Bye Bye Baby

I don’t have a baby anymore.  Now, before everyone gets all worked up and starts calling Child Protective Services or FOX News or very possibly, my father…Zac is totally fine!  What I mean is that he’s not a “baby” anymore who needs me for every little thing.  He’s a “kid” who is perfectly capable of shoveling food into his mouth all by himself, thank you very, so stop waving that tiny spoon in front of him and expecting him to eat off of it, you crazy woman with attachment issues.  Or at least, I think that’s what he was trying to tell me.  Truthfully it sounded a lot like “Goddamn it” or very possibly “Gold Nugget”.  Enunciation is not Zac’s strong suit, but by god, volume and vehemence most certainly are.

While I was pregnant, I spent so much time reading, researching and trying to suck every last bit of information out of the internet, on how to be pregnant and not royally fuck it up (hint: vodka and downhill skiing are generally frowned upon).  After Zac was born I spent an equally insane amount of time looking up milestone charts and feeding schedules and sleep schedules and all this crap the mother of a newborn is supposed to know.  Other that actually caring for my new child, this “research” was basically all I did (at least judging by my browser history), so much so that I didn’t give a thought as to what would come next.  What would come after the tummy time, and the head lifting and the sleep training?  Nope.  Somehow my OCD addled brain allowed me to completely skip over thinking about that part.

The thing is this….for the first year of Zac’s life I lived in terror, every single day, that he was going to die and it would be because I screwed up this whole motherhood thing.  I never mentioned this to anyone, not even Nick because I felt like if I even dared speak about it that the unthinkable would become reality.  I had it in my head that if I could make it past the one year mark and he didn’t succumb to SIDS or some kind of rare disease, if he wasn’t kidnapped, or just “failed to thrive” that we’d be fine.  I would wake up in the middle of the night panicking that I was going to go in his room to check on him and find him not breathing.  More than once I stood outside of his bedroom door terrified of going in because of what I might find and yet unable to stop myself from going in to check on him just one more time. More than once, I poked a soundly sleeping little boy just to make him move because I thought he was being too still.

It’s ridiculous, I know.  He was born perfectly healthy, albeit a little early, and has never had any serious health problems, but I was convinced that I was fundamentally incapable of keeping him safe and healthy for that all important (at least to me) first year.  I cannot tell you how good it feels to say that I was wrong.

Zac is healthy, he’s happy, he’s getting more independent every day and has the most awesome personality and sense of humor.  I loved him from the second he was placed in my arms, but I was scared of him (and for him) as well.  We’re a couple weeks past that one year mark and while I still feel like I’m going to somehow screw this parenting thing up, I also feel like I can finally relax a bit, enjoy my son and just….breathe.

That desire to Google (because the internet knows all), to WebMd, to read articles in arcane magazines dedicated to Aboriginal Parenting Styles has once again firmly taken hold of my brain (and common sense) and I’m overwhelmed with urge to stuff my brain with information so that I don’t screw up Year 2, but I’m resisting.  I’m not going to drive myself to that level of crazy again.  I’m going to try and trust my instincts and focus on how my child is growing and learning and most definitely thriving and not compare him to random charts and graphs that say he should be memorizing the periodic table by 14 months.  I’m going to laugh at how he loves to “pet” the dog (really, it’s more of a mild beating that actual petting) or how he will always giggle when you make raspberry noises on his belly or how he always has to carry his blanket around with him.  I’m going to focus on Zac and not on the “what if’s”.  I’m going to calm the hell down.

After all, how bad of a job can I be doing if we’ve gone from this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To This: