It usually happens that when a woman looks at the pregnancy test and observes that her mind is positive, it becomes a whirlwind of doubt in the face of uncertainty. First about what will happen when you are pregnant, how you will live it and how the delivery will be, second about how life and customs will be once the baby arrives, third about how to adapt the house to the baby, fourth about how the father will respond when the baby arrives baby, fifth ...
And when most of the doubts fade as time passes, most moms begin to enjoy pregnancy, changes, kicks and movements and begin to wonder how will your baby be.
It is not necessary to explain too much how it will be on a physical level, because everyone knows how babies are: small, with soft skin, light, so much that it is a pleasure to take them in the arms and feel that it is not necessary to make too much effort to hold them and surround them.
What many mothers do not know is what life will be like with your baby And this is what I will try to explain today.
Your baby will be born on a good day and you will realize that everything that he did inside the belly also does it outside. The kicks that you received before will be in the air and the time you rested inside will also be done outside, especially if it is still close to you.
The first days you will want it with madness, because you will take with him more than 9 months. Dad, however, will have to make the relevant presentations and the friction, inevitable and desired, will make love arise equally.
They say babies eat and sleep, eat and sleep. It is possible that this is the case, but it is also very possible that the first days you have to add a "cry", because even if it seems a lie they have their own needs and they are not able to satisfy them. In addition, if your family is to catch the babies, the crying will be almost assured, because they do not carry too much that change of arms and smells too many times.
It is possible that the first days and even the first weeks, accept sleeping in a bassinet next to you, however it is likely that at some point you begin to complain because there you feel isolated, alone and unprotected. You will think that it is not possible, that you are only half a meter away from him, however he will magnify that space by a thousand, because everything that is not touching and smelling mom's body is, for a baby, loneliness.
In the same way the first days and weeks will accept to go in the stroller and even in the car seat, but little by little it will begin to behave in the same way, requesting your warmth even in those moments.
This, which seems a step backwards in its independence or the sign that you have made a mistake is really a necessary step towards its autonomy and responds to a normal process, which comes after a very necessary truce to the parents. Children really need their parents' arms, affection, affection, warmth and a breast that will breastfeed almost every hour. The first months, however, tend to settle for a little less (except for food, for which they cannot yield), so that the mother's routine and schedule clash is not too strong.
Imagine that you, an independent, adult woman and with total freedom to do what you want and when you want you will bump into a baby who needs contact with you 24 hours a day. The change would be so obvious, so destructive, that the baby would run the risk of not being loved with total dedication. That's why they start asking for food often, but sleeping for a few hours, many of them in a crib or in a stroller. That is why when they are babies they allow at certain times to be taken by other people, despite not being a mother. Gradually, as they grow, they show you what their real need is: live with you and through you, with love like gasoline.
He will be an appendix of yours, a satellite in your orbit at all hours that will show you that without you it is nobody. You will be his eyes until he can see and can tell you what he wants to see. You will be his ears until he is able to decide what to hear. You will be his legs until he is able to use his. You will be his translator until he is able to speak directly with others. You will be his food until he is able to eat for himself and you will be the warmth and love he needs until he… well, you will always be, even when he grows up and forms a home.
They say babies don't bring instruction manual. Is a lie. They are the instruction manual. The problem is that adults strive to avoid believing that they are able to show us how we should raise them. However they are, they are capable, because since they are born they start telling us what they need and how they need it.
There is one question, only one, in which babies have achieved total independence: food when it is breast milk. Everyone knows that in a matter of breastfeeding babies know how to manage perfectly. They ask when they need and they don't when they don't. They suck when they are hungry or thirsty and stop when they are satisfied. Nobody sets schedules or makes absurd waiting and yet children grow and develop perfectly. The thing changes if the child takes a bottle. Not because children do not know how to control their diet in this way, that they know, but because at that time, when parents are able to quantify what they enter, they decide to take command (with the usual recommendation of health professionals to limit the intake with exact times and quantities).
So, if babies are able to self-manage when they receive food, why would they not be able to manage the love they need?
"I think he has already learned what arms are, because he asks me more and more," a mother once told me. “It's normal, when I met my wife I barely touched her. Little by little the little hands, the friction, the hugs, the caresses and the kisses arrived and, the more he had, the more he wanted… that's what love is called, ”I replied.
Photos | vividexpressionsphotography, Jon Ovington on Flickr
In Babies and more | Being a dad: how will your baby be (and how it won't be), Being a dad: the secret, "Don't take him in his arms, get used to it"
