In my short time being a mum I have found that no matter what age your child is, people are always commenting on what lay ahead. Any remark you may make regarding your child’s behaviour or developmental milestone’s is met with some variation of “that’s nothing, wait until they are xxx, then you will be in trouble”. I find it frustrating that they seem unable to simply celebrate or in some cases sympathise with the situation we are living right at that moment. When I was enjoying the thrill of seeing Skye crawling for the first time, I didn’t want to be deflated by someone saying “it won’t be long now and she will be running around” as if the crawling itself was not enough. When I was up through the night with Skye cutting her first teeth, the last thing I wanted to hear was how horrific the molars will be. It wasn’t that I was in denial of the future, but the stages come so quickly already, the thought of what would be happening 6 – 12 months from now was more than I could cope with. Having said that, I am guilty of it too, but I still don’t understand why we do it. Is it because people want to shift the focus onto themselves and their own expert opinions? Is it just human nature to drive a child’s development? Or is it a reflection of the instant gratification culture we now live in? No matter what the case may be, it seems that right now is never good enough.
When Skye was born I remember very clearly my dad telling me to not spend my time waiting for the next stage to hurry up and happen, be happy with how she is right now because she will change too quickly. His comment has stayed with me from my very first days as a new mum and I believe that in many ways, it has stopped me from wishing the time away in anticipation of the never ending next. It actually makes me a little sad when I hear people saying they can’t wait for the next stage, be it starting solids, crawling, walking, talking whatever, in the grand scheme of things all of these milestones will occur when the time is right and you will no doubt look back on the earlier times wistfully, wondering where the time went.
Friends with newborns often ask me if I think that Skye is easier to look after now than she was when she was first born, to which I always say that each stage has it’s exciting and challenging aspects. For me, I still believe that the first 3 months are the most overwhelming purely because the weight of responsibility is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. The sleep-deprived fog takes some getting used to and there was also an aspect of grieving for my old, familiar lifestyle. And that’s with a healthy, normal baby! It can be hard to imagine that they will ever be any more than a screaming, pooping little lump in those first weeks but when I look at Skye now, it seems hard to believe that she was ever that small.
Now that Skye has a bit of independence it does allow me more freedom, but it also means that I am dealing with someone developing their own personality and learning how to express her own wishes, which means that in many ways I actually have less control than I did in her first months of life. She is no longer content to lay on the floor for hours staring at a few brightly coloured toys, but as her language and movement develops, her needs have become less of a guessing game, in fact, she is quite capable of getting her message across these days, no guessing required. So while I occasionally miss how reliant she was on me for her every need as a newborn, there is still so much baby left in her that I want to enjoy just as it is, right now, because for me, right now is pretty damn amazing.
