One Year Ago Today...

I was, at this very hour, speed-walking around the labor & delivery floor of Mass General Hospital, trailed by my partner, our totally ineffectual doula, an IV stand, and my fabulous friend the Cap'n. (Cap'n made an exception for me -- usually, when she visits hospitals, it is to play the harp for the dying. Luckily, her services were not needed that night.) I was getting very control-freaky: "Let's get this baby born! My water broke at 3. We're on the clock, here, people!" So, when we passed the nursing station, we walked fast. When we got to the empty back hall, we sprinted. Did I mention I was wearing those grippy synthetic hospital socks, having soaked my slippers in amniotic fluid within the first hour? In retrospect, it's pretty funny, but at the time, I was trying quite seriously to avoid an induction.

Note to expectant moms: practice saying (and believing), "I'm not in control," 50 times a day. When you're in labor, it will keep you from getting in your own way. Once you have the baby, you will already have mastered the mantra for your new reality.

More labor flashbacks later, but first: Speedy started drinking breastmilk from a cup yesterday, and seems to have no objection to the lack of a bottle. Tonight, he had whole milk for the first time. His eyes got really wide (fat content??), and he drank with gusto. I'm totally psyched that I only have a few more days of pumping for my own comfort as my supply tapers, and then I can hang up the horns!

My baby ate my homework

Ok, he didn't really. Yet. But as I sat cutting out dozens of little chiclet-sized squares of double-sided mounting tape with which to adhere all the tiny pieces of my first model for class, even I was tempted to sample. Mmm...chewy...

Speedy turns 1 on Friday, and, right on target, he's cruising, babbling, and shoving fistfulls of everything into his mouth (including, sadly, this morning's Cheerios unearthed from somewhere on the diaper table). 1 is this magical age when babies apparently become invincible. Thursday: rear-facing carseat; no cow's milk, honey, citrus, or nuts; no duplo blocks or walk-behind bubble-mower. Friday: front facing, enough caesin to grow a baby cow, and his first lesson on excavation with the Bobcat.

I was reading the 12-15 mos section of Brazelton's Touchstones today, and could kinda identify with his description of the push-pull of toddlerhood. As an adult, I'm still bouncing from wanting to "do it myself" -- forging out to take more classes, biting of bigger designs than I can chew -- to getting scared and frustrated by all of the newness. Luckily, perhaps, I don't have the option to just let someone else take care of it all and remain dependent.

Had a great talk with my visiting mom about this (dynamic of adults wanting to be taken care of) at our final meeting. She was commenting on how even with grown children, it can be a challenge not to "do for" them. Likewise, it's a challenge not to ask someone else to do for us, or to find another way to pretend we're not responsible for our own destinies.

We joke about how much babies at the breast look like drug addicts -- their little eyes rolling back in their heads with pleasure, and then, "Oh, oh, I need another hit!" But one of the saddest moments I've had in the last year was seeing a businessman on his lunchbreak upending a sizable bottle of alcohol into his Dunkin' cup. Speedy was only maybe a month old, and I had the simultaneous thougts: (1) Please don't let my baby grow up to be an addict, and (2) How sad! This man just wants to be nurtured, to feel safe from the chaos of the world, to be accepted, loved, and cared for unconditionally, to slip into that same oblivion that Speedy has when he's nursing. Seems all of life is a series of weanings. Probably not what the Buddha had in mind when describing samsara...