Only a parent would marvel at her accomplishments I suppose: at how she can hold her head up a little bit longer every day; at how she can now focus on us and follow us with her eyes; at how she can (sometimes) get her hand to her mouth. She has outgrown her newborn-sized clothes (including the outfit she came home from the hospital in) and is on her way out of some of the 0-3 month-sized sleepers in certain brands. She spends a little more time awake and alert.
Some days this is so hard, harder than I imagined it would be. I think she is developing some sort of routine, and then she changes it. Or she cries, and I don't know why. I try everything in my small bag of tricks: nursing, changing, swaddling, walking. I get worried about how we will ever manage and wonder what on earth I was thinking. But then there are times when everything works. She cries, and is comforted when I pick her up. She wakes up to nurse as Brian is leaving for work, and when she finishes, she and I snuggle back down into the bed to sleep for another hour. She fusses and I pop her into the sling and dance around the house to Paul Simon as she makes funny baby faces up at me.
There was one evening a few days after we came home from the hospital when I nursed her and then handed her to Brian to rock. I walked into the next room and watched the sky get dark as I cried, completely sure that I was never going to bond with the baby. In spite of the overwhelming love I felt when I looked at her, I thought there was something missing, because I didn't know what to do with the baby besides feed her and change her and hope she would fall asleep. I have to confess that I still have those moods on occasion, moods that leave me in helpless tears, but they are fewer and further between. I find that mostly she just needs me to feed her and change her and snuggle her, and I am capable of all of those things.
And the love just gets more overwhelming.
2 comments:
You sound like a wonderful mama to me. I'm sure someday you will long for the days when she only needed such simple things :)
I'm no mama, but from what I gather a lot of women go through this. Don't worry, you will get there eventually. And the more kids you have the faster it will come =). The more you notice your bonding occurring, you will become closer to her exponentially. It's the moms who think they're perfect who never improve.
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