The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mommies

So apparently when you go to a wedding where the people getting married are in their mid-thirties, approximately half the guests will either be hugely pregnant or will have young children. As a result, I got to witness a lot of competitive mothering over the course of the three-day affair last weekend. Here we were, a group of thirty-something women with children between the ages of four months and five years, all thrust into dealing with where to store the kids while we went to the wedding festivities. And there were as many solutions as there were mothers.

There was the mother who refused to leave her child, who brought him along to every event, keeping him up past his bed time and eventually leaving early to return to the hotel. There was the mother who was lucky enough to be able to stow her twins with her parents, who lived in the area. And then there was me. I left Milo with a babysitter three nights in a row and didn't look back. Which I didn't really think was odd until I heard what all the other mothers were doing.

One night I shared two babysitters with the mother of a five-year-old and a one-year-old. About six hours after we'd left the kids, I went over to her and asked if she'd spoken to the sitters. I was only asking to be polite, because there'd been some confusion when we left as to which babysitter was hers.

"I already called twice," she said. "Everyone's fine. They're all asleep."

She'd called twice? It hadn't even crossed my mind to call once. I'd figured that if there had been any problem, the sitters would call me. They had my cell number. They knew how to operate a phone.

I suppose part of the difference is that most of the mothers there were stay-at-home moms, and I am not, which means that I am used to leaving Milo with anyone who will take him, and they are used to being their child's primary caregiver. But I also wondered if I was being too free and easy about the whole mother thing. As I've written about before, I don't really have that much of a problem being away from Milo. Sure, I get that vague nervous nagging at the back of my mind when I'm away from him, but I also have a life to live. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that I am the parent always pushing Milo higher in the swing, or hanging him upside down by his ankles, while Steven looks on in horror.

"You're scrambling his brain," Steven mumbles.

I always laugh. "There go two points on his SAT score," I say, flipping Milo upside down.

Milo likes it. He also likes meeting new people and playing with assorted babysitters. Or maybe I just tell myself that.

My mother says there are different kinds of babies and different kinds of mothers and there is no absolute right or wrong. There are babies who need to never be left and there are mothers who need to be with their babies always, and there are babies like Milo and mothers like me, and in the end it all works out. I guess that remains to be seen.