Nine months in and out

Nine whole months.

Little B is nine months old, and so now she has been outside in the world for the same time as she was growing inside me.

I don’t think it’s any accident that this is the time that separation anxiety really seems to set in.

For nine months while she was growing, she was warm, safe, secure. Never knowing hunger. Not knowing the cold. For every loud noise, or shocking surge of stress, there was the reassurance of my body cradling her close.

For the nine months she has been outside in the world, I’ve tried to make sure it’s a similar experience. That’s not necessarily something that others always understand (‘she’ll be fine on her own…put her down, you’ll spoil her…isn’t she old enough to go in a cot now…just stick her in the pushchair, she’s too old to be carried everywhere…can’t you just move on to bottles and give yourself a break…etc, etc, etc…) but she is not their baby. She is ours.

She has slept alongside us since the day she was born, and she spent her first few months snuggled up to me in a sling – many times out of convenience, it’s true – but also because she loved being close to me and I love being close to her. This third time round, I knew how quickly the time would pass. There was no hurry to get her rolling, crawling, eating, talking; and even though I’m now heading back to work there is still really no hurry to be exploring enforced nightime separation or (quite frankly unlikely) dreams of sleeping through the night. I’ve found that cosleeping generally works well for us in terms of getting a reasonable enough level of rest.

BUT now she is nine months. And she’s suddenly realised she isn’t a part of me any more.

She’s crawling. She’s cruising. She’s interested in anything and everything, especially if it’s something that she really shouldn’t be investigating, and sometimes she forgets me and gets lost in her independence.

But then she remembers that she is on her own. And she is scared.

I don’t blame her. Even as an adult it is sometimes scary to realise that you are alone. For a small baby, who can do so much and yet still not really that much at all, it must be pretty much terrifying.

So that’s why we’ll keep on cosleeping, we’ll keep on breastfeeding, and we’ll keep on having happy snuggles in the sling until she decides for herself that she’s ready to leave my side.

There are occasions where I do have to leave her. So I’m going to enjoy the snuggles and the smiles while they last, when I don’t.