"Baby Loves Disco": One Experience

Baby Loves Disco (BLD) is coming to town in September. For those of you not in the know, BLD is a dance party that travels the country and visits your favorite nightclub. It’s aimed at toddler parents who still like to get their groove on. There’s Donna Summer, fog machines, Bee Gees and babies – lots of babies – because this dance party happens at 12 noon, not 12 midnight.

 9 years ago Guru Girl went to a BLD party. I was riding the high of cold medicine and 10 sleepless months with a baby who didn’t love disco, sleeping, breast feeding or -- often it seemed -- me, her very own mother. But I was going to have a good time and reclaim a vestige of my former fun self if it killed me.

I didn’t so much boogie that afternoon as stagger. I looked like one of Michael Jackson’s graveyard zombies, even when “Thriller” wasn’t blaring over the speakers.

It was a terrible afternoon.

It felt wrong to be in a bar with a baby. It felt wrong not to be giving my fella come-hither looks, instead of the baleful glares I was giving him because he couldn’t smell our baby’s ripe diaper. It felt wrong to be pretending to be the kind of person who can blithely juggle clubbing and parenting.

Because I wasn’t that kind of person. And that’s okay. When you’re a new parent it’s not that you’ll never whoop it up at a bar again or dance until your feet hurt. It’s that parenthood brings enormous schedule changes that make these pursuits foolish at first. Not forever.

It’s the wise parent who accepts this. The new gig is a blessing and a ball buster, in equal parts those first few years. Read tomorrow’s post for my friend Jamie’s advice on items that will make parenting such a breeze that you’ll definitely have the energy to go clubbing for real – without babies and wet wipes – before your little snuggler turns 18.

There's even better news: our once disco-hating, fretful baby now loves disco, dancing, sleeping and me. It really was just a phase. Don’t you hate it when your mother’s right?