It's amazing how often, in thinking about Anna Sophia, the words that spring into my mind are that I'm "absolutely crazy about this baby." And it's equally amazing how infrequently I stop to reflect on the presence of "crazy" in my phrase-of choice. But there's little doubt that there's a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of insanity thrown into love for a pre-verbal infant.
We're very lucky. According to everyone, we have a "good baby." Also according to everyone, we have a baby who is very clear in her communications about what she wants and what she needs, preverbal or not. But "everyone" is not as attuned to the particularities of Anna's emerging personality. And "everyone" isn't spending a ridiculous number of hours a day at home, cut off from intellectual endeavours, with nothing analytical to do except to dissect those particularities.
In other words, it's impossible to avoid a certain amount of obsessiveness. It's impossible not to go a little bit crazy about the baby. My obsession, when it gets the better of me, fixates on Anna's objections to eating the amount that most babies her age, weight, and activity level would eat. She's only four to six ounces a day under the average, and "everyone" is again right to observe that she's thriving, strong, and extremely busy and alert. Still, there are weirdnesses in her food choices.
The weirdest thing is that no matter what time she wakes in the morning, no matter how hungry she is when she wakes, she absolutely will not eat more than ten or eleven ounces before noon. If she wakes with an empty belly at 4:30, she still won't eat again until 10:30 or 11:00. If she sleeps the sleep of the just until 7:00 a.m., same thing. This means that if she doesn't eat enough on Monday, she can't make up for it by eating more on Tuesday, because the number of hours in any given day always turns out to be finite, and her ability to stay awake is equally finite, and she'd prefer to sleep than eat almost any time.
Most days, she eats enough. But if she's equally tired and hungry on a particularly busy day, the tiredness will almost always win, and she'll go to sleep with too little food in her belly.
I know she won't starve herself, but the day after she has eaten too little always goes badly, and no amount of rational discussion about changing her feeding schedule seems to persuade her to eat a little bit more to even out her eating. Hence, obsession.
For all of those who suggested I should calm down about her food intake over the weekend, thanks, and of course I'm fine by today. But Monday with a hungry and restive baby (after Sunday with an over-tired and unwilling-to-eat baby) was not an easy day.
I have almost always let go my obsession of the week by Wednesday evening, after a coffee with other moms with babes ranging in age from three to ten months. Collectively, we've been through it all. Each baby has his or her own crazy-making features and his or her own joys, and all of these are fun to share and are inherently reassuring. Today, rather than coffee at a coffee shop, we got together at a mom's house -- ten little people. Some stander-uppers, some sitter-uppers, some lyer-downers, some crawl-arounders. As they circulated and watched each other and ate and spit up and farted, we could all see that our obsessions were futile.
Anna, still a lyer-arounder but fascinated by crawlers and stander-uppers, particularly enjoyed lying on her back, kicking vigorously, watching the other babies with her wide, wide eyes. She made a sincere effort to lick or chew anyone or anything who came into range. And if they stayed just out of range, she gently patted them on the leg, or the arm, or the bum, or whatever part presented itself. I did not offer her any food, so she did not have to yell at me that I was ruining everything. She did not need to spit it out or refuse to swallow it. And, in the course of the afternoon, she did not starve to death.
Anna has had issues with food since she was born, and this is why I worry. I still find it hard to accept sometimes that she couldn't breastfeed and I couldn't provide food for her from my body instead of from a tinny-tasting can full of sucrose, soy, sunflower oil, and vitamins.
Stephen, on the other hand, puts forward the perfectly reasonable proposition that Anna might just have his appetite and metabolism rather than mine. And he won't eat before noon, either. Between Anna and Stephen and "everyone" else, I'm clearly outnumbered. I might just have to find something more productive to fixate on.
