How You Choose is Who You Are

How One Mother’s Choice in Rocking Chairs Revealed her Parenting Style

Years before I had my daughter, I had already picked out the perfect rocking chair. I imagined reclining, rocking my baby to sleep in my arms, and later, reading books to her while she sat in my lap.
Here is the chair I selected:

Laugh all you want to at its impracticality, but that chair symbolized everything I thought about how I would parent. I would maintain my quality of life and create beautiful surroundings, although things might move at a slower pace. Most of all, that chair symbolized that my child would take things in stride, and immerse herself in my world—a thoroughly modern mom with urban sensibilities. My thirties (ahem, forties, by the time she arrived) would not be a sticky nightmare of Barney plushies and Dora videos.

I soon learned that I might spend a significant portion of my life in that chair, (five months of bedrest and four months postpartum to be exact.) And realized I might need something more—like arm rests, at least!

My heart then lighted upon this chair:

Also beautiful in an organic way, but made from traditional materials. If you look carefully, you will notice seats for two children to cuddle on either arm rest. I could imagine hours spent reading to my darlings, nestled against my chest. Most importantly, this time there is a place for a cushion.

This transition from poured plastic to turned wood marked what I thought was a highly sensible, yet still aesthetic nod to the practicalities of motherhood. I would be the attachment parenting, library-visiting hip mother of an Eloise with bows in her hair.

Then I became pregnant and the words “bed rest” arose more and more frequently with each visit to the doctor. Suddenly two things were crystal clear: there would be no second child, and there would be a drastic curtailing of my social life.

I sadly let go of the need for a chair built for three and googled about for something cheerful and comforting. I briefly admired this:

Or something sweeter, such as this Beatrix Potter upholstered version:

Until I went through the cumbersome experience of actually sitting in them. Not only did they “glide” in hicupy jolts, but the armrests were much too narrow to support my arms for hour upon hour of nursing my daughter to sleep. Furthermore, the headrest, if you could call it that, stopped midneck as though designed for a four foot tall person.

So it was with muttered comments and trepidation that I permitted this to enter my house:

(Click HERE)to find out how to set up the perfect nursing table.)

Despite all of its functional inelegance, I loved every second spent in that chair. I reclined while embroidering, awaiting my daughter’s arrival. I glided silently in the early morning hours when she woke me with her in utero gymnastics. I shared her gaze for hours in the first months of her life. And I would have it no other way. That piece of drab, i
utilitarian furniture allowed the rest of the world to fall away, leaving only the perfect present, uninterrupted by awkward cramps or clicking rocker mechanisms.

Best of all, since my daughter has taken to reading with me at the window seat, that chair is now in the perfect location: donated to someone else’s home.

Curious how someone maintains their sanity through bedrest?