Sleep in, preparations, guilt, and other miscellanea

I slept in until 9 am this morning, which for me is pretty late - if I'm really out late I can sleep in longer, but generally I'm a morning person. Carl's not, so we're hoping this will make for really good tradeoffs in baby duty. It felt luxurious but also gave me a headache, because I think I spent most of those hours in the same position and my back got a bit cramped.

On Thursday I bought the Baby Signs book as well as the aforementioned nursing outfit. I felt oddly guilty because we fully intended to buy it for Emily and, you know, didn't get around to it. Of course you can't really use baby signs until 6 months anyway, so it's not like we didn't have time, but it's still this odd feeling like being more optimistic about Noah is somehow wrong, or something. I wonder if parents whose children are living feel odd about buying the second child things the first didn't have. Maybe I should ask some. Then there's the reverse guilt that Noah doesn't get enough of "his own" although I have to admit that unpacking and the selection of a few things have gone a long way to mitigate that.

I don't love the new nursery as much as the old, probably because it's just a bit smaller and more traditional of a room - at our old house the rooms were quirky, but we liked that. But it may just be that I haven't sat in it a lot. It needs a new blind and then I think we'll be in business.

I'm daring to think towards being an actual parent again, in this burst of weight-inspired optimism, nesting hormones, and work winding down (next week is my last, eek). I read up on how to put a newborn-ish baby in the sling (I think we'll wait a little bit for that neck control, but we'll see). So yes, I believe in baby signs - anything that helps with communicating the child's thoughts and feelings is a big bonus to me: hopefully as a parent one's tuned in as well, but there is (especially with boys) that long stage between "grunting/pointing/wailing" and being able to say "owie!"

I was reading a study about how early babies come to recognize symbols - at around 5 months, a baby will try to grab an object in a picture as if it were an object, because to them there's not really a difference (or they'll just try to rip the page and stick it in their mouth :)) but a few months later, they'll point and wait for the word. If you think about it that's a huge cognitive leap, one which for example a cat or a dog will never make. And it happens that soon for a lot of kids. That's the whole theory of baby signs - although that's even more abstract; you're not just signing "cat" (although you can) but also something like "hungry" which is a feeling, not an object. This from a child that had no sense of object permanence a few months earlier. It's just insane, infant development.

Parenting that process seems like a huge responsibility, although the theory is that parents kind of muddle through it for the most part with equal instinct and ease.

Occasionally I worry about Noah's development. He's gotten the shorter end of the nutritional stick - a closely spaced pregnancy; I was nauseous; I was travelling and moving and generally more susceptible to chaos so some days didn't do as well at the healthy food thing (although probably ate higher quality food at the points where we weren't moving, etc.); and of course there's the question of why his weight gain stalled and what he wasn't absorbing during that time. Also, I know a family where they lost a baby (also an Emily) to stillbirth and then their next child was developmentally delayed and for some reason that seems like a forecast, to me.

But then I think of how utterly much I did not care, those two days when I didn't realize Emily was dying but I did realize (gradually) we were probably looking at wheelchairs and grunting and having to work out how to have someone wipe her bum for the rest of her life. I mean, of course I would have cared, eventually, and shed bitter tears, but there was also an odd peace down somewhere which is that - it's not about achievement and it's not even about being able to share the joys of Alligator Pie or William Carlos Williams, as much as I kind of wish for those things.

Having a child is a total wildcard, and at its deepest level it's just about meeting that child. Because of my history and my family and the pushy, coach-like person I can occasionally be, and the way I get highs off being able to "get" things and be smart and move fast and achieve, I worried before that I wouldn't be able to be there for a kid who was different. And although I'm sure I will always have to police myself a bit for the soccer mom thing (although here being multiple is good 'cause other people won't, plus Carl is sort of the polar opposite to that) I did learn about myself that there is a much deeper me below that that really does not give a fuck if my kid will never bring home a single written word, never mind an A.

Because I had this moment in the hospital where I could have disconnected from Emily and I didn't. It was a strange moment, but it was so there - where I could have taken her on as a responsibility and a burden and done the right things on the surface, but where my heart would have closed off to the reality of her. And I/we didn't. It's nothing you can measure or believe from the outside, but I do believe that's one of the differences between a real parent and someone who is merely biologically the parent.

It's hard to explain, and it's all theoretical anyway really. But it mitigates the fear a lot. I really hope that Noah is okay, because it's a different and harder road, especially in our society, for anyone who isn't. But it's not the main thing. And before Emily was born, I worried a lot more about it.

... actually, you know, I've been telling myself that but as I write this I see that it may in fact work both ways at once. Maybe I worry less about how I'll react, like if I would be rejecting or something, because now I know I wouldn't. But maybe the worry is more concrete because - it happened, to my baby. I literally watched her brain (through tests) swell and more of it die than already had.

Well, whatever the reason, I see why parents get obsessed with milestones and charts and the latest research. I lean more that way than any other way, I guess. Baby Signs is my casting a lure into the waters of hope. But I know that if it's doesn't work out that way, that's okay.

It's funny to think/hope that in a few more weeks I will be more obsessed with sleep, poo, and breast milk than anything else and won't have time or energy to worry about these things.