The space/time continuum that is Motherhood

When I first became a mother, a surprising number of experienced parents and grandparents tole me that I should cherish this time because it goes by so quickly.

Sometimes I wanted to smack them.

Other times, they at least acknowledged that they knew it didn’t seem that way to me right then. How true that was! Right then, I was looking at the prospect of thousands of sleepless nights (or at least interrupted nights), eight to twelve feedings a day and a baby that, other than during those feeding times, didn’t seem to know who I was.

This was not, of course, how I’d imagined it. I imagined a cute and cuddly baby that would possess a calm assurance in the arms of his mother (laugh if you’d like, but I have friends who insist this is the case with their child). I wanted the sweet baby that only has eyes for his mother. Don’t get me wrong. Hayden was a very good baby. He didn’t cry very often (when he was born, the nurses had a difficult time extracting more than a whimper!). He nursed very well. He slept okay—not great, but not horribly.

But despite what everyone told me, these days were not going by fast. And every day wore on like the one before. Because of Ryan’s work schedule, we enjoyed three day weekends every week, but I spent a lot of my days and weeks counting down until the time Ryan would arrive home, or until the weekend. (Okay, I still do.) Every once in a while, I’d look back, amazed at how big my boy was getting or how much he’d developed. The months slipped away, but the days were molasses.

I just wanted him to hurry up and get to the phase where he’d sleep through the night, or walk, or not be teething anymore (we’re almost there), or be potty trained (ha!). Or, at the beginning, the phase where he would smile at me, or look at my eyes and see . . . anything or not fall asleep while nursing every single time he ate.

And then, suddenly, he was at each of those phases. To have my son smiling and seem to know who I was was so gratifying! He was the cutest baby with his drooly, toothless grin.

And then, just as suddenly, I’d realize he’d kept growing. The first time it hit me was when he cut his first tooth. I cried because my little baby was growing up. Yesterday I was contemplating cutting some of his hair, since it’s getting to be almost 3 inches long in places.

I mentioned it to my neighbor, whose youngest is a few months older than Hayden (and has had, I think, multiple hair cuts). She told me not to cut it, because when you do, “they grow up so fast.” I thought of all the little boys in the neighborhood with their tinymanhaircuts.

Maybe this phase goes by fast enough all by itself. I certainly don’t need to help it along. Maybe what people told me was right, after all.