7 Weeks

Sadie is trying to communicate with us as hard as she can. There are certain times of the day, like when I'm changing her or playing with her on the bed with her head supported by a pillow, when we lock eyes and she begins a steady stream of vowel sounds and the occasional consonant. If I talk back to her, she "talks" even more. It's incredible to think that this is the first stage of language development. They say babies study your mouth while you speak, possibly trying to figure out exactly how it all works. Unbelievable to me that she's only been in this world for seven weeks and is already trying to master the art of verbal communication. She's going to be like that baby in the classic clip from "America's Funniest Home Videos" who could name all the presidents so when her dad would point to a picture and ask, "Who's that?" She'd respond, "Eisen-howa."

But until she gets to that point she has other ways of expressing her personality, which is just now beginning to emerge. Everyone who meets her agrees on two things: she's very alert, and she's a mover. Both qualities are aspects I didn't realize were unique to my baby until they were pointed out to me, because, well, I don't hang around babies as a general rule. But apparently there are some babies that tend to just hang out, and Sadie is not like that. She kicks when she's excited and squirms when you hold her and fusses when she's bored. This can get exhausting (you can't imagine how fast I've got to take showers these days, aware that as soon as sitting in her bouncy seat waving her arms and flailing her feet stops being interesting, she's going to let loose with an angry howl), but I don't mind it. While she might be quick to fuss, she's equally as quick to settle down once her attention has been diverted.

And as active as she is when she's awake, it makes the simple art of calming her down that much sweeter. I love bundling her up in a warm blanket, holding her tight, and sitting on the yoga ball, gently bouncing up and down. Her eyes glaze over and she zones out into this alpha state where her body completely relaxes. She begins to stare into middle distance and one arm flops out to the side. Within a few more minutes, her eyes are closed and she's sighing softly in her sleep.

Oh God, I can't help it, I'm in love with my daughter. And, if you don't mind the detour into my own mindset for a few paragraphs, I need to confess that it wasn't an immediate bond.

I wasn't one of those women who gazes upon her newborn child at the instant of delivery and feels an overwhelming love beyond anything she's ever known. And this worried me, a tiny bit. At first, I didn't feel anything other than panic and, later, a niggling doubt that perhaps I had made a huge mistake having a baby because we don't know what the hell we are doing, who allowed us to leave the hospital with this child? And that first month was so terrifying and exhausting, and I didn't know anything, I was just desperate to do right by this thing, this needy thing, all the while studying her face for features that looked like mine or Scott's or my father's and thinking I saw them but also feeling like she was an utter stranger.

The love was something that grew, slowly but surely. It grew as we invested our time and attention and energy into giving Sadie everything she needed and trying new routines and new playthings and new brands and new bits of advice. It grew as that effort began to pay off, little by little. As she began to sleep longer. As it took less and less time to calm her down when she fussed. As I was able, on occasion, to meet her demands without first wondering what in the world it was that she might need.

And it grew as she began to respond to us, too. The smiling helped. The talking helped more. ("I'm in here! There's a person in here," she seems to be saying when she reaches her hand out to me and lets loose with a string of a-a-a-a-a-as.) And best of all was the moment, last night, when Scott was having trouble putting her down to sleep. Every time he tried to lay her in her crib, she'd begin to cry, and soon she was so upset that even picking her up couldn't make her calm down. I came in and picked her up. She settled into my arms, quieted down, and ten seconds later her eyes were shut and she was sleeping peacefully. It was the first time I'd ever truly felt like Mom, that magical creature who makes everything better.