Don’t label me

Here’s what I’m learning about blogging with a newborn: One day’s truth becomes the next day’s lie. My relationship with Owen is in so much flux right now that sometimes I’ll start writing a blog about him in my mind as I nurse him or rock him or walk him and then by the time I get a chance to sit down at the computer and put thoughts to keyboard whatever I was meaning to say feels like it’s shifted to a half-truth.

There was the time two days ago when I felt like I was finally discovering his rhythms and deciphering his cries – distinguishing between the scrunchy I’ve-got-gas face and the head-bobbing I-really-do-need-to-eat-something-now whimpers – and then swiftly meeting his needs. It felt almost mystical, like I was really settling into my role as mother, finally understanding the needs of this tiny being, finally connecting to him more deeply.


Then yesterday, although Owen took some nice naps, his time awake was all agitation. He doesn’t like to lie anywhere or sit propped on a boppy pillow or lounge on my legs or sit in a bouncy seat for more than a minute at a time. He’s not yet comfortable in a sling or a front carrier and most of the time he’s not willing to sit in the swing.


We just can’t achieve even four-minute stretches of Happy Awake, and Rob and I started trying to remember wearily last night if Will seemed this constantly needy while awake at Owen’s age. Sure, he screamed with much more fury than milder-mannered Owen but we think we remember some wide-awake and content moments too. It’s as if little Owen is reading past blogs (see "Feisty Angel Babies" on July 20) and saying, “Ha! You think you can label me Angel/Textbook Baby! I’ll show you…”

And yet he is an angel, just an agitated one, always in need of a new position, a change of scene and probably still wishing he could retreat back to the womb and do some laid-back upside-down floating once again.