My Back Is My Childcare
My back is my childcare.
I wear my children on my body, sometimes for hours at a time. Sometimes while going up and down stairs, while walking to the store, while nursing other children, while cooking and doing laundry, while writing and creating and dancing.
When they are newborns I wear them on the front. And then when they are big enough to manage the weight of their own head, I wear them on my back. There have been times when I wear one on the front, and one on the back, simultaneously.
All the instructional materials for the baby carriers, wraps, and slings say not to overwear your baby, but overextended babywearing has been a part of my mothering reality since the beginning.
A child on my back is a child not falling down the stairs. A child on my back is a child not climbing on the table. A child on my back is a child not destroying the tower that another child is building. A child on my back is a child not dumping the contents of the trash can. A child on my back is a child not disconnecting the charger from the socket. A child on my back is a child not pouring water out on the floor, repeatedly. A child on my back is a child who is not unaccounted for. A child on my back is a child who is not missing their mother.
METANARRATIVE
Recently I’ve been unpacking the tightness in my neck and shoulders. At first I decided it was from the crazy positions I sleep in when breastfeeding one and sometimes two children through the night. But then I realized it was the strain of wearing Revvy on my back for too many hours a day. I admitted this to myself after reaching clarity at the end of a Movement Lab a few weeks ago. It was a vulnerable moment of transparency for me. The story of why I wear my baby on my back too often and for too long is complicated.
I need more physically engaged, loving-mother support in the day to day reality. The fact that my co-creator is onsite in the house is not synonymous with complete caregiving support. And explaining that, and going into that, is so draining, and tangled, and tiring. And still sometimes I try when people say things like, “Well does he help?”
I don’t want to write about him. This is a story about me, about mothers. Mothers need mothers. I know this to be true to my core. This is me attempting to unravel the threads of how I arrived at this life where I am mothering four children with no other mothers around me. This is me finding my way into the words to talk about how my back is bearing the weight of the absence of those mothers.
I am peeling open the layers, in my thoughts and in my words. I am dreaming in all directions about a life where I live in constant communion with other mothers. I am thinking about what I will tell my children about my life as their mother.
There are so many threads here. The economy of separation, and how I don’t participate in it. The tensions around money and the allocation of resources, time, and energy. The myths of marriage and the peculiar invisibilities of partnered mothers who exist in a world with so many unpartnered mothers, and so even the appearance of support becomes another form of erasure. The brilliance of babywearing, even when your back is overtaxed. The isolation that patriarchy and the nuclear family story perpetuates. The endangered genius of intergenerational living and the increased shaming and pressure that being an adult means to master living “on your own.” The extremely physical labors of caring for small children, of caring for all children.
Proximity to my children is what I center in everything. This is how breastfeeding labors are facilitated most seamlessly. But the world around me, the family around, has not been so kind and understanding. So while I was holding my children close to me, they were not learning how to support me. They misinterpreted my insistence on keeping my children with me as evidence that I don’t need anyone else’s help.
I see now that while I’ve become super practiced at coding my children, at understanding my children, at attending to them, at reading their cries, at assessing their moods, at soothing multiple people with my front and my back—as I type nearly-four-year old Juju is on my back because we’re weaning and she is crying for nunu— their father and other family have not poured into the cultivation of such caregiving consciousness. They have not valued my labors or the intelligence that goes into them. They have not sat at my feet and been at my side. They have not learned how to fully care for my children.
Being angry takes more energy, so I’ve evolved from that. I need my creativity to manage the intensity of these solo-mothering moments. The truth is for now, and likely tomorrow, and the many days after that, I will be alone as the mother in this house. And I am the one who knows how to do the mothering labors.
But still I dream. I dream about the sweet togetherness of being with other mothers all the time. The Garden is a part of nourishing this dream.
Are you exploring what we mean by Come As You Are in the Garden? Watch creators sharing their personal stories of discovering our sacred practic in the Come As You Are episode of our Creators Meet & Greets series.