The first three months of a baby’s life are often called the fourth trimester. As Eloise approaches three months of age, I now understand why. I knew she would need me close, but I had no idea how much I would also need her. Turns out sharing a body does not end quickly. However, with each passing day, little pieces of her independence (and mine) are beginning to shine through.
I can feel the fourth trimester closing.
Sure, she still needs me and I still need her, but she is beginning to look around, to turn her head and follow other people around the room. The colic has mysteriously disappeared in the last week and now I am able to put her to sleep around 9PM, leaving me with a couple hours untethered. Instead of the sleepy bundle, she is now alert and in search of external stimulation, babbling a mystical language I wish I could understand.
Our newborn has become a baby.
During my pregnancy and the early days of her life, I gobbled up literature on attachment parenting. I envisioned myself floating around the house with my sweet baby in a variety of baby carriers. I imagined harmonious co-sleeping. It all seemed so natural. But Eloise was not like the babies Dr. Sears describes. She demanded to be close but only tolerated her carriers for short stretches at specific times of day. She slept fitfully beside me but peacefully in her bedside bassinet for the majority of the night.
While strategic use of the carriers and a few hours of co-sleeping each morning have been integral to our first few months, they have not dominated our time together in the way I expected. Instead, she has mostly preferred to be directly in my arms, forcing me to get creative about housework and other tasks. At first I fought it, but then I settled into holding her much of the day, acutely aware of the fleeting time this would last.
Month three has heightened my awareness of time. She has transformed from a tiny newborn in premie jammies to a baby who suddenly fits her three-month clothes. There are only two more inches between her feet and the edge of the bassinet. She now throws her body forward and from side to side to show you where she wants to go. Her eyes watch movement with the kind of envy that tells you she cannot wait to run and dance everywhere she goes.
There are just so many little things I don’t want to forget. Like her smelly little hands from shoving them in her milky mouth all the time, or when her grandfather drove her around for thirty minutes so we could watch her auntie’s scene in a play, or how I finally discovered a way to safely sleep while holding her in my big blue chair. I want to tell her someday how her grandmother walked her through the Shasta forest, chanting like a monk because it was the only way to quiet her, and how her dog Odin would sleep with his body pressed up against the base of her basinet, ready to tell us when she stirred.
This month has sealed our bond. I loved her beyond words the moment I first saw her, but now I know her, too. Every time I put her down or let someone else take over, I marvel at her when she is in my arms again. My growing, changing daughter. Month three, while not always easy, has been powerful magic.
I had no idea bliss could be so simple.
Leap of Mama 