This baby is like a cake I don’t want to share. I am a pig for this baby. In certain respects, that’s understandable. I only get an hour of him awake per day during the week. I read some study that working parents only played with their kids 30 minutes a day; stay-at-home parents, only 60 minutes. Other days, not so much.
I hope he knows how I feel about him, or figures it out some day. I don’t think it counts that I smile at him when he’s sleeping or sitting up for a burp (the cutest thing I’ve ever seen). When I lift him up under his armpits, he’s still boneless enough that it’s like picking up a cat. Sometimes, I think, Wow, I am holding a future President of America like a cat, or, Wow, I am holding a future, really talented, school librarian like a cat.
Husband and I swoon over Baby like lovesick teenagers. When I miss Baby, I can’t call him (he doesn’t have a cell), so I call Husband and we share our favorite Baby moments. Baby is not going to remember a whit of these days, and I have recently thought these memories are for Husband and I to share when we’re old and Baby is driving cross-country to go surfing and never calls me (or transports into my living room, or whatever kids those days are doing).
After growing up with such a loudly opinionated (and very good) mother, I thought I would try to be a liberal parent, a parent like a therapist, where I would try to let Baby become whomever he is supposed to be, rather than what I wanted. My primary parenting goal was to raise a non-a-hole, a huge service to the world overrun with them. And while that is still true, today, I realized there’s no way on earth I’m going to be objective with this child. How can I? Having a child literally feels like I have sent out a part of my spirit into the world. He feels like an extension of me (precisely what I accused my mother of unhealthily feeling for many years). I don’t like strangers or people I don’t like holding him is because it’s almost as if they’re holding my heart (or to be less cheesy and just as effective) my liver, my pancreas (you know, the essentials). It feels like a too intimate gesture.
And if I feel this way now, how on earth am I going to let Baby be his own person? If he’s gay, which I’m totally down with, will I have a hard time adjusting simply because I’m not gay? (By the way, I would get over it lickety-split. I have friends who seem to have been disowned by their folks for a variety of reasons, including being gay, and now that I have a kid, I don’t understand why any parent would ever do that…I suppose if that parent was an ahole, this behavior would make sense.)
Ahh, whatever, I told you having this baby gave me a different mind. I now have different things to mull over, and there’s still a large part of my brain that can’t believe that Baby is here. Husband and I still look at each other when the Baby makes noise, and say “Wait, did someone leave a baby here? When did we agree to a third roommate?”