I swear my child was a newborn a few weeks ago. Except he wasn’t. He’s fourteen months old now and I don’t know how that happened. He now comes under the term ‘toddler’ instead of just ‘baby’.
When I was pregnant – and especially in the first couple of weeks of being a new parent – people told us to ‘cherish every moment’ and warned us ‘it goes so fast’. They were right but I still stick by the thought that you don’t have to linger over every moment. Some moments are hellish. Yes, there are cute cuddles and first smiles and milestones but sometimes there are nappy explosions, tantrums and sleep deprivation.
Recently I can’t shake the feeling that I missed a chunk of his life already. I look back at pictures of him and find it hard to believe he used to look and act differently. Where there once was a tiny bundle (ok, he was never tiny but it’s all relative…) there is now a thriving individual. He has a blossoming personality, a sense of independence, and he has a lot less time for Mummy’s love of cuddles.
The newborn stage is gone. That chapter is closed. As parents we succeeded in getting through those initial stages of panic when we had no clue how we were going to keep a completely helpless human alive for longer than a day or two. To be honest, we still don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re learning. Going into the toddler stage is a new challenge and we’re going to need to learn a whole new bunch of skills. But he’ll still be my baby – I now know that feeling of looking at a person and being pulled back to a different time and place when our first meeting was a game changer.
Mulling It Over 