A Year of Breastfeeding

Writing for Boston Moms Blog

"Your whole adult life, your small but reasonably symmetrical breasts have served you well — in that they've existed and...
Posted by Boston Moms Blog on Thursday, March 31, 2016

A year of you

Dear Bubbaloo, 

You have now so thoroughly taken over my life that I struggle to remember the time before you. This is probably a good thing. In the weeks after your birth, while marveling at your crumpled tinyness, the way your snorted and snuffled through the days, I also mourned the loss of sleep - how once I was able to sleep for 10 whole hours, waking only when the cat burrowed into the covers and curled himself into the crook of my leg. But gradually I accepted that this new reality, the one with you, does not contain ten hour stretches of sleep. I've moved on. Reframed my expectations. I've also accepted that my food will always be slightly cold and that, while I've never really been well groomed, clean clothes and brushed hair is the best I can hope for and some days even that is a pipe dream. 

I knew I would love you, bub. But I don't think I knew how much more I would smile. Or that I have an extraordinary capacity to be ridiculously silly, if it'll make you laugh or keep you from crying. I didn't know that it's possible to be so bored I feel I might ossify while simultaneously feeling joy and wonderment at the very existence of you. 

And while there are days when being home with you is hard - days where I count the minutes until your Dad gets home and where I pour myself wine at 4.55pm because waiting until 5pm seems far too long - I've also never felt so useful. Being the person you need - the person you want most of all - is this incredible honour, even though sometimes I want to shut myself in a cupboard in the basement just to give myself some timeout from the noise and touch and everything that is being a Mum. 

I am managing, so far, to keep my anxieties in check. When we go to the indoor play area and you put everything in your mouth, I resist the urge to spray you with disinfectant. I didn't bat that child with a cold sore away from you when she asked if you'd like to play. I just gently moved you a few feet further back. And when you found the cat vomit before me and decided to eat it, I didn't give you ipecac or call poison control or euthanize the cat. So I think I'm doing pretty well, don't you? 

Before you were born, I'd willfully ignored the fact that love this large comes with a side helping of terror. And now you're here and the terror has made its camp within me and I can make it work, I think. It's all worth the way when you first wake up you start talking before your eyes are fully open, and the way you think everything (the cat, my head, the toilet seat) is a drum and how you seem intent on determining the edibility of everything by eating everything (although actually if you want to start screening out the cat vomit and other gross or poisonous substances, that'd be fine). I love that your first word is Hi, and that you say it to everybody and manage to light up the grumpiest of faces. I love that you have fantastic taste in books and that you dance whenever there's a hint of music and that you're always so happy to see your Daddy. The terror is welcome because with it comes you, and I wouldn't be without even the screamiest second of you.  

A year, a whole year, of you becoming you. Of me becoming a new version of me. Of us becoming us. 

Now just learn to flipping sleep, OK? 

Leaving and Return

Leaving is dread and sorrow swallowed down and stuck in my chest. It is worry tugging at my fingertips from the inside. It is salt taste in my mouth and tingling in my nose. It is repeated silent promises - a chant, a lament, a prayer. It is meaningful looks and hushed regret. It is three months is not a long time. Three months is nothing. It is ignoring the not nothing of three months and three thousand miles and five hours time difference.

Leaving is a return. A return to 'cat' and 'drum' and our loose routine. And 'daddy'. Most of all daddy. It is neighbours and friends and weather extremes. It is home, in its way. Or they are my home and they are here, except for the they who are there.

Since I was nineteen my heart has lived in two continents. Stretching tight across dark ocean, sharks with their fins swimming beneath its taught fibers. Leaving and Return is balancing that tightrope across the Atlantic. It is 'more wine please' and 'planes don't crash because of turbulence' (except when they do). It is jet-lag now worsened by being shared with an 11 month old who can't take sleeping tablets. Or wine.

After a week or so, the leaving fades the jet-lag recedes and we settle back to regular phone calls and occasional Skype. It stops feeling acute and assumes its usual background hum. I know this. It's fading already. But my oh my do I hate how my life is punctuated by goodbyes.

This is the path you chose, my mum said.

You chose this for us too. She didn't say.

What to do today

In the summer -  when W was immobile and the air was warm, the ground was dry and the yard was not covered with leaves and acorns and other delicious baby treats - we would spend hours sat out on the grass. We'd read books, stare up at the trees and covertly check facebook on the phone while the other one was busy experimenting with how grass felt if he put his face into it. These days an excursion into the yard will result in muddy knees, partially digested leaf matter and an attempt to spear himself with a shovel.

Inside isn't much better. Kitchen drawers are made for trapping baby fingers; the cat intentionally leaves the door open through to his food and litter, and the robot vacuum cleaner I got for my birthday - while entertaining - is presumably not designed to play tag with a 10 month old. Everything else is just plain boring. Especially once the junk mail and potential electrocution sites have been moved out of reach. 

So we go out. Often at the expense of naps. But the boy needs to move and I need to not lose my mind. We go on play dates and he helpfully points out all the baby proofing they still need to do. We go grocery shopping, or to the local community farm. We go to the indoor play area where he manages to find the one piece of chalk small enough to fit in his mouth and big enough to stop my heart for a few seconds. 

Some days I run out of ideas or energy, or both. While he'd be quite happy visiting the rabbits and chickens at the local farm for the third time this week, I am less inclined. I relayed this to Jeremy - that sometimes I just don't know what to do with him. 

"Why don't you go hiking?" was his response. 

To some people, hiking means a leisurely walk in the woods. Something that requires sensible shoes perhaps, but sneakers would do the job. Something local and relatively short. 

Jeremy is not some people. 

To Jeremy, hiking means New Hampshire and the White Mountains. It means maps and emergency water. It means breathtaking views after breathstealing elevation gain. 

The White Mountains are 3 hours away. Our son weighs over 23 pounds. I am me and Jeremy has known me, as I am, for over 12 years.

I stared at him, somewhat (100%) incredulously. 

"Why not?" He said. "I totally would."

He would as well.

Lullaby

I love you, bub. You know that I think. But it's really very important that you fall asleep right now and stay asleep. At least for long enough for me to sit down with wine and read a bit.

Long enough for some of the ache from today to seep out of me and into the sofa. For me to start to feel a little more like me than I do right now - to remember that I am a person who likes art and music and poetry and who can talk reasonably intelligently about current events. Just sleep long enough for me to clean the kitchen floor ready for you to lick it tomorrow. Licking floors seems to be your new thing.

And if you could give me enough time to talk to your father about something other than you, that'd be great. We love talking about you but we need to make sure we remember the roots of us as well. You came from those roots.

My love, just sleep long enough for me to find my place within today - to understand that the day was not defined by your refusing to nap or your newfound ability to Houdini away from any and all attempts to change you. There were smiles and giggles today. You saw your first rabbit and there were moments where I could see you learning something for the very first time.

Just sleep a little longer, sweet boy. But if you wake and you need me, I'll be there.

My current refrain

Here are the sentences most often repeated at the moment. Aside from, y'know, I love you / you're beautiful / sweet boy blah blah blah...

• Where is your other sock?

• Don't eat that

• What are you eating?

• Don't bite me

• Ow!

• That's my phone

• Give me back my phone

• How are you not tired?

• That's cat food. Not baby food. 

• He will bite you

Survival of the whiniest

Another theory (I have many): whining is a key survival skill that has evolved over the eons and is now embedded into the genetic makeup of all children as a means to get what they want. It cannot be ignored or tuned out - it's the parenting equivalent of a mosquito in the ear and must be stopped by any means necessary.

Children know this.

They're programmed to know this.

So they keep going until finally. FINALLY. We cannot take it any longer and give in. Obviously this is the wrong thing to do. Obviously this teaches them that whining works. But the thing is, it does work. It's supposed to work. If the neanderthals had only held their ground and not given in then maybe this superskill wouldn't have developed to such great whiny heights. But they didn't. They gave in. And now we're doomed.

The eons are against us.