It’s only at night that we do this now, her and I, in those dark, indistinct hours between night and morning, both of us half asleep.
He is behind us, my amazing, funny husband, her sweet, doting daddy, watching us. I feel him, know he’s there, but I don’t turn around. He stays in the doorway, doesn’t come closer, doesn’t speak. He gives me these moments with her, these moments we both know are fleeting and will soon end.
The struggles of the first few days are barely a distant memory now. We fit so perfectly, so effortlessly, my baby and me, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time this seemed anything but natural.
Jim remembers, better than I do. Mostly he remembers Clark, the lactation consultant. I do remember his face, my husband‘s, when I wouldn’t let him help me in the hospital. He asked me about it, months later, sitting up in bed on a late Sunday morning, Cece nursing quietly as I sat between his legs, my head on his chest.
“I don’t know,” I tried to explain. “I guess I was just afraid you’d start seeing me, seeing my body, as clinical. I was scared you wouldn’t think I was sexy, or that you’d think of me as “Mom” instead of “Pam.”
“First of all,” he said, chuckling, “I will never think of you as “Mom.” That’s disgusting. And secondly,” he went on, sensing my eye roll, “I will always, always think you’re sexy.”
He punctuated his sentence with two lingering kisses to my right shoulder and continued.
“Watching you nurse her,” he murmured, “is so, so sexy. You’re like this goddess. I just want to worship you.”
He did too, later, three times, the sunlight streaming through the windows.
There is no sun now, but soon it will come peeking through hazy winter morning sky. I can see the shadows of the branches of the maple tree in the yard against the blue-black of the night sky.
I rest my head on the pillowed back of the rocker, my feet stretched out on the ottoman in front of me. Cece rests on the pillow on my lap and in the still, still silence, I can hear her gentle slurping sounds.
Jim stays in the shadows, our silent protector, our hero. He won’t stay in bed when I get up to nurse her at four in the morning, the only time of day we do now. It wouldn‘t be fair, he says.
But he stays in the doorway. This is our time, mine and hers.
With each day that passes, she is less of a baby and more of a little girl.
She can pull herself up to a standing position now, holding on to a side of a chair, her push-along toy, Mommy’s and Daddy’s hands. Jim and I spend hours negotiating the carpet on our knees as our little bunny holds on for dear life, basking in the newfound glory of being upright.
There are sounds she makes, not words yet, but a distinct babble all her own. Cecespeak, we call it, and we don’t care that Merriam-Webster wouldn’t recognize her vocabulary, because we know that “eebeebee” means “this makes me happy” and “puhbuhbuh” means “I do not appreciate this” and “gabahabah” means “give me this immediately or there will be trouble.”
We try not to overindulge the “gabahabahs” too much, but it’s hard to say no to such a precious face. We are, we will readily admit, total suckers for our baby girl.
We are trying to instill good habits. We tell each other, when Cece screams her “puhbuhbuhs” after being denied, that we want her to grow up right.
And then I look at Jim and confess, in a whisper, that I don’t want her to grow up at all.
And he kisses my forehead and says neither does he.
She is growing up, our baby, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
Soon I won’t have this anymore, these sleepy, silent moments, skin to skin.
I never knew. I always knew, but I never knew.
I always knew I would breastfeed, would at least try it, but I never knew how much I’d love it.
I wish I could tell my ten-months-younger self, frustrated and feeling like a failure in the first hours of motherhood, that it would come to be the most natural thing in the world, a shared instinct between her and me, that only we two knew together, because she is my daughter and I am her mother.
It has been an adventure, these months, these days and nights. It hasn’t always been a blissful one. It hurts sometimes, and I’ve wondered if I was expressing milk or acid.
There was the time I didn’t know I was coming down with a stomach bug and kept on nursing, until I was curled up on the bathroom floor and Cece was doing her best Linda Blair impressions, poor Jim running back and forth between the two of us, until my mother came to take care of the baby and my sweet, sweet husband camped out on the cold tile with me, rubbing my back, wiping down my face with a cool washcloth, and giving me tiny sips of flat ginger ale. By some miracle, neither Jim nor Mom got sick.
I have nursed or pumped in some of the most awkward places, places I never thought I’d unbutton my shirt -- under the bleachers at Jim’s nephew’s (our nephew’s) kickball game, in the back of an empty church sanctuary in the midst of a failed sales call, stuck in a traffic jam on the way to Jim’s brother’s house in Boston for Thanksgiving, ignoring the carload of college age boys honking their horn next to us.
I never knew how calming it would be, how after a crazy day at work, or an argument with my mother, or a tense perusal of our bank statement, all it would take to make me feel at peace again would be to feed my baby.
I never knew nursing would nourish me as much as it does her.
When I think about how worried I was that Jim wouldn’t find me sexy, that he’d look on my breasts as clinical, I feel foolish. Sometimes, not always, not in a traffic jam, or when I have a terrible toothache because I need a root canal, or when Cece is being an unabashed terror, but sometimes, most times, the good days, I feel beautiful.
Sometimes, I even feel like the goddess my foolish-in-love husband thinks I am.
Mostly, though, I just feel like a mother.
I never knew how much I’d love that.
Cece’s lips slip from my nipple and her head lolls against my breast; she has had enough.
Jim enters the room when he sees my feet hit the floor. He insists on helping me up. Every night.
I am more than capable of getting up out of the baby glider, I remind him, time and again, rolling my eyes.
But he insists. She is getting heavier, he says, it’s late and you’re tired. What if your legs fall asleep from sitting still and you stumble?
I feign exasperation, but I wouldn’t change a thing about him, my tender white knight.
The purple sweatshirt I wore to bed is on the floor and I am dressed only in gray and light blue plaid flannel pants, a pink fleece blanket wrapped around my shoulders to keep me warm.
It falls in the space in between the chair and the ottoman as I rise, Cece in my arms, leaving me bare. Jim bends to retrieve it, pressing a kiss to my hip bone, just above the waistband of my pajama pants, as he rises back up, sending a shiver up my spine.
He drapes the soft material around me as I settle the baby back in her crib and tuck the pale lilac and sea green blankets around her.
She babbles in her sleep. It’s soft, faint, almost song-like.
In less than three hours, the sun will be up and tomorrow will begin. We should go back to bed, snatch the few precious hours of rest we can get.
But I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here, watch Cece in her crib.
Soon she’ll be too big for a crib. She’ll have a toddler bed, then a big girl bed, then maybe bunk beds, a double bed. The day will come when I’ll come home and find a boy in her bed.
Oh my god, my little girl is never, never allowed to have a boy in her bed. I make a mental note to tell Jim to research convents on the Internet.
Can’t she stay a baby forever?
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to miss one moment.
“Come on,” Jim says softly, his hands on my shoulders. But he doesn’t guide me to the door. Instead, he leads me back to the rocking chair and settles into it, stretching his long legs out on the ottoman, his feet hanging off the edge.
He pulls me down and I settle in his lap, curling up, my head resting in the soft dip below his clavicle. He is bare-chested, like me, and his skin is warm against mine. He pulls the soft, pink blanket over us both and I close my eyes.
Jim whispers that he loves me and I tell him I love him back.
And Cece babbles her sweet, sweet music.
Story Notes:
I was inspired to write this story after reading a friend's blog about her feelings on weaning her baby. I did borrow from the spirit of her musings, but I did not steal her words. They are mine and belong to me. Jim, Pam and Cece, unfortunately, do not.
Also, something else that does not belong to me at this time is a baby, so Pam's reflections are based on, as I said, the spirit conveyed in my friend's blog as well as my own instincts. I'm going to venture that everyone's experience is probably different.
Also, something else that does not belong to me at this time is a baby, so Pam's reflections are based on, as I said, the spirit conveyed in my friend's blog as well as my own instincts. I'm going to venture that everyone's experience is probably different.
Chapter End Notes:
So after reading reviews, I learned that I've caused a bit of confusion with tense changes. I hope it's clear, but if not, please know that the tense changes in the story are intentional. The present tense is used to indicate anything happening in the moment (Pam holding Cece on her lap) , or anything ongoing in their lives (Pam's and Jim's reluctance to have Cece grow up). The past tense is for reflecting upon specific incidents that happened before the night the story takes place (Pam and Cece both having a stomach virus at the same time). There is a method to my madness.
andtheivy is the author of 17 other stories.
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