by their SAHM.

"If you bungle raising your children, nothing else you do well matters very much..." -JBKO

Sailing off of HP

It was all very sad actually, I guess that is why I wanted to try to help them for as much of every week as I could get down to the Cape, usually at least 4-day weekends, while they had local girls fill in when I was back in the city.  And Shannon thought I'd have extra insight since my parents were divorced when I was about their age, but there are some problems no amount of insight, help (and money) can solve.  We all lived in her parents' summer house on the harbor in HP, until she bought the place across the street late that summer.

That was by far the most challenging summer, and by the end I'd lost a bunch of weight I really didn't need to, had come down with mono (the after effects still w/me 15 years later), had a cancer scare, and was growing tired of the Croyden clan.  The last weekend of the summer, the extended family were all off to Nantucket for Doug Kennedy's wedding and Shannon left her au pair (who was soon returning home) with no money, no formula for the newest baby, and no way to get any (since she didn't drive).  I, of course, helped her out with the money and a ride and then when I moved to a new place in Brighton at the end of the summer, I never looked back.  Some people just have their priorities too messed up for me to deal with constructively...

Doug and Molly Kennedy getting married in Nantucket

 (and not a hungry baby in sight...)

So sometimes I worry about becoming these kind of mothers.  Not that I think I am now, but I don't ever want to ever be.  So detached or otherwise consumed not even by work, but obsessed with what I consider nonsense (social climbing, your appearance, etc), as to forget that children are more than an accessory to some kind of greeting card life.  Anyone else ever feel like this?

And having been a beloved nanny, it sets the bar really high for what I'd look for in someone for our family.  Oh and there's the whole "I might be a little over-protective because I can't successfully conceive, carry, or birth my children without extreme measures and them nearly dying."  Oh yeah, there might be that...

We've been through a lot together, the kids and me, that I'm having a hard time bringing an outside person into our little circle as much as I know I need to.  I know I need to work (even more) on this, and I know they are only two, but I've given up most of my life (willingly) for them, and I think I want/need to try to reclaim a bit more of it.  Finally.  

But that means giving up some of the control that I lost in those three years waiting for them, that I've been reclaiming the last three in my complete undivided devotion to them.  But the reality is, I don't know if they need me to be there as much I need/ed them to be.  Know what I mean?  Any tips on getting past the dread of dealing with help?  I met a mom of triplets (plus one) recently who I could relate to when she said she skipped help so she wouldn't have another person to look after.

We've booked our Cape vacation and in looking for houses to rent, found that my friend (Australian au pair) Annette's cottage, well actually Lori's friend Julie's rented place, around the corner from her is for rent.  Ah, the cape life...

HP/1996

Something no one talks (or maybe even knows) or wants to talk about...

So by now you may have heard about the tactless CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong, who has a way with conference calls.  After previously spontaneously firing an employee on a company wide call, he recently announced the company's (higher than usual) earnings, as well as changes the company was undertaking to their benefits.  He talked about the costs of the ACA and how among all their thousands of employees, the costs associated with two million dollar "distressed babies" of employees in 2012 required them to change how their 401K program was funded (which he has since reversed, due to the backlash).

Now a mother of one of these "distressed babies" has written an article in Slate to put a face on their story (full disclosure: the mother is the professional writer/novelist, Deanna Fei, a high school classmate of several friends of mine from college, Drs. Michelle and Veronica).  In reading her story, I obviously couldn't relate first hand, since we knew we were high risk and were fortunate enough to have some warning of our impending doom, and were able to have a cerclage and other treatments (bedrest, progesterone and steroid shots, etc.)  But as someone who has had a high risk pregnancy and many mom friends (of multiples and singletons) who've both lost late term babies and others whose babies survived and spent months in the NICU, I can understand the fear and trauma that this can cause.  It is indescribable.  And then to have your child used as a scapegoat for a lousy corporate benefit decision is inexcusable and suggests that not only did the CEO have info on these families he likely shouldn't have, he thought it appropriate to share it with people in an inappropriate way and setting.

Anyway, long story short.  In reading Ms. Fei's account, something jumped out at me.  She mentions that she had a (barely) one year old son, when she gave birth to her daughter (at five months pregnant).  This means that there was a very short gap between her pregnancies.  This is naturally becoming more and more common as women wait longer to have families (due to education, career, later marriage, infertility, etc.) and then are faced with squeezing multiple pregnancies into a very short span of time, presumably trying to evade AMA (w/ its diminishing fertility and increased risks).

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming her for the awful ordeal that happened to her or her daughter.  That would be ridiculous.  But knowledge is power, and I've been meaning to write for some time about how it is always surprising to me though how often otherwise well educated women who are presumably (like her, with insurance, living in NYC) getting some of the best obstetric care anywhere in the world, seeming are not even remotely aware of the potential impact of short pregnancy spacing on their pregnancy outcomes.  She mentions in the article that, to her knowledge, she didn't have any risk factors for premature birth.  IMO her physicians failed her here by not deeming her high risk.

"But there was nothing high-risk about my pregnancy. I never had a single risk factor for a preterm birth, let alone one as extreme as this one. Until the morning I woke up in labor, every exam indicated that our daughter was perfectly healthy. In fact, had signs of trouble emerged, such as bleeding or pre-eclampsia, the doctors would have had the chance to mitigate the danger, administering steroids to speed up her lung development or hormones to delay labor. Instead, even with the best medical care available, we had no warnings, and we will never have an explanation for what went wrong. This is why the head neonatologist referred matter-of-factly to our daughter’s birth as “catastrophic.”

I can only guess it was never mentioned to her, not once.  It never came up with me, I've only come across it in my own research/reading.  My OB did ask at our 6w postpartum visit what kind of BC we were using, and when I told her, it was the end of the conversation.  Had I said we weren't using any or something to indicate our plans to conceive, maybe it would have gone differently.  Or if we were actually planning to add to our family, as she thinks we should, she would have discussed the risks.  But honestly, I think often it is just considered a personal preference without any potential serious negative consequences, save lots of babies to take care of once (which is actually seen by some as an advantage, since you can get the baby stage over with quickly, and have kids who are close.)  This is too bad since the costs to women/their families, babies, and society (deaths, divorce, disabilities, picking up the pieces) are significant, and not just monetarily.

Studies, especially a large meta analysis done in 2006, show the worst outcomes (which include: maternal/fetal death, premature birth, low birth weight, etc.) for pregnancies beginning within six months of giving birth, but the negative association exists up to eighteen months after a pregnancy.  They believe that the depletion of maternal nutrient stores during pregnancy, extended further through breastfeeding, means there is less available to the baby.  Also the physical toll of pregnancy can cause negative outcomes for mother as well.  Uterine rupture, placental abruption, etc. are all seen in higher numbers.

I think besides not having it brought up by physicians, people just assume since they know people who have children close in age, as we all do, that if they are fine, then yours will be too.  But that is not how risk statistics work, unfortunately. 

And for all my infertile friends, while it may seem like a amazing mixed blessing, now that I've seen so so many of them (even those who were told their eggs were crap and/or their husbands had no sperm) who've had unplanned pregnancies post-pg/treatment while not believing it was possible.  Trust me, it is.  So this is not just a PSA for the fertile.  While it is a common perception that infertility, like breastfeeding, is an effective form of BC, it actually seems in my observations that pregnancy, breastfeeding, and generally being overwhelmed by life as a parent is a great boost to one's fertility, which assuming you have even the minimum of the available equipment, is clearly fluid.

There are a great many things about pregnancy that you can't control, but one thing you can, if you try, is when it doesn't happen.

Mayo Clinic on pregnancy spacing
The Alpha Parent on age gaps (w/links)
Public health resources on birth spacing (CA)

Tiger Mom strikes again

I just finished "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (out in early 2011, now in paperback, and a quick and easy read), and I guess I can see why it was so controversial given traditional American parenting styles (which would peg her as crazy and verbally abusive), but it is a satirical memoir, not a parenting handbook.  People take memoirs so seriously.  She (author Amy Chua) has a new book coming out next month which is already making waves.

She and her husband  (fellow Yale law professor, Jed Rubenfeld) have coauthored a book called  "The Triple Package..." about the three traits that they've found (in their research and from other data) make for success.  The "controversial" part of this one is they've singled out particular ethnic/religious/immigrant groups in America who they've found tend to possess these traits, which conveniently they are both a part.  But "The Bell Curve" it does not seem to be, since they aren't talking about inherent ability differing by group necessarily, but rather traits potentially anyone could adopt, which is why I don't get the controversy.  Except that she has baggage from her last book (which was a bit braggadocios for me, but that's obviously just her personality).

The groups of American they single out are heavily immigrant (big surprise):  Indians (yay!), Iranians, Lebanese-Americans, Mormons, Jews, Cuban exiles, Nigerians, and Chinese-Americans.

 

The three traits they've identified are: superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control.  

I'm not anything but an honorary member of any of these groups (euromutt/WASP right here), but given my journeys from early childhood with a Jewish step-mother (and hard driving dad to counter my prep mother), Indian immigrant husband (and ex-BF, among other good friends), a stereotypical second-gen Chinese college roommate, and other long term exes who were a Cuban exile and second-gen Lebanese-American, I probably know more than most of the other people commenting on a book that is yet to be released as to what goes into the theory.
 

I'm not sure what they cover in the book, but of those I know in these groups they have a long basically unquestioned cultural heritage of valuing education, excellence, family, discipline and hard work.  There is no coincidence that the two highest earning groups in the U.S. (Jews and Indians) are also those who have the highest educational attainment.  Several of these groups also have a cultural history of persecution, which can be a unique cultural drive (to overcome obstacles, be resilient, etc.) for generations.  Many of these groups are also very insular, as are many immigrant groups, which is not always a good trait, but if they are successful and then look to their own peers to socialize, marry and hire, it is a self perpetuating cycle, even given their small numbers.  The largest of these groups is only a few percent of the total population.

The ability to pair the thought that you can do anything, and well (superiority) paired which the feeling that you aren't ever quite good enough no matter how good you are (insecurity) and a unique (anti-modern American) ability to put off immediate gratification for the long term benefit (impulse control) is a powerful combination that can bring uncommon success.

As the blurb suggests, and as she did in Tiger Mom, they delve into the pros and cons of these traits.  The moral of Tiger Mom is you can have really successful kids if you are strict, but if it doesn't meld with your kid's personality, it can backfire.  She always gives the flip side of her mantra, a bit of an out.  This may be what makes her somewhat palatable, but people still criticize her like crazy.  But she's laughing all the way to the bank...  Looking forward to checking this one out...

What Drives Success? (NYT, 1//25/14)
The Problem with the Triple Package... (The Atlantic, 1/28/14)

"More Toys"

So the kids might be in shock from having a week go by when it is neither their birthday nor Christmas, as this is one of Mari's new favorite things to say...  I wish I could say I was just proud that she keeps putting new words together (that make sense).  It is cute to hear, until she keeps repeating it and you start to wonder...

Am I capable of raising a Veruca Salt?

Do you ever struggle with knowing how much is enough and when it is too much when it comes to your kids?  Not love or attention (obviously), but things, stuff...

I tend to just go with my gut and usually that means a bit less is more, but I know this will just become more challenging the older they get.  I grew up in a middle class family (as did DH), but we are better off (and have a smaller family) than our parents, and I do worry sometimes about the dreaded "affluenza".  I do think it is possible to teach your kids good values while not depriving them materially, but it is a delicate balance.  No one wants to be responsible for raising spoiled brats.

I know there are many who have more and less than we do as far as material tangible things for the kids, but I think as a conscious parent you can only wonder is it all too much or maybe just enough.  Much of what they have in the way of toys have actually been gifts from generous family, friends, colleagues (including what ended up being a haul from their first birthday party, yet another reason we don't need to do that every year).  I make an effort to not buy them things they don't really "need" and instead save more for their futures.  This makes me feel better.  It takes effort in our materialistic world to focus on what's most important (for us that's an emphasis on top notch health, education, experiences, etc.) and try to dial down some of the rest.

We are both looking forward to when they are a bit older and we can volunteer more as a family and teach them the value of giving back and about how so many people are less fortunate.  And that they have a responsibility to not only help others but to be humble in their good luck of being born into our family (as we are lucky to have them).  Hopefully, that will help...  The wild thing about parenting is you don't really know for sure if you've done well, until it is too late...

Teach Kids to be Grateful, Give them Less -from The Atlantic (1/6/14)