Love is...

I remember when Miss I was just a tiny bundle of baby, not more than a week old, I wondered how she would know that I loved her. I really wasn’t sure. I whispered it to her, in the same way that, two and half years later, I whispered it to Miss L. I whispered it knowing that neither of them would, or could, understand my words. But I did it anyway because I wanted them to know. And if I didn’t tell them how would they know?

When babies are newborns they are quite like little strangers. They are tiny, tightly-curled balls of baby who mostly want to be swaddled so they feel snug and warm like they did for the first nine months of their lives. They are finally so close, here in our arms, and yet they seem so faraway. For several weeks it feels like nearly everything we do is to help make them feel as if they’re back in their cosy cocoon of their mother’s womb. Really, we want to learn everything there is to know about this little person we’ve finally got to meet. But we wait. 

We hold them close, we pat, we rock, we wrap, we sing, we gently shh. We stare at them sleeping and feeding and stretching. We watch everything that they do. We are always nearby peering in their eyes hoping to catch a glimpse of the character that will eventually emerge. Gradually they start to uncurl. Their focus adjusts and soon enough they begin noticing everything in the world around them.

But, back before this happened, I genuinely wondered how Miss I, this faraway little friend of mine, would know that I loved her. A book, an apt gift from a friend studying psycho-analysis, called Why Love Matters held the answer. I learned that babies receive love through the accumulation of all of our gestures. It is obvious enough and I doubt many mums need a book to teach them that but I did and I remember feeling a flood of relief. 

I didn’t need to worry about defining my love in language because just the way I held my little girl close spoke volumes. My love was loud in the way that I patted and rocked and wrapped and sang and shh’d. In the way that I fed her when she was hungry and picked her up when she cried and burped her when she was uncomfortable. In the way I smiled and spoke to her. My love was complicit in all of those tiny things that I did without thinking. It’s easy, I thought! It’s in everything I do.

In the three and a bit years that have passed since I first realised that, I have revisited the lesson many times and each time I do I feel the same sense of relief. Although it’s equally applicable with toddlers, to me, it’s never more valuable than when tending to a baby who can’t yet talk. Because tending to a baby who can’t yet talk is often tricky. Particularly when a baby is unhappy and all babies are unhappy from time to time.

Whether it’s because of a cold, a tooth, a development milestone, separation anxiety or just because, at some point, usually several, every baby will be miserable. And it can really test their parents’ mettle (not to mention their neighbours’).

Through practical experience I have discovered there are only so many days I am capable of being saintly in the face of our girls being sick. A few days with a crying baby or toddler in constant need of comforting is fine. More than that isn’t. It’s around that point, when trying to soothe a screeching baby for the nineteenth time that day, for the fourth day that week, that less-saintly thoughts float around my mind.  

These vary between “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST BE QUIET!!!”, “JUST CONCENTRATE REALLY HARD AND YOU MAY LAND ON A BEACH WITH A COCKTAIL, A BOOK AND NO DEPENDENTS”, “HOW ON EARTH DO ANY PARENTS SURVIVE BABYHOOD???”, “WHY DID I EVER THINK HAVING CHILDREN WAS A GOOD IDEA???”, “PLEASE JUST MAKE IT STOP!!”   

It’s always when I’m swimming around in these waters that I happily remember that my love is in everything I do, not in everything I think. When I’m feeling like that I love remembering that love is a verb.

Just because I don’t enjoy a particular day (or week) or because I occasionally will the time away or often wish they would just sleep a bit longer or cry a bit less (and a lot less loudly) doesn’t mean I don’t love the girls. The fact is - rain, hail or shine - I’m still here feeding, cuddling, caring. No matter the conditions, in the face of illness, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, frustration, impatience, I tend to them.  And that, my dear readers, is love. Love that is unmitigated by any disillusion or weariness.   

It’s territory I have frequented rather a lot over the past six months with our lovely Miss L who will celebrate her first birthday today. It’s been a year since the most magical afternoon of my whole life, the afternoon we met. It was magical in a way I never anticipated because her arrival was serene. I’d relive it a hundred times if I could. She, of the most luscious locks and the loudest lungs, arrived so easily and early, almost three weeks before she was expected, and, just like that, she stole my heart. 

Her early weeks and months felt easy simply because they weren’t as daunting as those first few weeks we had Miss I in our care. Miss L was placid but quickly proved herself to be something of a mixed bag. A great daytime sleeper but painfully stubborn about letting go of her middle-of-the night feed. She would self-settle without fuss most of the time but then unpredictably wouldn’t. And when she wouldn’t settle herself it proved to be an almost impossible task for anyone else.

A lot of the time she is quite laid back; happy to watch what goes on around her. But at others time she’s been so determined that it’s really tested us. She flat out refused a dummy – despite some persisting on our part – and at six months old, for six weeks straight, she refused even a sip from a bottle. She’s a bundle of extremes: extremely happy or extremely unhappy, with little else in between. I’m terrified to admit she is every bit as resolute as her big sister. 

Of course she is also so impossibly sweet and lovely that she takes my breath away often. Her grin and giggle melt hearts from a mile off. 

It is impossible, I think, to celebrate a baby’s first birthday without a sense of nostalgia and pride and love. It’s not time that is ever returned – which for the most part is fantastic – but it’s also daunting. This time last year Miss L was just a teeny, tiny thing. Now she is an almost-walking, babbling little girl on the brink of toddlerhood. This time next year her and Miss I will no doubt be terrorising Mr G and I, honing their skills in preparation for their careers leading terrorist organisations.

I have no idea what the next twelve months will bring but I know I am relieved and happy and proud that we’ve survived this year. I can't imagine our family without our darling L but I can't quite believe she's been with us for a whole year. A first birthday is a milestone that is always worth celebrating: babies are adorable but they're not low maintenance and emerging intact is remarkable. Almost as remarkable as a parent’s capacity to love, no matter the conditions. So today, with champagne, cake and chocolate crackles, we will celebrate our gorgeous girl turning one and the fact we're still standing.