Welcome to the Club

My younger brother and his wife are expecting a child in August. A boy.

The thought if it fills me with a mixture of emotions, joy and longing and fear, the desire to help and the need to step back..

The happiness and delight I feel is obvious. It's a sense of welcoming, of camaraderie, of the knowledge that their lives are soon to become that much richer. A warm sort of Welcome to the club. Membership is exhausting, but it comes with some crazy, fun benefits. And I'll have a brand new nephew to hold, and bounce, and give back.

The power of those first moments cannot be replicated, when you see your gooey progeny, mewling or bleating or outright howling, and you think, We did this. This, as you watch your child toweled off and weighed and wrapped. This, as mouth roots for nipple. The heart swells, magically blocking out the physical aftermath of birth's great marathon. He was inside, and now he's out. Even a doubter has to sing about this seeming miracle.

****

I don't mean to rag on your parenting style, my brother tells me over the phone, in the midst of a conversation on infancy. But M's sister did the whole babywearing thing. She was always carrying E around in a sling, and he was so calm and content.

I know he didn't mean it as an indictment, truly, just an observation on differences, but in the moment it made me feel like crying. It was as if I had been examined by an outsider and deemed insufficient. All the difficulty I had with Lillian as an infant welled back up: my seeming inability to ever completely soothe or placate her, her outright hostility to her father, her need for constant movement, constant nursing. Would it have all been different had I nestled her in a swath of multi-colored fabric and worn her around?

****

I saw them this past Easter weekend for the first time since we learned they were expecting. Though I have shared some things with my brother over the phone, I do my best to keep my darkness to myself, sticking instead to the delightful task of boy baby names. My experience, I tell myself, is mine. It may not be theirs.

I have to stop myself or I'd blather on and on about how infancy gutted me, how alone I felt, how small and anxious, useless, insanely needed yet invisible. How I longed for confidence, not in my ability to care for my children, but just in the knowledge that everything would be alright. That we'd make it through this war slightly battle-scarred but all the stronger. That our unit would find contentment.

I wonder why this is, this need to be heard. Or maybe it's not as selfish as that. Maybe it's a desire to prepare someone I love for the insanity that is parenthood. How you can love and fear so intensely. How you could stand down a tank for your child. How you can be pushed to the edge, suddenly fearing your own behavior, realizing that you are no longer standing on firm ground. That these feelings are the norm, not the exception.

The preternatural confidence of M's sister to parent her child, to know what is natural and best and follow through with the poise and grace of I can do this...that is the exception.

So I don't mention all the tears in the shower, or the jets sprays of breast milk hosing down my bathroom when I stepped out, clean but scared to once again face my baby. I don't mention my perverse desire to flee from their little bodies and rooting mouths, and the guilty fallout. I don't mention crossing days off the calendar in a black Sharpie, and my mantra with each black X: another day survived.

Because their days might be enjoyable and light, with a baby who sleeps and sucks a binky and takes a bottle and and enjoys his carseat and bouncy seat and eats at 2-3 hour intervals and gurgles happily from within his sling.

They are not us. We are not them.

And anyway, the darkness passed. I have a video of the girls on the couch, sitting beside one another, when Lillian is close to six months old. She is chattering up a storm, making these cute, high-pitched gurgles. I'm speaking to Lillian in the video, as her sister bounces beside her, asking, "How many times did you get up last night? Six? Six!", as if it was some cute milestone rather than a form of torture. We had swung around the bend. Her personality had made everything else more tolerable. I finally enjoyed nursing her. The confidence I had lacked before was now evident in my tone, my lightness. Our unit was finding contentment.

****

Perhaps I'd like a do-over, if I could face going back to infancy again. It sucks to think that I didn't enjoy that period, that I felt oppressed and anxious while tending to my babies.

I hope that when they cuddle their little boy, that's exactly where they want to be. They'll be tired, but I hope they find contentment and confidence from the start.

I can't prepare them for anything, nor should I try to. It's a ritual as old as time itself, but yet each time is like the first time. They'll have to make their own way, with their own baby. And I know they'll be okay. They have love and friendship and intelligence and instinct on their side.

They'll be okay. Just like we are.