I Swore I'd Never Be The Mother Who Complained About Parenthood. Then I Had Children.

It’s 6 p.m., the beginning of the dinner-bath-bedtime gauntlet for most parents. I’m upstairs in bed with a novel. This is unprecedented.

Since becoming a mother six years ago (and again four years ago) (and again two years ago), I, like so many parents before me, have spent each early evening breastfeeding and/or cutting food into tiny pieces and/or sopping up water spills while reminding someone they liked salmon last week. But tonight my husband is handling feeding time, and I’m lying back like Cleopatra popping grapes.

What I’m actually popping are giant white pills called SUTAB, in preparation for a colonoscopy in the morning. One tablet every two minutes for half an hour, followed by two jugs of water over the subsequent two hours: a grand total of 150 minutes just hanging out in a room by myself. That these pills are designed to bring on rivers of overnight diarrhea matters to me very little.

I’m in bed! Alone! Reading! I’m content to the point of giddiness, and I remain so for the next 24 hours — through the night in the bathroom (during which I watched Netflix – nothing animated!), and through the exam itself. I slept two hours in the surgery center, then three hours once I got home. Anesthesia: highly recommended.

I woke up around 5 p.m. rested to an almost otherworldly degree, practically skipping downstairs to hug my family and help with the nighttime routine, as one does after an invasive gastrointestinal procedure. It was the most rejuvenating experience I’d had in years.

I have, of course, gotten a lot of mileage out of this story. I told it to a group of moms at a birthday party, and we really got into it.

“Now I want a colonoscopy!”

“Have you heard the one about how a mom’s only break is the time