What you need v. what I need

Dear Daniel,
Last night you grew up a bit; it felt like a pretty big deal to us. You slept in the co-sleeper for the first time. At first, you really, really didn’t like for us to put you down at all, especially when it was time for you to sleep. Then, you could sleep for very brief periods of time in a vibrating baby rocker (we call it your bumpy seat). Then, last night, you slept for the whole night (with the usual waking up for changes and snacks) in the co-sleeper.

The fact that you did that is not, in and of itself, all that remarkable I suppose. It’s a landmark event in your life and in ours, but it’s not all that surprising that you did it. What is remarkable is my reaction to it, and your father’s insights. As we turned out the lights, I found myself having this totally irrational fear that you would stop breathing if you weren’t in our arms. I missed you!

Totally unprovoked, and not yet having told my mother about this anxiety, she told me and your dad about the first time she and my dad ever left me after I was born. She says I was about a month old when she and my dad went to an arts and crafts festival for a few hours, leaving me with a perfectly capable mature adult who even had a child of her own. She said that while they were at the festival, she developed a totally irrational fear that I would be unable to breathe without her and my father there.

Why do we have these fears? We aren’t usually crazy people. Your dad reflected on his own thoughts and experience of these last few days, and I think the answer lies in his thoughts. There’s a trick to this parenting that we’re trying to get the hang of. We need to discern what is it exactly that you need, and what is it that we need? In other words, these last few days, have you needed to be held, or have we needed to hold you?

Particularly confusing is that something that you needed yesterday may be no longer important for you today. We have to figure these things out. You can’t tell us yet, and someday when you’re a child and a teenager, you’ll be able to tell us but sometimes you’ll be wrong. For now, it seems that you don’t need us to hold you while you sleep at night, as long as you’re fed, changed, and swaddled. But I confess, I don’t really know how much you actually need to be held during the day because your dad and I need to hold you.

I wonder what you’ll think when you read this someday. Will you think it makes sense and have some sympathy for your parents as we try to figure out these new things? Will you think we’re a little nuts? Those are probably both appropriate thoughts. Well, at least I’m honest about it, I guess.

Love, Mom

Uh-oh

I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant. People kept telling me “it’s all belly,” but I knew that wasn’t really true. There was not 62lbs of belly. But I didn’t worry about it, either. Some of it was water, related to high blood pressure; some of it was baby, some was placenta, some was increased blood volume. Now I know that I didn’t gain milk weight, but that’s usually only a pound or two. Well, I knew that I would have to face my body when pregnancy was over, and that time has arrived.

My mother arrived last night and she brought me my wedding and engagement rings. I could not get them on. Yikes. I have been wearing maternity clothes since Daniel’s birth, but the reason I haven’t tried non-maternity clothes has largely been that I don’t want regular pants waistbands touching my c-section incision. Now, however, I wonder if I may be in trouble. It’s a little confusing because I have absolutely no perspective about this. We don’t own a scale, so I don’t know what the number is on the scale.

February 13th of last year your dad and I went to my doctor to get instruction in how to begin to try to get pregnant. On that day, I weighed 113lbs. That’s less than I weighed since I was about 12 years old, so I’m not shooting to return to that. I wasn’t trying to be excessively thin at the time; I consider it a product of the fact that law school historically made me a little crazy and caused me to forget about food all too often. The last time I saw the doctor before Daniel was born, I weighed 175. Geez. That’s a very large difference! The question I have to answer now is what is a healthy weight for me, and I really don’t know.

Danielisms

Dear Daniel,
I write to you at the close of the thirteenth day of your life. I know better than to think we can possibly know all that much about your personality when you are only 13 days old, but some things are appearing that are not what the books predicted, and which I think are really your own. It may be that this is just your personality for a tiny little time in your life, but for now, we are really enjoying getting to know the you that you are right now.

You are teaching us about yourself and how to be your parents. We’ve learned that you are a cluster eater. They told us that in the hospital, but we did not understand. Now we get it. You eat for several hours at a time, with only short breaks in the midst of a feeding. Apparently, I was a cluster eater too, and my mother found it very irritating. Your dad and I love it in you because it makes for longer stretches of sleep. Hallelujah!

Speaking of sleep, you make wonderful faces while you sleep. I assume that much of the time you are exploring your face, but when you dream (we can tell when you’re dreaming because we see your eyes moving around under your eyelids) I love to see how you smile and open your mouth as if you are laughing, and then sometimes you look distraught, the way you look when you need to burp or when your diaper is dirty and before we get the problem solved. I see those faces and I know that if you were awake you’d be about to cry; but then the faces pass and my heart rate returns to normal. I know that social smiles are not possible for another few weeks, but I really have a hard time believing that the smiles don’t still mean that you are happy.

All in all, I’d say you are a pretty darned happy baby. You very rarely cry, and when you do, it’s always because of some fairly obvious need like needing food, changing, to burp, or someone is doing something to you that you don’t like. You don’t like it when the nurse at the doctor’s stretches you out to measure your length, for instance. You also used to really hate being naked, but that seems to be passing. It’s still not your favorite thing, but now you just make little distressed vocalizations, rather than out and out crying, and your dad figured out that if we turn the dryer on next to the changing table, you don’t even make those noises.

My father is here visiting us and most importantly, meeting you. My father is very impressed with your contemplative countenance. When he says this he is referring to your tai-chi movements. You still do those. Also, you keep your hands very open, with your fingers extended beautifully. You rarely close them into a fist, as the books told us you would do.

Last night, when we thought that you were sleeping, I glanced down at your body out-stretched on my lap. You had your hands placed lightly atop your knees in the zen mudra for meditation; with your palms up and knuckles down, thumbs floating in a relaxed cup shape over your palms. Your dad, my dad, and I each took turns placing our fingers in the space between your hands and sure enough, we could feel a little ball of warm energy there. My dad maintained that you had clearly been here before, and since you were in a Japanese meditation posture you had probably been Japanese. I am inclined to think we project too much, but if indeed you are as contemplative as you currently seem, you’ll share a great deal with your grandfather. I note that your dad commented how much you looked like my father the first time he saw you. You’ll also share a great deal with your dad.

These are just a few of our early observations about you. Even now we can see that you are both a product of your parents and a uniquely new being.

What we know thus far, we love and like about you. It’s hard to really know how much of you we’re actually seeing, and how much may be our own projections. We’re really trying to keep a pretty open mind about you though, and we’ll try to continue to try to be aware of the differences between the emerging you and our projections onto you as you grow up, because ultimately the little light inside of you is what we want to shine. We are stunned again and again that you chose our family to be a part of; and we feel so blessed.

Love,
Mom and Dad