Change

I was feeling down the other day and realized I was sad because she is changing. She used to be small and still, just present, and with me. She has now emerged from the larval stage to become this totally hyperactive squawking, bobbling, wriggling, scooting thing. She sounds like a noisy seagull and moves like a paralytic determined to drag herself around by the arms. She’s less helpless, more willful. And I sort of miss the way she used to be.

D thinks I’ve gone off my rocker. He says he’s always loved her, but now he’s starting to really like her, now she’s getting more interesting and being her own person. Before she was this thing that cried and pooped. Now she laughs and babbles and squeals when we come in the room. She waves at us (and inanimate objects and total strangers) and shares her pacifier (takes it out, turns it around and jams it into our mouths).

She also likes, curiously, to pick at my teeth, carefully feeling each one with utter seriousness. I complain about feeling like a horse at the market or someone at the dentist’s, but secretly I sort of like it.

I’ve finally weaned her, a process which felt surprisingly natural, but which may be contributing to this sense of basic separation. I look back now, and the last nine months seem a gift, an extension of the first nine months she was inside me, when we basically just connected and hung out together.

It’s good to identify this, because it helps me be thankful and move on. They say it’s normal to grieve when you wean. It’s natural she’s changing, and a good reminder that she was always her own person. It’s okay to miss the old baby while I learn how to be with the new one—think of new foods to try, new games to play, new books to read or ways for her to explore the world. This is part of what it is to parent, I guess, to always be changing and learning. Or maybe, I think to myself, I’ll just have another baby.