Dispatches From Almost Ten Months

In another few months I’ll probably come back to this post, laugh a great big hearty laugh at my mumma-of-an-almost-ten-month-old naivety, but in a way (holding breath) parts of parenting a baby have gotten easier. 

The day your baby is born you go from having no baby none of the time to having a baby (or more – brave people) all of the time. It’s such a huge and important responsibility that it feels like someone should have been popping by with your baby for a few hours at first, then a full day, then an overnight and so on until they’re sure you’re not going to feed it Twinkies or let it watch Maury Povich. 

But they don’t. And when you’re still tired and slow-moving from just having said baby, your little one needs you so much. For love and food and a sense of security and general safe keeping and clean bumedness. 

I’m not saying that those first parenting minutes and hours aren’t wonderful. They are. When Frances was born she was grey. And flopsy. And had a cone head. Objectively, she was not a pretty sight. But as soon as I saw her it was like there was no one else in the room, just me and the world’s most beautiful and perfect baby. I think there may have been a few seconds where she glowed goldish and a choir of angels sang. 

Still it often seems in those early days as if your baby’s needs are inversely proportionate to your knowledge and skills as a parent. Then, each day as you learn a little bit more about how to meet the needs of your wee button, your wee button learns more about, and feels more secure in, the world and so needs you a tiny bit less. 

Our simultaneous learning and independence curves have continued apace. Now at nine and a half months, I can pretty much anticipate what she needs before she needs it and she has become so engaged in and curious about the world around her that she sometimes (sometimes) forgets I’m even here. 

I think no one tells you that it gets easier because they don’t want to assume that you might be finding it hard. Or if you’re that one awful nurse from the hospital who says “oh wait it only gets harder,” when you've finally got your baby to eat after three days, it’s because you have a black soul and sat on a sea cucumber at lunch.

I kept waiting and waiting for the harder but it didn't come. Instead, in what seems like the blink of an eye you’re in such a beautiful stride that you forget there was a time you felt like you didn’t know absolutely everything about that tiny fresh bundle in your arms.