Showering Rob and Preeta: The View From Ten Months Out

Dear Preeta and Rob,

I’m going to skip the practical advice** in favor of my version of the more universal truths from my time with my familiar stranger in the hopes that it might help you with yours.

Everything is a stage. While babies can make hours feel like weeks, you have to remember that nothing is permanent—not the short naps, or the refusals of comfort/food, not even the patterns. By the time you’ve figured out how to endure whatever small hellish thing the babe is afflicting you with, it’s over. Better yet, you’ll have forgotten it because you’re so busy in the next stage. Babies move forward constantly—they have a lot of work to do—and if it’s momentarily awful, remember that it will end. This is also helpful during to remember during labor.

You in are in charge (but not in control). I was surprised, and horrified to get so many “I don’t know’s” from folks I wanted to be experts: my mom, sister, pediatricians. There are no answers, and it’s all your call. It’s comforting to remember that you can’t really break them, or at least that you’d have to try really really hard to. It takes some getting used to, but you are the funniest, most loveable beings on the planet to them. For this short while before adolescence, you can do no wrong in their eyes.

But remember that while you are making all these choices (and mistakes), whatever isn’t working perfectly is not your fault/doing/creation. You get lucky with sleeping or eating or labor or burping or you don’t. The kid is 90% baked by genetics or fate or whatever you believe in. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out why something is the way it is (sleeping, nursing, toe length), thinking you can conquer baby mysteries. (see also: it’s over, move on note above) You’ll get lucky with some things (like if say, your baby has awesome hair) that others won’t, and just try to focus on what’s good about your baby, which will be more things than you can name.

It’s totally okay to do “nothing.” During the year of the download, as my friend Brian li

kes to call it, every little thing is a big thing. Phoebe spends a part of each day staring out the window, waving at the garden. She laughs at the dogs and gets excited about lights. We bang things together to make noise. I’m not bored, because each little thing she does opens up more of her to me and vice versa. I think this is what we do as parents—get to know these little people and show them us, through the small moments of the every day. So really, stop to smell the flowers, and don’t worry about doing anything else.

Let yourself fall head over heels. It is amazing that we make human beings out of essentially nothing and that they come with all their pieces in place and ready to grow and learn. Your baby is adorable and funny and smart and it’s fine to smother him/her with kisses and zerberts, to gush and document and love unabashedly. I think there’s a sad trend to downplay the awesomeness of parenthood, to pretend that for the coolest of us, we wouldn’t stoop to talking about poo or sing silly songs or make the baby the center of our world. But we do change, without being swallowed by them, become more ourselves, and it’s amazing and it’s good. It’s going to be so good.

**I am happy to share what we have learned on the more nitty-gritty side should you want to ever play the “I don’t know what I’m doing either!” game. Email me whenever.

And now, some words from the "real" Louie and Otis.

When dogs lick babies, everyone wins.