I never intended not to write. I knew it would be all-consuming, but I had assumed babies took naps, and I would sneak in a few paragraphs here and there. Not all babies nap. I’ve wondered if he wasn’t getting enough food, or if he was uncomfortable in some way, but we’ve explored all of the obvious reasons one would think a baby doesn’t nap, and Chels is not placated by any of them. He will sleep some (20-minute increments), if he is held, but all I can think is that he has been so alert and aware since he arrived, he just wants to bear witness to all of it. He came out holding his neck up, eyes open. He absolutely loves getting out of the house and loves people, both of which give me severe anxiety postpartum, though it’s getting better now.
The hospital, as well as every government-sanctioned website and pediatric board, beats “safe sleep” into your brain before birth, after birth, and at every pediatrician appointment. “And baby is sleeping in his own sleep space, placed on his back?” I nod. I check yes on the form, after also lying about my postpartum crying so they don’t think I’m depressed. The hormones just really made me cry, a lot, almost always happy tears. We used a bassinet for a few months, then moved him to a crib thinking he might like the mattress. We survived those first three months with little napping, but night sleep was bearable. The four-month sleep “regression” (which my mom, and apparently most of her generation, refuses to believe is real), derailed all the sleep habits we thought we had formed. Babe was waking every hour, for weeks, and most nights would end up in our bed so that I didn’t have to drag my unshapen body across the hall, and because he wanted to nurse often for comfort instead of calories. Now, at five months old, he starts the night in his crib pretty easily around 7:15, and I get to eat, wash bottles, and shower (where I stand in the redeeming scalding water night after night reminding myself it’s just contrast. It’s only temporary). I usually sleep from 8 to 10, sometimes 11, and then he’s ready to eat. Occasionally he will go back in his crib, but most nights he demands to be with me. I’ve come across articles about how to “care for a strong-willed baby,” whatever that means, but I haven’t clicked on it because, besides the headline being off-putting, I deleted Instagram weeks ago and swore off googling things about childcare. I love knowing the numbers, reading the research, finding tools to cope, but I was drowning in the internet’s “right” ways to mother, as if any one doctor or organization or even another mom would have answers that prove they know my baby better than me.
It’s such a call to presence. To have faith that one day, it will happen, you know in your bones it will, but you don’t know when that day will be, so every day, every night, every nap, every drop off, you try. And try. And try again. And you don’t know what he will remember, which memories will stick, the ones he will grasp at to define his family, the ones he will look back on with pride or laugher or shame. You don’t know of what his little body will keep score, so you pat and hold and kiss and bounce and sing and dance and talk baby talk until you’re blue in the face and aching from carpel tunnel. “Let that baby cry,” they say, “He won’t remember.” True, he will not consciously remember - but I will. And his nervous system will. So, I hum, with watery eyes, as he fakes being asleep in my arms, only to look up at me wide-eyed and break into the biggest smile before burying his face back into my elbow. A moment many millennials are quick to point out as sacrifice, I cling to in devotion.
Just when I feel like I am going to collapse from fatigue, from fighting nap times, from milk supply concerns, daycare sicknesses, back-to-work guilt (that strikes at morning drop off but strikes even harder at pickup when they hand him back to me in a dissociated gaze and he refuses to make eye contact with me until he’s buckled in the car), pining for my yoga practice, feeling distant from my partner…the universe intercedes with her grace. After dwelling on thoughts like “I won’t make it like this another day,” “something is going to break,” and after feeling defeated upon estimating the hours of sleep (brain cells) lost, or how my body won’t recover in ways I need it to…the pressure lets up, and I get a small win. Sometimes it comes in the form of a baby’s giggle, a four-hour stretch of sleep, an easy, non-protested bedtime. Sometimes, it’s watching my husband’s face light up when Chels flashes him a smile. A whisper in the night I had been yearning to hear, “I know it’s hard, but I’m glad we did This”.
All of the sudden I am flooded with calm. Or maybe it is joy. Something that washes over me, that forces me to acknowledge its frivolity, its lightness. A magical, scintillating moment of awe, clarity, peace, luck.
Lying in bed wishing my baby would sleep in his crib like he’s “supposed to”, my mindset shifts as I look down on myself from above. A soft lady in a soft bed, warm, with a sweet baby cuddled up to her left breast and a husband sound asleep to her right. We are made to commune, so why was I forcing my baby to sleep alone when he didn’t want to, when he knows he’s safe next to me? Why do I sleep with my husband? Because I love him and I want to be close to him. So why would I leave my baby across the hall in another room with walls and closed doors between us?
Sure, sometimes it’s nice to get some space, and when he’s willing, I let him sleep in his own room. But these nights are already fleeting, and he might be my only one. I resolve to sleep with him as long as he needs. And sometimes, I need it too.
There’s so much to say about being mother - I fear I do not know how to say it. So I’m starting to try, in little pieces. Thanks for being here XOXO