The Beastly Baby

The original title of this entry was "On love and loving". After catching up on my blog-reading of other new mamas, it seems that there is a common theme on what it is to love your child, or how loving the child came to be. I planned to contribute some well thought out discourse on my thoughts and experience growing love for Miss Gillian; then our experience last night made me look at the whole thing differently. You always love your baby, but just like your husband, your family, and your friends, you may not always like your baby.

On Love
I loved the idea of Gillian when we thought it was about time to plant a little love seed; I was in awe of her when I felt her moving early in my pregnancy-at 12 weeks 5 days; I was terrified of her seeming fragility when she weighed 2.5 lbs in the NICU and didn't feel like my baby; and now-seven and a half months later-I can safely say I am in love with her. Head over heels in love-and it just gets deeper and more etched in me with every little smile and silly sound she makes. But as Sarah said in her blog, it certainly wasn't love at first sight (although I was moved to weeping the first time I saw her in the NICU 36 hours after her birth). I want to say that moms who get to be with their babies right away might feel the love sooner, but I don't think that's always true. I meditated on Gillian for 6 solid hours a day as I held her, skin to skin, for seven solid weeks at the hospital; prayed for her health, recovery, and growth every day, multiple times a day (per whichever challenge we were facing at the time)...I spent that time with her because it was suppose to help her, and help me...but you're always afraid to get too attached just in case (as if you would hurt less if you didn't spend the time and the baby didn't make it). I just held her and we smelled eachother and became comfortable with eachother-me and my tiny little china doll with all her strings. When you believe your baby's life is precariously hanging by a thread, you get grateful very quickly for good days (and starve for any tiny bit of good news from the doctors and nurses), and you value that little life so much. You don't take one second for granted. So that's how my love root started. It can shake to the core, but it is never broken...now I know how the many moms that get challenged by their headstrong or lost children later in life can still love them, no matter what. I can't say that there was a defining moment when I suddenly loved her, really loved her, but I can say the early love is instinct, and the later love is true human emotion. I feel like I came to love her the way I came to love her father-only by getting to know her.

The thing about having a baby is that it creates a depth in life that you never realized until you stand there and look it square in the eye. It is something you can't explain to people who don't have children. I feel so much more bonded with my in-laws now that we are all parents. There is another dimension to the relationship based on the depth of love and the instinct to "protect at any cost" it is possible to feel for another human being.

"Fool, not to know that thy little shoe
Can make men weep
-Some men weep.
I weep and I gnash
And I love the little shoe
The little, little shoe."
-Crane

On Not Liking
Which brings me to my second point. You don't always like the people you love. That goes for your precious baby. Sometimes they frustrate you beyond belief, and in an effort to not mentally scar them for life with how you really feel, you put a cork in it and smile, speak in your gentle voice, and try again. Last night was a case study in this phenomenon. To be fair, Gillian is a very good baby, and our bad nights are few and far between, so my whining may be scoffed at by some (the ones who could legitimately say, "let me tell you about my colicky nightmare" for example..or the ones that look like they haven't slept since the baby was born, but I digress).

Anyway, I have had some milk supply issues the past couple of days, and have noticed in the past that that can happen if I am tired (although never on this scale). So, instead of staying up to get a few hours of time to myself and thereby ruining any amount of quality sleep (a deliberate choice I have been making a lot lately, and no fault of my great sleeper of a baby), I decided to go to bed early. At 9:30. That, by my estimation, would give me about 9 hours (including her feeding) of good quality sleep. I woke up at 1am because it was raining, and the rain was creating annoying drip on the window unit by my side of the bed. After getting some water, I decided to check on G to make sure her covers were still on (she often kicks them off and can get cold). Oh, Why did I try to pry them out from under her legs and straighten them out??!!?? Normally, that wouldn't have been an issue. She might have stirred, stretched, then been out. So, she stirred, stretched, and knocked her little crib mirror with a rattle in it (grrr for the rattle). DRATS. That is how our night from hell with the Beastly Baby began. For the record, I do not like the Beastly Baby. Not at all.

I assumed she would got back to sleep and made my escape before she saw me. Through the monitor on my bedside table I heard her playing with the mirror. Tugging at the rattle, cooing in delight, making dolphin sounds. For an hour. And then the dastardly dripping from the rain on the metal window unit. At our wits end and unable to find a ratty old towel, we put a ratty old pillow on top of the window unit to mute the dripping. Gillian still was playing, but getting riled up. So, I nursed her early, at 2am. She seemed decently sleepy to go back to her own bed so I put her back in her room. Through the monitor I could hear that the playing resumed...and the singing and vocals resumed. She would not go back to sleep! I, in desperation (and for Sean's sake, who had to get up at 5am for work) brought her to the bedroom to try to calm her down. She wanted to play, not sleep. Instead of being soothed, she got more wired by being in bed with us. So, after Sean went to the guest room to sleep and after I gave up on Gillian sleeping with me, I took her back to her room, sat in the rocking chair with the intention to nurse. I say intention because she would suck, delatch and smile/laugh and/or coo at me (even with my eyes closed trying to fool her), or strrreetch, then look at me, relatch, suck a few times...over, and over, and over. To my charming happy baby: This I did not like. Not after going to bed early to catch up on sleep, not after being awake for two hours in the middle of the night, not at all. This is even more frustrating when you let down and baby delatches to be cute at you while your milk drips all over you and her. Then the lump of frustration forms in your throat ("just eat!!!!", you think in your meanest growly internal voice). I switched sides, and she seemed more focused, and seemed to be asleep after about an hour in the rocker (we're up for three hours at this point). So I carefully put her down and her eyes popped open and she gave me my-usual-favorite-thing-on-the-planet (but not at that moment) giant, toothless grin. I whispered "I give up", covered her, kissed her goodnight, and went back to my empty bed. I turned off the monitor and decided she could play all she wanted and stay up forever if she wanted, but I was having no part of it. I was going to bed. And I did. And she was still alive and still happy when she got up at 7am this morning, in spite of it all. And my deep canyon of love was still intact when we layed in bed smiling, laughing, and playing together-the Beastly Baby, in my eyes, was transformed back to my precious girl. And all was well again.

"Its tiny eyes were surrounded by large black rings due to fatigue, for its guilty conscience hardly ever allowed it to sleep."
-Edward Gorey