JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

The two blogs I am checking first this week whenever I sit down at my desk are Jenny’s and Lenn’s. Both are bloggers, both are friends of mine and both are expecting babies to arrive in their families any day now. (note: Jenny headed to the hospital early this morning – wow!) Somehow I feel in the midst of a baby boomlet in my life: a number of neighbors and friends seem to be waiting for a little one.

I can remember how the last days of pregnancy can drag, hours filled with anticipation but also frustration. It’s a heavy time, physically and emotionally. When I was in labor with my third baby, I was in denial, unable to believe it had finally happened.

The best advice Ted and I received when we were pregnant came from a Lamaze teacher. She encouraged the parents in the class to enjoy every day while waiting for the baby to arrive, even when the child is overdue. Do something special, she recommended. The waiting, although tiring, is a special time, especially before the first one, a time that won’t happen again, a time to celebrate the last days of being a family of two before becoming three.

More on babies…

Last Sunday I enjoyed an informative and entertaining Seattle Times article on The Baby Brain which covered the stories of the research as well as the scientists conducting the studies, a married couple who are both professors at the University of Washington and have a child of their own.

The questions: What do babies know about language, when do they know it, and what’s the best time for them to learn it? Can babies learn from television? Can we know something about who we’re going to be by looking at a little baby? “That’s as fully important as sending rovers to Mars,” Meltzoff says.

A friend of mine recommended The Scientist in the Crib : What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind, the book written by the researchers. I never got to it and I should have.

Rod Kratchowill again found himself in that wonderful half conscious state of the new parent that only spent a very short time sleeping the night before

Scheherazade decided to read a bestselling book on pregnancy: I have a friend who’s pregnant, and another two who are trying very hard to conceive, and I figured it was about time for me to inform myself about what’s on the other side of the great divide. I couldn’t resist commenting and sharing what happened to the book in our home: Ted forbid me from reading it.

Particularly precious to me was Ilona’s essay on Post-Partum Penciling

I have had ten different births, in different circumstances. Some were very different from the others, one had severe postpartum depression, one had none. I can’t compile any sort of “finding” from this, I can just share some of what I think.

Ilona’s experience and suggestions speak powerfully to me.

What I know, from my years of babyhood, is that the days of waiting can take forever. Acquiring the right knowledge, sustaining the necessary emotional fortitude and finding the proper equipment to take care of your baby can seem enormous. Sleepless nights can seem endless and bring you to tears with the frustrations of first time parenting. But the babies grow. They grow and grow. And soon, like me, you may find yourself reluctantly saying goodbye to the baby years (and the baby things so carefully collected) with only memories remaining of the breastmilk smells, newborn cries and midnight feedings.