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Jan. 27th, 2004 09:33 amSparked by a post from rliz about feeling phsyically intimate with her little sisters and maternal love - I've been thinking a lot about the baby as a little body. She is herself, of course, or will increasingly become so, anyway, but right now she's also me. I made her, for one thing. I mean, mr. flea helped at the start, but I did the heavy lifting, and still do. I'm still making her, with only occasional minor help from Gerber's rice cereal. And I feel physically intimate with her in a way that I have never been with anyone else (except, presumably, my own mother, but I don't remember that). I love her physicality - I sniff her and nibble her constantly, from ears to toes. I like to have her next to me in bed - she feels like a little warm bud, an outgrowth of myself. It's something that I am sometimes wary of - my mother still has a level of possessive "MINE" about her children, and especially me, her first, and before we knew Casper was a girl I wanted a boy so as to have some kind of otherness boundary between me and the baby, to keep me from being an over-identifying, smothering mother. But now that it's here, that she's here, I celebrate it. For now, while she's small, it's somehow right for her to be an outgrowth of me. And she will grow further out and away as she gets bigger, and then will be the time that I have to watch myself and let her go. But now, OH her skin! Oh sniffing her little head-fuzz! Oh kissing the fat muscular nursing cheeks!
And because I have to see everything with as clear an eye as possible, of course there are times I am overwhelmed by having this little body with me for long stretches - her grabby hands that can't yet know how hard they're pinching my neck, her spitup and pee, the constant danger of smelly dampness, her writhing and unwillingness to be held. So there's that, too.
Baby Human Tricks:
*Lying on tummy, puts her face down to the floor to scrabble her feet up in back, to get her knees under her, butt in the air.
*Getting very good at removing, then replacing pacifier. (We've said we'll take it away at 6 months - dear god, how?)
*Screams all the livelong day. Earsplitting, high-pitched baby screams (for the noise of it - we're not torturing her or anything). This will be fun for the next 3 years.
And because I have to see everything with as clear an eye as possible, of course there are times I am overwhelmed by having this little body with me for long stretches - her grabby hands that can't yet know how hard they're pinching my neck, her spitup and pee, the constant danger of smelly dampness, her writhing and unwillingness to be held. So there's that, too.
Baby Human Tricks:
*Lying on tummy, puts her face down to the floor to scrabble her feet up in back, to get her knees under her, butt in the air.
*Getting very good at removing, then replacing pacifier. (We've said we'll take it away at 6 months - dear god, how?)
*Screams all the livelong day. Earsplitting, high-pitched baby screams (for the noise of it - we're not torturing her or anything). This will be fun for the next 3 years.