Elisenda Carod: "I will never again be four months collecting without working to dedicate to my son"

This very day, in a second, Guillem has disappeared. What are you saying!

— I was working, I turned around for a moment and it disappeared. Really. It wasn't anywhere.

At home, this?

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

You finally found it, I suppose. 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 go very carefully, playing with him, so as not to get any of his fingers caught.

I see 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 daycare 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/she discovering?

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

How was deciding to have a child?

— It was very natural. I met my partner at 33 and we started trying at 38. It was more of a physiological matter. I remember telling myself, "get on with it now, because if not, 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.

Explain that it was hard to go back to work.

— It wasn't easy. My drama came not so much from the fact of separating myself for a few hours from the creature as from the fact of being aware that a stage was ending, a unique stage because I don't plan on having a second. I will never again spend four months getting paid without working to dedicate them 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 parenting to take care of our little ones. The first two years are basic in building little people.

What are you trying to copy from other mothers?

— Relaxation. Letting things flow. Enjoying this infatuation I have with my son without paying attention to the silly things my brain tells me.

And what do you do differently?

— I'm not looking for any difference. I am me 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. I can't help it. Surely there are many other people who relate to their son 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 was about to grab it, he moved it away and burst out laughing. He had just made his first joke.

Of all the things you read on social media about parenting, what do you find stupid?

— Everything that 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.

¿Do you not 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've seen videos where a child doesn't want to eat and the parents grab a stuffed animal and hit it. That's what I find stupid. But what are you teaching your child? That you'll hit them if they don't eat? And does that amuse you?

What do you tell yourself when you can't take it anymore?

— "All this is a phase. It will pass." And, above all, one that I really like is "you'll miss all this one day." Now I'm taking mental snapshots of situations that might seem tense to me, but that, in time, I might say "I wish I had dwelled on it more." I'm creating a kind of preemptive melancholy. One night I was thinking "someday the child will grow up and will have gone out partying and you'll wish he were home".