By: Revanche

My kid and Making Strides: Notes from Month 12

February 15, 2016

We have all survived a WHOLE YEAR.

Sleep-crying is a thing. It’s as pitiful as sleepbarking (by Seamus, not LB) is cute: real baby cries but you can’t comfort them because they’ll actually wake up and then you’ll regret everything.

I used to hold my breath a lot: would these snorks and soft sobs wake hir or would ze shuffle off to sleep? Don’t know why I bothered. Oxygen deprivation for me wasn’t going to affect the outcome for hir. Wakefulness was either a need for a cuddle, or a full bore scream and arched back of misery that meant FEED ME. Which, in my sleep deprived haze, would often be misinterpreted as “I’m sad, soothe me”. Less than 1% of the time is the latter, why do I always forget?? Oh right. Sleep deprivation.

But it got easier

Ze cried all the time. For months, it was a constant cycle of crying baby, change hir diaper, soothe soothe soothe, feed the baby, soothe soothe soothe, crying baby, try again.

We walked hir, we rocked hir, we patted hir, we sang, we shushed, we passed out sitting up with a baby cradled in our arms.

Not a single thing made hir sleep better or more.

Then ze stopped. Either ze got older and less anxious or hir needs were being met. Who the hell knows? All I know is ze wouldn’t sleep through the night for months. Some nights, we’d be up with the dawn because we’d hardly gotten back in bed much before that.

There was that odd night back in Month 4 ze slept through for a solid 9 hours like a horrible, torturous carrot ze was dangling in front of us. It would be 3 months later before it happened again for a few nights and then it’d stop.

Suddenly, 4 or so months after that ze did. No warning. Just started sleeping through and waking at 5 am. Then started sleeping until 6 am. Once, ze slept til 730.

Lesson learned? It can get better. But nothing we did had any influence over it. I used to be terrible at dealing with uncertainty and after a hard year of training find that while it may not be comfortable, it won’t keep me up nights.

But not easy-easy

That’s not to say we don’t still have our moments of frustration. As ze grows and explores, ze will confuse and frustrate us. We forget, every so often, that ze is just a baby still because ze has grown so fast and is so amazingly interactive.

My favorite age

A friend said that whatever age you’re at, you’ll revise that to be your favorite age. I used to love babies best at Months 3-6. But now I think he was right, I adore LB at this age even more than I did when ze was fresh-baked, or when ze was just learning to lift hir head, or when ze finally learned to hold hir own bottle.

I miss those earlier days with that sort of wistful nostalgia when I realize ze is no longer willing to cuddle. Once ze became mobile, that was the end of baby+mom liedowns together. Ze simply cannot stay still, period. But despite all the exhaustion running after hir now, I love it.

Now is: climbing onto furniture without help, proudly showing off “gentle pets” for Seamus, mischievously crawling and poking at sleeping Dad’s face, industriously pulling down books and folded laundry faster than I can put them up, mad dash crawls with top of the range squeals as ze tries to beat me to the Forbidden Anything Zones, curiously tasting anything ze touches and pulling faces, then sticking out hir tongue for me to remove tasted and rejected item.

Now is a busy time. There’s the nonstop exploration of all the same things, repeatedly. The thrill of discovering new things in the recycling to bang around and share with Seamus. The excitement of pulling out Legos to share with me.  Discovering how to put things back where they came from. That last is a much coveted skill but as I understand it, it’s going to take some time. Ze’s working against muscle memory and instinct when putting things back in the box, you can see this when ze places a Lego back in the box, ponders for a second and grabs it back out.

The first step is the hardest

LB took five steps in a row, racing toward hir teacher with delight. Ze has been trying hir sealegs since, taking a step or three here and there, aiming hirself for a relatively soft landing or hurling hirself the rest of the way at us.

I adore hir face

Even when ze is crawling right over my throat to get to the toy on the other side of me, across me being the straightest line from Point Baby to Point Toy, I adore hir.

Ze might be in danger of being spoiled if I thought love was money or love was indulgence, but I think love is support and boundaries and equipping hir with as much skill, knowledge, and confidence to take on the world.

Therefore, no, I will not pick hir up every three minutes just because ze would like to hitch a ride and they always pick me up at daycare! They surely do but I am not a mule-momma and I need to conserve my strength for the most important things.

Oh, right, more importantly, as my parents always said: we say no, and we tell you the hard truths because we love you. Someone who didn’t love you would have no interest in doing the difficult jobs that help you be a better person.

May I always have the strength and clarity to love and guide LB as I was loved and guided in the early years.

Here’s a question for you

It’s been fun putting together monthly updates but now that ze has achieved a full year, we’ve stopped counting in months. Would anyone still like to see monthly updates or have you had enough?

Earlier…

Month 11: Rising Up
Month 10: Going Boneless
Month 9: Tasting Life
Month 8: Exploration
Month 7: Ambulation
Month 6: Becoming human
Month 5: Toes
Month 4: Velociraptor Claws
Month 3: Growth Spurts
Month 2: Hates sleep
Month 1: Banshee

Sharing is caring!

Email

Twitter

Pinterest

0