“I have hives! I have hives!” I ran screaming from the bathroom, on the first morning of shooting. My husband gave me the signature “So what’s the big deal?” look from the kitchen, where he was making waffles. The kids were all decked out in logo free, plain colored outfits that had been painstakingly selected the night before. Do you know how hard it is to find nine logo free, plain colored, wardrobes…without holes? That is 63 outfits, all meeting the guidelines laid out by the production company. No wonder thousands of itchy, red bumps had taken up residence on my face and neck. The hunt for appropriate wardrobes, alone, had been a royal pain in the ass. I knew that our wardrobe quest was just the beginning of a very long and stressful two weeks. I slumped over on the bathroom floor, hives covering my skin, wondering if I was even going to make it to the point where Jo Frost knocked on our door. I kept repeating, “It’s for the kids, it’s for the kids,” every mother’s mantra.

Sure, everything we mothers do is for our kids. We live for our kids. We sacrifice without with little complaint, so that they will have a better childhood than we had. I have always tried to make choices that reflected the best interest of my children, since the day my first daughter was born. This experience, however, was testing the limits of my will to be the best parent I could. I was knowingly throwing myself and my spouse into the lion’s den. We were about to allow the nation to see every flaw, every mistake and every moment of our lives, edited at the discretion of a television production company. I had survived some extreme situations, all in the name of motherhood. Deciding to film an episode for Supernanny, trumped every other parenting trial I had encountered. If I survived the whole two weeks, I would feel an indescribable sense of accomplishment and pride. That “If” was heavily loaded.

I foolishly believed that those two weeks of assessment, parenting lessons and Jo’s insistence on repairing my relationship with my father, would be the most difficult task to complete. Daniel and I went to bed, completely exhausted and anxious for what the next day of filming would bring with it. Our days were full of washing an outfit every time a kid would soil it, for the sake of television continuity. We were not allowed to have the TV on, or the play radio and only a few Disney books could be present on our bookshelves. Our lives had radically been altered, yet we had to live as normal as possible. After a few days of screwed up schedules, hiding the labels on food containers and peeing while wearing a microphone, I began to lose sight of the reason for embarking on this endeavor (remember…’it’s for the kids’?) Then Jo arrived and everything came into focus. All of the annoyances and outright demands on our family, became suddenly doable. Jo’s insight and guidance was a cold drink of water on an August day…in the Sahara. A light appeared at the end of my sanity tunnel. Our kids’ demeanor changed, our household became more peaceful and I actually looked forward to the next day of filming. It was hard work worth performing!

If I only knew what was to come after filming, I would have relished the hives and mind boggling amount of work those two weeks offered. I thought that the stressful part was behind us. There were a few months of calm and other distracting events that occurred after filming ended. My family and friends anticipated the airing of our episode. The kids enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity at school. I enjoyed the few months of anonymity that preceded the airing. I figured that it would be short lived after our faces graced the 9pm time slot on ABC. Then, March 5th arrived. My stomach churned all that day. Every mother knows the feeling of anxiety towards her first labor and delivery experience. The unknown is a horrifying thing. Not knowing what 43 minutes of footage would give birth to, was driving me nutty. We could easily look angelic or demonic. The choice was theirs alone. As I drove Marlie home from Girl Scouts that night, I couldn’t even hold a conversation. I was too nervous. My cell phone rang and my mother announced that our family on the east coast had just finished watching the show. I had to pull the truck over because every muscle in my body turned to gelatin.

“Well? How bad was it?” I asked. Silence. I felt my dinner rapidly making its way to my throat. She finally broke the news, “They loved it. They all cried for you guys.” Those words were the sweetest I’d heard in awhile. The prior month of February had been extremely rough and her news a great relief. My grandfather passed away on February 9th and I had been going through terrible emotional turmoil. He was my father figure after my dad left. He walked me down the aisle on my wedding day, spoiled me rotten and was my favorite person in the world. After his passing, I was not sure if I could endure the mental and emotional toll that public scrutiny would present. If my family was behind us, everything else seemed more manageable. I felt more confident in my ability to handle the harsh feedback that America was about to serve up.

The aftermath was, as I expected, a test of my nerves and strength. My intentions of being a better parent were not received as such by much of the public. A lot of people saw a weak, vain, too skinny, middle class, attention whore who couldn’t keep her legs closed. Some called names that made me crumble into a sobbing heap. Then, my husband taught me to give people the metaphoric bird. He sat me down and told me that “You have to, politely, tell people to fuck off. Do not answer their rude questions. Do not get down when you read a mean spirited comment. Who cares? You know who you are and that is all that matters.” As right as he was, I was not born with the incredibly thick skin that he managed to inherit. It took some time to grow a callus and adjust my mantra. Luckily, my grief over the loss of my grandpa and the stress of dealing with verbally ugly people, hit me all at once. It dealt with it, cried a lot and, with Jo’s continued assistance, started the healing process.

As for my new mantra, it is now a little more fowl (get it?): “My life is for my kids and the bird is for all who have something rude to say about it.” Yeah, I know its crude, but you are not reading the Perfect Parent blog! As I exited the dizzying roller coaster of being a 43 minute celebrity, I realized a few things. One, being on Supernanny does not make for a better parent, in itself. What makes for a better parent, is the ability to learn from our experiences, apply the lessons learned and stick to them. Two, hives really aren’t that big of a deal, when compared to all of the other side effects of being on television. Three, earning a sense of parental accomplishment and pride, entail a lot more than I ever imagined.

Bookmark to: