ShanghaiMamas

Medals for Mothers Superior

Sunday, August 24th 2008

By Katrina Beikoff
 
  I wish I could win Olympic medals and have abs like super mum Dara Torres. But I’m too damn tired.
 
  And I’d miss my kids.
 
  After I had my first baby, it was all I could do to make it to the shower each day, let alone contemplate training or swimming 100 laps.
 
  For weeks after the birth, I could barely walk to the shops. I had such little control over my body and all the new and, in hindsight, wonderful things — which I have to confess I found quite revolting, leaky and utterly unglamorous at the time — it was able to do to sustain this new little life we’d been blessed with, that the possibility of a quick training session seemed as likely as flying to the moon.
 
  My days revolved around sleep — definitely not exercise.
 
  I’d spend all day trying to ensure the baby was adequately fed, then trying to get her to sleep. Of course she wouldn’t sleep. Then late in the afternoon, I’d spend my entire time trying to prevent her falling asleep in the vain hope that she would collapse into a blissful slumber for a significant portion of the night. Of course, she wouldn’t.
 
  I would then obsess over getting more than three hours sleep in a row, which I rarely did. That sleep fixation then didn’t help when I had to be awake for countless hours, trying to get the baby to sleep, only to worry that if she did sleep I’d have to wake her so she wouldn’t sleep through a feed time. I’m exhausted just casting my mind back.
 
  By the time baby No.2 came along 20 months later — one might have thought with a free moment I’d opt for sleep — I feared I was returning to the ranks of the great unwashed.
 
  I had the bizarre notion that second time around I would be wiser, more in control and just plain better at this mothering caper. Alas, there was pain, there was leakiness, there was crying (baby No.2, baby No.1 and me) and there was very little sleep.
 
  There was no athletic training.
 
  There was no returning to work fulltime to continue the climb up the professional ladder.
 
  There was no uninterrupted, dedicated self-betterment time.
 
  There were lots of dirty nappies, wiping noses, looking like a frump at the shops, attempting to get around with a child on each hip, cleaning up kid mess, making huge pots of play dough and kissing tears away.
 
  And there still is.
 
  I applaud people like Dara Torres. But I’m not inspired by them.
 
  Quite frankly I hope she has to take her medals off as soon as she gets home so she can go clean up vomit.
 
  I had been feeling somewhat old of late — with the big names of my era like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, and (can you believe it?) Kevin Bacon all turning 50 — and had accepted that perhaps my time had passed for winning Olympic gold medals (or in my other fantasy life of becoming a famous dancer).
 
  Then along comes Torres at these Beijing Games, and everyone started proclaiming her an inspiration and making us all think that, with a little more effort, there’s still time.
 
  Torres has undoubtedly been one of the wonderful stories of this Olympics (and I’m quite happy to look to the achievements of other nations for success stories as long as I don’t have to dwell on the awful truth that Great Britain is belting Australia in the medal count).
 
  The 41-year-old American mother earned silver in all her three races in Beijing, which takes her personal Olympic medal haul to 12 after a career that began when she was 17 at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
 
  But now I feel old and under-achieving.
 
  Until I read that Torres has had to be away from her two-year-old daughter Tessa for the entire month leading up to the Games.
 
  And that she has to be away from her for hours each day and for significant stretches due to training and competitions. And that she’d been through numerous surgeries for injuries caused by her dedication to her sport. And that she’s had to spend six figures to hire help that includes three coaches, two masseurs, two stretching coaches, a chiropractor and a nanny — although I think a stretching coach mightn’t go astray in my case.
 
  Mothers, who make it to the top of any field, whether it is athletic endeavor or business, ought to be applauded, for more than anything else they have to make great sacrifices to get there.
 
  They have had to give up a lot of the things I complain constantly about, but wouldn’t have missed for the world.
 
  Dara Torres is not an inspiration to me — she is a mum who made a choice to pursue her dream. I am inspired and proud that she, and other mums who also go on to reach the top in their endeavors, was able to make that choice.
 
  I may never have abs like Torres.
 
  But I also got to make a choice. And I have two of my dreams.
 
  And it also doesn’t hurt to know that when it comes to fitness, healthy eating and exercise, new research shows that kids take their strongest lead from their dads anyway.
 
  *Katrina Beikoff is a shanghai-based writer and mum-of-two.  She no longer writes for the Shanghai Daily.  She writes fortnightly for shanghai mamas.

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