Pants Free Parenting: No ‘Silent Nights’ in parenthood

When my son was born, I learned quickly that not all babies were created the same. His cries were more insistent and frequent. He woke up more and demanded to be held more than my daughter ever had. His demands often overwhelmed me as I struggled to appease him and a 2-year-old intent on pooping in her princess underwear.

That first Christmas with two children, I stood in church, holding my baby and sang 'Away in the Manger.” There is a line in the hymn that insists that the little Lord Jesus, 'No crying he made.” I looked at my husband and laughed. I laughed so hard, I had to run out of the sanctuary.

My own parents used to laugh at that line, too. My dad calls 'Silent Night” just a PR stunt. No one with a baby born in a manger has a silent night, not even if he is the son of God.

Whether you cotton to Christmas or another faith, or no faith at all, Mary the mother of Jesus remains the absolute Western model of motherhood. Her image has been painted a thousand times over, serenely staring at the baby on her lap. She glows. She lost the baby weight really fast. Whatever the realities of the baby on her lap are, it is totally lost in her saintly glow.

I don't buy it.

Whatever we celebrate this year, we are celebrating miracles. Hanukkah is the celebration of the miracle of light. Christmas is the celebration of the miracle of God in flesh. Or if you don't believe in a faith, the season is a celebration of love. All are miracles. The image of a birth is a beautiful metaphor for miracles - our hopes made incarnate. But these miracles also come with bloody fleshy realities, we often try to ignore.

Birth is hard. Even in America where we have access to high-quality health care, it's easy for birth to turn deadly or damaging. Even in a good birth scenario, a new mother can't pee for months without crying or pain medication.

Raising a child is hard. Yesterday, getting my children into the car was a half-hour ordeal that made me cry - clutching the steering wheel, wondering why I was getting yelled at, why the simple act of shoes and coats had to initiate a full core meltdown of these little humans who I deeply loved, but desperately wanted to run away from.

Sometimes I think about the mother of all mothers - Did she want to run? Was she ever sick of her children begging for cookies? Did she ever mumble curse words under her breath at a melting down toddler, too?

So much of parenthood is covered with the glossy paintbrush of nostalgia or fear. Mothers are encouraged to focus on their blessings. I am frequently told I need to be happier that I even have children - as if the blessing and miracle of their lives is somehow overshadowed when I get kicked in the shins. Both things can be true - blessings and frustrations. Peace and turmoil. It's the contradiction of the season, when days shift from darkness into light, when our desires become a celebration of miracles and a hope for miracles to come.

Parenting is an eternal ambivalence. It's hope and love poured into a human who is flawed and challenging and will drop you for a candy cane. There are no such things as silent nights - not ever - but there is hope and love and the promise that we can find it by facing these fleshy, sticky realities.

l Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.