But the worst is the raised-eyebrow feelings I get when I see other parents not parenting their babies the way I think it should be done. Yesterday, I was in Target and the sound of a newborn crying attracted my attention (OK, it also made my boobs go a little crazy). There was a teeny, tiny — I mean, tiny — little girl in a huge stroller, flailing and crying in that piteous newborn way while her mother nonchalantly looked at clothes. I think the mother saw me looking, so she briefly leaned over the baby, said, “Ohhh,” and went back to shopping. My mind began racing. Tiny babies only cry like that if they really, really need something! Why is she in that huge stroller? Newborns need to feel secure! Oh my god I just want to pick her up! Lady, pick up your baby! Pick her up! She’s hungry! Feed your baby, woman!

I said nothing, of course, because I didn’t want to be that woman. And anyway, Brian was wheeling Mateo around the store, so I didn’t have my chubby little drool machine as proof that I totally know what I’m doing with the baby stuff. I hurried to Brian to tell him about it, though, and we both watched in silent judgment later as the same woman passed us at the greeting card section, her baby still crying, her face impassive. We watched her until, finally, as we were checking out, we saw the baby’s grandmother take out a bottle to feed the baby in the food court.

Now, I’m sure this baby is just fine, even if, as Brian pointed out, the were giving her formula. (Gasp!) But that urge to be nosy, it is so irresistible! I wonder what other women think of me when they see me with Mateo.

Speaking of Mateo, he likes to pretend he’s a grown-up sometimes.

Reading the fascinating tome Squishy Turtle and Friends

“… We should not grieve, should we, baby?” said Celia confidentially to that unconscious centre and poise of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even to the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap off, to make — you didn’t know what: — in short, he was Bouddha in a Western form.”
-George Eliot, Middlemarch

I finished Middlemarch a couple of weeks ago, and was amused to find a completely accurate portrayal of new motherhood in it. The heroine’s sister, Celia, is the mother of what she regards as the most remarkable being in the world, and is content to sit and stare at him, to talk of almost nothing but him, and can’t think that anything is truly wrong in the world as long as her baby is safe and happy. She is harmlessly insipid in her new motherhood, and I understand every inch of her silliness.

I laughed when I read this because I’d been calling Mateo “my little Buddha” because of the serenity of his expressions. Honestly, it is quite hard to work on anything when I could happily watch him sleep and talk of nothing but him — how he has begun to smile and outgrow newborn clothes, how he watches me intently and studies his father’s face.

It is a kind of devotion that is difficult to write about — both because it is so consumingly intense and because I know it can be tiresome to people whose existences aren’t anchored to my own little “center and poise of the world.”