YO MAMA: A new view from the living room couch
OPINION
It was about to happen again. The kid, now two weeks old, was going to fall asleep in my arms before I had time to prepare the necessities: water bottle, book, phone, snack, burp cloth, fleece blanket, and most importantly a trip to the bathroom. If he fell asleep on me before I had collected ‘The Couch Kit’, I was hooped — destined for an hour of desolation, boredom, dehydration and desperately trying to hold my pee. I might become ravenous enough to eat the baby like one of those animals who eat their young.
After it happened the last time, I swore I’d be more diligent. I wouldn’t get distracted by his adorable sleepy stare and allow him to nod off before I was ready. It’s hypnotic, though, the way a baby looks at you. I mean, they really look at you — into you almost. Such sustained eye contact is practically nonexistent in our world today. One time in university, our prof led us through an activity where we had to sit across from a partner and gaze into their eyes for a full five minutes, no talking allowed. As you can imagine, there was a lot of awkward, self-conscious fidgeting and fits of giggles. They should have lined us up with infants and we might have learned a thing or two.
Researchers have found that gazing into your newborn’s eyes triggers a release of the hormone oxytocin (sometimes referred to as the love hormone for its role in childbirth, breastfeeding and relationship building).
So, anyway, this is all to say that the kid had bewitched me once again with his Jedi mind tricks. We were just sitting there, staring at each other, and suddenly, it was lights out and I wasn’t going anywhere for at least 45 minutes. If I tried to get up, he might awaken, and it didn’t matter if I peed my pants or died of starvation: I would trade anything for 45 minutes of peaceful quietude.
I had no water, no snack. I could almost reach my phone. It was lying on the coffee table next to the couch. If I reached out my foot, I could almost touch it. I scooted down a bit, stretching out my leg. Almost… almost… there! I touched it! Just a bit more… I nudged it with my big toe and it inched toward the edge of the coffee table, teetering precariously. I broke out in a sweat. Easy now… I moved it tiny bits at a time; using my toes to turn it ever so slightly, walking it over… It was definitely closer now. I used my toes to grab the corner and pulled.
CRASH-BANG-CLATTER-SMASH!
I didn’t even care if the phone survived the fall; I glanced down sharply to see if the kid had woken up. He stirred briefly, then settled.
I was done trying anything risky. I’d just have to sit it out.
I studied the kid. It had become a major hobby of late. The only hobby, really. If he had a dry patch of skin, for instance, I could tell you precisely how long it had been there, what ointments had been applied to it, and how it was responding to the treatment. In fact, I was already preparing a thesis statement about his changing stool colours.
I looked over every inch of him. His hair was becoming two-toned, extremely fair and blonde on the top half and dark brown on the bottom so it looked like he was balding. He sucked in his bottom lip when he slept. My balding, toothless old man child. I watched — and felt — his steady breathing, rising and falling against my body.
I always felt conflicted during our Couch Naps. I itched to be productive — to bake something, tidy the house, exercise, or write. I’ve always hated sitting still. Nothing — not illness, injury or late night — could keep me marooned on the couch, not until my son was born. They say everything changes when you have a baby, and the cliche couldn’t be more true.
Another thing people say is to savour the time when your baby is really small because before you know it, they’ll be crawling, walking, running, and then driving off in their first car.
But it’s not always easy having that perspective in the moment.
Lying on the couch for hours a day drove me crazy. But ask me to leave my baby with a family member so I could go for a walk by myself? I’d rather die. I wanted to do all the things I loved before I had a baby, but I didn’t want to miss a single second with him. My heart felt like silly-putty, stretching in every direction.
How long had it been since he fell asleep? It felt like time had stopped. The house was quiet, calm, still. The world outside, the traffic, my colleagues at work, the COVID-19 pandemic — it all felt so far away. Cut off from the usual distractions of television and my cellphone, I found myself looking at the stuff in my house — the so-called precious things I surrounded myself with but barely ever looked at. The pictures on the walls, souvenirs from trips, family heirlooms. I closely observed them all.
I gazed out the window. It was Spring and there were birds at our feeder. Western Tanagers. I’d been watching them for days and had looked them up in the bird book. Right around this time, we (I) also got pretty into a couple of squirrels that hung out in the trees by the window, scampering around in a comic display. I had pointed them out to the kid and wondered what they looked like to him — just more blurry colours in this strange new world of sights and sounds. There was so much to show him and teach him. I’d start in this room, showing him all those photos and keepsakes, and move on to the porch, the yard, the street. Slowly and surely, the world would get big again.
Maybe that’s what I was supposed to learn from the university staring contest: the value in tuning everything else out and connecting to something, someone, in the moment. Could everything else wait a little while? Yes. Would it sometimes still be hard and frustrating and annoying sometimes? Sure.
When my son awoke, I was right there, the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
When I eventually returned to real life and checked my phone, I saw I had a text from a mom friend. She’d sent a photo of her baby sleeping on her chest.
“Trapped,” she wrote, followed by a heart emoji. That about sums it up.
— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.
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