Sweet & Sour

The last several nights, Ila has been bent on torturing me. She wakes 3 or 4 times to nurse, actually whine-cries (she's never really been a night crier) when she wakes and the boob is not instantly in her mouth, and sometimes rustles around for a while after eating before falling back to sleep. Needless to say, these are grounds for being put outside on the front porch...but she's also been doing something so indescribably sweet that I'm totally disarmed. Sometimes when she wakes and I lie her down next to me, she doesn't actually want to eat. Instead she wiggles her little body so close to mine it's touching and then nestles her head into my chest. Then, her whole body relaxes and she goes back to sleep. This is unspeakably endearing and lovely.

It reminds me of something I read in a Penelope Leach baby book about when babies are first smiling. In the manner of a total wet-rag of disappointment, Leach says don't be fooled by those first real smiles! Babies do not smile because they love you. No! It is just an evolutionary mechanism our species has adapted in order to continue to get fed and loved despite screaming for three hours a day, puking on every article of clothing you own, and keeping you up all night. Well, Penelope, it works. The same basic thing is going on with Ila's little night snuggles. It's finally gotten cold here, and she wants to board the mama train for warm, well-fed dream land. It's not about love; it's about surviving the "harsh" winter conditions. Although this is all true, having her sweet little body next to me really does make me feel a little equanimity about the whole not sleeping thing...so, I guess I'm a total sucker. Such is motherhood, I suppose.

In fact, this all makes me thing about the general work of parenthood. It seems that I'm really being heated by the furnace of my own love here - I mean, it's creepy and weird when parents are trying to get something from their babies, be it a sense of love, peace, a reason to live. You can get these from parenting in a functional non-damaging way, if you are really getting these feelings from your own ability to love; your own generated warmth and nurturing and care for another little being; from the power of learning to truly love someone unconditionally.

Let's just admit to ourselves that really parenting is about giving, fairly one-sidedly, for the first 25 years or so. This isn't based on what I anticipate with Ila, rather it's based on my memories of me growing up. (Actually, being a teacher also brings this lesson home, too.) The amusing thing, that Penelope Leach would smile patronizingly at I'm sure, is that I totally think it really won't be like that with Ila. I guess I sort of acknowledge parenting is sometimes a thankless task...but you're so high from loving your baby other times that it all evens out.

This is all essential because, in addition to being a very demanding little being, Ila is sometimes just strange and uncanny. Last night when I went to bed, I moved Ila into her own little bed and settled myself down to sleep. I couldn't really relax and felt like I was being watched. I opened my eyes to see Ila staring unblinkingly at me. The light was dim, but I could see her little mole eyes boring into me. I smiled and even whispered to her, but she just kept staring at me. It was a little Omen-esque or how I imagine Rosemary's Baby must have been staring back at Mia Farrow's dopey-eyed look at the end of that movie...so I had to reach out and touch her to make sure she wasn't actually turning into a little Stephen King baby before my eyes. She did some slow blinks upon being touched and looked a little less like demon spawn. But, these moments it really hits home that I have no idea what is going on her mind, or even what the landscape of her thoughts could possibly look like, being pre-verbal and all. What is it like in a baby's brain? How can I possibly even imagine it?

The world is certainly new and enormous to her in a way that I can't fathom anymore. For instance, we've given her a little banana and apple in the last week. What this means is that she has gnawed, slobbered and sucked ineffectually on the fruit while I held it in my hand. We haven't really started solids in earnest, but I was curious to see what she thought of these things. She did some spastic twitch upon tasting the banana, like she was encountering something wild and not entirely acceptable. But she grabbed at the banana for more...then proceeded to grimace and gag, probably only swallowing a few mouthfuls of lightly banana-flavored slobber. Still, she finally gagged and spit up copious amounts of fruity saliva. Charming.

I guess when you're used to a liquid diet that is delivered in a warm and snuggleable package, real food is bizarre and hard to understand. In that vein, I love when she's nursing and her little eyes roll back in her head. It's like she's mainlining a liquid form of happiness and love. Pretty cool. My aunt mentioned to me recently that the parts of the brain that register pleasure from love and food are very close to each other. Watching Ila nurse, it is not hard to believe this.