It’s probably safe to say that for much of my life, I had a dislike of babies. As I have said more than once to my husband when comparing babies to cats, there’s no downside to cats. They’re cute and furry, they purr, and they use a litter box. Babies, on the other hand, leak from every available orifice, constantly, and are LOUD. I have a squeamish thing about drool, especially. It bothers me more than the idea of cleaning poopy diapers. I remember years ago meeting up with a high school friend. He came over to my parents’ house when I was in town visiting, bringing his wife and new baby. He handed me the baby. I held the baby practically at arm’s length, wondering what to do with it, and gave it back as soon as I decently could. As recently as last summer I was at a barbeque watching a very young toddler drooling copiously onto her father’s head, and feeling totally disgusted.
Why on earth, you could easily ask, did I decide to have a baby then? What possessed me?
Well, the bottom line is that I decided, after a lot of thought, conversation, and processing, that I genuinely did want to have a child, and I was going to have to just find ways to deal with the baby part. Both my husband and I worried about how we’d feel about the baby, though. Everyone said “It’s different when it’s your own”, but it’s hard to take that on faith, especially when one’s squeamish button is turned on high and beeping loudly around other people’s babies.
So, we decided to go for it. It felt a lot like deliberately walking up to the edge of a cliff and, in cold blood, jumping off. We had times all through my pregnancy in which we struggled with difficult feelings. In fact, when I first heard my baby’s heartbeat on Doppler I cried, because my first response was to feel that I didn’t deserve to have a baby, because I didn’t feel what I *should* feel.
Hazel was born on the Ides of March. We have both promptly fallen totally in love with her, and what I feel for her is a huge gift from the universe, a blessing I can’t adequately describe to anyone. The power of this connection is enormous, and I am so grateful for this chance to live life more fully, feel more deeply, and engage my heart, mind, and soul in this new adventure that has me simultaneously shaking in my boots and smiling through my whole body.
The fact is that babies are not the same thing as their drool. Yeah, it seems simple, but it’s been a revelation to me. Wow, babies do not equal poop, drool, spit-up, and pee. Yes, they’ve got a lot of all those things (and she’ll have more and more as she gets bigger, oh goody), but they are so much more. I cannot get over the incredible scent of the top of Hazel’s head. Her gaze has, from the beginning, been so present and direct. Her nose and mouth are perfect, her cheeks are adorable, and her eyes are gorgeous. She is simultaneously a little animal who looks just like any other baby animal when she nurses and a little human person looking out of those incredible eyes. She is fresh and new, but looking at her takes me one more step toward believing that we really do have something called a soul after all. She is amazing to me. I’ve even gotten to the place where I can see why other people think their kids are cute, and even to thinking that the other babies in our parents’ support group are cute, quite a transformation to happen in a matter of weeks.
I have not magically gotten over my “ew, gross!!” reaction to drool & spit-up. Ugh, I still don’t want to be covered in either substance, or even have a bit spotted on my shirt. And I will have to deal with that, and back off my negative reactions, because those substances are now a reality in my life. But, I have the motivation to deal with it now, because it’s part of having Hazel in my life. It wasn’t possible to understand that before, because the generic idea of baby wasn’t something that was (even remotely) sufficiently positive to make me want to. But Hazel herself is a person who shows me that the whole is vastly greater than the sum of its parts. And if some of her parts are stinky or otherwise unappealing, she herself is so wonderful that sometimes my heart aches in that painfully joyous way when I look at her. So I’ll tackle my drool neurosis and many others besides. And I’ll sniff her head and snuggle her, and thank the universe for the chance both to do the work and to experience the reward.
Why on earth, you could easily ask, did I decide to have a baby then? What possessed me?
Well, the bottom line is that I decided, after a lot of thought, conversation, and processing, that I genuinely did want to have a child, and I was going to have to just find ways to deal with the baby part. Both my husband and I worried about how we’d feel about the baby, though. Everyone said “It’s different when it’s your own”, but it’s hard to take that on faith, especially when one’s squeamish button is turned on high and beeping loudly around other people’s babies.
So, we decided to go for it. It felt a lot like deliberately walking up to the edge of a cliff and, in cold blood, jumping off. We had times all through my pregnancy in which we struggled with difficult feelings. In fact, when I first heard my baby’s heartbeat on Doppler I cried, because my first response was to feel that I didn’t deserve to have a baby, because I didn’t feel what I *should* feel.
Hazel was born on the Ides of March. We have both promptly fallen totally in love with her, and what I feel for her is a huge gift from the universe, a blessing I can’t adequately describe to anyone. The power of this connection is enormous, and I am so grateful for this chance to live life more fully, feel more deeply, and engage my heart, mind, and soul in this new adventure that has me simultaneously shaking in my boots and smiling through my whole body.
The fact is that babies are not the same thing as their drool. Yeah, it seems simple, but it’s been a revelation to me. Wow, babies do not equal poop, drool, spit-up, and pee. Yes, they’ve got a lot of all those things (and she’ll have more and more as she gets bigger, oh goody), but they are so much more. I cannot get over the incredible scent of the top of Hazel’s head. Her gaze has, from the beginning, been so present and direct. Her nose and mouth are perfect, her cheeks are adorable, and her eyes are gorgeous. She is simultaneously a little animal who looks just like any other baby animal when she nurses and a little human person looking out of those incredible eyes. She is fresh and new, but looking at her takes me one more step toward believing that we really do have something called a soul after all. She is amazing to me. I’ve even gotten to the place where I can see why other people think their kids are cute, and even to thinking that the other babies in our parents’ support group are cute, quite a transformation to happen in a matter of weeks.
I have not magically gotten over my “ew, gross!!” reaction to drool & spit-up. Ugh, I still don’t want to be covered in either substance, or even have a bit spotted on my shirt. And I will have to deal with that, and back off my negative reactions, because those substances are now a reality in my life. But, I have the motivation to deal with it now, because it’s part of having Hazel in my life. It wasn’t possible to understand that before, because the generic idea of baby wasn’t something that was (even remotely) sufficiently positive to make me want to. But Hazel herself is a person who shows me that the whole is vastly greater than the sum of its parts. And if some of her parts are stinky or otherwise unappealing, she herself is so wonderful that sometimes my heart aches in that painfully joyous way when I look at her. So I’ll tackle my drool neurosis and many others besides. And I’ll sniff her head and snuggle her, and thank the universe for the chance both to do the work and to experience the reward.
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