okay, so i've been lax in my posting. going back to work has, not surprisingly, made life a bit busier and more complicated. it's going well overall. the babe is so happy and good with his nanny (who is amazing). i had a much tougher transition to the new routine... funny that i didn't think about that. i was so worried about him having separation anxiety or not taking a bottle or being unhappy when i was gone, but he adjusted within days while i've been back at work for two months and still cry on a regular basis when i leave him. i plan to write more about this in a separate post -- this, and cloth diapers, and starting solids... all topics i have thoughts about and experiences with to share... when i have time.
but for now i want to write a quick post to commemorate my son's upcoming six month "birthday" in just a week. the hubby and i were remarking today how time continues to feel both like it's flying and like every week is an eternity. for example, i can't believe that he's almost six months old. but i also can no longer remember life before him, which feels like it was eons ago. he is such a different baby than he was just a month ago. these days it seems like every few days he's doing something new or becoming more a part of the world. he has such a personality now and interacts with everything around him in such an authentic way; it's hard to hearken back to the days when he was just a lump of baby that could sleep through anything in anyone's arms and didn't do anything other than nurse and poop and cry. and then it's hard to envision the tremendous growth that is still in front of him. he's still a baby, just half a year old! and yet so much change, so much excitement, so much blooming (for lack of a better word) has been compressed into that time. he greets the world around him now with wide, anticipating eyes; with a smile and a laugh that melt my heart.
and how am i? aside from my ongoing guilt and sadness about going back to work and commuting an hour away from home, i'm great. the anxiety and stress i expected to take on as a new parent never really materialized. i've had my moments/hours/even days, interspersed throughout the past six months, but overall i feel more fulfilled than i ever have. my marriage, though still comparatively sex-less, is solid. we, too, have our moments of frustration with one another (which usually coincide with the above-mentioned moments/hours/days), but we seem to have shifted into parent mode fairly seamlessly. and i have gotten to a point with my parenting decisions that feels very empowered and secure. i spent the first couple of months -- as evidenced by many of the posts on this blog -- trying to be very methodical and routinized and grasping on to the advice and guidelines given by any number of books, websites, pediatricians, and fellow parents. heck, i had studied this stuff ahead of time and really thought i knew what to do and what was best for a newborn. my biggest lesson after six months is that there is no one best way to do anything with a newborn. and that my instincts as a parent and understandings of my son are the best guidelines i can follow.
this has dawned on me slowly. it took my previous lesson -- "everything changes" -- to get me there. i felt frustrated that i was spending so much time trying to follow the programmatic teachings of those experts who were somehow qualified to tell me how my child should sleep and nurse and interact with me and others and that still "progress" would only happen in spurts. i entered a phase of slowly pulling back from trying to implement the routines and schedules, but worrying in the back of my mind that i was screwing everything up. "i'll think about that tomorrow," i kept telling myself, a la scarlett o'hara. "for now, it's working."
and then i went back to work, which was so emotionally and physically draining that there was no way i could dedicate the energy or time to worrying about how many hours per 24 period the babe was sleeping or how long he was going in between "meals." i lost the desire to push his bedtime any earlier than we already had (9pm-ish) because any more lost time with him would have broken my heart. i completely rejected the mission to "train" him to sleep in his own bed consistently, because i craved closeness with him -- not further separation. and i decided that i definitely did not care if he still woke up to nurse during the night, because those moments together in the nighttime stillness are so precious and fleeting, i know. still i worried that i was setting us up for a disaster in ignoring the experts and forming all of these "bad habits." but i was so devastated to have lost 8 hours of every day with him that i just didn't care. and what i slowly started to discover was that i resented the "experts" and had a growing sense that i wasn't resisting the advice only because i didn't WANT to put these things into place, but because i didn't feel it was right for us.
that feeling has grown over the past six weeks. i fully support anyone's decision to do what's best for their baby and their family, but i like feeling certain that i'm not screwing up my baby or my life by the daily choices that i make. we have loose routines, but no tight schedule. and that seems to work. the babe is still making progress in becoming a better sleeper without us forcing him to sleep alone. he puts himself to sleep quite often now, for naps and nighttime sleep, without me having to nurse him to sleep like i did for so long. i didn't "train" him out of this habit, he just grew out of it. he sleeps fine in his pack & play, but when he wakes up during the night and i bring him into our bed (which happens almost every night), he and i both sleep exceptionally well... and it doesn't keep him from being able to sleep in the pack & play the next day. he's independently spacing out the time in between meals even though i still nurse on demand (and the nanny pretty much bottle-feeds on demand). as he's growing and changing, he's independently doing what he needs to do to transition to being an older baby. we haven't had to force anything on him or endure any painful "training." i know that eventually he'll sleep through the night. i know that when we transition him into his own room (this summer, when i'm off of work and have the time and energy to do it) that eventually he will learn to sleep in his crib all night. i know that as we introduce solid foods this week that he'll taper down his nursing over the next few months and that eventually he won't be stuck to my breast all the time. and for now, whatever steps we take to get to all of that are fine by me. we're happy, we're bonding, and he's thriving. we're all sleeping, and we're still living our life and incorporating him into it, rather than being run by his schedule. it's working. and i've never been happier than when i wake up on a saturday morning to his smile. there's nothing better.
