Ain't No Holla Back Girl

There is something inescapably now about having an infant. As one who sometimes wishes to avoid the Now...and, say, daydream about the future, analyze the past, or even obsessively construct plans for the future based on strategies I think I understand from my past, I am not always loving this whole in the present moment with the tiny baby thing.



Actually, mostly these days (I can only speak in a very limited time frame) I am feeling okay with it. The first couple weeks with, though, were rough. I found myself, at random moments during the day, gripped by a thought that this is it - this endless cycle of nursing, putting the baby to sleep, trying to assess what the baby wants and then nursing again, etc. all over again. This thought was, of course, accompanied by a terrible feeling of confinement. To be fair, this is a sensation that I've experienced at pretty much every job I've ever had. It's just that this particular job doesn't include legally outlined breaks and mealtimes...no vacation or sick days, really. No ducking out or rashly deciding, after a dull day at work, to say "fuck it!" to going to the gym and "boy howdy" to getting a beer with a friend.

It is natural to feel this massive adjustment, I assume. To balk a little at the radical shift your days take after having a baby. To be honest, I feel pretty lucky. I feel like Ila isn't an extraordinarily demanding baby...and I also feel pretty content going through the repetitive little motions of each day, capable of reminding myself this is a phase and that I should enjoy Ila while she's tiny.

In that vein, I really am trying to notice as much as I can about her now. (In fact, sometimes I feel little pangs of sadness that she's changing - and going to change - so fast that I'll somehow miss some of it. It's weirdly a sensation of missing her when she's right in front of me.) For instance, she is getting more and more opinonated. She has started screeching and hollering when I try to nurse her when she's not hungry - or when she's gotten enough food. She throws her head back, turns red in the face, and yells. I was completely floored by this at first...I thought something was wrong. However, having paid attention, I've decided that sometimes I think she may be hungry when she's not. Instead of a polite refusal - however that would look in infantese - she screams about it. Fortunately, the screaming stops immediately when I just sit her upright or lie her down next to me.

It has taken some getting used to. At first, I was a little hurt - my breasts couldn't help but take it personally. However, now, I am trying to find some amusement in it. I mean, imagine being offered food when you're not hungry and instead of simply refusing it, you curse the person who offered it to you and throw the plate at the wall? It is absurd...but I guess everything is a little crazy when the only real way you have to communicate is screams and shrieks at varying volume levels. I can't wait for more cooing and smiling. These two things have started a little...but the grunting and hollering is still the preferred dialect. Isn't it funny that we all learn to scream and groan long before we learn to smile? It's supposedly for our survival...which, I think, says a lot about our species.