I Don't Mind

I don’t mind.

I don’t mind that you woke up for the fourth, fifth, sixth time tonight for no obvious reason. I don’t mind that it’s 4:35am.

I don’t mind that when I come into your room that you’re awake. Not wide awake, but definitely more awake than, you know, asleep.

I don’t mind bringing you downstairs to do the one thing that has always soothed you even in the deepest throes of colic: dancing to music. I picked Alkaline Trio this time.

I don’t mind having to turn off the computer screen and the nightlight while we dance because if I don’t you’ll stare at them and stay awake.

I don’t mind having to constantly readjust so that one hand is always holding your head as we dance. I know it helps you fall asleep and more importantly, I know you like it.

I don’t mind that you fight me again with increasingly quieter squawks. I know you want to experience the world around you instead of sleeping, and I hope you retain that curiosity as you get older.

I don’t mind that my feet are getting cold pacing the floor as you resist the sleep you so desperately need. I don’t mind that my arms ache from holding and swaying you.

I definitely don’t mind the way your body and head slowly get heavier against me as you drift off to sleep. One day I’ll remember this moment and I’ll miss it when you are grown. I don’t know what that feels like from experience, but the seed of that future loss was sown the day you were born and I am constantly aware of its presence. Sleep seems so important now, but I know it won’t some day.

I don’t mind walking you back upstairs and laying you down, taking extra, excruciating care to make sure I don’t wake you up.

Honestly I do mind a little bit when your eyes immediately snap open and you start to scream again the second you hit the bed.

But it's okay. Alkaline Trio has a lot of songs.

Motherhood Lately

Amelia is about 9 days away from turning 8 months old.

And where the hell that time went, I have absolutely no idea.

When she was first born, and really until she was about 4 1/2 months old, time could not have gone slower. As I've written about previously, she was very colicky, and with the specter of postpartum depression hanging over my head and the anxiety of being thrown into motherhood...let's just say it was a tough fourth trimester.

Everyone told me that it'd get easier, that it'd get better, that I'd forget the absolute drudgery of that time. I'm not far enough away from it to forget it (some days I think it's actually worse in my memory than it was in reality), but I can finally report that it did, in fact, get better.

At 7 1/2 months old, Amelia is bright, aware, engaging, communicative. She reaches both for me and for Rob, eats whatever we shovel into her mouth, doesn't (always) scream when I leave the room, is back to sleeping through the night in her own bed (knock on wood), is working toward crawling and walking simultaneously. She is still fussier than a lot of babies, but generally only when she's tired, lonely, hungry, or wakes up from a nap too early. If there is such a thing as an introverted baby, she is one; when we go somewhere new or when someone new comes to us, her fussiness ramps up a bit and she requires a fair amount of "recharge" time. Sometimes I worry that she is this way because in her first months we didn't go many places or meet new people, but either way it is how she is and we are learning to adapt to meet her needs. A lot of our day is still spent pulling her back from the brink of misery (for all involved) but it's about a thousand times less unpleasant than it was in her first few months.

I suppose that along with her evening out, we have gotten a lot better too. We are more used to her ups and her downs, we know what works and what doesn't, and we learn more about each other every second of every day. Before she was born I always thought there'd be a point at which we felt like we had the basics down and had a good flow; I've realized, though, that this point doesn't really exist at least in the way that I had expected. It might be that my baby is uniquely difficult, but it seems that she never has one habit for too long and as soon as we get accustomed to her she flips the tables on us.  The most recent example is that she was napping only in the carrier for months, and now putting her into the carrier launches a massive screaming fit. At the current moment I can only get her to nap in our bed with me there, and it takes a lot of fighting and nursing to make that happen. Another example is that she was almost 100% weaned onto formula for several weeks only to give up and refuse bottles in favor of breastfeeding again. It's taken awhile for my milk supply to respond to "unweaning" but I think we're in a good place. At this point I might just nurse forever for how well it works toward getting her to sleep.

This is one thing I would convey to expecting mothers from my experience: plan away if it helps you, but be ready for near-constant change. Don't internalize it, because it probably isn't your fault. Babies are terrible.

Aside from all that (or maybe partially because of it) motherhood is as amazing and beautiful. I don't know why I feel the need to clarify to the world that I love my kid--it should be a given--but I share a lot of the tough stuff so there's some positive for you too.

Happy week, friends!