In Development Always/Again
joining the (mother)'hood
My daughter is eight weeks old today, but not two months. She was born on September 8th, almost forty-eight hours after the lunar eclipse full moon I believe induced her (or it was the acupuncture appointment I’d had the morning before). Today is November 3rd, so in a world that exists without counting every newborn week, minute, hour, shit, and ounce of milk consumed, she is not yet two months old. But it remains true that she was born eight weeks ago today.
And I am forty-years old. 2,131 weeks and 6 days. Being her mother will be the only job I have for the rest of my life. I’ve not yet figured out what that means; I’ve not yet decided if I’m mourning the life I had before her; I don’t know what loving her completely, obsessively, and wholly looks like yet. The other day, someone asked me, “What type of baby is she?” And I didn’t know how to answer that. She’s loud when she sleeps. She stares me down and half the time starts to laugh and the other starts to cry; occasionally just looking at me tires her out. It would appear she loves Fats Waller and, more broadly, showtunes, and can’t handle it when I eat nightshades, passing them along to her in my milk. She refused to latch. She loves to eat. I don’t consider her mine because I find it difficult to speak as though I own a person.
At eight weeks old she’s her own being and I’m fully aware of my own self, with no idea where to begin to describe what type of baby she is; what type of mother I am; what type of women we are.
I guess it’s a new stage of being in development.
Every single sentence of this.