In the aftermath of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Massachusetts, President Obama gave an address in which he commented that children slowly separate from their parents as they grow older. For some reason, that stuck in my mind.
As a mother of a seven-month old child, I’m curious about parenting and what to expect. It is a ride I am taking now, in my late thirties. Really late thirties, as a matter of fact. I just turned 39. Thanks to my husband, who wanted to wait until the economy improved (hah!), we decided to have our first child when I was 38 and my husband was 46. This is the first child for both of us. My husband was more skeptical going in, but since she was born we have both fallen in love with her. Her smile and laugh light up our worlds. She is a balm to our lives, a natural anti-depressant. She enjoys life, and one can’t help but enjoy it with her in the moment.
Watching my daughter grow, I’ve been thinking about separation. I know she’s going to grow up and do the things she wants to do, but what is happening now is that she is not separating from me. Quite the opposite. She reaches out to me, but I am separating from her.
Take, for instance, what happens when she goes to sleep at night. For six and a half months, she needed my breast to fall asleep. If I moved it out of her mouth, she would latch on again. If I tried placing her to sleep without it, she would cry. I had to wait until she was soundly asleep before gently extricating my breast from her mouth and carefully carrying her to her sleeping place. One bad move and she would wake up, and the whole process would start over again- she latches on, I wait until she falls asleep, I gently remove my nipple from her mouth, I gently lift her up without waking her and gently lay her down. This went on for as many as four times in a row. Last week, February 26, to be exact, she fell asleep on my lap without a booby in her mouth. Sure she sucked on it like she normally does, but then she latched off and remained asleep.
One small step for baby, one giant step in the course of our separation.
Or take for example that she has to sleep in a crib or some other place that is not our bed. My husband takes Ambien and there are gaps not only between our mattresses (we have two side by side each other) but also between our mattresses and bed frame, all of which make sleeping with an infant in our bed dangerous. When my daughter falls asleep in my arms, I wish sometimes that I could sleep with her. But I know I can’t. My arms would lose their circulation and both she and I would get uncomfortable, I’m guessing. Before she could crawl, she slept on a futon. Now, she is sleeping in her crib for the third night in a row. The transition has been smoother than I expected. But still, it is a separation. She doesn’t need to be in a co-sleeper beside me. She sleeps by herself.
Or take her cries for attention when I am brushing my teeth or am in the shower. Sometimes I just want to stand under the hot shower, my only private relaxing moment of the day. I hear her crying out, and if I really need it, I give myself another minute. Then I come rushing out. But teaching her patience is a form of separation. So who is it that initially pushes the other away? In my experience, it is not the baby. It’s us. We push our babies away and then wonder how they grow so fast and become the magnificent people that they are.
