Elisenda Carod: "Never again will I have four months collecting [a salary/benefits] to dedicate to my son"

Today, in a second, Guillem has disappeared. What do you say!

— I was working, I turned around for a moment and it disappeared. Really. It was nowhere.

At home, this?

— Yes. I started to panic. I called him. He, of course, since he doesn't speak, didn't answer me.

You finally found it, I guess. And what happened?

— So, crawling, he entered a room and, as he is obsessed with doors, he closed the door with him inside. To open it I had to be very careful, playing with him, so as not to catch any of his fingers.

I see that your desperation is evolving well.

— During pregnancy I had zero. I lived it very calmly. On the other hand, the first weeks were very full of fears. Taking him to nursery school has helped us to put many things into perspective. It has been liberating to share anxieties, to feel accompanied. The son is growing and the moments of desperation do not end. Now I am in a sweet moment and he no longer makes so many attempts at what I call a thousand ways to die.

What new thousand ways to die is he discovering?

— Now that he is starting to get up and walk, the attempts to hit his head on any corner exasperate me. It also exasperates me that he puts his hands in his mouth when he is touching anything, especially our dog's ears and other orifices.

How was it decided to have a child?

— It was very natural. I met my partner at 33 and we started trying at 38. It was more a physiological issue. I remember telling myself, "get started now, because otherwise it will get harder and harder." But I don't remember the decision involving stopping everything. I simply wanted to have a child and didn't want to delay it any longer for work reasons.

You explain that it was hard to return to work.

— It wasn't easy. My drama came not so much from separating from the child for a few hours as from being aware that a stage was ending, a unique stage because I don't plan on having a second. I will never again have four months of pay to dedicate to my son. It was a change of cycle that generated a terrible melancholy in me. As if I hadn't lived it enough.

What helped you?

— Write it and cry it. I cried a lot. Let me feel it. I wish we could have two years of childhood to care for our little ones. The first two years are basic in the construction of little people.

What are you trying to copy from other mothers?

— Relaxation. Letting things flow. Enjoying this love I have for my son without paying attention to the nonsense my brain tells me.

And what do you do differently?

— I don't seek any difference. I am myself and I can't think of any other way to do things. This son of mine, from a very young age, will have humor very present because I speak to him as if he were an adult. It doesn't come out of me any other way. Surely there are many other people who relate to their children through humor and structured discourse.

And Guillem, how does he respond to this humor?

— I remember that at nine months old he played his first trick on me. He showed me something, and when I went to grab it, he pulled it away and burst out laughing. He had just told his first joke.

Of all the things you read on social media about parenting, what seems stupid to you?

— Everything people explain about their experience seems valid to me. I will share it or not, but I am no one to invalidate how someone feels.

Don't you see things on social media that seem dangerous to you?

— Look, well, those jokes that some parents play on their children, making them believe they are fainting. Or I have seen videos where a child doesn't want to eat and the parents grab a stuffed animal and hit it. Now that I find stupid. But what are you teaching your child? That you will hit them if they don't eat? And that makes you laugh?

What do you say when you can't take it anymore?

— "All this is a phase. It will pass". And, above all, one that I really like is "one day you will miss all this". Now I'm taking mental pictures of situations that might seem tense to me, but that, with time, I might say to myself "I wish I had stayed there longer". I'm doing a kind of preventive melancholy. One night I was thinking "someday the child will grow up and go out partying and you'll wish he was home".