We've raised our child to be independent, and now I desperately long for him to need me.
Last week I told my husband, I don't feel like Ryker loves me. He looked at me like I was crazy and sincerely said, "Oh my God Honey. He loves you so much." He told me Ryker's eyes follow me everywhere and he lights up when I'm around. Life lights him up. He was born curious, alert, intrigued and discovering.
What I want for him is to take up into other's arms, smile, experience, feel safe in all sorts of surroundings and comfortable in social situations I introduce him to. He's taken to that. Fantastic.
Now I'm heartbroken that he isn't the child that wants his mommy. I want him to put his arms out for only me, cry for me, need me to hold him.
This week at Baby/Mama Yoga while other moms were posing, stretching and holding their wee ones just a few months old close to them, I felt a pang of disconnect. Ryker was across the room chewing on someone's shoe (the ultimate victory because it's his latest, 'want what I can't have' battle). He was watching another mommy sing the 'rollie pollie' song.
I often wonder if I pushed him too early to move out of his bassinet that was next to our bed and into his crib, although we all slept better. I carry guilt for that, or better re-examined, I feel selfishly regretful that I didn't hang onto that.
Those times he was in his swing, he should have been in my arms.
Those times he was content in my arms, I should have felt it.
Now I wonder, have I not been present? When I'm with him, am I?
Am I showing him enough love and does he feel it?
I was so worried about having a too-dependent child, one that couldn't be happy to play alone or soothe himself to sleep, that I've just realized I totally missed the purpose of becoming a parent.
We welcome life into this world to not only love unconditionally, but to give ourselves and allow this being to be completely dependent on us.
Did I miss out?
That dependence gradually ceases, I suppose, as our children grow and change and utilize the skills we teach them to be self sufficient. Ryker is now in full force. He is crawling, climbing stairs and pulling himself up on everything. And like a baby constantly and quickly flows through the different stages of his life, so do mom and dad's reaction to them.
Last night, Ryker was asleep in his crib, and as an attempt to desperately turn back time and make up those very early days with him, I picked him up and brought him into bed with us. He woke up crying and couldn't settle. Wasn't he supposed to feel ultimate comfort and security in my arms? Why didn't he feel my love and warmth?
I put him back in his crib and he went soundly to sleep. He was in "big boy jammies" and I asked myself why I always dressed him in clothes that made him look like a little man, when now I just want him in sleepers.
When he was one-week-old, I said to his daddy, "I can't believe he has been with us for one week already." And when he was one-month-old, we couldn't believe how quickly it crept up on us. And on his half birthday, I cried all day because it was all I could do to bear the speed of time.
You see, I realize he has been in our world a mere nine months, and we were always told it would fly by... But it's going so fast it blows my mind and I'm fucking sick of people saying, "Enjoy every minute, because before you know it he'll be grown and gone."
I get it.
I couldn't resist. This commercial gets me every single time.
It was written in 1985, when I was three years old).
If the days must run by so quickly,
If the minutes of the time piece run free.
I wish only for the having of your love,
Because your life has bin the making of me.
Since you entered my life with your beauty,
You came along like the words of my song.
May the time just continue so smoothly
And let the days be where they belong.
17.7.12