Dear Baby - Month #1

Dear baby,

A month ago today, I woke up at 7:15 and realised that this. was. it.

After I flicked on the bedroom light and declared it to be 'baby day', I remember your daddy asking me how I felt, and I could only respond 'nervous' (after first responding 'damp'). I didn't know what it was going to be like, and I'd really spent most of my pregnancy wondering how I would deal with the labour, leaving most thoughts of how I would actually deal with a baby in my too hard basket

In the kitchen, the night before you were born, I remember saying that I hoped it wasn't my last day as a pregnant woman, as I hasn't done anything but sit on the couch and nap. Your daddy didn't tell me until after you were born that he had a feeling that you would arrive the day that you did.

I remember a friend from school telling me that she could always remember the time that she was born, because her mum told her she arrived just before the evening news started. In my head, her mum was sat up  in a hospital bed watching the dinky room tv, and after a brief moment of discomfort (that my imagination had no equivalent for) she was holding a clean baby parcel and was able to settle back on her pillow, just in time to watch the news.

Not quite.

With a crescendo, you arrived just after 5:30. There was a moment that your daddy thought he would be delivering you himself, but luckily the staff returned just in time. I can't remember much of the pain, but I remember knowing when you decided it was time and that I wasn't ashamed to let my voice ring out in pain when they told me I had to stop pushing after 30 minutes of being told just to push, Push, PUSH. I remember that it was the first time I vomited in front of your father and I was very apologetic for that. And I remember feeling wicked drunk on the pethidine and making a conscious decision to let your daddy and the midwife do all the hard work for me when I decided I wanted to go to the bathroom.

I'd always feared that when they were about to put you on me as a gunky, slimy, foreign thing, my first instinct would be to pull away from you. In fact, as they started to lower you towards me, your daddy asked me if I wanted you wiped down more, just as I'd asked him to before labour even started. But I was happy to have you there. And it was the first time that I 'really' held a baby.

I remember looking at your daddy and saying 'we made a cute one!' (as well as 'she's not a ginger!'), but looking back at the photos now, I can see that you actually had a cone head and a cranky face and aren't anywhere near as adorable as you are today.

You've tested the limits of our tiredness, and there's been some boundaries pushed for patience as well. I've apologised, I've pleaded, I've chattered and I've mocked, but we're largely at a point where I realise that many of these moments are only temporary and you just don't know any better. Even when you're scratching at my chest with those nails that I know I've clipped, when you're both hungry and tired, when  you bobble your head around like a who-knows-what and you're bleating at me with a trembling bottom lip - I can look down at you (when my eyes focus and stop zig-zagging with tiredness) and try to capture the moment because I'm sure you're going to keep changing at an astounding rate.

You do spend far more time looking around, doing your best interpretation of 'adorable baby'. You've started  to make more coo-ing noises, happy little yells, and murmurs that we pretend are words. You look around, wide eyed. You look towards the toys we try to pacify you with, you stare up at the photos from our honeymoon that hang above the bed, you stare at the heater like it's the most wonderful invention known to modern man. And you do look deep in to our eyes.

While a lot of this first month has been spent asking you to please use your words and reasonably explain why you're bothered, jokingly telling you off for peeing all over the change table again, and staring at you bewildered after you've sharted on me, farted in daddy's face or projectile vomited with astounding vertical  force, it's been a good month.

Nice work, you cool baby.