One Year Old Mom

by Joni Finegold-Sachs

I'm about to turn one. One-year-old mom, that is. I can't help but reflect back on the past year and how much sleep I've lost. All I can say is, thank heavens for hormones, or whatever it is that makes me besotted, addicted, unbreakably attached to this little being that emerged from me (after thirty hours of head-butting my tailbone) just a short, but lifetime of a year ago.

Lillie and I have never slept in the same bed. Not that I'm opposed to "co-sleeping" as it's called; I would love to be able to do it. Oh, I've certainly had Lillie in bed with me, and she's co-slept, but not me. I can't reconcile my primordial urge to protect my offspring and my more current urge to just conk out. I understand now how my father could say to me, in all seriousness -- "when you're at college, you can do what you want, but when you're here, you follow my rules." It's not quite out of sight, out of mind, but more the intense awareness of this being's presence and vulnerability that renders me unable to relax enough to be unconscious in her presence.

My devotion to this child has got to be hormonal, or maybe evidence of a greater being than all of us, because parenting Lillie's has made me do things that I would consider at least insane, if not downright self-abusive. I can't count the number of times I gathered that sleeping little bunny up in my arms, knowing full well she's wake and howl, just to get another whiff of that addictive, milky, newborn smell. I still wake in a heartbeat the moment I hear her cry, but no reaction is like that to the cry of six week old Lillie. The tortured cry that made my stomach turn over and my blood pressure skyrocket and my mind go into overdrive just needing to make everything better and having no idea how. I dropped a lot of weight quickly after giving birth -- some might attribute it to nursing, but I think it resulted from all the hours I spent dancing to Dido in an effort to calm Lillie and, in effect, myself.

I've experienced a year's worth of worries, rational and irrational, concise and formlessly huge. Of course, I worried that she'd stop breathing, but that was nothing (especially since my husband was far worse about it and wasn't above holding a mirror to Lillie's lips as she slept). It was the worries about every thing that could assault, attack, annoy, and aggravate this fragile little extension of myself, from germs that could get inside that adorable little nose to relatives who might get inside that vulnerable little mind

Feeding Lillie has been so difficult at times, but it breaks my heart anytime someone else does it, including Lillie herself. The first weeks of nursing were rarely fun -- filled with soreness, leaking, engorgement, and exhaustion (yup, even my boobs were tired). But despite the huge burden on me (particularly my chest -- nursing has made me a 38 E!) I prided myself on being Lillie's sole source of sustenance not only through nine months of gestation, but also the first six months outside the womb. And then I succumbed to the pressure of cereal. She gobbled it up eagerly, and I schismed between joy and despair, knowing that my baby was taking her first step away from me, albeit through her mouth. I'm still nursing her, and admit freely that I'm clinging desperately to that recreation of the umbilical cord for ten minutes three or four times a day. I'm not going to wean Lillie; she'll wean me. I know it's my job to teach Lillie independence, and the reward of a job well done will be her growing farther and farther from me, but I'm holding onto those few moments of deepest connection as long as I can. Knowing Lillie and her attempts to feed herself from almost that first spoonful of cereal, she'll grow impatient getting her "munch" from Mommy soon enough.

I look onto the next year with anticipation and trepidation. By this time next year, my soft, round, toothless, sparse-haired lump of babbling, crawling, baby will be talking, running, biting, and rubbing all sorts of food and gunk into a (hopefully) full head of hair. She'll be far closer to "kid" than "baby". But I will also get to see more of that real personality shining through -- alternatively very serious and very delighted at the absurdities of life (particularly the absurdities of her Abba and myself). And this anticipation and trepidation is nothing compared to the wonder and terror of the years beyond. What piques my curiosity the most, however, is what I'll be like as a two year old Mom, a school age Mom, a teenager Mom, and someday, an adult Mom. Who will that be? And what bizarre behaviors governed by God, hormones, or just lack of sleep will bemuse and astound me then?